A Lexical-Pragmatic Approach to Japanese Wakamono Kotoba ‘Youth Language’ yabai

This study uncovers the morphosyntactic properties of yabai and its clipped forms. It aims to arrive at an understanding of how the forms and the meanings might be associated. A lexical-pragmatic-based analysis was carried out using Twitter and speech corpus data. The findings reveal the following picture of the lexeme: (a) when yabai undertakes an adjective role, modifying a noun, it is likely that a negative evaluation is invited. In this regard, yabai fulfils a lexical function. (b) The adverb use of yabai presents two variations: modifying a verb or modifying an i-adjective. At any rate, the adverb use describes the degree of an event or an object, leading to the assumption that yabai fulfils a grammatical function.(c) The predicate function presents the following diversities: the negative-denotation yabai and yabee are lexical items; the positive/neutral-denotation yabai, yabee and yaba are grammatical items. The clipped forms, i.e. yaba; yabee and yabe are limited to interjection use and adverb use, which are signs of complete grammaticalisation. A quantitative analysis via KH Coder suggests that yabai’s adverb function appears to be limited to women friendships, with parent-child relationship and vertical relationship being ruled out.

Comment "surintensifier" les expressions d’intensité ? L’exemple des collocations ADJ /V comme SN et ADJ / N à faire Vinf

In this article we present some syntactic characteristics, and then some productive semantic mechanisms of the intensification of the collocations selected for this study, namely Adj comme SN ou V comme SN et Adj à (faire) Vinf ou N à faire Vinf. All of them already mark a strong, indeterminate intensity, that means, they express a standard lexical function "intensity" (henceforth Intens, inspired by the simple function Magn of the Mel'čuk’s model, 1996) reflecting the syntagmatic relation between a base (argument) and a collocative intensifier (predicate). These collocations are combined by overlapping or embedding with other collocators or other collocations. By these combinatorial operations, one obtains over intensified expressions which are the result of either occasional modification (hapax) without the chance for lexicalisation, or spontaneous motivated modifications which may one day become lexicalized. All of them can be productive themselves under the new patterns, e.g. bête à faire pleurer un âne or fumer comme une vieille locomotive à vapeur, etc. Dans cet article nous présentons quelques caractéristiques syntaxiques, puis quelques mécanismes sémantiques productifs de l’intensification des collocations sélectionnées pour cette étude, à savoir Adj comme SN ou V comme SN et Adj à (faire) Vinf ou N à faire Vinf. Toutes, elles marquent déjà une forte intensité indéterminée, c’est-à-dire elles expriment une fonction lexicale standard « intensité » (dorénavant Intens, inspirée de la fonction simple Magn du modèle mel’čukien, 1996) rendant compte des liens syntagmatiques entre une base (argument) et un collocatif intensifieur (prédicat). Ces collocations se combinent par superposition ou enchâssement avec d’autres collocatifs ou d’autres collocations. Par ces opérations de combinatoire on obtient des expressions surintensifiées qui sont les résultats ou bien des modifications de circonstance (hapax) sans chance de se lexicaliser ou bien des modifications spontanées motivées pouvant, un jour, être sujettes à se lexicaliser. Toutes, elles peuvent elles-mêmes être productives sous de nouveaux schémas, comme bête à faire pleurer un âne ou fumer comme une vieille locomotive à vapeur, etc.

Typology of Words and Constructions with a High Degree of Meaning

The article is devoted to the study of the semantics of units expressing the value of intensity. The concept of the lexical function Magn of the “Meaning ↔ Text” model is used in the article. Lexical functions are a tool for describing limited lexical collocation. Magn is an abstract typical meaning of ‘very’, ‘intensity’, ‘high degree’, which is expressed in a significant number of different words, and in many cases in an idiomatic way. Lexical units expressing the meaning of ‘very’ / ‘large’ / ‘intense’ are represented in different languages by a large number of words and constructions. The designation of intensity in many languages has lexically determined variants of expression, often linguistic specific. A brief overview of the main models of the formation of the meaning of intensity in a language, examples of linguistic-specific units are given. The novelty of the research is determined by the presentation in the work of new models of the formation of the meaning of Magn and linguistic-specific expressions of this meaning. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the study of models of the formation of the value of intensity is in line with modern research on the study of semantic evolution, the construction of a typology of semantic transitions, the identification of the features of the picture of the world of different languages, the creation of explanatory models of the language.

The functions of the verb ‘to say’ in the Jordanian Arabic dialect of Irbid

This research investigates the functions of the verb ‘to say’ in the Jordanian Arabic dialect of Irbid (JADI). Relying on a 250,000-word corpus, we propose that the speech verb ‘to say’ in JADI has one main lexical function (i.e. introducing direct or indirect speech) in addition to three functions which the verb develops, i.e. expressing the speaker’s mental state, signalling indirect evidentiality, and revealing the speaker’s incredulity towards the accompanying utterance. We show that in these three developed functions, the verb lost one or more of its lexical properties, because of an (initial or advanced) grammaticalization process whose effects are clearly manifested by the function of the verb as an incredulity marker, in which case the verb is semantically bleached, phonologically reduced, and de-categorized. Following Traugott (1989), Wang et al. (2003) and Hsieh (2012), among others, we propose that the grammaticalization path of the speech verb in JADI into these three functions are motivated by pragmatic inference and (inter)subjectification. The directionality of the grammaticalization process is also shown to be implemented from propositional (through textual) to expressive functions.

Corpus-based methods in stylistic studies: reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Fedor Dostoevskii’s individual style

The article discusses the idiolectic features of the adjective reshitel’nyi and the adverb reshitel’no in Fedor Dostoevskii’s writing style. Conceived as one lexical item, reshitel’nyi and reshitel’no have a semantic structure that includes three blocks of meanings: quality/mode of action; discursive meaning; intensity (corresponding to the lexical function Magn). The dictionary definitions suggest that all of them were common to reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Russian language of the 19th century. Ноwever, a corpus-based study shows that reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in discursive or intensifying use is one of Dostoevskii’s idiolectic patterns. The study comprises 1219 contexts from Dostoevskii’s five great novels and from Leo Tolstoy’s, Mikhail Saltykov Shchedrin’s, Ivan Turgenev’s and Ivan Goncharov’s literary texts accessible in the Russian National Corpus. The analysis reveals the closeness of intensification tо discursive meanings up to nondistinction. Almost half of the contexts extracted from Dostoevsky’s texts are discursive or intensifying uses of reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no. This share is much smaller for the texts of other authors (12%, 22%, 15% and 14% respectively). The article considers some types of contexts and constructions that refer to discursive or intensifying uses of reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Dostoesvskii’s literary texts.

The active dictionary of lexical combinatorics as a means of optimizing language learning

An important element of language competence is the knowledge of different features of lexical combinatorics. This article describes the structure of an Active Russian-Ukrainian Combinatory Dictionary of Nouns. The main goal of the Dictionary lies within the systematic representation of lexical combinatorics of a particular entry keyword along with its translation equivalent. A keyword is a Russian noun which designates such situations as an action, activity, process, pro-perty, state, or an event. Each lexeme which denotes a situation usually relates to a number of other lexemes that denote correlation between the participants of a situation, its variable signs, typical impacts, e.g., beginning or terminating a particular situation, its creation or ending, and other impacts constrained by its specifics. It is essential that different names of situations relate to different sets of lexemes attached to them. A combination of words with the name of a situa-tion and a lexeme that this name relates to is called collocation. In corpus linguistics, colloca-tions are described by means of apparatus of lexical functions (LF). Thus, the accompanying lexeme of the word combination conveys the meaning of LF for which the name of situation serves as an argument. In the Dictionary, eасh entry involves not only a Russian noun naming situation and its Ukrainian translation but also a set of collocations that correlate with the noun. Each Russian collocation is accompanied by its Ukrainian equivalent. The use of such a dic-tionary furthers the knowledge of the user’s native (first) language (Russian or Ukrainian). The Dictionary is especially important for learners of Ukrainian as a second language. It contains information about “paradigmatic syntagmatics” in Ukrainian yet not fully represented in bilin-gual dictionaries. Keywords: dictionary, noun, combinatorics, collocation, lexical function, predicate, actant.

New trends in collocability based on the English collocations in fiction

The language of fiction is probably not the most dynamically but still changing. These new trends in collacability are of a great interest to us. The definition of collocation is present in the text; the authors also distinguish the concepts of collocation and lexical function. This article will discuss the trends considered in synchrony and diachrony, which were highlighted on the material of John Grisham “Gray Mountain”, which is relatively new English-language material (2014), and a bit dated J. D. Salinger “Nine Stories” (1953 ) to track trends and their development in the language. 150 examples were reviewed and analyzed. 5 trends were highlighted on a given case. The authors use dictionaries, linguistic search on the Internet, the COCA (Grisham and Salinger are both from the USA). The authors conclude that the trends that have been considered are the most frequent for the language of fiction and deserve the attention of the researchers due to their productivity. The reasons why stable word combinations change: the emergence of new realities and the need for a new nomination and (which is more typical for the prose) the search for the new forms of self-expression of the writers.

The time-course of context modulation for underspecified meaning: an eye-movement study

Sentences such as “The pop singer began the album” are ambiguous between an agentive reading (The pop singer began recording/listening to/etc. the album) and a constitutive reading (The pop singer’s song was contained in the first track of the album). The ambiguity is rooted in the meaning specification of a semantic class, the “aspectual verb class.” This semantic verb class demands that its complement be construed as a structured individual along a dimension (e.g., spatial, informational, eventive...). In the case of “begin the album,” the complement “the album” can be construed as a set of singing eventualities (a structured individual construed along the eventive dimension) or as a set of songs (a structured individual construed along the informational dimension). Previous work has shown that real-time sentence composition profile of these verbs is consistent with the implementation of two processes (a) exhaustive lexical-function retrieval and (b) construal of multiple dimension-specific structured individuals, leading to agentive and constitutive readings. Which dimension-specific structured individual is chosen ultimately depends on which dimension biases are present in the context. Understanding the real-time behavior of aspectual-verb composition under different contexts (agentive vs. constitutive) provides a glimpse into the time-course of context modulation during real-time sentence comprehension. Results from an eye-tracking study comparing agentive vs. constitutive readings of these sentences show not only the standard effect of the aspectual-verb composition, previously reported for the agentive readings, but also a comparable processing profile for the constitutive readings, a novel finding supporting the unified linguistic analysis and corresponding processing implementation of the two readings. Results also show that regardless of reading, the aspectual-verb composition effect is observable even after the complement has been retrieved, and interpretation has been disambiguated, thus indicating that the above two-step process is a nonnegotiable component of the interpretation of the verb+complement composition and therefore must take place before preceding context can serve as a sentence-external constraining force. Moreover, the sustained nature of the cost suggests that all possible dimension-specific structured individuals are being construed at least immediately after the complement has been retrieved, consistent with comprehenders’ intuitions. This suggests that although not directly relevant for the interpretation at issue those meaning construals are not incompatible with the complement’s conceptual representation, and therefore need not be “pruned.” Overall, the pattern observed suggests a model of comprehension whereby context is allowed to modulate sentence interpretation once the fundamental lexico-semantic compositional processes of the sentence have taken place.