Comprehending adverbs of doubt and certainty in health communication: A multidimensional scaling approach

This research explored the feasibility of using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in novel combination with other techniques to study comprehension of epistemic adverbs expressing doubt and certainty (e.g., evidently, obviously, probably) as they relate to health communication in clinical settings. In Study 1, Australian English speakers performed a dissimilarity-rating task with sentence pairs containing the target stimuli, presented as "doctors' opinions". Ratings were analyzed using a combination of cultural consensus analysis (factor analysis across participants), weighted-data classical-MDS, and cluster analysis. Analyses revealed strong within-community consistency for a 3-dimensional semantic space solution that took into account individual differences, strong statistical acceptability of the MDS results in terms of stress and explained variance, and semantic configurations that were interpretable in terms of linguistic analyses of the target adverbs. The results confirmed the feasibility of using MDS in this context. Study 2 replicated the results with Canadian English speakers on the same task. Semantic analyses and stress decomposition analysis were performed on the Australian and Canadian data sets, revealing similarities and differences between the two groups. Overall, the results support using MDS to study comprehension of words critical for health communication, including in future studies, for example, second language speaking patients and/or practitioners. More broadly, the results indicate that the techniques described should be promising for comprehension studies in many communicative domains, in both clinical settings and beyond, and including those targeting other aspects of language and focusing on comparisons across different speech communities.

A study of epistemic modality in academic and popularised discourse: the case of possibility adverbs perhaps, maybe and possibly

[EN] This paper describes the use of perhaps, maybe and possibly in a cross-disciplinary corpus of academic and popularised scientific writing. It accounts for their higher frequency in popularised discourse by investigating their functions in detail. The analysis, conducted from various perspectives (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical), suggests that two factors are at work: the evidential basis for the epistemic assessment and the mode of discourse the marker is most closely associated with.

Author stance in doctoral dissertations of native and non-native speakers of English: a corpus-based study on epistemic adverbs

[EN]Our study concentrates on the epistemic adverbs used in conveying author stance in academic English. The Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996) was run to three sets of corpora comprising doctoral dissertations written by native and non-native academic authors of English. Epistemic adverbs occurring in the dissertations were identified through a computer programme and their frequencies were separately computed for each corpus. Lastly, a log-likelihood test was administered to see whether there is a statistically significant difference across the groups in concern concerning the use of these adverbs.

Primestoimenno-otnositel'nye konstrukcii v sovremennom russkom jazyke

Relative Constructions with Pronominal Heads in Contemporary Russian Chapter 1 introduces the distinctive syntactic and semantic properties of Russian relative constructions (RCs), which are then divided into two main classes according to the type of the head phrase. The study concentrates on RCs with pronominal heads, which are systematically compared with noun-headed RCs. Chapter 2 clarifies the categorization of pronouns in Russian. The conclusion is that Russian pronouns include only personal, reflexive and wh-pronouns. The remaining words that are traditionally seen as pronouns are actually functional equivalents of determiners. This idea leads to the suggestion that RCs with these determiner-like words as the only constituent of the head phrase are actually headed by zero pronouns. In the other type of RCs with pronominal heads, the head position is occupied by wh-pronouns with clitics expressing different types of indefiniteness and quantification. Comparison of the two types of pronoun-headed RCs shows that the wh-heads and zero-heads share a number of common properties with respect to the grammatical gender, number and person as well as to the semantic distinction between animates and inanimates. The rest of Chapter 2 gives an overview of various uses of wh-pronouns in Russian and an experimental analysis of RCs headed by pronominal adverbs. Chapter 3 discusses fundamental differences between RCs with noun and pronominal heads. One of the main findings is that the choice of the relative pronoun (kto 'who' and chto 'what' versus kotoryj 'which') is motivated by a tendency to reproduce maximally the essential grammatical and semantic properties of the antecedent. Chapter 4 gives a detailed description of the determiner-like words and wh-based heads used in the two types of RCs with pronominal heads. In addition, several issues related to the syntax and semantics of free relatives are discussed. The conclusion is that there is no need to establish a separate category of free relatives in Russian. Chapter 5 discusses the syntax and semantics of correlative and free concessive constructions. They share a number of properties with pronoun-headed RCs and the two are often confused in Russian linguistics. However, a detailed analysis shows that these constructions must be distinguished from RCs. The study combines the methods of functionally-oriented Russian structuralism with some insights from generative syntax.

Betydelser i barnfamiljsbroschyrer : Systemisk-funktionell analys av den tänkta läsaren och institutionen

This thesis concerns Swedish and Finland-Swedish brochures to families with children, presenting family allowances from the social insurance institutions in the two countries. The aim of the study is to analyse what meanings are conveyed with reference to the conceivable reader and the institution in the brochures. The material consists of information brochures in Swedish from Kela, the social insurance institution of Finland, and Försäkringskassan, the Swedish social insurance agency, issued during 2003–2006. The general theoretical framework is systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) as presented by Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) and Holmberg & Karlsson (2006). The study consists of a quantitative study of the lexical choices of the social insurance brochures. Furthermore, a qualitative process and participant analysis is annotated with the UAM Corpus tool and the results are quantified. Speech functions and modal auxiliaries are analysed qualitatively. The analysis shows that material and relational processes are most common. The relational and verbal processes are used more in the Sweden-Swedish brochures, while the material processes are more common in the Finland-Swedish brochures. The participants in the brochures are the institution, mentioned by its name, and the conceivable reader, directly addressed with “you” (du). In addition, the referent “child” is often mentioned. The participants assigned for the reader are Actor, Receiver, Carrier and Speaker. In the Finland-Swedish texts, the reader is often an Actor, while the reader in the Sweden-Swedish texts is a Carrier. Thus, the conceivable reader is an active participant who takes care of his or her own matters using the internet, communicates actively to the institution and has legal rights and obligations. The institution is visible in the texts but does not have an active role as the name of the institution is mostly used in circumstances. The institution is not often a participant, but when it is, it is Actor, Receiver, Listener and Carrier, expecting the clients to address it. Speech functions are performed in different ways. For instance, questions structure the reading process and commands are realised by modal auxiliaries, not by imperatives. The most common modal auxiliary is kan (can, may), and another common auxiliary is ska (shall, must). Statements are surrounded by subordinate clauses and adverbs that describe situations and criteria. The results of the study suggest that the brochures in the two countries are similar, in particular when produced in similar ways, that is, when the Finland-Swedish texts are not translated. Existing differences reflect the differences in the institutions, the social insurance systems and the cultural contexts. KEYWORDS: Finland-Swedish, Swedish, comparative analysis, SFL, discourse analysis, administrative language, institutional discourse, institutional communication

About the limits of metalanguage: An essay on the modelisation of Latin grammatical lexicography

[EN] Progress in methodology in specific fields is usually very closely linked to the technological progress in other areas of knowledge. This justifies the fact that lexicographical techniques have had to wait for the arrival of the IT era of the last decades of the 20th century in order to be able to create specialised electronic dictionaries which can house and systemise enormous amounts of information which can later be dealt with quickly and efficiently. This study proposes a practical-methodological model which aims to solve the grammatical treatment of adverbs in Ancient Latin. We have suggested a list of 5 types, in a decreasing order from a greater to lesser degree of specialisation; technical (T), semi-technical (S-T), instrumental-valued (I-V), instrumental- descriptive (I-D), instrumental-expository (I-E).

Prosa argumentativa em língua inglesa: um estudo contrastivo sobre advérbios em corpora digitais

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo principal investigar como aprendizes brasileiros de língua inglesa usam advérbios com terminação em ly no inglês escrito, e comparar ao uso que deles fazem os falantes de inglês como língua materna. Para tanto, o trabalho encontra suporte teórico e metodológico na Linguística de Corpus e fundamenta-se na área chamada de pesquisa sobre corpora de aprendizes, que se ocupa da coleta e armazenagem de dados linguísticos de sujeitos aprendizes de uma língua estrangeira, para a formação de um corpus que possa ser utilizado para fins descritivos e pedagógicos. Esta área objetiva identificar em que aspectos os aprendizes diferem ou se assemelham aos falantes nativos. Os corpora empregados na pesquisa são o corpus de estudo (Br-ICLE), contendo inglês escrito por brasileiros, compilado de acordo com o projeto ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English) e dois corpora de referência (LOCNESS e BAWE), contendo inglês escrito por falantes de inglês como língua materna. Os resultados indicam que os alunos brasileiros usam, em demasia, as categorias de advérbios que indicam veracidade, realidade e intensidade, em relação ao uso que deles fazem os falantes nativos, além de usarem esses advérbios de forma distinta. Os resultados sugerem que, além das diferenças apresentadas em termos de frequência (seja pelo sobreuso ou subuso dos advérbios), os aprendizes apresentavam combinações errôneas, ou em termos de colocados ou em termos de prosódia semântica. E finalmente a pesquisa revela que a preferência dos aprendizes por advérbios que exprimem veracidade, realidade e intensidade cria a impressão de um discurso muito assertivo. Conclui-se que as diferenças encontradas podem estar ligadas a fatores como o tamanho dos corpora, a influência da língua materna dos aprendizes, a internalização dos elementos linguísticos necessários para a produção de um texto em língua estrangeira, a falta de fluência dos aprendizes e o contexto de sala de aula nas universidades

Vozes na colônia: um estudo discursivo do dicionário geral de língua

Como gênero, o dicionário inscreve-se na sociedade entre as obras de autoridade, que servem como referência para a construção dos mais diferentes gêneros. Além disso, encerra um discurso pedagógico, já que, por meio das definições, consulentes partilham do conhecimento detido pelo lexicógrafo. O dicionário é também um gênero múltiplo, formado por diferentes subgêneros, como o verbete e os textos de abertura (prefácio, apresentação, detalhamento). Espécie de colônia, que agrega outros textos, define-se também por suas características formais bem marcadas, como a alfabetação e a composição por verbetes. Múltiplo por sua própria natureza e sujeito ao dialogismo da enunciação, o dicionário é atravessado por muitas vozes e enunciadores, não apenas os próprios redatores, mas também outras obras de referência, técnicas ou de outras línguas. Essas vozes são costuradas pelo dicionarista, figura do discurso que gerencia os enunciados, envoltos na expectativa da neutralidade da descrição isenta. É nosso grande interesse observar em termos práticos quais são as fronteiras entre o discurso aparentemente isento que se pretende que o dicionário tenha e as brechas de onde emergem outras vozes que povoam essa colônia. Para buscá-las, valemo-nos basicamente dos estudos de polifonia de Ducrot, da noção de ethos de Maingueneau e Charaudeau e das formas de modalização que Castilho e Castilho (2002) arrolaram em seu estudo sobre os advérbios na Gramática do português falado, volume II. Por meio da pesquisa reversa com base nos termos modalizadores de Castilho e Castilho no Dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa (DALP, 2010) e no Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa (DHLP, 2009), buscamos partir da definição para as entradas, identificando os enunciadores que se mostram ou se escondem, afiançam ou refutam, negam ou afirmam uma proposição. Por meio dessas ocorrências, podemos chegar a enunciados postos e pressupostos e explorar diferentes aspectos da enunciação, desnudando parte das vozes que povoam essa colônia

Argumentação e suas estratégias discursivas: um estudo dos conectivos em português

O propósito deste trabalho é analisar os conetivos, ferramentas linguísticas que se propõem nos enunciados a estabelecer ligação, do ponto de vista funcional, em seus usos, e que representam valores semânticos importantes discursivamente. Para isso, será válido utilizarmos fundamentações teóricas da Linguística Textual e do Funcionalismo. O corpus de análise baseia-se em textos cuja tipologia é argumentativa, mais especificamente o gênero editorial. Dessa forma, procuraremos analisar como esses conectivos (conjunções, preposições, advérbios...) revelam marcas semânticas importantes que se constituem como verdadeiras estratégias argumentativas por parte dos autores em sua proposta temática e que precisam ser reconhecidas pelo leitor para uma compreensão textual mais abrangente. Essa forma de abordagem implicará análises de coesão e de coerência textuais e, por isso, é também uma proposta de avaliação de como os textos são constituídos em sua tessitura, resultando na produção de sentido. Os textos em análise serão os correspondentes aos editoriais da revista Veja, cujo titulo da seção chama-se Carta ao leitor. As abordagens colocarão em relevo os elementos conectores tanto do ponto de vista sintático-semântico bem como em relação às implicações pragmático-discursivas, fatores que servirão de base para compreensão/interpretação dos textos. Espera-se com isso proporcionar análises contundentes, levando em consideração a descrição, estruturação e o funcionamento da Língua portuguesa, com o objetivo de colaborar para o desenvolvimento científico das abordagens linguísticas

Językowe środki wyrażania postawy mówiącego w łotewskich debatach sejmowych

Wydział Neofilologii: Instytut Językoznawstwa

La synchronie à lumière de la diachronie : quelques exemples

This article aims to give various examples that illustrate the use of a bipolar and joint perspective – diachronic and synchronic – for the semantic study of certain items of the language. We are initially interested in the adverb carrément, which currently seems to bear little relation to any meaning as an adverb of manner. Nevertheless, the diachronic study shows how the latter stages of its development with respect to its root carré pave the way for its becoming a polyphonic adverb. It is a similar case with apparemment: it has four clear stages of semantic development, each of which is related to the various values of this adverb in synchrony. However what is perhaps even more revealing is the diachronic approach in the case of the delocutive adverbs (diablement, bigrement, fichtrement...), whereby it might be seen that these elements can have no nominal or adjectival base, which is one of the criteria that helps to illustrate their origin.

Cappadocia: where Greek prepositions come to die

The Cappadocian variety of Ulaghátsh is unique among the Greek-speaking world in having lost the inherited preposition ‘se’. The innovation is found with both locative and allative uses and has af-ected both syntactic contexts in which ‘se’ was originally found, that is, as a simple preposition (1) and as the left-occurring member of circumpositions of the type ‘se’ + NP + spatial adverb (2). (1) a. tránse ci [to meidán] en ávʝa see.PST.3SG COMP ART.DEF.SG.ACC yard.SG.ACC COP.3 game.PL.NOM ‘he saw that in the yard is some game’ (Dawkins 1916: 348) b. ta erʝó da qardáʃa évɣan [to qonáq] ART.DEF.PL.NOM two ART.DEF.PL.NOM friend.PL.NOM ascend.PST.3PL ART.DEF.SG.ACC house.SG.ACC ‘the two friends went up to the house’ (Dawkins 1916: 354) (2) émi [ta qonáca mésa], kiríʃde [to ʝasdɯ́q píso] enter.PST.3SG ART.DEF.PL.NOM house.PL.ACC inside hide.PST.3SG. ART.DEF.SG.ACC cushion.SG.ACC behind ‘he went into the houses and hid behind the cushions’ (Dawkins 1916: 348) In this paper, we set out to provide (a) a diachronic account of the loss of ‘se’ in Asia Minor Greek, and (b) a synchronic analysis of its ramifications for the encoding of the semantic and grammatical functions it had prior to its loss. The diachronic development of ‘se’ is traced by comparing the Ulaghátsh data with those obtained from Cappadocian varieties that have neither lost it nor do they show signs of losing it and, crucially, also from varieties in which ‘se’ is in the process of being lost. The comparative analysis shows that the loss first became manifest in circumpositions in which ‘se’ was preposed to the complement to which in turn a wide range of adverbs expressing topological relations were postposed (émi sa qonáca mésa > émi ta qonáca mésa). This finding is accounted for in terms of Sinha and Kuteva’s (1995) distributed spatial semantics framework, which accepts that the elements involved in the constructions under investigation—the verb (émi), ‘se’ and the spatial adverb (mésa)—all contribute to the expression of the spatial relational meaning but with differences in weighting. Of the three, ‘eis’ made the most minimal contribution, the bulk of it being distributed over the verb and the adverb. This allowed for it to be optionally dropped from circumpositions, a stage attested in Phlo-tá Cappadocian and Silliot, and to be later completely abandoned, originally in allative and subsequently in locative contexts (earlier: évɣan so qonáq > évɣan to qonáq; later: so meidán en ávʝa > to meidán en ávʝa). The earlier loss in allative contexts is also dealt with in distributed semantics terms as verbs of motion such as έβγαν are semantically more loaded than vacuous verbs like the copula and therefore the preposition could be left out in the former context more easily than in the latter. The analysis also addresses the possibility that the loss of ‘se’ may ultimately originate in substandard forms of Medieval Greek, which according to Tachibana (1994) displayed SPATIAL ADVERB + NP constructions. Applying the semantic map model (Croft 2003, Haspelmath 2003), the synchronic analysis of the varieties that retain ‘se’ reveals that—like many other allative markers crosslinguistically—it displays a pattern of multifunctionality in expressing nine different functions (among others allative, locative, recipient, addressee, experiencer), which can be mapped against four domains, viz. the spatiotemporal, the social, the mental and the logicotextual (cf. Rice & Kabata 2007). In Ulaghátsh Cappadocian, none of these functions is overtly marked as such. In cases like (1), the intended spatial relational meaning is arrived at through the combination of the syntax and the inherent semantics of the verb and the zero-marked NP as well as from the context. In environments of the type exemplified by (2), the adverb contributes further to the correct interpretation. The analysis additionally shows that, despite the loss of ‘se’, Ulaghátsh patterns with all other Cappadocian varieties in one important aspect: Goal and Location are expressed similarly (by zero in Ulaghátsh, by ‘se’ in the other varieties) whereas Source is being kept distinct (expressed by ‘apó’ in all varieties). Goal-Location polysemy is very common across the world’s languages and, most crucially, prevails over other possible polysemies in the tripartite distinction Source—Location—Goal (Lestrade 2010, Nikitina 2009). Taking into account this empirical observation, our findings suggest that the reor-anisation of spatial systems can have a local effect—in our case the loss of a member of the prepositional paradigm—but will keep the original global picture intact, thus conforming to crosslinguistically robust tendencies.  References Croft, W. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dawkins, R. M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor: A Study of the Dialects of Sílli, Cappadocia and Phárasa with Grammar, Texts, Translations and Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, M. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning: semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The New Psychology of Language, Volume 2. New York: Erlbaum, 211–243. Lestrade, S. 2010. The Space of Case. Doctoral dissertation. Radboud University Nijmegen. Nikitina, T. 2009. Subcategorization pattern and lexical meaning of motion verbs: a study of the source/goal ambiguity. Linguistics 47, 1113–1141. Rice, S. & K. Kabata. 2007. Cross-linguistic grammaticalization patterns of the allative. Linguistic Typology 11, 451–514. Sinha, C. & T. Kuteva. 1995. Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 18:2, 167–199. Tachibana, T. 1994. Syntactic structure of spatial expressions in the “Late Byzantine Prose Alexander Romance”. Propylaia 6, 35–51.

Aspects of Passives in Capeverdean (Santiago’s variety)

The present dissertation intends to study passives in Capeverdean. I argue that Capeverdean have eventive passives with specific morphology, postverbal morphemes, -du and -da, which affix to the verb to form passives and interact with the TMA morphemes available in the language in the same way as in the active voice. I also show that Capeverdean only allows short passives. However, this study demonstrates that the by-phrase, although not expressed phonologically, is implicit and can be tracked through instrumentals and Agent-oriented adverbs. In order to account for this specific property of Capeverdean passives, I assume the existence of a Voice head which introduces the external argument in all finite sentences in Capeverdean, except in unaccusatives, following proposals from Marantz (1984), Kratzer (1996), Sailor & Ahn (2010), Pratas (2014). I also assume that this Voice head is subject to a Doubly Filled Comp Filter, similar to what is proposed in Koopman (1997), which determines that either heads or specifiers can be overt, never both. In the case of passives, I propose that external argument is in Spec,Voice and the passive morphology is lexicalized in Voice0 and that while Spec,Voice is silent, Voice0 is not. This configuration can be explained if it is assumed, following Costa & Martins (2004), that in Capeverdean passives Voice0 is a strong functional head, thus requiring visibility at PF. This restriction, combined with the Doubly Filled Comp filter, imposes that Spec,Voice is silent.

El español de los inmigrantes de los Andes bolivianos en el Norte Grande de Chile : convergencias y divergencias dialectales en el marco de una situación de contacto

Cette thèse a été financée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (numéro de référence 767-2010-1310)