Studies about Languages

Pragmatics via prosody in interaction optimization

2024-02-17T15:06:48+02:00

The article represents a case study of Joaquin Phoenix’s acceptance speech, aimed at examining the interface of pragmatics and prosody. Relying on research into prosodic-pragmatic relationships and employing auditory prosody analysis combined with methods of pragmatic and discourse analysis, the article explores the interaction of prosody with speech acts, as well as with their related politeness and discursive strategies. Direct expressives are associated with three positive politeness strategies and are prosodically characterized by a normal or slow speech rate, normal or reduced volume, short intonation groups, very short pauses, a narrow pitch range, clear timbre, and a regular rhythm. The illocutionary force of indirect expressives relies on stylistic devices and markers of positive politeness, connoting emotional closeness and “sincerity” as components of felicity conditions for such acts. Indirect expressives are signaled by very short, short, or medium filled pauses, resonant timbre, low fall and stressed syllable, a descending stepping scale followed by a falling nucleus, high fall intonation groups, a rising intonation before key concepts, accelerated speech tempo, increased loudness, and emphasis on key words. The prosodic signals of expressive syntax and positive politeness coincide, except for markers emphasizing commonality. The “ecocentric” part of speech is constructed by representatives-reasoning that stimulates reflection without imposing views. This aligns with the negative politeness of non-imposition, marked by mitigators like hedges, bushes, and shields. The intonational accent on words with denotative or connotative meanings related to “discrimination” contributes to the discursive strategy of group polarization.

Kriegsmetaphorik in der politischen Sprache: eine kontrastive Studie am Beispiel von ukrainischen und deutschen Pressetexten

2024-01-15T14:50:19+02:00

Die vorliegende Studie analysiert vergleichend Metaphern und metaphorische Phraseologismen, mit denen während des Russland-Krieges gegen die Ukraine in deutschen und ukrainischen Pressetexten auf das Konzept KRIEG Bezug genommen wird. In einer Analyse der strukturell-semantischen und konzeptuellen Merkmale des Belegmaterials wird herausgearbeitet, welche kulturspezifischen Konzepte von KRIEG jeweils durch die Metaphern repräsentiert werden. Dabei werden Kriegsmetaphern in Bezug auf Referenzobjekte, ihre lexikalischen Quellbereiche und ihre strukturellen Merkmale klassifiziert. Durch Kontrastierung der deutsch-ukrainischen Lexem- und Phraseologismenpaare aufgrund semantischer Übereinstimmungen und Unterschiede werden Voll-, Teil- und Nulläquivalenzen herausgearbeitet. Die pragmatischen Funktionen der ausgewählten Metaphern werden in Kontexteinbettung untersucht. Die Materialbasis bilden 205 ukrainische und 105 deutsche Metaphern und metaphorische Phraseologismen, die von Februar 2022 bis Dezember 2023 aus Online-Wörterbüchern sowie digitaler Versionen von Zeitungen
und Zeitschriften erhoben wurden.

News reporting of public speeches in English on-line media: a constructional perspective

2024-03-10T13:07:56+02:00

The paper argues that news texts split into stories dwelling on events and reports with their organization influenced by the content of documents or public speeches they render. The two levels of arranging news reports – compositional and semantic – are revealed by the comparison of the BBC’s and CBC’s reports on Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to the American Congress of 22 December 2022. The composition of news reports is three-layered: universal, typical of all news texts with the headline, the lead, the post-lead paragraph and the text body; implicit, with the conventional layout accompanied by descriptive, argumentative and background sections; explicit, with additional headings emphasizing the editorial view of the speaker’s ideas. Semantically, news reports are best structured in terms of morphosyntactic constructions, i.e., prefabricated pairings of form and meaning, which relate the content of news reports to the rendered address. It is found that with respect to the proximity to the original speech the constructions used in the news reports form five basic types: identical, equivalent with those in the speech
to underscore the affinity of the speaker’s and readers’ worldviews; synonymous, reflecting the original content through meanings close to the new target audience’s worldview; modifying, changing the dependent elements of the author’s original constructions to adjust their meaning to the target audience’s views; generalizing, fitting the speech content into the public worldview; specifying, clarifying the concepts absent from the readers’ worldview.

Modal polyfunctionality and German modals revisited

2024-04-15T16:21:03+03:00

This paper points out that there is presently no consistent definition of German modals, nor is there any agreement as to which verbs should be categorized as modals. The paper suggests that modals should be defined based on modal polyfunctionality, i.e. the ability to express both root and epistemic readings. Applying this definition, the paper states that besides canonical dürfen ‘be
allowed to’, können ‘can’, mögen ‘may’, müssen ‘must’, sollen ‘should’, wollen ‘want’, verbs werden ‘will’ and brauchen ‘need’ are to be considered modals as well, since they semantically behave as standard modals. More specifically, they are both capable of expressing both root and epistemic modalities. Furthermore, the paper proposes that the absence of agreement in 1st and 3rd person singular in modals such as in ich/er mussØ ‘I/he must’ cannot be solely attributed to their preterite-present origin of modals, but is related to the synchronic definition of modals, i.e. their polyfunctionality as a result of paradigmatic coherence. In addition to exploring the central modals, the paper investigates the paradigms of brauchen ‘need’, as well as werden ‘will’, suggesting that they might be aligning with the central modals in terms of their agreement morphology as well. Since being theoretical, the paper’s arguments are supported by the examples from the texts referenced in literature or produced by native speakers of German.

Pitch changes as the marker of a phrase edge in standard Lithuanian

2023-11-26T14:27:27+02:00

In many languages, pitch changes at phrase edges are often described as significant cues of juncture. The aim of this study is to analyse pitch changes at the beginning and end of declarative phrases in standard Lithuanian. The study consists of two parts: 1) a pilot study analysing whether the F0 difference is a reliable measure to determine the F0 rise/fall at the end of declarative phrases
and whether such a difference depends on the speaker’s sex; 2) an annotated speech corpus analysis on the tendencies of pitch changes at phrase edges. The pilot study showed that in phrases with a rising F0 at the end, the F0 mean of the last stressed syllable is significantly lower than F0 at the end of a phrase. In phrases with a falling F0, the F0 mean of the last stressed syllable is significantly higher than the F0 at the end of a phrase. The F0 difference is a reliable measure to determine the F0 rise or fall at the end of a phrase, and all the abovementioned tendencies were found in both male and female speakers’ recordings. The annotated speech corpus analysis revealed that both intonational and intermediate phrases usually begin and end in a low tone. Hence, the high and rising or falling tones at the beginning or end of a phrase are the marked members of the phrase edge tone system, and they can help identify phrase junctures. However, it is important to pay attention to other acoustic features such as pauses and intensity, as well as grammatical and semantic aspects.

Lessons learned from an electronic botany dictionary compilation project

2024-02-17T16:03:55+02:00

The study offers insights into the design, working model, and solutions of the specialised electronic dictionary of botany terms in Latvian, Latin, English, German, and Russian, developed as a mobile application. The third version of this dictionary has been updated as a final one within the project ‘Smart Complex of Information Systems of Specialised Biology Lexis for the Research and Preservation of Linguistic Diversity’ and published in the Google Play Store and the Apple Store in January 2024.
The study describes various aspects of the conception of a dictionary of botany terms and offers a practical dictionary compiling model for the dictionary’s mega-, macro-, and microstructure. Prior to commencing the project, a survey of the potential users was conducted to understand the preferences of the respondents and to take these preferences into consideration when developing the dictionary. New solutions to the aspects typical of a specialised dictionary of botany terms (labelling of taxonomic categories, visualization with interactive images, automatic retrieval of definitions from existing sources and their usability, etc.) were found. The study is summarised by discussing the main lessons that have been learned in the process of developing a small
(~3000 entry words) specialised dictionary. The conclusions might be useful for lexicographers and translators interested in compiling dictionaries.

Variation diatopique dans la terminologie juridique. Analyse des néologismes juridiques dans FranceTerme, dans le Grand dictionnaire terminologique, dans TERMIUM Plus® et TERMDAT

2024-03-10T13:53:38+02:00

L’article traite de la variation diatopique de la terminologie juridique française. Il s’appuie sur les 93 néologismes juridiques contenus dans FranceTerme, la banque de données terminologique officielle française gérée par le ministère de la Culture, en les comparant à leurs équivalents présents dans le Grand dictionnaire terminologique, la banque de données officielle du Québec, qui a été créée par l’Office québécois de la langue française, dans TERMIUM Plus®, la banque de données du gouvernement canadien, et dans TERMDAT, la banque de données de la Chancellerie fédérale suisse. L’analyse a révélé une variation terminologique importante. Une minorité négligeable de termes ne manifeste aucune variation à travers les quatre sources. Les correspondances entre les termes présents dans les banques de données respectives ne sont que très partielles. Dans la majorité écrasante des termes, une variation est attestée et l’article en illustre les différents types à partir d’exemples concrets. On distingue surtout les équivalents qui ne diffèrent que formellement (les variantes syntaxiques, morphologiques et orthographiques, l’alternation des formes pleines et des sigles) et les équivalents qui manifestent des différences plus profondes (les termes vernaculaires et les emprunts à l’anglais, les termes descriptifs et les termes grécolatins, les termes contenant des mots indigènes synonymes remplaçant le terme entier ou l’un de ses éléments, les termes métaphoriques et les termes non métaphoriques, etc.).

Preferences of Lithuanian cybersecurity synonymous terms in different user groups

2024-05-11T18:17:23+03:00

Cybersecurity is a rapidly developing domain, where emerging new concepts are usually first designated in English and then find their way into the usage of other languages. As the Lithuanian terminology in this domain develops, different types of synonymous terms appear in usage, which are treated differently by speakers. The article presents a terminology survey involving 593 respondents from various age groups, from different regions and expertise levels. In the survey, the respondents had to name the most suitable terms for 10 cybersecurity concepts: the respondents could choose the terms proposed in the questionnaire or they could propose their own terms and give the reasons why they made their choices. The concepts and their terminological designations were selected from the Lithuanian-English Cybersecurity Termbase, the dataset of which is based on bilingual parallel and comparable cybersecurity corpora. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey results reveals preferences for different types of terms, such as borrowings, metaphorical calques, and descriptive terms, and how these preferences differ across the two segments of respondents: students vs. graduates, and cybersecurity experts vs. general public. The results show that some terminological designations have been already established in the Lithuanian language, while most of them are still competing for their positions. The analysis of the reasons reveals that accuracy and clarity are the main factors for selecting a term. The research contributes to the standardisation of cybersecurity terms in Lithuania and provides insights into user preferences and the reasons behind them.