scholarly journals Emphatic Italics in English Translations: Stylistic Failure or Motivated Stylistic Resources?

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Saldanha
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Common Features ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Consistent Feature ◽  
Stylistic Function ◽  
Information Focus

This article argues that emphatic italics, a typographic feature regularly ignored by linguists and associated with poor style, have an important stylistic function in English, often working in implicit association with prosodic patterns in spoken language to signal marked information focus, thus fulfilling an important role in information structure and adding a conversational and involved tone to written texts. Emphatic italics are more common in English than in other languages because tonic prominence is the preferred means of marking information focus in English, while other languages use purely linguistic devices, such as word order. Thus arises the question of what happens in English translations from and into other languages. The study presented here looks at results obtained from a bidirectional English-Portuguese corpus (COMPARA) which suggest that italics may be less common in English translations from Portuguese than in non-translated English texts. This trend could potentially be explained by the use of common features of translated language, in particular explicitation and conservatism (also known as normalization). However, a closer look at the work of particular translators shows that the avoidance or use of italics is not a consistent feature of translations and may be a characteristic feature of the stylistic profile of certain translators.

scholarly journals Sociolinguistics of Hindī An Analysis of TV-Mediated Spoken Hindī Features Through TV Programmes’ Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Ferro
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hindi Language

This paper analyses varieties of Hindī language differentiated on the social ground, namely standard Hindī (the sanskritized language) and non-standard Hindī. The latter, which includes different varieties of spoken Hindī, was studied listening to two TV programs: Delhi Crime and Satyamev Jayate. Several features were observed on every level, but here the focus is on syntax (Hindī word order) and lexicon (code-switching). Information structure theory and pragmatics are used to analyse TV-mediated spoken Hindī word order. The comprehension of these special features can be helpful to predict the changes towards which Hindī tends to move and to give examples of the spoken language.

Subject inversion in transitive sentences from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Galves ◽  
Alba Gibrail
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
High Position ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Information Focus

This chapter focuses on Classical Portuguese and its change to Modern European Portuguese, bringing to the debate new data concerning transitive sentences. The data are drawn from the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese (texts written by Portuguese authors born 1502–1836). It is argued that both constituent order syntax and the information structure functions of word order in transitive sentences (SVO, VSO, VOS) support the characterization of Classical Portuguese as a verb-second language: the verb occupies a high position in clause structure, which makes a high position for post-verbal subjects available as well. This explains why post-verbal subjects in Classical Portuguese are not obligatorily associated with an information focus interpretation, but very frequently receive a familiar topic interpretation. The empirical evidence discussed in this chapter supports the claim that there was a syntactic change from Classical to Modern European Portuguese, rather than a discursive reinterpretation of the same syntax.

scholarly journals El foco, la estructura informativa y ser focalizador en el español cibaeño

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Gupton
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Dominican Spanish ◽  
Information Focus

In this manuscript, I examine information focus and contrastive focus in Cibaeño Dominican Spanish (CDS), in an attempt to test the predictions of Zubizarreta (1998) as well as claims of rigid word order (e.g. Cameron, 1993; Toribio, 2000). Analysis of the experimental results from 34 monolingual CDS speakers suggests that CDS does not behave according to Zubizarreta's proposal, nor does it have rigid word order. Additionally, the preference for in situ contrastive-corrective focus bears a potential for information-structure-related ambiguities. I suggest that the ser focalizador structure, which is exhaustive in CDS, is made available to resolve such cases of ambiguity. Novel ser focalizador data informs a revised syntactic analysis of the structure based on Toribio (1993).

Pragmatics for Latin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Devine ◽  
Laurence D. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

Latin is often described as a free word order language, but in general each word order encodes a particular information structure: in that sense, each word order has a different meaning. This book provides a descriptive analysis of Latin information structure based on detailed philological evidence and elaborates a syntax-pragmatics interface that formalizes the informational content of the various different word orders. The book covers a wide ranges of issues including broad scope focus, narrow scope focus, double focus, topicalization, tails, focus alternates, association with focus, scrambling, informational structure inside the noun phrase and hyperbaton (discontinuous constituency). Using a slightly adjusted version of the structured meanings theory, the book shows how the pragmatic meanings matching the different word orders arise naturally and spontaneously out of the compositional process as an integral part of a single semantic derivation covering denotational and informational meaning at one and the same time.

Bare nominals, information structure and word order

Lingua ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 120 (6) ◽  
pp. 1476-1501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Salem
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Bare Nominals

Word Order in Old and Middle English

Diachronica ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Extended Version ◽  
Major Parameter ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mixed Systems

In the history of English one finds a mixture of V2 and non-V2 word order in declaratives for several hundred years, with frequencies suggesting a relatively gradual development in the direction of non-V2. Within an extended version of a cue-based approach to acquisition and change, this paper argues that there are many possible V2 grammars, differing from each other with respect to clause types, information structure, and the behavior of specific lexical elements. This variation may be formulated in terms of micro-cues. Child language data from present-day mixed systems show that such grammars are acquired early. The apparent optionality of V2 in the history of English may thus be considered to represent several different V2 grammars in succession, and it is not necessary to refer to competition between two major parameter settings. Diachronic language development can thus be argued to occur in small steps, reflecting the loss of micro-cues, and giving the impression that change is gradual.

scholarly journals Word order in Latin locative constructions: a corpus study in Caesar’s De bello gallico

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Structural Domains ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

AbstractClassical Latin is a free word order language, i.e., the order of the constituents is determined by information structure rather than by syntactic rules. This article presents a corpus study on the word order of locative constructions and shows that the choice between a Theme-first and a Locative-first order is influenced by the discourse status of the referents. Furthermore, the corpus findings reveal a striking impact of the syntactic construction: complements of motion verbs do not have the same ordering preferences with complements of static verbs and adjuncts. This finding supports the view that the influence of discourse status on word order is indirect, i.e., it is mediated by information structural domains.

scholarly journals THE PROSODIC EMPHASIS OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN LECTURES

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (10(78)) ◽  
pp. 111-114
Author(s):  
Nataliia Koval
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
International Communication ◽  
Rhythmic Pattern ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Logical Organization ◽  
Sociocultural Characteristics

The focus of the study is prosodic emphasis and its correlation with the sociocultural characteristics of native speakers who have shown them during lectures. Thus, the accentuation of the informational structure of lectures is regarded as an indicator of the speaker’s language culture. This research was conducted within the framework of academic style. The relevance of this article is because currently the issues of the culture of the studied foreign language, including the culture of the spoken language, are of particular importance in the context of globalization, when English became the language of international communication, which operates on the territories of countries with different cultural traditions. The identification of the British norm of linguistic culture is presented in this article on the example of the prosody of the information structure of lectures. So, the conducted audit analysis of quasi-spoken speech of texts of academic style in British and American lecturers’ implementation allowed the author to draw the following conclusions: 1) the sociocultural characteristics of the speaker largely determine the culture of his/her speech behavior; 2) accentuation, being a particular manifestation of the category of emphasis and performing the function of the logical organization of the utterance, can serve as an indicator of the complexity of thinking; 3) the rhythmic pattern of the experimental sounding material corresponds to generally accepted data – 1:2 for the British version and 1:1.3 for the American one; 4) the most frequent are emphatic patterns having the ratio of stressed syllables to unstressed equal to 1: 1; 1: 1.3; 1: 2.

scholarly journals Analytical forms of expressing the category of certainty / uncertainty in modern Slovenian fiction

Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Ksenia Igorevna Komarova
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
First Person ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Colloquial Language ◽  
Article Type ◽  
Type Particle ◽  
Stylistic Function

This article examines the analytical approach towards expressing the category of certainty / uncertainty in Slovenian fiction. The analytical forms are comprised by the unchangeable article-type particle “ta”, which is commonly used in the Slovenian colloquial language, but at present is also actively used in the literary language. Special attention is given to the modern Slovenian fiction. The author analyzed ten Slovenian novels published between 2008 and 2018, and revealed all instances of using the article-type particle with both, substantive adjectives and together with adjectives and nouns. The following conclusions were formulated: colloquial elements in fiction perform a stylistic function; therefore one of the key tasks of the article-type particle consists in speech characteristic of the character, including indicating his dialect, since all instanced of using the particle are in the dialogical speech or first-person narrative. However, it is important to note that in most instances, the particle is used with substantive adjectives, which indicates lexicalization of combination of the particle and the adjective, which is used for mentioning a known person/object or indicating a characteristic feature.

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