Evidentials and their pivot in Tibetic and neighboring Himalayan languages

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Marius Zemp

Abstract This paper focuses on a specific type of perspective-indexing constructions in Tibetic and neighboring languages, namely a type of verbal marker that is consistently construed from the perspective of the speaker in statements, the addressee in questions, and the source (= the original/reported speaker) in reported speech clauses. As these markers indicate how one obtained the information profiled in a sentence and may thus be viewed as a type of evidential, they cannot at the same time establish reference to any participant of the current speech act and thus by default reflect the perspective of the ‘informant’ of the respective sentence type. If we define the encountered distinctions in relation to a cause-effect vector in the sense of DeLancey (1986), these languages all contain what we may call an ‘insider’ marker indicating access to the entire vector including its causal origin and an ‘outsider’ marker indicating access only to its effect end. Whereas the insider markers typically occur when the informant is the subject and the outsider markers when s/he is not, the present paper discusses the different ways in which Tibetic and neighboring languages deviate from this basic pattern, and argues that these differences reflect the fact that the markers in the latter languages were only secondarily evidentialized in reported speech clauses, likely due to contact with Tibetic.

Author(s):  
Lindayana ◽  
Arifuddin ◽  
Halus Mandala

This study was conducted aiming at examining: (1) the divergent principles of politeness in students’ directive speech act (2) factors affecting politeness and impoliteness in verbal and non-verbal directive speech act produced by students at grade X in Senior High School 1 Mataram in the learning process. The subject of this study are teachers teaching Bahasa Indonesia, English, Economy, History, Math, Religion, Civic, and Science, and all students at Grade X of Science 1, Science 3 and Social 2 in Senior High School 1 Mataram. This study is a descriptive qualitative research. The data source in this study is the number of utterances produced by students and teachers in the learning process. The data were collected through observation. This study revealed that: (1) there were divergent principles of politeness in participants’ directive speech act namely single and multiple divergent principles of politeness affected by speaker intentionally accused addressees, intentionally uttered by neglecting the context, was protective to other arguments, showed emotional feeling, given critiques in impolite words and mocked at other; and (2) there were factors affecting politeness and impoliteness in verbal and non-verbal directive speech act produced by students in learning process namely linguistic factor and non-linguistic factor.


Author(s):  
Azeb Amha

This chapter examines expressions of commands (imperatives) in Wolaitta and the ways in which the imperative is distinguished from statements and questions. Although each sentence type is formally distinct, imperatives and questions share a number of morpho-syntactic properties. Similar to declarative and interrogative sentences, imperatives in Wolaitta involve verbal grammatical categories such as the distinction of person, number, and gender of the subject as well as negative and positive polarity. In contrast to previous studies, the present contribution establishes the function of a set of morphemes based on -árk and -érk to be the expression of plea or appeal to an addressee rather than politeness when issuing a command. Instead, politeness in commands is expressed by using plural (pro)nominal and verbal elements. The imperative in Wolaitta is a robust construction which is also used in formulaic speeches such as leave-taking as well as in blessing, curses, and advice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 915
Author(s):  
Marianna Stella ◽  
Paul E. Engelhardt

In this study, we examined eye movements and comprehension in sentences containing a relative clause. To date, few studies have focused on syntactic processing in dyslexia and so one goal of the study is to contribute to this gap in the experimental literature. A second goal is to contribute to theoretical psycholinguistic debate concerning the cause and the location of the processing difficulty associated with object-relative clauses. We compared dyslexic readers (n = 50) to a group of non-dyslexic controls (n = 50). We also assessed two key individual differences variables (working memory and verbal intelligence), which have been theorised to impact reading times and comprehension of subject- and object-relative clauses. The results showed that dyslexics and controls had similar comprehension accuracy. However, reading times showed participants with dyslexia spent significantly longer reading the sentences compared to controls (i.e., a main effect of dyslexia). In general, sentence type did not interact with dyslexia status. With respect to individual differences and the theoretical debate, we found that processing difficulty between the subject and object relatives was no longer significant when individual differences in working memory were controlled. Thus, our findings support theories, which assume that working memory demands are responsible for the processing difficulty incurred by (1) individuals with dyslexia and (2) object-relative clauses as compared to subject relative clauses.


Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Knyazkov

The subject of this research is the abusive language (invectives) prohibited by the rules of the International Song Contest “Eurovision”. The goal consists in substantiating the role of obscene language as a linguistic manipulation in song discourse of “Eurovision” contest. The tabooed words and expressions represent a wide array of lexical units for research by modern linguistic science based on the materials of various voice compositions. Using the lyrics of songs that participated in “Eurovision” and made top 10 chart, the author determined those that contain invectives. The scientific novelty consists in the first ever analysis of song lyrics that contained the lexical units of abusive language prohibited by the rules of “Eurovision”. It was determined that the compositions of multimodal discourse contain various invectives in verbal component. The authors of songs for “Eurovision” apply different linguistic manipulations to influence the live voting and ensure a spot in the finals for their composition. This is directly related to increase in the number of participating countries; therefore, the structure and content of verbal component of a musical-poetic composition of Eurovision plays an important role. Despite the prohibition by rules of the context to use tabooed lexicon in song lyrics, the author was able to identify certain violations in the English-language and Italian-language compositions. The conclusion is made that invectives in the song discourse are effective linguistic manipulations that enhance suggestive semantics of speech act, since all compositions made it to the top 10.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67
Author(s):  
Sherwan Hussein Hamad ◽  
Talar Sabah Omer

           Every Friday, articles were presented at mosques, and the subject of  the articles involved all aspects of human life, political, economic, social,…Any phenomenon in the society is mentioned in religious speeches. These articles will be part of religious discourse in Kurdistan, one of the subjects we have chosen for this investigation and we will study it from the perspective of a speech by Mala Araz about condemning the Turkish attack on the kurds. The aim of our study is to analyze religious discourse from a pragmatic perspective to achieve the goal that we have analyzed in the methodology, and we have received an example from the book" Mala Araz", which is in the context of the central Kurdish language kurmanji dialect.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Widdya Syafitri

This research focuses on the use of commissive speech act used by the shopping hosts of MNC Shop. The source of data is taken from the advertisements of household appliances, such as frying pan, rice cooker, vacuum cleaner, etc which are broadcasted in December 2018. The purposes of the research are to identify and to explain the form and the pattern as well as the function of the commissive speech acts used by the shopping hosts. This research uses qualitative approach. The data are collected by using observational method followed by recording and note-taking technique. Then, the data are analyzed by using pragmatic identity method and distributional method with deletion and permutation technique. The theory of form and pattern of the commissive speech act are based on Alwi’s and Putrayasa’s theory. Meanwhile the theory of its function is taken from Yule’s and Ibrahim’s theory. From the analysis, it is found that the commissive speech acts in the advertisement can be uttered in the form of declarative, interrogative and exclamative. The pattern can be in the form of normal sentence (subject preceding the predicate then followed by the object) or in the form of inverted sentence (the inversion of normal pattern) which the predicate preceding the subject, etc. In terms of its functions, the commissive speech acts can be used to promise, to guarantee and to convince.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-72
Author(s):  
Widiastuti Muchsin

The research problems of this research is what are the types and functions of speech acts that appear in discussion activities on speaking learning of 3rd semester students of Polytechnic ATI Makassar. The methods in this research is a descriptive qualitative method. The subject of this research is the 3rd semester Politechnic ATI Makassar students in class discussion activities. The results of the study can be described as follows. There are several types of speech acts found. Based on the action objectives of the speaker's perspective, Locutionary act, Illocution act, and perlocutionary act are found. Locutionary speech acts include news, questions and orders. Illocutionary speech acts include assertive, directive, expressive, commissive and declarative illocution


Theology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 260-266
Author(s):  
Anna Cho

Holiness as the subject of Wesleyan holiness theology is not only God’s divine language but also an experiential language of humans. Despite this fact, research that considers the religious linguistic features of holiness theology as they relate to its meaning and effects in the real lives of believers seems to have been neglected. Thus, this article proposes to examine the language of holiness in terms of Wesleyan holiness theory by means of speech act theory. First, this approach solves the problem of overcoming the proposition principle of holiness theology. Second, it shows an understanding of the linguistic hermeneutics of the work of the Holy Spirit in believers. And finally, it presents the ways in which the religious divine language of holiness can be described as an ethical language characteristic of human experiential language.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77
Author(s):  
Linda Konnerth

Abstract In a reported intentionality construction, intentionality is expressed as reported speech/thought (‘s/he says/thinks, <I will go>’). The quoted clause must contain a first person form and refer to the future. Reported intentionality displays perspective persistence and an accompanying apparent form-meaning mismatch, as it structurally marks the speech-act participant perspective of the volitional agent despite idiomatically translating only from the perspective of the current speaker. While this construction has been examined in languages around the world, this is the first treatment for the Trans-Himalayan (or Sino-Tibetan/Tibeto-Burman) language family. Monsang (South-Central; Northeast India) is shown to have a reported intentionality construction of the cross-linguistic type. In addition, there is a desiderative construction in the language that does not display perspective persistence but is argued to reconstruct back to a reported intentionality construction. Further evidence from synchronic and diachronic quotative constructions in Monsang is presented that illustrates the prominence of quotative-derived expressions of intentionality in Monsang verbal morphology.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYN FRAZIER ◽  
BRIAN DILLON ◽  
CHARLES CLIFTON

abstractExpressives like damn convey a negative attitude toward an entity or toward a situation. What is particularly interesting about such expressions is the looseness of the relation between their syntax, which is the syntax of normal attribute adjectives, and their interpretation (Potts 2005, 2007). An experiment on various negative expressives manipulated the placement of the expressive as a prior utterance, or inside the subject or inside an object of the verb or preposition. Experimental participants were asked what the speaker was most likely to have a negative attitude towards − the subject, the object, or the entire situation. The test items were of two types, ‘non-causal’ and ‘causal’, exemplified by The holiday is on the damn weekend and The dog is on the damn couch. In the non-causal items, the subject (holiday) cannot plausibly be taken as being responsible for the state of affairs described. However, in the causal items, the subject might be responsible for the state of affairs described. The same range of interpretations was observed for all placements of damn. The prior utterance condition (Damn. The dog is on the couch.) yielded more entire situation interpretations than the sentence-internal damn items. Overall, subject damn items yielded more subject interpretations than object damn items. However, as predicted by the hypothesis that blame would devolve on a potentially responsible agent (the culprit hypothesis), there were more subject interpretations in the causal items than in the non-causal items. The results suggest that considerable pragmatic inferencing is involved in the interpretation of expressives, consistent with a proposal that an expressive constitutes a separate speech act.


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