This article presents a socio-onomastic comparison of the personal naming systems of Uzbek and French and examines the role of personal names in transmitting cultural memory across two linguistic communities. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 600 given names from civil registration documents, literary texts and contemporary public discourse. The analysis focuses on the etymological and cultural meaning of given names, their morphological structure, gender marking and the phonological adaptation of borrowed name material. The results show that there are substantial differences between the two systems. The etymological meanings of given names are often transparent and related to nature, religion and traditional culture in Uzbekistan, while French names are more related to Christian and historical naming traditions. Uzbek anthroponyms also exhibit productive compounding patterns, while French names are mostly suffixed. The study shows that personal names are not only an identifier of identity but also a linguistic vehicle of collective cultural memory from generation to generation.
In sign languages, classifier verbs are polymorphemic constructions that express motion events, spatial relations, and handling of objects (Supalla, Ted. 1982. Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion and location in American Sign Language. San Diego: PhD, University of California. https://www.proquest.com/docview/303234697/abstract/BB45DDF2DC68401EPQ/1; Zwitserlood, Inge. 2012. Classifiers. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. De Gruyter). Whole-entity classifiers (WECL) represent entire referents, such as humans, animals, and vehicles in motion events. This study examines linguistic and social factors influencing the choice of two handshapes (1-hs, 2-hs) in WECL for animate referents in Nepali Sign Language (NSL), which emerged with the establishment of deaf education in Kathmandu in 1966 (Acharya, Kiran. 1997. History of the deaf in Nepal. (E. Hoffmann-Dilloway & D. Chemjong Trans). Unpublished manuscript). We analysed 467 instances of WECL from Canary Row retellings by 12 deaf NSL signers (six younger, six older participants). Using Rbrul software, our findings show that the linguistic factors manner versus path, controlled versus uncontrolled actions, and the presence of the non-dominant hand representing an animate versus inanimate referent significantly influence handshape choice, while discourse status does not. Social factors (age, age of sign language acquisition, and gender) had no statistical effect, though older signers tended to display a greater variety of handshapes. This study contributes to our understanding of classifier verbs in an under-documented Asian sign language, showing that the use of the 1-hs and the 2-hs for animate referents is extremely common across sign languages but also revealing the importance of linguistic factors that constrain and shape handshape choice.
This article examines how implicit pragmatic meaning operates in contemporary advertising discourse and argues that it functions not as a peripheral stylistic effect, but as a central mechanism of persuasive design. Drawing on a corpus of advertising campaigns published between 2021 and 2025, the study develops an integrative analytical model that combines the pragmatic analysis of presupposition and implicature with the examination of intentionality, cognitive-poetic mechanisms, and multimodal organisation. The analysis shows that advertising does not simply transmit ready-made meanings; rather, it activates structured interpretive work by guiding the viewer through verbal compression, visual framing, perspectival control, and controlled under-specification. In this process, implicit meaning emerges through the coordinated interaction of image, text, layout, and culturally recognisable semiotic cues, which together shape inferential trajectories and regulate audience uptake. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which presuppositional framing, implicatural extension, conceptual metaphor, blending, framing, and viewpoint construction converge within single advertising cases and produce a layered persuasive effect. The findings demonstrate that implicitness in advertising is strategically organised and medium-sensitive: it depends on how verbal and visual resources are combined, how interpretation is paced, and how the recipient is positioned within the communicative act. The article contributes to multimodal pragmatics, cognitive poetics, and advertising discourse studies by offering a coherent framework for analysing concealed meaning structures and the mechanisms that make them persuasive. Its practical contribution lies in providing an analytical toolkit for examining brand communication, creative strategy, and the covert persuasive dynamics of digital media.
In the context of the rapid development of cognitive and discursive linguistics, the category of degree emerges as a fundamental semantic-pragmatic mechanism for representing subjective evaluation, intensity, and communicative modality. This study offers a comprehensive multilevel analysis of degree expressions in Kazakh and French, uncovering their underlying cognitive structure, linguocultural specificity, and functional roles across discursive domains. The aim of the research is to identify both universal and culture-bound strategies for expressing degree within the framework of cross-linguistic comparison. The empirical base consists of data from corpora, journalistic prose, and literary texts in both languages, systematically selected according to genre affiliation and pragmatic orientation. The methodological framework integrates cognitive linguistics, linguocultural analysis, pragmatics, and corpus-assisted discourse studies, ensuring a multidimensional examination of the phenomenon. The findings confirm the hypothesis that degree is deeply embedded in cultural and linguistic codes, functioning as a cognitive universal whose realization is shaped by national value systems, discourse traditions, and communicative norms. A typology of degree expressions has been proposed, encompassing their grammatical-semantic properties, evaluative functions, and metaphorical mappings. The theoretical contribution of the study lies in refining the conceptual apparatus of cognitive-discursive linguistics in relation to evaluative language, while its practical implications extend to the development of models for automatic text evaluation, intercultural communication theory, and foreign language pedagogy.
This paper investigates the use of identical and non-adjacent doubling – which can be schematised as A-B-A, and is referred to here as framing repetition (FR) – in French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB), examining what it reveals about the integration of multiple semiotic resources in meaning-making. Drawing on a corpus of conversational and narrative data from ten signers, the study combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse the frequency of FRs, the forms they mobilise, and their semiotic composition. The results show that FRs are a pervasive, regular, and systematic structuring device, used by all signers and in both genres. They operate at multiple levels of discourse organisation, from intra-clausal segments to full turns or narrative episodes, and integrate a wide array of semiotic resources, often in combination. More specifically, FRs function as a structural pattern that, among other roles, integrates linear sequences of descriptive and depictive modes of expression. By demonstrating how such a widespread and regular pattern is realised through heterogeneous resources, the study underscores the need to treat the full spectrum of expressive means as a single, integrated repertoire. Indeed, the study of FR use in LSFB shows that there is no empirical basis for systematically treating so-called gestural elements – i.e. spontaneous, non-conventional, depictive ones – as distinct from so-called linguistic elements – i.e. conventional and descriptive ones, as both contribute to the realisation of FRs. More broadly, the findings support a comparative semiotic approach to signed and spoken languages, accounting for how signers and speakers dynamically integrate available semiotic resources.
This paper uncovers empirical phenomena left unaddressed by current minimalist analyses of French faire-à (FA) constructions in Folli and Harley (2007. Causation, obligation, and argument structure: On the nature of v. Linguistic Inquiry 38(2). 197–238), Belletti (2017. Labeling (Romance) causatives. In Enoch Aboh, Eric Haeberli, Genoveva Puskás & Manuela Schönenberger (eds.), Elements of comparative syntax: Theory and description, 13–46. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; 2021. Ways of smuggling in syntactic derivations. In Adriana Belletti & Chris Collins (eds.), Smuggling in syntax, 13–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press), and Hu (2023. Defectivity matters: Cliticization in French causatives revisited. Linguistic Inquiry 54(4). 759–796). These issues involve (a) the differing placement of non-pronominal direct and indirect objects vis-à-vis non-pronominal embedded thematic subjects, and (b) the acceptability of embedded negation and, under a more limited condition, auxiliary verbs. These problematic data find a solution in a novel approach to FA which associates verbs like faire ‘to make’, laisser ‘to let’, and voir ‘to see’ with the type of c-selection feature central to Matushansky’s (2006. Head movement in linguistic theory. Linguistic Inquiry 37(1). 69–109) s-merge. Specifically, in V + V contexts, these verbs are argued to have a non-affixal [uvdefective] c-selection feature that triggers the merger of a defective vP complement. This complement is “too small” to allow for the projection of an embedded NegP or TP. The need to value that feature then triggers s-merge, formalized as movement of some portion of the complement clause to the Spec of the matrix verb. The result is the construction’s characteristic V + V word order, with the relative placement of embedded thematic subjects and the attested projections of embedded negation and auxiliary verbs being argued to fall out from the proper configurations associated with Case-licensing and the existence of a second complementation option for the matrix verb that is like Raising-to-Object (RO).
In China, sustained promotion of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) has intensified dialect–standard contact, under which urban tone systems may exhibit generational differentiation. Using the Kunming urban dialect as a case study, this study examines tone-category selectivity and generational pathways across four tones (T1–T4). A controlled monosyllabic reading task elicited productions from 72 native speakers divided into three age groups and balanced by gender. F0 contours were extracted in Mini-Speech-Lab, time-normalised at nine sampling points (ST1–ST9), and converted to semitones relative to each speaker’s mean F0. Three slope measures and a Final Lowering Index (FLI), used as an operational contour-final diagnostic, were also calculated. Age-group differences were assessed using Kruskal–Wallis H tests and pairwise Mann–Whitney U tests, with Holm correction applied to both sets of comparisons. The results show tone-category and contour-phase selectivity. T1 remained broadly stable; T2 showed localised middle- and late-contour differences and endpoint variation; T3 showed the broadest differentiation across ST1–ST7 and the FLI; and T4 showed coordinated differences in relative pitch position and falling dynamics, mainly separating the elderly group from the two younger groups. A restricted ST1–ST7 sensitivity analysis showed that the principal T3 and T4 effects, as well as the T2 differentiation, were detectable before ST8 and ST9. The findings are compatible with selective, gradual, tone-specific variation under sustained contact with Standard Chinese rather than uniform tonal replacement.
This paper examines apparent preposition-stranding under sluicing in Jordanian Arabic. On the surface, JA appears to violate the Preposition-Stranding Generalization (PSG): overt P-stranding is categorically banned, yet P-less sluices are nevertheless accepted. I argue that this mismatch is merely superficial. Drawing on diagnostics adapted from sluicing in Arabic more broadly (i.e., contrast sluicing, wh-type asymmetries, cleft morphology, connectivity, and resumption), I show that JA employs two distinct strategies. Some cases are true sluices, constructed via wh-movement plus TP-deletion, with a resumptive pronoun inside the ellipsis site; other cases are pseudosluices, reduced wh-clefts with copular/pronominal morphology. Crucially, sluicing in JA tracks the independent distribution of resumptives: sluices are possible only with wh-expressions that license resumptives (e.g., miin ‘who’, wayn ‘where’), but not with those that do not (e.g., ʔimta ‘when’). Connectivity effects, including Case and Voice matching, follow under the resumptive analysis. I conclude that JA instantiates a hybrid grammar of sluicing, where resumption and clefts coexist as derivational sources, preserving the PSG while explaining the surface appearance of P-less remnants. The findings highlight the value of microvariation for testing universals in ellipsis and reinforce the view that sluicing is constrained by syntax rather than PF repair.
This paper investigates the lexification patterns (i.e., correspondences between forms and senses) of the concepts EAT, DRINK, and SMOKE across 159 Sinitic languages. Utilizing data sourced from reference grammars, online databases, dictionaries, and fieldwork, the study categorizes the languages into five distinct patterns of colexification and dislexification, revealing a notable north-south divide. The findings indicate that colexification occurs more frequently in Sinitic varieties located south of the Yangtze River, while dislexification is prevalent among the three concepts in Northern Chinese languages. This study also examines how cognitive, historical, sociocultural, and areal factors favor the colexification among two or three of the concepts. While conceptual relatedness serves as an underlying reason connecting these three concepts, the colexification of EAT and DRINK is also attributed to the retention of archaic features of Old and Middle Chinese. The colexification of EAT and SMOKE is likely facilitated by sociocultural factors, particularly the medicinal function of tobacco, which was promoted by Chinese merchants following its introduction from Luzon (Philippines) during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Furthermore, after comparing Sinitic varieties with 240 non-Sinitic languages from the Tibeto-Burman (116), Kra-Dai (78), and Hmong-Mien (46) families, the study concludes that the colexification of DRINK and SMOKE in Sinitic languages likely results from language contact with Hmong-Mien languages; this illustrates how multilingual environments influence the reconfiguration of sense clustering and lead to the adoption of shared semantic structures.
This study examines how ad hoc concept construction mitigates impoliteness in Jordanian Arabic. Drawing on Relevance Theory and lexical pragmatics, it analyzes how hearers pragmatically adjust conventionalized expressions in face-threatening contexts to derive context-specific meanings. The data come from naturally occurring conversations across informal, workplace, and public settings. From approximately 500 candidate instances, 21 recurrent lexical-pragmatic resources were selected through explicit filtering criteria and reliability procedures. The analysis focuses on explicature derivation, implicature calculation, lexical narrowing, enrichment, ironic reversal, and the prosodic and sequential cues that guide interpretation. The findings show that expressions such as a:di:, bas i:t a, mali integral, ala ra:si, and ja: sala:m do not mitigate impoliteness by virtue of fixed politeness meanings. They trigger ad hoc concepts that minimize offence, close disagreement, express deference, convey forgiveness, or redirect criticism. The study contributes to pragmatics by linking lexical pragmatic adjustment with culturally situated impoliteness mitigation in Jordanian Arabic interaction and by clarifying the role of inferential cues in facework.
While recurrent manual gestures have been extensively studied, nonmanual actions such as head movements remain less explored, especially in naturalistic interaction. This study investigates whether head nods and head shakes serve communicative functions comparable to those of recurrent manual gestures. Drawing on corpus data from spoken German and DGS (German Sign Language), we analyze approximately 1 h of interaction per language with 16 participants. More than 2,500 head movements produced by speakers/signers and their addressees were manually identified and annotated. The findings reveal a largely shared functional repertoire of head nods and head shakes across spoken and signed interaction, with no qualitative differences in the range of functions. In both languages, head movements fulfill discursive, stance-taking, illocutionary, and interactive functions, as well as affirmation and negation, closely paralleling patterns described for recurrent manual gestures. At the same time, cross-linguistic differences emerge in the relative prominence and degree of grammaticalization of specific functions, most notably in the use of head shakes for negation in DGS and for stance-taking in spoken German. Extending a functional framework for recurrent manual gestures to nonmanual actions, this study shows that head nods and head shakes exhibit the defining properties of recurrency: stable form-function pairings that recur systematically across speakers, signers, and interactional context. These findings support an embodied view of language and highlight the role of head movements as key semiotic resources in spoken and signed interaction.
The paper analyses how language users report and conceptualise terminological problems in emails addressed to the Language Consulting Service of the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics. Using a qualitative, data-driven approach within the framework of Language Management Theory, the study investigates 45 anonymised email correspondences selected from a corpus of more than 12,000 email threads (2011-2025). The analysis identifies six major types of terminological problems: adequacy, new term, linguistic concept, variant, meaning, and replacement. Most inquiries concern the evaluation of existing terms or the search for new ones, demonstrating users' active involvement in terminology management. In a small number of cases, collaboration with the Research Centre's Terminology Research Group enabled expert input in solving user-initiated language problems. The results show how institutional language consulting connects individual linguistic reflection with organised terminology work, contributing to the continuous development of Hungarian terminology.
While recurrent manual gestures have been extensively studied, nonmanual actions such as head movements remain less explored, especially in naturalistic interaction. This study investigates whether head nods and head shakes serve communicative functions comparable to those of recurrent manual gestures. Drawing on corpus data from spoken German and DGS (German Sign Language), we analyze approximately 1 h of interaction per language with 16 participants. More than 2,500 head movements produced by speakers/signers and their addressees were manually identified and annotated. The findings reveal a largely shared functional repertoire of head nods and head shakes across spoken and signed interaction, with no qualitative differences in the range of functions. In both languages, head movements fulfill discursive, stance-taking, illocutionary, and interactive functions, as well as affirmation and negation, closely paralleling patterns described for recurrent manual gestures. At the same time, cross-linguistic differences emerge in the relative prominence and degree of grammaticalization of specific functions, most notably in the use of head shakes for negation in DGS and for stance-taking in spoken German. Extending a functional framework for recurrent manual gestures to nonmanual actions, this study shows that head nods and head shakes exhibit the defining properties of recurrency: stable form–function pairings that recur systematically across speakers, signers, and interactional context. These findings support an embodied view of language and highlight the role of head movements as key semiotic resources in spoken and signed interaction.
Gesture has been shown to serve as a substrate for learning a sign language as a second language in a second modality (L2M2). Evidence comes from the perception of signs and their iconicity but also from production, where the accuracy with which hearing learners of a sign language can produce the parameters of a sign is affected by form resemblance between sign and silent gesture. Our study delves deeper into the relationship between gesture and sign in L2M2 acquisition by jointly investigating the lexical and sublexical (i.e. phonological parameter) effects of (i) form resemblance between gesture and sign and (ii) iconicity on the early acquisition of DGS (German Sign Language, Deutsche Geb & auml;rdensprache). In a sign repetition task, participants were shown DGS signs which systematically differed in the degree of form overlap with silent gestures produced for corresponding concepts, as well as in the distribution of similarity over the phonological parameters (handshape, location, movement). After 20 hours of instruction, they repeated this task. Our data show that production accuracy increases across parameters following exposure to DGS. The effects of gesture-sign overlap and sign iconicity are mediated by parameter type, and highlight the importance of considering these two factors on the sublexical in addition to the lexical level. Finally, we suggest that the holistic nature of gesture plays a unique role in gesture-to-sign phonological acquisition, by providing learners only with phonetic, not phonological, information to build phonological categories from, reducing the potential for transfer here.
Speech production and recognition studies have revealed cross-linguistic variation in the grain size of phonological processing, particularly in the relative importance of individual segments and segment strings (analytical processing) and entire word forms (holistic processing). This variation has been ascribed to orthography (alphabets highlight individual phonemes) and/or syllabary size (the fewer the syllable types, the easier to process them as wholes). In the present study, we attempt to deconfound the independent effects of these correlated language-level variables by testing a varied language sample: Cantonese, English, Hakka, Japanese, Northern and Southern Vietnamese, Polish, Southern Min, and Taiwan Mandarin. In each, native speakers made binary auditory wordlikeness judgments for randomly generated minimal nonwords. We analyzed the judgments as a function of neighborhood density (suggesting the processing of whole test items), and of phonotactic probability and initial-segment frequency (suggesting the processing of segments and bigrams), as modulated by orthographic type and syllabary size. As expected, phoneme-based orthographies tended to be associated with stronger phonotactic probability effects, while smaller syllabaries were associated with stronger neighborhood density effects. This new evidence, gathered in an unusually broad typological survey and using a consistent task, may help contribute to the development of a truly universal model of phonological processing.
This paper investigates palm-ups, finger pointings, and holds in Tactile Swedish Sign Language interactions. Our objectives are threefold: scrutinizing the frequency of use of the three interactive markers, studying their functions, and describing the differences and similarities as compared to other signed and spoken languages. Data from two corpora were selected; one was collected in a studio and the other in natural settings. Fifty-nine minutes were analyzed, consisting of five deafblind dyads. Results show that holds are the most frequent markers, followed by palm-up and finger pointing. The most frequent functions of both holds and palm-up are monitoring (i.e., checking for understanding) followed by planning (i.e., producing the marker while making a cognitive effort to edit a term or processing discourse). Regarding other modalities, the preference in the use of these markers patterns with previous results on signed and spoken languages, but the functions are slightly less varied in our sample.
The goal of the research was to assess whether landscape conceptualization systematically differed across European languages in the context of the linguistic relativity debate. We examined the generalizability of previous findings and evaluated the limits of used methodologies, drawing on a large and diverse sample of 14 languages across 5 linguistic families in Eastern Europe (Slavic, Baltic, Uralic, Romance, Hellenic). Participants were asked to free-list terms associated with three linguistic domains: landscape, animals, and body parts. Mixed ANOVA, pairwise comparisons, frequency distribution, cognitive salience, and semantic network analyses were used to test for relationships and to visualize patterns and differences between languages. We confirmed that the landscape domain was less structured than the domains of animals and body parts. Furthermore, the landscape domain had weaker semantic connections across languages. However, we did not find any systematic differences in landscape conceptualizations across languages that could be clearly attributed to linguistic factors. Rather, we argue that the observed variability is more likely the result of multiple factors – geographical, cultural, and linguistic. Building on previous research, we propose more nuanced methods in future research that integrate qualitative, ethnographic insights with quantitative methods, while accounting for extra-linguistic factors.
Many signing communities in countries that once formed part of the Soviet Union share a common deaf institutional history. The sign languages of these communities have been influenced by Russian Sign Language, which was taught and used to varying degrees in Soviet deaf schools. However, little is known about the linguistic histories of the sign languages of the Soviet Union or of the histories of the signing communities within which those languages arose. Here we explore the relationships of Georgian, Russian, and Tajik Sign Languages by comparing aspects of the lexicons and grammars of two signers each from Georgia, Russia, and Tajikistan. We report the results of comparisons of basic vocabulary, basic constituent order, and event representations. The results indicate that (i) Russian and Tajik Sign Languages share more vocabulary than either of those languages share with Georgian Sign Language and that (ii) aspects of the grammar of Georgian and Tajik Sign Languages developed independently of Russian Sign Language. We suggest that this small-scale study could form the basis for a larger comparative investigation of sign languages of the Soviet Union.
This paper investigates null subjects in child early L1 grammar, grounding its explanation in the principles of computational efficiency and simplicity central to the Strong Minimalist Thesis. We argue that while the Extended Projection Principle – the requirement for clauses to have a subject – is universal, languages differ in how this requirement is met. Cross-linguistic variation between null-subject languages like Arabic and non-null-subject languages like English stems from how a potential null subject’s features and reference are identified and licensed. Drawing on Chomsky’s work on the I-language/externalization distinction, this study explores the different grammatical mechanisms that enable the recoverability of a null subject. In some languages, like Arabic, recoverability is achieved through rich verbal agreement. By contrast, in English and French, externalization pressures (such as phonological syncretism) and impoverished morphology prevent this licensing, rendering null subjects ungrammatical in the adult target. However, in early child English or French, specific information-structure conditions may license root TP structures that allow for null subjects. This investigation aims to provide a deeper understanding of how children, guided by principles like Grammatical Conservatism, acquire and use null subjects across these diverse linguistic contexts (including Agreement-based and Discourse-based interfaces).
This paper demonstrates the use of LLMs as first-pass filters in corpus annotation, with a focus on semantic disambiguation – a task more challenging than form-based classification due to its context-dependence. Using as a case study the polysemous Galician noun pobo ‘people/village’, the study demonstrates the applicability of LLM-assisted annotation to low-resource languages. 300 examples were annotated by three human coders and four LLMs (Claude 4 Sonnet, Claude 4 Opus, Claude 4.5 Sonnet, and Claude 4.5 Opus) using a static, single-phase prompting approach. Since first-pass filters should capture as many actual occurrences of the target phenomenon as possible, priority was given to recall over precision. Accordingly, the paper argues for F 2, a recall-focused metric, over commonly used alternatives like F 1 or MCC for validating LLM performance in filtering tasks. Claude 4.5 Opus with pretraining achieved the best performance against the human consensus (F 2 = 0.944, recall = 100 %), resulting in substantial workload reduction with no information loss. The study demonstrates that LLMs can serve as effective first-pass filters for semantic annotation in corpus linguistics, extending their applicability to low-resource languages.
