Tanulmányok
Abstract: In this paper I would like to give an analysis of personal and reflexive pronouns in English. The reason why the present study is novel is that some selected phenomena related to these pronouns are accounted for within a relatively new framework, called Syntax First Alignment. My aim is to introduce this system and make the reader understand with the help of some examples how it works.
Keywords: Syntax First Alignment, personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns
Abstract: Bilingual speakers’ languages are not independent from each other. However, it is debated what kind of functional and structural relation exists between the two languages. From this viewpoint, the age and the manner of language acquisition is mentioned as an important factor. Researchers emphasize the dynamic relation between the languages of bilinguals being influenced by various external and internal factors, but there is no agreement on mental processing. In this paper I attempt to review how the connectionist approach (which seems to be the most appropriate for modeling the philogenesis and ontogenesis) can be used in the study of bilingualism.
Keywords: bilingualism, bilingual mental lexicon, language acquisition of bilingual children, early and late bilingualism, connectionism, network model
Abstract: The aim of this article is to give an overview of terminology in phraseology on the basis of Burger (2003, 2010), Fleischer (1982, 1997) and Palm (1997). Although all of these authors use exact definitions for the term „phraseologism”, still a new, amalgamated definition is necessary to be established to include all the essential phraseological characteristics (polylexicality, stability and idiomaticity). The transition from full-idioms through semi-idioms to non-idioms (collocations) is described in terms of the relationship between phraseological and literal meaning (Burger), the semantic transformability of the phraseological components (Palm) and the question of methaphoricity (Fleischer).
Keywords: phraseology, phraseologism, phraseological charateristics, continuum, centre-periphery, idiomaticity
Abstract: The article deals with the classification of phraseologisms. It addresses problematic issues (for example how to classify comparative phraseologisms and how to distinguish them from other phraseologisms) and tries to find solutions for these (for example comparative phraseologisms are classified in terms of form). Relying on Burger’s (2003, 2010) and Fleischer’s (1982, 1997) classifications, in which different classificational criteria are mixed, the present article comes up with a classificational system that is based on the more unified aspects of form, function and idiomaticity.
Keywords: phraseologism, classification, form, function, idiomaticity
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to describe a new language identification method that uses language models based on character statistics, or more specifically, character n-gram frequency tables or Markov chains. An important advantage of this method is that it uses a very simple and straightforward algorithm, which is similar to those that have been used for the past 20 years for this purpose. In addition, it can also handle input such as target texts in an unknown language or more than one language, which the traditional approaches inherently classify incorrectly. We systematically compare and contrast our method with others that have been proposed in the literature, and measure its accuracy using a series of experiments. These experiments demonstrate that our solution works not only for whole documents but also delivers usable results for input strings as short as a single word, and the identification rate reaches 99.9 % for strings that are about 100 characters, i.e. a short sentence, in length.
Keywords: character statistics, language identification, Markov chain, n-gram
Abstract: Monotonicity is a basic component of syllogistic reasoning (van Eijck 2007, Geurts 2003). Inference rules based on it can be defined for any kind of linguistic units (van Eijck 2007). This kind of inferences can be defined between sentences, can be specified for sentence operators, generalized quantifiers, determiners. In each of these cases the monotonicity of a particular linguistic expression has a direct relationship with some inferences (Barwise & Cooper 1981, van Eijk 2007). In the case of locative prepositions Zwarts & Winter (2000) defined point-monotonicity for locative phrases themselves and not for sentences containing them.
Examining the inferences based on Hungarian sentences containing locative phrases gives us arguments against treating Hungarian locative particles as two-place predicates. If they were two-place predicates, their monotonicity would guarantee certain valid inferences predicting their validity according to the enlargement or the diminution of the reference objects.
The present paper focuses on the question what kind of role the point-monotonicity of locative particles plays in the inferences between sentences containing locative phrases.
Keywords: locative phrase, inferences, monotonicity
Abstract: In this article, the columns of german publisher and journalist Jakob Augstein, who appeared in the Simon-Wiesenthal-Center's Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs 2012, are subjected to a critical analysis corncerning verbal anti-Semitism. From a cognitive linguistics point of view and based on sociological and politological theories of anti-Semitism, Augstein's articles are analysed in relation to verbal anti-Semitism on the level of lexis, semantics, syntax and argumentative conceptualisation. Particular attention is being paid to anti-Semitic utterances under the guise of allegedly objective 'criticism of Israel'. Hereby, the article contributes to an analysis of the verbal means and strategies being used in german public media discourse for manifestations of anti-Semitism within the limits of expression and for the expansion of these limits. Furthermore, this article wants to lay emphasis on the danger of such disguised forms of verbal anti-Semitism.
Keywords: anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Israel, critical cognitive linguistics, stereotypes
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the occurrence of Hungarian V+NP idioms in predicative adverbial parti-ciple constructions. The study is based on the cognitive treatment of idioms, which claims that only analyzable expressions allow the various syntactic variations. To test this hypothesis, I collected 100 Hungarian idioms and examined them with respect to their analyzability. Then I made a grammaticality judgement test in which the in-vestigated idioms were put into the lett+V+-va/ve construction. The respondents of the test had to decide whether the expressions are grammatical or not in the given contexts. This paper reports the results of this investigation.
Keywords: idioms, Hungarian, predicative adverbial participle, cognitive
Superbly grounded in the world of language - Special issue in honour of Dr. Péter Pelyvás on the occasion of his 65th birthday = Tökéletesen lehorgonyozottan a nyelv világában - Különszám Dr. Pelyvás Péter 65. születésnapja alkalmából
Abstract: This paper is devoted to a thorough formal semantic and pragmatic analysis of the Modality + Tense + Mood marker combinations of Hungarian verbs. Earlier pragmatico-semantic results in the area rely on possible-worlds semantics. We, however, intend to use a different formal semantic framework: one which is grounded in DRT-based representationalist dynamic discourse-semantics but exploits several observations and analytical comments due to Cognitive Linguistics. Another starting point is an essentially syntactic analysis, which is based on the following syntactic hierarchy: Mood > Tense > Modality. We claim that any further scopal permutations can be “evoked” with the aid of certain adverbial expressions (e.g., bárcsak ‘if only’, mintha ‘as if’), and that the entire system of all possible readings can be accounted for in our approach.
Keywords: Hungarian tense, mood, modality; representational dynamic discourse semantics; cognitive linguistics
Abstract: In this paper conditions and processes of constructionalization and metaphorization of the expression train of thought and the frequency of occurrence of other nominal complements co-occurring in construction with the pattern train of are studied via examination of the representation of the expression in various monolingual dictionaries of English, and parallel control observation of corpus based data and testing the intuitively based judgment of native speakers. It is pointed out that train of thought is a conceptual as well as image-based metaphoric phrasal construction and that schematic, primarily frame-based conceptual and lexical factors as well as constructionalization are functionally decisive in its usage and interpretation.
Keywords: constructionalization, metaphorization, conceptual phrasal metaphor, image metaphor schema, framing, salience, keyword
Abstract: English is remarkably abundant in nominal compounds whose meaning is based upon some sort of metaphor and metonymy. Examples include both lexicalized ones, such as couch potato (denoting a person who spends too much time before the television snacking on unhealthy food), and novel ones alike, such as muffin top (denoting the roll of spare flesh which cascades over the top of low-slung jeans). Nevertheless, such compounds have often been dismissed in morphological literature as semantically opaque – non-compositional – phenomena that are not formed on the basis of productive patterns. This bias can be traced back to the widely acknowledged and applied endocentric–exocentric distinction, which is still the dominant approach toward the semantics of compounds.
Cognitive linguistics, however, has demonstrated that these “exocentric” compounds are indeed analysable with the application of conceptual metaphor and metonymy and blending among others. Through the analysis of numerous examples, the paper will focus on how the everyday creativity of language that is inherent in metaphor- and metonymy-based compounds can contribute to a cognitive semantics-based word formation theory on the one hand, and psycholinguistic models of compound representation on the other hand, in order to have a better understanding of the structure of the mental lexicon.
Keywords: exocentric compounds, creativity, novel compounds, metaphor, metonymy, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, mental lexicon
Abstract: The present paper outlines a conception of lexical pragmatics which deals with mutual connections of the lexicon and pragmatics and has the following characteristics. Besides lexical stereotypes, three types of encoded encyclopaedic information are differentiated: prototypes which are 1) added to and 2) built into the predicate decomposition of lexical-semantic representations as well as 3) those that constitute the main part of lexical-semantic representations. Since a number of words do not encode full-fledged concepts, lexical pragmatics cannot do without underspecified meaning representations. Words reach their full meanings in corresponding contexts through a number of different ways of considerable pragmatic inference, depending on various types of underspecificity.
Keywords: underspecificity, encyclopaedic information, pragmatic inference, lexical pragmatics
Abstract: A discussion of metonymy in translation practice can mean two things. On the one hand, we may be interested in finding out how we (can/should) translate metonymic expressions in a given context (i.e. where metonymies constitute part of the object of the translation process). On the other hand, we may also be interested in finding out how and why something could/should be translated by means of metonymic expressions. In other words, metonymy can also function as a translation tool or strategy. Ideally, the two go hand in hand when we translate a metonymic expression in the source language text by means of a metonymic expression in the target language text. The two metonymies may be cognates, i.e. equivalents, but they may also be different, although related (e.g. one may replace a low-level metonymy by a high-level one). This is not the only possibility: in fact we have two other possibilities here: a non-metonymic expression can be translated by a metonymic one, and conversely, a metonymic expression can be translated by a non-metonymic one. In this article we concentrate on the translation of some complex metonymies. It will be demonstrated that here the situation is more complicated than suggested above, i.e. there is a fourth possibility, which is a combination of the first and the third possibility. There are namely many metonymic expressions that involve two or more metonymic tiers such that one of them may actually get lost in translation. In the final section we speculate on some possible reasons for this situation, and extend the perspective to consider the relationship between metonymy and word-formation in general.
Keywords: metonymy, complex metonymy, translation, word formation, compound
Abstract: In this paper my aim is to highlight the strengths and the weaknesses of a recent theory, called hybrid theory (Tendahl 2009) through the analysis of metaphors of the type X IS A JAIL. By providing sample analyses, my aim is thus to demonstrate, how different metaphors of the type X IS A JAIL can be described in a hybrid theoretical framework. My further aim is to show what possible solutions hybrid theory can provide for problems of conceptual metaphor theory and relevance theory, both serving as its sources.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor theory, relevance theory, hybrid theory
Abstract: Conceptual Metaphor Theory is a promising model that despite its deficiencies can be used to account for a number of phenomena in figurative language use. The paper reviews the arguments in favour of and against Conceptual Metaphor Theory in terms of the data, methodology and content. Since the model focuses on regularities, it is less useful in the study of idioms, where irregularities are also found. It has, however, enormous potential as it integrates corpus- and discourse-driven findings.
Keywords: conceptual metaphors, mapping, blending, grounding, idioms
Abstract: The paper addresses the issue of categorization and category membership with respect to the functional class of discourse markers. In the course of the paper I will review possible criteria for discourse marker status and examine them from the perspectives of three alternative hypotheses about the development of discourse markers: grammaticalization theory; its modified version, the pragmaticalization hypothesis; and the cooptation hypothesis. The characteristics outlined in the paper suggest that the functional class of DMs constitutes a radial category either in the light of grammaticalization/pragmaticalization or the cooptation hypothesis, thus, a network model along the lines of Pelyvás (1995) is the most appropriate way of characterizing individual DMs in terms of prototypicality.
Keywords: discourse markers, grammaticalization, pragmaticalization, cooptation, cognitive grammar
Abstract: In the present paper I take a look at the process of lexicalization on the basis of etymological data and examine what cognitive processes play a role in its actuation. The analysis takes place within the frames of a functional explanation according to which lexicalization is governed by two basic principles of novel usage: expressivity and efficiency. For this reason it is necessary to go beyond pure linguistic analysis and investigate the cognitive background of the choice of conventional expressions for being used in novel ways for effective reference and representation. I will discuss specific cognitive factors and show how lexicalization originates in various cognitive mechanisms in the mind of the individual speaker when new categories and concepts are named.
Keywords: lexicalization, naming, conjunctivity, metonymy, construal, conceptualization, categorization
Abstract: The study investigates affix doublets in English with the aim of highlighting the historical background of their emergence. Just like in the case of lexical doublets, it is necessary to distinguish between true etymological doublets and quasi-doublets among affixes. Quasi-doublets can develop in various circumstances, e.g. due to the coexistence of alternative spellings, the use of free affix variants in derivation, or the rivalry between native and foreign affixes. Etymological duplication of affixes occurs, when English borrows a bound morpheme, and the loan affix coexists with a native affix, which descends from the same archaic etymon as the borrowed affix.
Keywords: etymological doublets, quasi-doublets, spelling doublets, affix rivalry
Abstract: The paper presents the first results of a series of experiments aimed at assisting deaf people in improving their speech production and perception. The theoretical novelty of the approach is that it is based on the expected effect of brain plasticity. It is assumed that speech can be transcoded into visual patterns in such a way that the resulting stream of patterns will both help the learner in acquiring proper pronunciation and in processing the transcoded sounds online as continuous speech. The results shed light on some of the similarities and differences between auditory and visual perception. Further research is needed to possibly reconcile the apparent conflict between richness of visual information for better speech pronunciation and reduction of visual redundancy for better visual sound perception.
Keywords: deafness, auditory and visual perception, audiovisual transcoding, speech processing
Abstract: Starting with Aristotle’s The Poetics and the Rhetoric, this paper wishes to call attention to some major problems with respect to the identification and characterisation of metaphor, drawing on, among others, the works of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, John R. Searle, and Donald Davidson. It concludes that metaphor is best interpreted as a phenomenon which leads from seeing as to being as (Ricoeur).
Keywords: metaphor, Aristotle, Ricoeur, philosophy of language, poetic language
Abstract: This study focuses on discourse production in translation. More specifically, it explores a much debated question in translation research, namely the extent to which translational discourse production may be considered as a merely derivative/reproductive activity, or rather as a special, complex activity that is a composite of both creative discourse production and reproduction. The problem is approached from a cognitive perspective and is investigated through a crucial aspect of discourse coherence, rhetorical structure (Mann and Thompson 1986), the example of news translation, and the case of the Hungarian and English language pair. Based on the findings of a corpus-based case study (Károly 2013), it is argued that (1) translational discourse production is not a purely derivative/reproductive process as it combines both creative/productive as well as reproductive activities and that (2) the degree to which the translator may be creative/productive in the process of translation depends on the aim and the function of the translation and the type and genre of the discourse translated. The paper concludes by the implications of the findings for the study of translation as text.
Keywords: translational discourse production, news translation, rhetorical structure theory, relational proposition
Abstract: The present note is meant to be a modest contribution to the current discussion on the nature of linguistic data. It focuses on the question of what kind of relationship there is between introspective thought experiments and real experiments in linguistics. In order to answer this question, Kertész and Rákosi’s (2012) p-model is introduced as a metatheoretical framework and applied to two examples: to Jackendoff’s (1994) treatment of grammaticality judgments and Gibbs et al.’s (2004) real experiments on conceptual metaphor. These two examples illustrate the main finding that says that there is a multifaceted interaction between introspective thought experiments and real experiments in linguistics: thought experiments may be components of real experiments, real experiments are motivated by introspective thought experiments, and the results of real experiments retrospectively re-evaluate those of introspective thought experiments.
Keywords: thought experiment, real experiment, conceptual metaphor research, grammaticality judgment, plausible argumentation
Abstract: Among other things, the late Robert Hetzron (1937‒1997) worked on a tonosyntax in the last decade of his life. This tonosyntax was near completion when Hetzron sent it to some of his friends for criticism and comments in 1990. Because this manuscript tonosyntax, totalling 122 pages, cannot be found in any Hungarian university or research library, and because it is unknown to most linguists studying Hungarian, in April 2014 the author donated a xerox copy to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and to the Library of the University of Debrecen.
Keywords: Robert Hetzron, Hungarian tonosyntax
Abstract: Although the difference between inflexional variation and the use of prepositions and/or postpositions is unimportant, there is some empirical reason to suggest that, if a language has both inflexional distinctions and prepositions or postpositions, the former will have a more ‘abstract’ and the latter a more ‘concrete’ function.
Keywords: case grammar, postpositions, lexical variation, case inflection
Abstract: I argue that conceptualizers often do not know in advance which metaphor they are going to use on a given occasion because the choice of particular metaphors in discourse is largely a matter of context, and contexts are extremely variable. I attempt to show what the major components of what we call “context” are and how they play a role in giving rise to the particular metaphors we use on particular occasions. I identify a number of contextual factors that have such an effect. They range from global to local along the physical, social, cultural, historical, linguistic, and so on, dimensions. When we use metaphors in real discourse, our metaphors are selected in conformity to them.
Keywords: metaphor, context, context-induced metaphor, contextual factors in metaphor, discourse
Abstract: This paper proposes a reassessment of the category of inferentiality from a functional cognitive theoretical perspective. It presents a view of evidential, inferential and epistemic meaning as emerging via dynamic construal from intersubjective acts of sharing knowledge/experience. Inferentiality will be regarded as a metaevidential phenomenon (cf. Horváth 2013) distinguishable in principle from evidentiality proper; however, a neat separation of these categories will be discarded. More specifically, the present proposal argues for a shared domain encompassing both inferentiality and epistemic modality, since both are subject to the same processes of inference and subjectification. This semantic domain will be called epistemic-inferential, or in short, epistential.
The paper begins with a critique of previous treatments of evidentiality in linguistics before making the case for an alternative cognitive account highlighting the interaction between evidentiality and epistemic modality. Finally, it presents the findings of a corpus-based study of Hungarian evidential markers of visual perception (Kugler 2013) to illustrate the model’s functioning and the underlying process of grammaticalization.
Keywords: epistemic modality, evidentiality, inferentiality, subjectification, subjectivization
Abstract: The main claim of this paper is that although there are (finite) auxiliaries in Hungarian, they should not be assumed to justify the functional category I in the syntax of Hungarian in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. They should be handled as a subgroup of verbal elements (Vs), and their special properties (most of which are shared by a group of lexical Vs) should be encoded in their lexical forms.
Keywords: auxiliary, syntax, Hungarian, Lexical-Functional Grammar, generative grammar
Abstract: The main issues touched upon in the present paper
(i) the push – drag conflict Luick (1896) vs Jespersen (1909) and their followers), recent attempts at a compromise;
(ii) the total refusal of its unity (Stockwell & Minkova 1988a, 1988b) or its revision as pan-dialectal rather than “great” (Lass 1997, Guzmán-Gonzáles 2003);
(iii) the sociolinguistic approach (Smith 1996)
(iv) the university instructor’s dilemma: what is to be taught?
Keywords: push and drag, vocabulary refill from Old French
Abstract: A widespread assumption in works dealing with English word-formation is that conversion is by and large a productive process. A much less frequent alternative assumption is that conversion is an analogy-driven operation based on the re-application or imitation of certain salient patterns, like N V or V N. Given these assumptions, neither of which has been properly examined, let alone justified so far, this paper first proposes an interpretation of conversion as a kind of semantic derivation. Then, it considers evidence for justifying that assumption according to which conversion is a productive, rule-governed word-building technique. In particular, it is demonstrated that, relying on the aforesaid interpretation of conversion, on the one hand, and on the criteria of qualitative approach to morphological productivity, on the other hand, it is possible to identify a set of conversion rules. It is also argued that an important corollary of treating conversion as semantic derivation is that the traditional, strictly categorial approach to polysemy needs to be reconsidered.
Keywords: analogy, encyclopaedic knowledge, metonymic mappings, polysemy, productivity, rules
Abstract: The present paper aims to analyse, on the one hand, how speakers can realize their intentions through their perspectives and what perspectives speakers intend to develop in their partners of verbal interactions in the social forms of language use, and, on the other hand, how partners can infer the speakers’ intentions evaluating and taking their perspectives. The paper also attempts to show that the success of social forms of language use seems to be partly predicted by the extent to which speakers’ and partners’ perspectives coincide or differ from each other.
Keywords: social forms of language use, intentions, perspectives, perspective taking, intentional viewpoint, egocentrism
Abstract: This paper contributes to the discussion on causative-unaccusative verb pairs in English and Hungarian. It examines numerous assumptions in derivational detransitivisation analyses of such verbs and shows that these assumptions are empirically inadequate. A non-derivational analysis is proposed as an alternative, which seems to be void of the problems that derivational analyses suffer from.
Keywords: causative-unaccusative alternation, selectional restrictions, derivational morphology
Abstract: The negation of a modalized sentence may affect the proposition or the modality. Languages need to find a solution for disambiguating these two scopes of negation. English mainly pursues a lexical strategy to disambiguate scope: the negated modals mustn’t and may not typically have narrow scope, i.e. they affect the proposition, while the negated modals can’t and needn’t have wide scope, i.e. they affect the modality. Thus, prohibitions involve propositional, or internal, negation and hence are expressed by mustn’t, as in You mustn’t come in, while denials of permission involve modal, or external, negation and hence are expressed by can’t, as in You can’t come in.
It is mainly due to the different scopes associated with modals and constraints imposed on the use of modals by lexical pre-emption that the English system of negated modals gives the impression of incoherence. German, by contrast, employs a more systematic strategy in disambiguating scope: all negated modals affect the modality, and propositional negation is achieved by way of using inversely equivalent modals. The German system of negated modals perfectly fits in with the ecological slots established by a conceptual matrix of negated modality. In applying this conceptual framework to the negated modals of English, their distribution and use can be shown to be motivated and largely systematic after all.
Keywords: negated modality, scope of negation, internal negation, external negation, root modality, epistemic modality, modal suppletion, conceptual matrix, ecological niche, logical equivalence
Abstract: Experiments have to be objective and intersubjectively controllable, and the experimental report must not make use of rhetorical tools that aim merely at persuading the reader but it has to allow the reader a direct access to the experimental evidence. At the same time, however, the reliability of psycholinguistic experiments does not seem to stem from an impersonal and straightforward linkage between “empirical facts” and hypotheses. Rather, it depends crucially on the peculiarities and the plausibility of the argumentation put forward in the experimental report, on its persuasiveness and its convincing force. The present paper aims at resolving this problem that I call the rhetorical paradox of psycholinguistic experiments.
Keywords: psycholinguistic experiments, rhetoric, plausible argumentation, philosophy of science
Abstract: The paper provides an overview of the three most frequent Hungarian reflexive-marking strategies employed in the coding of pronominal possessors with clause-mate antecedents. While anaphoric possessors are generally pro-dropped, personal pronouns and reflexives can also function as possessors. The paper shows how these two overt strategies differ systematically from each other and from the default pro-drop strategy in the possessive noun phrase.
Keywords: anaphor, binding, coreference, Hungarian, logophor, pro-drop, possessive
Abstract: This paper deals with the use of corpus linguistics to promote better academic writing. To explore Hungarian undergraduate EFL learners’ awareness of academic vocabulary register conventions a learner corpus was compiled, and particular vocabulary items were then compared with the academic and spoken subcorpora of the BNC to establish similarities or differences with native academic writing or spoken language by counting frequency of use. The results largely confirm and coincide with previous (multicultural) research results, which demonstrate a considerable amount of stylistically inappropriate, colloquial lexical features in undergraduates’ academic writing.
Keywords: learners’ corpus, academic writing, conversational features
Abstract: The Hungarian language has two verbal inflectional paradigms, the general and the definite ones (to use the most frequent terms). Traditional grammars consider the definite or indefinite object to govern the choice between the two paradigms. Working in the cognitive linguistic theoretical framework, the paper proposes a different interpretation. The Hungarian verbal inflectional suffix symbolizes a schematic relation between the trajector and the landmarks and also the process (the event); it profiles one of the substructures in the verb + complement structure. The landmark in a structure with general inflection is less prominent compared to the process, whereas the object landmark in a structure with definite inflection is more prominent compared to the process. Inflection has an influence on the semantic structure of the verb stem, as the result of metonymic attention shift.
Keywords: attention focusing, conceptual domain, definite inflection, epistemic grounding, general inflection, Hungarian language, landmark, prominence, trajector
Abstract: The present paper discusses the nature of the lexical relation exploited in automatized, corpus-based, statistical explorations of word meaning. This relation captures and quantifies the distributional similarity of lexical items. For reasons presented in this paper, I call it the Distributional Compatibility Relation (DCR). I argue that DCR is a fuzzy relation and I compare it to selected lexical relations known from the linguistic literature to see if – and to what extent – their basic properties are similar.
Keywords: distributional semantics, lexical semantics
Abstract: This paper examines various hypotheses regarding the choice of English proximal and distal gestural demonstratives in an experimental framework. Using the so called scripted dialogue technique it is shown that there is a significant difference between the choice of demonstratives depending on the nature of context (non-contrastive vs. contrastive). In non-contrastive contexts distance plays a crucial role, but in contrastive contexts the pattern of demonstratives changes, i.e. in contrastive contexts distance as a factor competes with some other factor.
Keywords: deixis, proximal and distal demonstratives, distance, context
Abstract: The article investigates metaphor and irony and compares them with respect to their representation. The primary aim of the study is to find commonalities and differences between the processing mechanisms of these figures of speech at the cognitive level of organisation.
The paper shows that conceptual integration (blending) is a justifiable framework in a comparative analysis of the understanding of metaphor and irony. The findings indicate that, although the representation of both figures incorporates a blending mechanism, their understandings presuppose basically different cognitive entities and patterns.
Keywords: conceptual integration, blending, irony, metaphor, understanding
Abstract: This paper examines various linguistic contexts where the subjunctive proper and/or the imperative mood are licensed in Hungarian. Minimal pairs of contexts, where both moods are grammatical, are also explored in an experimental framework. The paper argues that semantic factors influence the distribution of the imperative and the subjunctive proper in complement clauses and that the imperative and the subjunctive proper need to be treated as separate grammatical moods in Hungarian.
Keywords: imperative, subjunctive proper, grammatical mood, Hungarian
Abstract: The paper describes the grammar of the Hungarian possessive adjective saját ‘own’ in comparison to its English counterpart own. Both items can function as possessive intensifiers, but saját ‘own’ in Hungarian also has a productive non-possessive use. In addition to the basic possessive adjective saját ‘own’, Hungarian has two further, slightly archaic but still productive possessive intensifiers: tulajdon ‘own’ and önnön ‘own’. The paper draws up an inventory of the determining grammatical features of these items, and it argues that they instantiate slightly different strategies of marking emphatic possessive relations.
Keywords: anaphora, intensifier, possessive structure, possessive adjective, reflexive
Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research into the so-called Pronoun Interpretation Problem in first language acquisition, and it discusses the relevance of this problem in the acquisition of Hungarian. It is well-known that children face problems in judgement tasks concerning the acceptability of locally coreferential personal pronouns, whereas they can handle locally bound reflexive anaphors relatively well. Preliminary evidence suggesting the presence of the Problem in the first language acquisition of Hungarian is available, but research into this domain of Hungarian is still in its infancy. This paper aims at setting up the outlines of a research agenda for the study of the core issues in the acquisition of the Hungarian pronominal system.
Keywords: personal pronoun, reflexive anaphor, coreference, binding, first language acquisition
Abstract: The present paper aims to show how the application of a complex approach in the research into implicit arguments makes it possible to explain various phenomena which cannot be accounted for in purely syntactic, pragmatic and lexical-semantic approaches. The complex approach suggested in this paper can provide an adequate theoretical background for the description of the interaction between grammatical and contextual factors, and also make it possible to go beyond the sentence boundary and consider those implicit arguments in utterances of language use which were excluded from the description in purely syntactic and lexical-semantic explanations. So, a significant amount of previously non-supporting evidence can become supporting data for the theory. The assumption of an interaction between grammar and pragmatics, investigation of implicit arguments in utterances and use of data from the integration of various data sources can result in a more complete and plausible account of implicit arguments in Hungarian, and also perhaps in other languages.
Keywords: implicit arguments, grammar-pragmatics interface, definition of utterances, latent background assumptions.
Abstract: Indirect pronominal anaphora have long been a controversial issue in linguistic research (s. Postal 1969, Ward et al. 1991, Schwarz 2000, Erkü & Gundel 1987, Sanford et al. 1983, Yule 1982, Greene et al. 1994, etc.). The possibility of using pronouns as indirect anaphors or the conditions under which this could possibly be done, have not satisfactorily been clarified for a long time (general fundamental question=GFQ). Cornish et al. (2005) contributed to the debate in carrying out two reading-time experiments in French and English with the help of which the following general hypothesis was supposed to be tested: A non-subject pronoun can felicitously retrieve an implicit referent without increasing processing cost on the condition that it is ”nuclear” in terms of the situation which is evoked. The results of the experiment confirmed their hypothesis. The aim of the present paper is first to identify the reasons why the GFQ has not been satisfactorily answered for a long time and second, to present the work of Cornish et al. (2005) in detail, since it provides useful insights into the use of indirect pronominal anaphora and thus also contributes to answering the GFQ.
Keywords: indirect anaphora, pronouns, conceptual centrality
Abstract: The aim of the this study is to investigate the linguistic argumentative strategies that English and Arabic tend to employ in newspaper editorials. The study examines the linguistic strategies employed within the structure of through-argumentative and counter-argumentative English and Arabic texts. The linguistic features (Biber 1988) analyzed in the study are: concessive adverbials, modality, conditional clauses, lexical repetition, intensifiers, rhetorical questions, and suasive verbs. The study finds that there is a significant difference between English and Arabic argumentative texts in the tendency to employ the linguistic features mentioned above.
Keywords: discourse analysis, genre analysis, argumentative texts
Abstract: Present paper aims to provide an answer to the questions whether spoken texts belong to the object of study of text linguistics, whether conversations can be considered to be spoken texts, and how written, monologic and static texts and spoken, dialogic and dynamic speech relate to each other from the perspective of text linguistics. Furthermore, while addressing these questions it also attempts to clarify the problem what means and methods contribute to the interactive construal of reality during a conversation, in this case during a publicly broadcast radio interview.
In order to come to grips with the questions posed we analyze a recorded radio interview. In our analysis we direct our attention to the formal, sequential construction of the conversation and its thematic structure. In other words we focus on the actions of the participants with the help of which they co-ordinate their contributions in order to construe the actual social reality, and on the strategies they apply meanwhile to organize the textual structure of the spoken text.
Keywords: conversation analysis, text linguistics, spoken text, spoken language, public radio interview
Abstract: The study aims to model rhyme as a structure and process of figurative meaning creation, from a cognitive poetic point of view. In my proposal, rhyme is described as non-canonical anaphoric semantic structure, i.e. a specific reference-point configuration. The first member of the rhyming relation serves as a reference-point during the meaning generating process, from which another entity of the text world can be accessed and conceptualized. Consequently, rhyme increases the coherence of the text, at the same time, however, enriching the referential complexity of the discourse. The poetic nature of rhyme conceived as linguistic structure is the result of its twofold semantic functioning in the proposed approach, in that it contributes to the development of the substantial implicitness and referential complexity of lyric discourses. The paper elaborates the anaphoric model of rhyme with the terms of cognitive grammar, through an analysis of the problem of sloppy identity, i.e. the complex identification process of the subject/trajector in the clause by means of processing rhyme.
Keywords: rhyme, indirect anaphor, metonymic antecedence, sloppy identity
Abstract: The classification of languages according to the null subject parameter has become a central problem of typological research. The evaluation of Russian is controversial in this sense as some grammars define it as a non-pro-drop, while others as a pro-drop language. The article aims to put an end to this controversy. The investigation shows that Russian has referential, generic and expletive null subjects. According to these features Russian falls under the rubric of partial null subject languages.
Keywords: pro-drop parameter, null subjects, partial null subject languages
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