This study investigates whether and how the formulation of a picture-based narrative task—specifically, the specification of the addressee—affects macrostructural richness in young adult narratives. Although the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) is increasingly used with adults, it typically pairs child-oriented stimuli with adult-directed instructions, and the impact of addressee specification on macrostructure has not been tested experimentally. The present study provides the first controlled investigation of this methodological factor. Sixty speakers of German, Polish, and Russian each produced two MAIN narratives under different task formulations: one addressed to the adult examiner and one to an imagined child. A total of 120 narratives was analyzed in terms of story structure and macrostructural component frequencies. Child-directed instruction yielded consistently higher story structure scores, indicating greater macrostructural richness across all languages. Story type did not influence outcomes. Language effects emerged only under adult-directed instruction and are best explained by differences in task interpretation rather than language-specific narrative competence. These results demonstrate that addressee specification is a critical methodological parameter in young adult narrative elicitation and has important implications for the interpretation and comparability of adult MAIN data.
Building on Accessibility Theory and its English-based quantification systems, this study proposes a multiple-discourse-factor-driven model for measuring referent accessibility in Chinese. It examines how 13 accessibility degrees are marked by anaphoric expressions (zeros, pronouns, NPs) in narratives and sentence sequences produced by 36 native Chinese speakers, and whether such marking conforms to the theory’s predictions. The analysis reveals that highest accessibility degrees are associated with zeros, secondarily high and middle degrees with pronouns and NPs, and low degrees with NPs. While Chinese generally follows the accessibility-marking principle proposed by the theory, systematic violations occur at secondarily high accessibility degrees. These findings confirm the theory’s cross-linguistic applicability and establish a refined quantification system adaptable to other languages. Furthermore, they suggest that languages vary in their adherence to the accessibility-marking principle, which should be reconceptualized as a probabilistic tendency—the more accessible a referent is, the more likely it is to be encoded by a reduced form—rather than a rigid hierarchy between accessibility degrees and anaphoric expression types.
We consider dispositional expressions in Russian (such as Mne ne rabotaetsja ‘I am undisposed to work’) and Serbian (Radi mi se ‘I feel like working’). Our approach is production-oriented, i.e., we describe the production of expressions from underlying semantic representations; the framework adopted is the Meaning-Text linguistic approach.Our main claim: dispositional expressions consist of regularly derived reflexive verbs—dispositionals—with their actants and represent a particular case of productive verbal derivations, rather than being instances of some particular “constructions,” as is often stated in linguistic literature.A dispositional is produced by adding to an imperfective base verb a dispositionality derivateme (a type of linguistic sign), such as Rus. be_undisposed or Serb. feel_like, which triggers the reflexivization of the base verb and the concomitant modification of its Government Pattern (different alignment of the verb’s semantic and deep-syntactic actants and, if the derivation proceeds from an intransitive or intransitively used verb, the addition of a zero empty 3.SG neuter surface-syntactic dummy subject).Being productively derived, dispositional verbs constitute an open set and cannot be all relegated to the lexicon; the units that must be listed for the proper coverage of dispositionals are the corresponding derivatemes.Since derivational meanings are akin to lexical meanings, we have opted for a lexicographic description of dispositionality derivatemes—by (slightly adapted) standard Meaning-Text lexicographic entries. Four dispositionality derivatemes are formally described: the two indicated above, as well as Rus. go_Y-ily and Serb. feel_urge. Their presence and distribution in other Slavic languages is briefly discussed and illustrated.
Boosters are a key metadiscourse resource through which academic writers reinforce the certainty of their claims. Higher frequencies are typically reported in soft than in hard disciplines, though findings conflict. A persistent limitation is the assumption of semantic homogeneity: lexical items encoding different ways of construing certainty are aggregated under a single functional label, and cross-study differences in booster inventory composition may also account for conflicting findings. This study re-examines disciplinary variation by adopting a frame-semantic perspective that foregrounds this heterogeneity. Drawing on the frame-annotated academic subcorpus of the Corpus of Contemporary American English, boosters are classified into eight Semantic Frames, and their distribution is examined across eight disciplines. Stratified manual validation confirms acceptable annotation reliability for seven frames; one (Frequency) is excluded due to low recall. One-way ANOVAs reveal that all seven frames differ significantly in normalized frequency across disciplines, with the largest effect sizes in Correctness, Evidence, and Likelihood. A chi-square test confirms that disciplines differ not only in how much they boost but in how they boost. Rather than a simple soft–hard dichotomy, the results reveal an interpretive–evidential continuum: interpretive disciplines favour evaluative frames such as Correctness and Obviousness, whereas empirical disciplines favour Evidence, Reasoning, and Coming_to_believe. The study argues that metadiscourse research would benefit from supplementing functional categories with frame-based semantic differentiation, and that the relationship between rhetorical function and semantic construal is one-to-many—a single function being realized through multiple semantic pathways shaped by disciplinary epistemologies.
While autistic children are often described as exhibiting semantic impairments, accumulating evidence suggests that some aspects of formal semantics may be relatively preserved. The present study investigated whether 4–7-year-old Mandarin-speaking autistic children compute the core semantic relations underlying logical expressions. Twenty-three autistic children and two typically developing (TD) control groups (23 age-matched and 28 language-matched), matched on nonverbal intelligence, completed two computer-based Truth Value Judgment Tasks assessing the interpretation of the disjunction huozhe (“or”) in two downward-entailing contexts involving the Mandarin negation meiyou (“not”) and the temporal conjunction zai…zhiqian (“before”). Results showed that autistic children exhibited interpretation patterns comparable to those of both TD control groups. Across the two tasks, all groups tended to assign a conjunctive interpretation to disjunction in downward-entailing contexts, demonstrating sensitivity to the scope relations between logical operators. These interpretation patterns were consistent with the principles of classical logic and the predictions of the Semantic Subset Principle. The findings suggest that autistic children with nonverbal intelligence scores in the average-to-above-average range retain core aspects of semantic knowledge and logical reasoning, challenging claims of pervasive semantic atypicality in autism and supporting a role for language-internal computational mechanisms in autistic language acquisition.
This study explores idiosyncratic slot competition between definiteness and plurality that characterizes languages like Southern Kurdish and Colloquial New Persian. One strategy by which Iranian languages have developed definiteness marking is by the recruitment of diminutive/evaluative morphology. A strategy by which they have developed plural marking is by recruiting collective nouns/morphemes. The relative chronology of these developments dictates whether there is slot-competition or not. If these languages had a plural marker before the recruitment of the definite article, they would feature a definiteness distinction in plural contexts. However, if the definiteness distinction was the earlier innovation, plural nouns do not feature definiteness marking. This competition results from persistent features of their etyma, which can be used as heuristics for identifying the origins of innovative morphology.
Numeral classifiers (CLs) in East and mainland Southeast Asian languages are well-known for their multifunctionality (e.g., individuation/atomization, classification, referentialization, relationalization). However, almost all existing literature on CL functions is based on endophoric (text-internal) contexts, with exophoric (text-external) contexts being largely overlooked. This paper attempts to point out the significance of integrating exophoric contexts in studies of grammaticalization scenarios by presenting two case studies on CLs in Meixian Hakka, a Southern Sinitic language with an extremely multifunctional CL system, paying special attention to CL use in exophoric contexts. Study 1 is a cognitive experiment, and Study 2 adopts a triangulated methodological approach combining experimental data, synchronic corpus analysis and diachronic textual evidence.These studies shed light on the following two grammaticalization pathways of CLs that can only be accounted for by a combination of evidence from exophoric and endophoric contexts: (i) specific CL > contrastive focus marker and (ii) general CL > DEM. Pathway (i) is interesting in that the target function can only be observed in exophoric contexts, while pathway (ii) is of additional interest as it contradicts general assumptions that DEMs are not derived from any lexical sources.
Possessive nominals such as yours are ambiguous, especially when they occur as predicates in copular constructions, as in this book is yours. They can receive either a possession reading or a relational reading. In the possession reading, you serves as the possessor, while in the relational reading, it can denote a writer, a buyer, a possessor, or another relational participant. Assuming that yours consists of your and -s, this study argues that the ambiguity originates from the morpheme -s, which can either denote some entity or function as a dummy noun. Just as the verb do is ambiguous between the main verb do and the dummy verb do, the morpheme -s can be either a content noun denoting some entity or a dummy noun. This paper further claims that dummy -s is inserted as a last resort when a weak possessive pronoun is stranded as a result of NP-deletion, just as dummy do is inserted as a last resort when T is stranded. The dummy N-insertion approach is further extended in this study to Dutch, German and Italian.
Manchu exhibits a semantic overlap between temporal and conditional relations. The dative-locative participial construction (V-HA de) and the conditional-converb construction (V-ci/V-HA bi-ci) can express both meanings. Based on the corpus of the Qing Dynasty Manchu-Chinese bilingual textbook Qingwen Zhiyao (A Guide to Manchu, 100 chapters), this study investigates the semantic mechanism of Manchu temporal-conditional overlap and the corresponding translation strategies in Bannerman Chinese. The findings reveal that the semantic shift between the two Manchu constructions is underpinned by the temporal sequence of the antecedent and consequent situations, and the essence of Manchu temporal-conditional overlap lies in semantic flexibility based on the temporal sequence. Bannerman Chinese adopts a priority translation strategy centered on “的时候” (de shí hòu, ’when’), with this temporal marker serving as the core to cover all three semantic types: temporal, conditional, and temporo-conditional. Only when Manchu expresses strong conditional meaning does it superimpose conditional conjunctions to form a reinforced marker structure. This strategy represents a dynamic adaptation between the source language category and target language norms under Manchu-Chinese bilingual contact: it leverages the grammaticalization tradition of Chinese temporal words while aligning with the semantic essence of Manchu constructions, thus complying with the principle of language economy.
Classical legal-pragmatic accounts characterise regulatory text as directive-and-declaration dominated, organised around external command. Two sites in AI governance resist this picture. Preambular passages in binding regulation rely on non-directive modal resources whose illocutionary classification remains unsettled. Industry-signed AI codes deploy first-person commissive constructions that the directive-declaration model does not straightforwardly accommodate. This paper asks how speech-act and modal-strength distributions vary across regulatory categories, and whether the conventional soft- and hard-law continuum predicts the resulting pragmatic profile. Across a corpus of nineteen US, EU, and intergovernmental instruments, a rule-based speech-act classifier identifies two dissociations between legal force and speech-act force. Within EU regulations, recitals align with soft-law principles documents on modal profile rather than with the operative articles they preface. Industry-signed AI codes display a commissive-dominant configuration, deferring directive content to a parent regulatory framework. The study contributes a recital-versus-operative decomposition of binding regulation, an auditable rule-based speech-act classifier, and an argument for the analytic centrality of preambular text and commissive speech in legal pragmatics.
Causative verbs in Chinese causative constructions often develop into causative markers through grammaticalization, and patterns of alternation among these markers vary across dialects. Drawing on the prototype-exemplar continuum theory, this paper investigates the distribution and alternation of (sic)iau(55)((sic)), kei(53)((sic)) and na(35)((sic)) in Fuping dialect causative constructions using multiple co distinct yet partially overlapping function nized conceptual variables, especially C strained and direction-sensitive rather t rrespondence analysis (MCA). The results show that the three markers occupy al domains in conceptual space, primarily constrained by hierarchically orgaausee and Control. Alternation among these markers is systematically conhan freely variable, with each marker displaying distinct degrees of stability and flexibility across causative configurations. Together, these patterns reflect contrasts in the conceptual encoding of causative events and provide synchro dialect. nic insights into possible divergent grammaticalization pathways in the Fuping (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.
This paper investigates how politene focus on sociolinguistic and pragmatic p nouns (e.g., n & iacute;n (sic)), honorific noun phra and sentence-final particles used to miti forms are shown to be systematically in ss in Mandarin Chinese is encoded in syntax, moving beyond the traditional erspectives. The study analyzes four key domains of politeness: honorific proses referring to the addressee, humble expressions referring to the speaker, gate illocutionary force. While often treated as lexical or stylistic markers, these tegrated into the grammatical architecture. ization of discourse and adopting a feature-based proposal within the Generues that politeness distinctions are encoded through formal features such as ontent-oriented markers (e.g., pronouns and honorific noun phrases) are ana- Building on the approach of syntactic ative grammar framework, the paper arg [FORMAL] in the high clausal domain. C lyzed as bound variables linked to the a tain sentence-final particles) are restricted to root clauses, directly encoding the social relation between interlocutors. Evidence comes from distributional contrasts in embedding, binding effects, and the interplay between vocatives and pronouns. The findings suggest that Mandarin politeness is not merely a pragmatic overlay but a grammaticalized component of the clausal left periphery in the syntactic theories of the syntax-pragmatics inte encoded in clause structure. ddressee or speaker operators, whereas utterance-oriented markers (e.g., cerspine, providing structural loci for social meaning. The analysis contributes to rface by showing how social hierarchy, respect, and face management are (c) 2026 Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This article deals with the syntactic phenomenon known as recomplementation, which involves the use of two or more interspersed complementizers seemingly belonging to the same complementizer phrase and linked to the same complement clause within it (e.g., My hope is that by the time we meet that we'll have made some progress). After a brief overview of previous templatic approaches and their shortcomings, two lines of analysis grounded in the notion of restart are discussed. The case is made, drawing mainly on readily available data from English and Spanish, that recomplementation structures are multiplanar anacolutha, consistently with early treatments of the phenomenon. It is argued, however, that these structures cannot be reduced to performance deviations across the board, since they appear to have been grammatically licensed historically. This is illustrated with Old Romance data, viewed from a construction grammar perspective. By utilizing the concept of syntactic plane and demonstrating the grammatical potential of phenomena such as anacolutha, this work challenges widely held assumptions in the discipline and contributes to a fuller appreciation of the possibilities of syntactic structure and of languages as conventional systems. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
The aim of this paper is to offer a critical overview of how politeness is presented in a sample of textbooks used in teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language. The importance of politeness in second language acquisition has long been recognized in the literature; previous research in this area on the acquisition and teaching of CSL/CFL has focussed e.g. on language socialization, on pragmatics, and on the development of intercultural communicative competence. However, specific research on how politeness and politeness-related topics and skills are introduced in textbooks and other works used by learners and teachers of CSL/CFL suffers from a lack of systematicity. To this end, we analysed a sample of teaching materials designed for non-native speakers which are widely used in China (and beyond). We shall show that explicit discussion of politeness is limited, and that often the dialogues do not offer enough indirect evidence for a thorough understanding of politeness. We shall argue that this is suggestive of an approach to language pedagogy in which politeness is not really seen as linguistic senso strictu, and hence teaching the structures of the language is not effectively integrated with the pragmatic aspects related to politeness in interaction. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
