The role of pragmatics for grammatical change: the case of preverbal non

What is the role of pragmatics in the evolution of grammatical paradigms? It is to maintain marked candidates that may come to be the default expression. This perspective is validated by the Jespersen cycle, where the standard expression of sentential negation is renewed as pragmatically marked negatives achieve default status. How status changes are effected, however, remains to be documented. This is what is achieved in this paper that looks at the evolution of preverbal negative non in Old and Middle French. The negative, which categorically marks pragmatic activation (Dryer 1996) with finite verbs in Old French, loses this value when used with non-finite verbs in Middle French. This process is accompanied by competing semantic reanalyses of the distribution of infinitives negated in this way, and by the co-occurrence with a greater lexical variety of verbs. The absence of pragmatic contribution should lead the marker to take on the role of default, which is already fulfilled by a well-established ne ... pas, pushing non to decline. Hard empirical evidence is thus provided that validates the assumed role of pragmatics in the Jespersen cycle, supporting the general view of pragmatics as supporting alternative candidates that may or may not achieve default status in the evolution of a grammatical paradigm.

Studying language:English in action

This book introduces key ideas and current critical debates about how English functions within its social and cultural contexts, and provides practical examples and guidance on how to approach further work in these areas. It introduces core topics of language study; language variation, pragmatics, stylistics, critical discourse analysis, language and gender and language and education. Each chapter includes case studies providing worked analysis of sample texts, suggestions for further project work and an annotated further reading section.

Developing a categorisation system for rapists' speech

Case linkage, the linking of crimes into series, is used in policing in the UK and other countries. Previous researchers have proposed using rapists' speech in this practice; however, researching this application requires the development of a reliable coding system for rapists' speech. A system was developed based on linguistic theories of pragmatics which allowed for the categorization of an utterance into a speech act type (e.g. directive). Following this classification, the qualitative properties of the utterances (e.g. the degree of threat it carried) could be captured through the use of rating scales. This system was tested against a previously developed system using 188 rapists' utterances taken from victims' descriptions of rape. The pragmatics-based system demonstrated higher inter-rater reliability whilst enabling the classification of a greater number of rapists' utterances. Inter-rater reliability for the subscales was also tested using a sub-sample of 50 rapists' utterances and inter-item correlations were calculated. Seventy-six per cent of the subscales had satisfactory to high inter-rater reliability. Based on these findings and the inter-item correlations, the classification system was revised. The potential use of this system for the practices of case linkage and offender profiling is discussed.

Token codeswitching and language alternation in narrative discourse: a functional-pragmatic approach

This study is concerned with two phenomena of language alternation in biographic narrations in Yiddish and Low German, based on spoken language data recorded between 1988 and 1995. In both phenomena language alternation serves as an additional communicative tool which can be applied by bilingual speakers to enlarge their set of interactional devices in order to ensure a smoother or more pointed processing of communicative aims. The first phenomenon is a narrative strategy I call Token Cod-eswitching: In a bilingual narrative culminating in a line of reported speech, a single element of L2 indicates the original language of the reconstructed dialogue – a token for a quote. The second phenomenon has to do with directing procedures, carried out by the speaker and aimed at guiding the hearer's attention, which are frequently carried out in L2, supporting the hearer's attention at crucial points in the interaction. Both phenomena are analyzed following a model of narrative discourse as proposed in the framework of Functional Pragmatics. The model allows the adoption of an integral approach to previous findings in code-switching research.

Word order in Yiddish narrative discourse

Based on data from spoken narrative discourse in Yiddish, this paper analyses two structures common in Yiddish narrations: The placement of the finite verb in the first position of a declarative sentence, and topicalization.Like German, Yiddish word order is generally centered around a verb-second rule. However, both Yiddish and spoken German show configurations of word order that go against the rule, where the finite verb occupies the first position of the utterance. From a functional-pragmatic point of view, these structures can be said to serve special purposes in the interaction between speaker and listener, sometimes in particular discourse types.Differences and similarities in word order between Yiddish and German enable us to comment on the relationship between these two closely related languages.

Interprétation des insultes et relations de solidarité

This article focuses on the empirical domain of the solidarity uses of certain insults in different varieties of French (standard, Quebec, Burgundy) from diachronic and synchronic points of view. Solidarity uses refers to the usage of axiological terms as terms of endearment to mark social proximity between subjects. This value is signalled by morphosyntactic, prosodic and mimeo-gestural features indicating the speaker's disposition towards the addressee. These psychological and social parameters conspire to attenuate the axiological term's argumentative program, which however can never be entirely evacuated. This argumentative program is nevertheless subordinated to pragmatics, which remains necessary in order to evaluate the extent to which the conventional lexical meaning is maintained in these uses. The attenuation of conventional meaning under solidarity uses shows the relevance of relational and attitudinal notions for the negotiation of meaning. It further establishes that at least in some cases, the analysis of linguistic interpretation require a multidisciplinary approach, most specifically where the relation between Semantics and Pragmatics is concerned.

The dynamics of power and resistance in police interview discourse

This is a study of police interviewing using an integrated approach, drawing on CA, CDA and pragmatics. The study focuses on the balance of power and control, finding that in particular the institutional status of the participants, the discursive roles assigned to them by the context, and their relative knowledge, are significant factors affecting the dynamics of the discourse. Four discursive features are identified as particularly significant, and a detailed analysis of the complex interplay of these features shows that power and control are constantly under negotiation, and are always open to challenge and resistance. Further it is shown that discursive dominance is not necessarily advantageous to participants, due to the specific goals and purposes of the police interview context. A wider consideration of the context illustrates the contribution that linguistics can make to the use of police interview data as evidence in the UK criminal justice system.

Introduction

Corpora—large collections of written and/or spoken text stored and accessed electronically—provide the means of investigating language that is of growing importance academically and professionally. Corpora are now routinely used in the following fields: •the production of dictionaries and other reference materials; •the development of aids to translation; •language teaching materials; •the investigation of ideologies and cultural assumptions; •natural language processing; and •the investigation of all aspects of linguistic behaviour, including vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics.

Metaphor and translation:Some implications of a cognitive approach

Metaphor has been widely discussed within the discipline of Translation Studies, predominantly with respect to translatability and transfer methods. It has been argued that metaphors can become a translation problem, since transferring them from one language and culture to another one may be hampered by linguistic and cultural differences. A number of translation procedures for dealing with this problem have been suggested, e.g., substitution (metaphor into different metaphor), paraphrase (metaphor into sense), or deletion. Such procedures have been commented on both in normative models of translation (how to translate metaphors) and in descriptive models (how metaphors have been dealt with in actual translations). After a short overview of how metaphor has been dealt with in the discipline of Translation Studies, this paper discusses some implications of a cognitive approach to metaphors for translation theory and practice. Illustrations from authentic source and target texts (English and German, political discourse) show how translators handled metaphorical expressions, and what effects this had for the text itself, for text reception by the addressees, and for subsequent discursive developments. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All right reserved.