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"Linguistic Theory"
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A Dynamic Systems Theory approach to second language acquisition
In this article it is argued that language can be seen as a dynamic system, i.e. a set of variables that interact over time, and that language development can be seen as a dynamic process. Language development shows some of the core characteristics of dynamic systems: sensitive dependence on initial conditions, complete interconnectedness of subsystems, the emergence of attractor states in development over time and variation both in and among individuals. The application of tools and instruments developed for the study of dynamic systems in other disciplines calls for different approaches to research, which allow for the inclusion of both the social and the cognitive, and the interaction between systems. There is also a need for dense data bases on first and second language development to enhance our understanding of the fine-grained patterns of change over time. Dynamic Systems Theory is proposed as a candidate for an overall theory of language development.
Journal Article
Against markedness (and what to replace it with)
This paper first provides an overview of the various senses in which the terms ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ have been used in 20th-century linguistics. Twelve different senses, related only by family resemblances, are distinguished, grouped into four larger classes: markedness as complexity, as difficulty, as abnormality, and as a multidimensional correlation. In the second part of the paper, it is argued that the term ‘markedness’ is superfluous, because some of the concepts that it denotes are not helpful, and others are better expressed by more straightforward, less ambiguous terms. In a great many cases, frequency asymmetries can be shown to lead to a direct explanation of observed structural asymmetries, and in other cases additional concrete, substantive factors such as phonetic difficulty and pragmatic inferences can replace reference to an abstract notion of ‘markedness’.
Journal Article
Ten lectures on field semantics and semantic typology
These lectures provide one of the first comprehensive introductions to semantic typology, the study of crosslinguistic variation in how languages represent reality. In addition, they survey research methods for field semantics, the study of linguistic meaning under fieldwork conditions.
eBook
Verbal predication negation in Dawurotsuwa
This paper presents an analysis of the verbal negation of declarative main clauses in Dawurotsuwa. This study aims to describe verbal negation in Dawurotsuwa, a language that is scarcely described. Having prepared phrases and sentences for elicitation, which are appropriate and purposefully fitting to the verbal predication negation in English and Amharic, the data were collected from native speakers of Dawurotsuwa. The finding shows that the language suffixes negative markers to the root. Verbal negation in main clauses is formed by suffixing the morphemes -kk-/-nn- to the verb along with other inflectional suffixes, such as person, number, and aspect. The negative morpheme -kk- is used for all persons except 3SG.M. The morpheme -nn- is used for 3SG.M and infinite verb forms. Negation in Dawurotsuwa is asymmetric, in which the structural difference between affirmative and corresponding negative goes beyond the mere existence of the negative marker. The negative and perfective aspect marker co-occur together though the perfective aspect marker is substituted by another marker in the negative. The imperfective aspect is not marked in the language. The language emphasizes negation by attaching -ttenne to the verb following the person and number marker. In ellipsis, the morpheme -kka is suffixed to the pronouns or nominal elements for representing all other elements of the antecedent clause omitted in both affirmatives and negatives.
Journal Article
Objective or subjective adjectives? A case study on UNESCO Global Geopark tourism texts
This study depicts the usage of the adjectives in the UNESCO Global Geoparks (UGGp) tourism texts from English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. The aim of this paper is to find out if subjective adjectives are the main component of UGGp tourism texts as related to previous arguments. The texts analyzed in this research were collected from UGGp website. The tourism texts are nine texts from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the UK) as English-speaking countries and ten texts from Indonesia as a non-English speaking country. All the texts are published on UGGp’s official website. The research method implemented is a mixed method, both qualitative and quantitative methods. Based on the result, both the UK and Indonesia UGGp tourism texts dominantly applied objective adjectives in comparison with subjective adjectives. The research findings are slightly different from the argument that subjective adjectives are commonly used in tourism discourse. Based on the conclusion, it can be inferred that objective adjectives are commonly used in UGGp texts, particularly in tourism texts. According to the researchers, the findings have the potential to aid writers of tourism texts in choosing adjectives.
Journal Article
Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Preference Utility Set and Its Application in Selection of Fire Rescue Plans
Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set provides an effective tool to represent uncertain decision information. However, the semantics corresponding to the linguistic terms in it cannot accurately reflect the decision-makers’ subjective cognition. In general, different decision-makers’ sensitivities towards the semantics are different. Such sensitivities can be represented by the cumulative prospect theory value function. Inspired by this, we propose a linguistic scale function to transform the semantics corresponding to linguistic terms into the linguistic preference values. Furthermore, we propose the hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference utility set, based on which, the decision-makers can flexibly express their distinct semantics and obtain the decision results that are consistent with their cognition. For calculations and comparisons over the hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference utility sets, we introduce some distance measures and comparison laws. Afterwards, to apply the hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference utility sets in emergency management, we develop a method to obtain objective weights of attributes and then propose a hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference utility-TOPSIS method to select the best fire rescue plan. Finally, the validity of the proposed method is verified by some comparisons of the method with other two representative methods including the hesitant fuzzy linguistic-TOPSIS method and the hesitant fuzzy linguistic-VIKOR method.
Journal Article
COMPLEX DYNAMIC SYSTEMS THEORY IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
A quarter of a century has passed since complex dynamic systems theory was proposed as an alternative paradigm to rethink and reexamine some of the main questions and phenomena in applied linguistics and language learning. In this article, we report a scoping review of the heterogenous body of research adopting this framework. We analyzed 158 reports satisfying our inclusion criteria (89 journal articles and 69 dissertations) for methodological characteristics and substantive contributions. We first highlight methodological trends in the report pool using a framework for dynamic method integration at the levels of study aim, unit of analysis, and choice of method. We then survey the main substantive contribution this body of research has made to the field. Finally, examination of study quality in these reports revealed a number of potential areas of improvement. We synthesize these insights in what we call the “nine tenets” of complex dynamic systems theory research, which we hope will help enhance the methodological rigor and the substantive contribution of future research.
Journal Article
Abelian networks IV. Dynamics of nonhalting networks
An abelian network is a collection of communicating automata whose state transitions and message passing each satisfy a local
commutativity condition. This paper is a continuation of the abelian networks series of Bond and Levine (2016), for which we extend the
theory of abelian networks that halt on all inputs to networks that can run forever. A nonhalting abelian network can be realized as a
discrete dynamical system in many different ways, depending on the update order. We show that certain features of the dynamics, such as
minimal period length, have intrinsic definitions that do not require specifying an update order.
We give an intrinsic definition
of the
This perspective leads to
new results even in the classical case of sinkless rotor networks (deterministic analogues of random walks). In Holroyd et. al (2008) it
was shown that the recurrent configurations of a sinkless rotor network with just one chip are precisely the unicycles (spanning
subgraphs with a unique oriented cycle, with the chip on the cycle). We generalize this result to abelian mobile agent networks with any
number of chips. We give formulas for generating series such as
eBook
Testing the nonce borrowing hypothesis: Counter-evidence from English-origin verbs in Welsh
According to the nonce borrowing hypothesis (NBH), “[n]once borrowings pattern exactly like their native counterparts in the (unmixed) recipient language” (Poplack & Meechan, 1998a, p. 137). Nonce borrowings (Sankoff, Poplack & Vanniarajan, 1990, p. 74) are “lone other-language items” which differ from established borrowings in terms of frequency of use and recognition. Lone other-language items are singly occurring words from the “donor” language which are preceded and followed by words or phrases from the “recipient” language. Whether such other-language words belong only to the donor language (and are classed as codeswitches) or to both the donor and the recipient language (and are classed as borrowings) is both a theoretical and a practical issue. Poplack & Meechan (1998a) suggest that this question can be settled by measuring the linguistic integration of donor-language words, so that infrequent donor-language words which behave like their recipient-language counterparts are categorised as (nonce) borrowings. This suggests that frequency of use need play no role in the extent to which other-language items are linguistically integrated into the recipient language. We challenge this hypothesis with an analysis of soft mutation on English-origin verbs in Welsh, which shows that integration is related to frequency.
Journal Article