Research has shown that prosody constitutes the one of the first characteristics of a language acquired in infancy (Hilton 2022). Very quickly during their development, fetuses perceive the intonation patterns of their first language and their developmental implications (Mehler and Dupoux 1990; Di Cristo 2002). Once acquired, the prosody of the first language can have a major influence on speakers’ competence in the additional language. Yet the teaching and learning of prosody in additional languages has long been relegated to the background. Indeed, the focus has often been on the study of segmental phenomena, at the expense of rhythm and intonation (Diana 2010). Indeed, it appears that in the Common Framework of Reference for Languages assessment grids (Conseil de la coopération culturelle 2001), these phenomena are dealt with only from level B2 upwards, and their absence in the lower proficiency thresholds underlines the fact that it would be irrelevant to address prosody, rhythm, accentuation and intonation at more rudimentary levels of mastery of an additional language. However, Yates and Zielinski (2019) emphasize the role of intonation in speaker intelligibility, whether in English as a first or additional language. In the field of oral language teaching and learning (Granger 2003; Hawkins and Buttery 2009), more and more phonological corpora focus on suprasegmental phenomena (Tortel 2008; Gut 2010; Delais-Roussarie and Yoo 2011; Herment, Tortel et al. 2014). Among them, many corpora are composed of learners' oral productions. This paper will present the phonological corpus of IPAC-UJM learners (Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne) and explore the phenomena of linguistic transfer amongst French-speaking students during a sentence reading task. I will assess the ways in which the influence of the French intonation system can lead learners to transfer some prosodic characteristics from their L1 to LX English (Herry-Bénit et al. 2021). In addition, I will analyze the extent to which these interphonological phenomena are likely to influence intelligibility in oral production.
This study explores the development and spread of are as the present tense plural form of the verb “be” in the indicative across the various dialectal areas of medieval English. The aim is to shed light on the origin of forms of this type, which then came into linguistic competition with other variants, and whose gradual development has sometimes been associated with the influence of Scandinavian populations who had settled in parts of the English territory at that time. The combined use of the York-Toronto-Helsinki Corpus of Old English Prose and the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English provides the opportunity of tackling this issue both from a quantitative and a diachronic perspective, allowing for a precise measure of the frequency of are across a large number of texts, and for a reliable assessment of its importance within the time periods and the areas in which they were written. The data we put forward, as well as the spreading movement they reflect, are quite consistent with the hypothesis that the Scandinavian presence played an important role in the development (and eventually the dominance) of are as the present tense plural form of the verb “be” in the indicative. Our study is part of a broader project aimed at further describing the dynamics at work in the diffusion of various linguistic features that have been associated with Scandinavian influence in medieval English, as well as correlating these linguistic data with the sociohistorical information available for that period.
This paper studies the syntactic and semantic functioning of constructions featuring the verb remember when it appears with a to-infinitive subordinate clause. The aim is to determine the reasons why a verb generally (though not invariably) referring to past and established facts can be complemented by clauses denoting an idea or a notion – in other words, something that is abstract and virtual. It seems that in these sentences, some conditions favour the compatibility between this verb and this type of clausal complement.The analysis of occurrences from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) shows that the structure remember to V is particularly used when a notion of necessity is expressed in the co-text. Moreover, the notion of volition sometimes mentioned in the literature is only perceptible in a very specific case and not intrinsic to the structure. Finally, the results suggest that the very meaning of the verb itself is altered by that of its complement.
This analysis will focus on [N1 of a/an N2] NPs in English, particularly those that are sometimes named “Evaluative Binominal Noun Phrases (EBNP)” (ten Wolde, 2023) (ex. my fool of a husband, this palace of a house). Although their constrained syntax and evaluative semantics are often highlighted in the literature, their place within the [N1 of a/an N2] paradigm is not clearly defined. Indeed, the latter includes EBNPs but also binominals involving different semantic relations between the two nouns (ex. a bit of a mess, a ghost of a chuckle). Thus, based on the analysis of an electronic corpus of examples (COCA, Davies 2008- ) focused on N2 smile, which presents diverse semantic relations with N1, this study aims to better understand what distinguishes EBNPs from other [N1 of a/an N2] binominals. Antoine Culioli’s utterer-centered approach to grammar (i.e Théorie des Opérations Énonciatives), especially the concepts of “notion”, “notional domain”, “quantity” and “quality”, will be helpful to provide a detailed analysis of the examples in the corpus and set specific limits to EBNPs.
This article deals with the the-N-is construction and its lexico-grammatical variants (the thing is, the idea is, the funny thing is etc.) in spoken English and focuses in particular on the way it functions from a syntactic, prosodic and discursive point of view. Through the study of a corpus of spoken British English, prosody is used to question the traditional categories this construction is associated to. A particular attention is paid to tonality and the impact the position of the tone unit boundary has on the discursive function of the construction.The construction is organised in two parts linked by a form of the copula be, and, as such, is sometimes associated to specificational copular sentences. The aim of the construction would then be to specify the referent of a weakly referential noun. This analysis has however already been questioned (Keizer, 2013). This has led to new approaches to the construction, which has been analysed as a projective construction following interactional approaches (Auer, 2009). The study of the corpus through the lens of prosody shows that prosody can be used to foreground a specificational reading of the construction, or, on the contrary, to background this specificational reading, thus giving way to other discursive functions. This article shows that the position of tone unit boundaries plays a central role in this construction and contributes to its discursive functions.
Accounting for how speakers project end-of-turn boundaries has been the focus of many studies in the fields of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. While some suggest syntax occupies a primary role (Sacks et al. 1974, Lerner 1991), others indicate that it is part of a wider constellation where prosody, gesture as well as other embodied resources come into play (Ford et al. 1996).Most scholarly attention to date has centered on contexts of naturally occurring conversation, although more atypical interactions such as stand-up comedy have come under the spotlight (Mc Ilvenny et al. 1993; Rutter 1997). Based on two excerpts gleaned from a performance by British comedian Jo Caulfield filmed at Liverpool’s Hot Water Comedy Club, the present study examines how turn-constructional units (TCUs) emerge as multimodal constructs. Stand-up comedy provides fertile ground for observing the interplay between different modalities. It will be shown that the right brackets of TCUs coincide with the completion of syntactic as well as prosodic patterns, and that gestures mirror speech in projecting turn endings. We also highlight the particular importance of prosody, which not only acts to strengthen syntactic projections, but also paves the way for the syntactic integration of gestures into speech. Finally, we examine how visual cues are used to build up a desired response. We suggest that gaze plays a critical part in this process, as it works to secure joint attention and select the audience itself as an interactional partner.
This article explores the discursive motivations for code-switching, defined as the use of two or more languages during the same conversation by one or more bilingual speakers. In functional approaches, code-switching serves to signal the boundary between topic and focus, with the juncture at which the language change occurs carrying additional informational weight. Other approaches establish a connection between theme/rheme on one hand and the predictability of reference on the other, where less predictable meanings are seen as encouraging switching as a rheme marker: informative or important content favors distinctive and/or explicit encoding, which a language change facilitates. Building on these approaches as well as the analysis of a bilingual English-German conversational corpus (n=10, 95,000 words, 1,487 instances of switching), coupled with an informal longitudinal corpus (n=2), this article suggests that code-switching can be considered a tool for structuring utterances, and more specifically as a "physical salience factor" (Landragin 2004). From this perspective, language switching can be seen as stemming from the salience of certain lexemes at the moment of formulating the message and/or as a means of directing the co-speakers’ attention toward elements with strong communicative dynamism, much like certain typical, monolingual non-canonical constructions.
Through the analysis of a sample of 600 denominal verbs in English, this article investigates the debate around the influence of nominal etymology and morphology on the morphology of the verbal output. Previous studies have suggested that base nouns variables, such as borrowing from Romance languages or compounded constructions, have, to a certain extent, an influence on the morphology of the derived verb. However, these studies also indicate that some variables may not be relevant in present-day English any longer. As the dataset under scrutiny covers two centuries (1800-2022) and incorporates the most recent period, the relevance of these variables is questioned for the whole period. Statistical tests of significance are carried out in order to assess this supposed influence. The study confirms some of the previous hypotheses and proposes new constraints for lesser researched word-formation processes, such as back-formation, clipping, parasynthesis and paradigmatic derivation. It concludes on chronological data which suggest that the construction of English denominal verbs on borrowed bases has declined since the beginning of the 20th century which may help understand why the influence of Romance etymology is considered more and more anecdotal.
This paper aims to characterize X be up to Y, an idiom associated with four different syntactic and referential constructions, each associated with distinct yet related aspectual and modal meanings. Up to in X be up to Y is compared to other uses of up to; its complex preposition status is discussed as well as its potential for adjectivization in some of its uses, along with the status of the whole idiom X be up to Y and its connection to other aspectual-modal constructions.
This article explores the connection between salience and sarcasm through focusing on three interrogative constructions that can convey both sarcastic and literal meanings – WH-questions followed by a self-answer, alternative questions, and disjunctive polar questions. A large-scale corpus research was conducted throughout three distinct corpora of American-English to determine how these interrogative constructions use salience to encode sarcasm, and how salience contributes to the preference of their sarcastic meaning over the literal one. Firstly, we examine the salience of sarcasm by comparing the distribution of sarcastic questions between a spoken, non-scripted TV-corpus (COCA), a spoken telephone-corpus (Switchboard), and a written web-corpus (NLDS). The main goal of this comparison was to explore if sarcasm is significantly more salient in one corpus than the others. Results show that there are significantly more sarcastic questions in the written-web corpus than in the non-scripted spoken corpora, suggesting that sarcasm is significantly more salient in this corpus than the others. We attribute these results to situational and emotional salience stemming from the distinct discursive arenas. Secondly, we examine the distribution of the different question types to see if the sarcastic meaning is significantly more salient in one of the three interrogative constructions than the others. Results show that WH-questions followed by a self-answer are the most sarcastic construction out of the three examined, and that its sarcastic meaning is more salient than that of alternative questions and of disjunctive polar questions. We attribute these results to intrinsic syntactic properties and to the notion of predictability and (un)expectedness. We conclude the paper with thoughts regarding future work necessary to further our understanding of salient sarcastic questions.
This article seeks to show how some syntactical, grammatical or lexical salience strategies work to enable the speaker, in vaccine-hesitant or conspiracy theory contexts, to legitimize their discourses and strengthen their authority as a reliable speaker in order to maximize the audience’s agreement with the theory. We define salience as the result of focusing strategies which do not rely on notions of information packaging, but on the selection of an interlocutive relation that can be disruptive, polemical, or consensual, and which enable the construction of a prevailing point of view. In this regard, such strategies are used for their cognitive effects on the audience, which, for example, allow for the topicalisation and focusing of a presupposed or shared knowledge, or for their argumentative advantage, as they allow for the restriction of meaning and the imposition of the speaker’s interpretation of reality, or for the emphasis on the viewpoint’s validity, significance or reliability.
Salience is often used in linguistics to refer to the importance given to a certain part of a discourse such as a word, phrase, or grammatical function (Col, 2011). As such, question sequences can be considered a tool used to make a certain topic more salient because they represent the repetition of a certain linguistic device. Moreover, the repetitive nature of a question sequence has the tendency to affect the audience’s attention in a particular way and might lead to the perception of greater emphasis on topics addressed in the question sequences. It may be difficult to quantify emphatic salience because of the subjective nature of discourse perception. However, there are some measures which can be used and have been discussed in previous literature. Following Falk (2014:4)’s idea that “the key characteristic of salience is its function to encode predictability or likelihood of continuous or discontinuous (previous / next) mention of a discourse part in the mental model throughout time,” this paper considers how question sequences are used by TED talk presenters to create a discourse framework which prompts the audience to understand the importance of a certain subject. Furthermore, question sequences in TED talks may be used to manipulate the audience’s attention in either a forward- or backward-looking manner.Through the analysis of a transcribed corpus of TED talks in English, as studied in Celle and Liégeois (2021), this paper examines question sequences in a corpus of 18 transcribed TED talks by presenters with various backgrounds. Through a proposed hierarchy of question sequences, we attempt to understand how question sequences can be used to make a topic more salient and create a sense of anticipation on the part of the audience. This relates directly to previous work on linguistic salience and helps us to develop an understanding of how questions might play a role in presentational dialogue games.
“Argumentative discourse aims at influencing the opinions, attitudes or behaviour of an addressee or an audience by making a statement credible or acceptable” (Adam, 1992: 116). There are however different ways of reaching this goal as will be shown in a collection of varied internet videos. This paper proposes an analysis of two styles present in ecological discourse which can be expositive in nature but can also be closer to exhortation as environmentalists wish to urge people and governments to act on the issue of global warming. A difference of multimodal complexity and/or intensity is observed between the two styles.Expository discourse will be shown to be expressed in speech with the use of examples and explanations of processes and systems. Renaming and defining is very much present in this type of discourse. Prosodically close to pedagogical discourse, expository discourse is typically uttered with greater emphasis. Multimodally, this type of discourse relies on visual resources (slideshow, maps, etc.) and speakers’ gestures mostly include three types: discourse organisation gestures, pointing to visual resources, and representational gestures (McNeill, 2005) which illustrate the verbal content in speech and may even complement other types of visuals.For its part, exhortation will be shown to be expressed by hyperbolic speech (Druetta, 2015a; Ferré, 2014), metaphor and contrasts. Beat prosody is also more present in this type of discourse, accented syllables being closer to each other and more often pronounced with emphatic prosody: syllable lengthening, but also higher pitch, as well as potentially larger pitch movements and higher speech amplitude (Brenier et al., 2005; Herment-Dujardin & Hirst, 2003; Simon & Grobet, 2005). Prosodic beats are regularly accompanied by beat gestures (Biau & Soto-Faraco, 2013; Dimitrova et al., 2016; Ferré, 2019) while contrasting viewpoints can be expressed in hand gestures being performed in different parts of the speaker’s personal space (McNeill et al., 1993).
The pseudo-cleft construction is a syntactic structure organised in two parts linked by the copula be, the first part being a what-clause and the second part being focalised. In spoken English, the second part of the construction frequently corresponds to a complex stretch of discourse or even an entire paragraph (Auer, 2009; Gaudy-Campbell et al., 2016), making the resolution of the pseudo-cleft more complex and sometimes not immediate. Although the construction is traditionally analysed for its focalising function, this paper accounts for the strategic use of pseudo-clefts in discourse. They will be treated as an argumentative device used by the enunciator to introduce a common situation or even to co-construct this situation. By doing so, it paves the way for the co-enunciator’s adhesion to the focalised segment.Using a corpus of spoken British English (Berthe, 2021), this article puts forward different strategies implemented by the enunciator to this end. First of all, the pseudo-cleft can be used to introduce a complex stretch of discourse in which shared knowledge is reactivated before the pseudo-cleft resolution. This complex stretch of discourse can also be used to provide a situational frame in which the co-enunciator is included. Finally, this complex stretch of discourse may also include a form of internal dialogue, which allows the enunciator to share common discursive representations with the co-enunciator.
The purpose of this contribution is to examine, in a British press corpus of 90 articles dealing with Brexit, the segments inserted between inverted commas within the narrative speech of the journalist (called “îlots textuels” in French) and to highlight the interpretative effects underlying their use by the journalist. These fragments of other’s discourse, frequently used in media discourse, are explicitly marked as being other with quotation marks which signal the heterogeneity of the discourse. They make it possible to attract the reader’s attention, to make the speech stand out by clearly separating it from the journalist's speech. This clearly indicated borrowing of statements from another source, displayed as such, corresponds to a strategy of highlighting elements of discourse by the journalist, which may reflect a desire to collude with the reader. It also enables the journalists to distance themselves from the comments and point out the will not to endorse them, particularly when the content of the fragment refers to connotative expressions and violent and/or vulgar vocabulary. Over and above this distancing, the insertion of these salient fragments in the journalist’s speech can represent a means to express a position regarding the source of the segment or its content, and therefore present interpretative consequences that go beyond simple highlighting. It is therefore a real discursive tool available to the journalists to let their opinion shine through.
In the space of just a few weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed alternative frames and new viewing angles upon all members of the academic community. Private homes went public; interactional frames and scripts were subtly altered; displaying or concealing one’s true self became much trickier. Some managed the transition well but many struggled to adjust their public image and social behaviour to the changed circumstances. Video-interviews are now commonplace but the challenges remain. The claim made in this paper is that those interactants who perform nicely and successfully are those who get both their own and other people’s “stories” right, thus avoiding miscommunication and subtle forms of alienation.
A distinction between a first-person perspective and a third-person one is common in philosophical discussions of consciousness. As it is generally understood, the first-person perspective, informally, relates to a person’s ‘felt’ experience of situations, while a third-person perspective is an external look at things. This paper considers extending the distinction to the semantic study of grammar and is the first of a series on the subject of grammar in a first-person perspective. The first part of the paper is an informal discussion of the distinction and its relation to language. The second part is about the well-known derivation of purpose markers from allative markers, with reference to the polysemy of English ‘to’. It is shown that varying the perspective under study changes the analysis. The derivation is construed as metaphorical if it seen in a third-person perspective (this being the received interpretation) but it is construed as involving synecdoche when seen in a first-person perspective. It appears that the two constructions are not contradictory.
The present paper focuses on two constructions – capacitive (e.g. The main dining room seats 65) and setting-subject (e.g. The reign of Charles II saw the end of the great Forest courts) constructions – which are comparable in more than one way. The verbs under study (seat and sleep, the two most frequent verbs in capacitive sentences; see and witness, the only two ‘perception’ verbs featuring in setting-subject constructions) prototypically license an animate subject whereas in these less prototypical constructions, the subject has an inanimate referent, either spatial or temporal (the latter only in setting-subject constructions). The alignment between syntactic function and semantic role is not prototypical, as the subject referent is neither an agent nor an experiencer, but denotes, at first sight, a place or a temporal period. Finally, the two types of sentences abstract away from the expression of a concrete situation experienced by a human animate, originally denoted by the verbs concerned.The study addresses the mechanisms at work in both types of constructions. It shows that not only does the difference in syntax-semantics alignment between prototypical and non-prototypical sentences allows for the emergence of a new, abstract verbal meaning, but also that there is a logic of continuity between prototypical (She slept well or We saw a car with only one headlight on) and non-prototypical sentences. By analysing the syntax-semantics alignment present in these two types of sentences, we can first identify the deviations present at the syntax-semantics interface in capacitive and setting-subject constructions, and then attempt to categorise the type of alignment at work in such constructions, in which the thematised locative constituent is neither a typical subject nor a typical topic; it is conceived of as a participant in the process, rather than as a mere circumstance. In the light of such analyses, the motivation for this specific syntax-semantics alignment and the topicalisation of the locative is revealed, as is the meaning at work in both types of constructions.
