Search results

1

The semantics of the Spanish adjective positions: a matter of focus

100%

Dam L., University A., ld@cgs.aau.dk

Research in Language

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2018

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vol. 16

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issue 2

EN

This paper presents a hypothesis about Spanish adjective position that accounts for different occurrences in language use. The hypothesis is based on the idea that the modifier position itself is a meaningful sign and that the meaning of the modifier position is related to focus: the postnominal modifier creates focus, whereas the prenominal modifier does not create focus. Drawing on the analysis of examples from a text corpus, the paper suggests that the proposed meaning of the two positions offers an account of various empirical phenomena. For example, it can explain why some adjectives are normally placed in one of the positions and why some adjectives change meaning according to their position.

2

The Semantics of the Spanish Adjective Positions: a Matter of Focus

100%

Dam L.

Research in Language

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2018

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vol. 16

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issue 2

223-241

EN

This paper presents a hypothesis about Spanish adjective position that accounts for different occurrences in language use. The hypothesis is based on the idea that the modifier position itself is a meaningful sign and that the meaning of the modifier position is related to focus: the postnominal modifier creates focus, whereas the prenominal modifier does not create focus. Drawing on the analysis of examples from a text corpus, the paper suggests that the proposed meaning of the two positions offers an account of various empirical phenomena. For example, it can explain why some adjectives are normally placed in one of the positions and why some adjectives change meaning according to their position.

3

Prosodic and Semantic Properties of Intonational Phrases

100%

Milićev T., Milićević N., Marković M.

Romanian Journal of English Studies

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2012

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vol. 9

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issue 1

70-77

EN

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relation between prosodic and semantic properties of Intonational Phrases, based on the facts from Serbian. The production tests and elicited judgements show that the prosodic integration of the embedded IPs (appositives, parentheticals, and the left-peripheral adverbs) has a distinct semantic effect, or is accompanied by the narrow focus interpretation within the proposition modified.

4

What Does Only Assert and Entail?

88%

Yoshimura K.

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

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2007

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vol. 3

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issue -1

97-117

EN

This paper investigates the semantics of English only and two equivalent expressions in Japanese -dake and -shika, giving attention to two aspects: (i) the debate over the status of two propositions that are involved in the use of ONLY expressions and (ii) the semantic and pragmatic differences among ONLY items, if any. We claim that a sentence with ONLY expressions entails both the affirmative and negative propositions. This view raises issues with Horn's original claim (1969) as well as van Rooij and Schulz's (2005) while supporting Atlas (1991, 1993) and Horn (2002). We claim then that the difference in strength between the affirmative and negative propositions emerges from what is asserted by that sentence. One of the bases for our claim is that there is a significant difference in behavior between entailment and assertion of a given sentence, following Horn (2002). This difference explains the difference between -dake on the one hand and -shika and -only on the other: -dake differs from only and -shika in that it asserts the affirmative proposition while -shika and only asserts the negative proposition.

5

Fokusakzente als rhetorische Hervorhebungsmarker in der gesprochenen Wissenschaftssprache. Eine deutsch-polnische vergleichende Signaluntersuchung

88%

Tworek A.

Studia Linguistica

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2016

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issue 35

221-233

EN

The objects of this paper are the focus accents in the spoken academic German and Polish language. The comparative analysis of how the semantic importance can be shown by means of prosodic features confirms the special role of focus accents in the rhetoric formation of academic lecture in both languages.

6

On focus marking and predication. Evidence from Polish with some notes on Hausa

88%

Tajsner P.

Lingua Posnaniensis

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2015

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vol. 57

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issue 1

113-138

EN

Purpose: The primary aim of the paper is to provide a new, derivational analysis of two types of Polish sentences with the occurrence of a particle to, which syntactically code focus and topic. These are: to-clefts (To Janek napisał list. ‘It was Janek who wrote the letter’), and topic-to sentences (Janek to napisał list. ‘As for Janek, he wrote the letter’). The secondary aim is to reflect on the relevance of the isomorphism of focus markers and non-verbal copulas in Polish with some reference to Hausa. Method: The approach follows a minimalist method but departs from cartographic accounts with dedicated heads in sentence left-periphery. Instead, it postulates that focus and topic are interpretive by-effects of Specification Predication. In this, the paper extends and modifies Kiss’s (2006, 2010) central idea that focusing is predication. Result & Conclusion: The account proves successful in explaining a few syntactic constraints, doing so in a simple, unitary fashion. Viewing focus as a derivative of predication is a step towards understanding the relation between narrow syntax and information structure.

7

Do they understand more? Turkish EFL speakers perception of sentence stress in English

88%

Buczek-Zawiła A.

Linguistics Beyond and Within

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2016

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vol. 2

27-43

EN

As one of the most prominent elements of intonation sentence stress frequently contributes to the meaning expressed by speakers. It most typically signals details of an utterance information structure, but it also performs a contrastive or emphasizing function, thus expressing focus in the spoken discourse. In English and many other languages its location, while exhibiting certain regularities it additionally determined by extra relevant or relative information. As such, either alone or in combination, it may communicate certain additional shades of meaning that, similarly to the contribution of sentence intonation, may escape the attention of EFL speakers. The paper explores the comprehension sensitivity of Turkish speakers of English when it comes to identifying meaning details contributed by sentence stress. It investigates their awareness as detected through perception of variable sentence stress location. The target group are Turkish advanced speakers of English, with various levels of competence, and only sporadic phonetic training in English for part of them. In a perception-based experiment they were asked to identify the details they perceive. Their results were then compared and analysed, also in relation to what their native language (with a distinction into sentential and focal stress) adds in terms of this module of utterance intonation. Finally, their results were correlated with those achieved by Polish advanced speakers of English as investigated in a similar study conducted earlier. The interpretation of the results reveals that Turkish EFL speakers are more sensitive to the highlighting or contrastive function of sentence stress, achieving overall better result here than when they are to judge its contribution to notion such as politeness or impatience. They are also rather competent at detecting the prominent element in an utterance.

8

Encapsulació i estructura informativa en el debat parlamentari. Una anàlisi contrastiva (català – espanyol – anglès)

87%

Ribera J. E.

Studia Romanica Posnaniensia

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2016

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vol. 43

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issue 2

29-50

EN

Parliamentary debate (PD) as a specific genre of parliamentary discourse exhibits a hybrid nature: part oral and part written discourse. It is performed orally, but planned ahead and formal. From the point of view of lexical cohesion, encapsulation by means of abstract and unspecific nouns (e.g. fact or reason) is an indicator of the informative density and the underlying written nature of PD. With the tools provided by Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics, this paper aims at describing and characterizing cross-linguistically lexical encapsulation’s potential to define the information structure of PD. In this regard, encapsulation is analyzed in relation to the notions of topic and focus in three PDs in Catalan, Spanish and English. In order to determine the contribution of encapsulation to the information structure of PD, we describe the properties of lexical encapsulation as a referential cohesion device and analyze the various lexico-grammatical and discourse patterns in which encapsulators occur. From a cross-linguistic point of view, the results show a higher frequency of encapsulation in the debate in English. In this respect, the Scottish debate exhibits a higher cohesive and informational density than the Catalan and the Spanish ones. However, there has also been observed a homogeneous crosslinguistic behavior of encapsulation with regard to weaving the information structure of PD. In fact, the different usage patterns uncover similar general trends in the three languages. These quantitative coincidences are interpreted as genre related features. On the other hand, some patterns unveil cross-linguistic differences linked to a more speaker-dependent style aiming at guiding the addressee (persuasive function) and to the lexico-grammatical features of each language.

9

Системность просодического уровня языка

75%

Yanko T.

Przegląd Wschodnioeuropejski

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2020

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vol. 1

317-334

EN

This paper is aimed at illustrating the phenomenon of compositionality in the system of the communicative meanings and their prosodic means of expression. The regularity in combining the communicative meanings is illustrated by the compositions of 1) the illocutionary meanings, 2) the meaning of discourse incompleteness, and 3) the meaning of communicative contrast. It is demonstrated that discourse incompleteness functions not only within the row of statements which constitute a connected text, but also within sequences of questions, including the contrastive contexts. The systemic method of analysis has been applied therefore to the description of a fragment of linguistic pragmatics. The material for the analysis is a minor working corpus of the sound speech specifically set up for this investigation on the basis the Russian National corpus.

10

On Specification Predication and the derivation of copular to-clauses in Polish

75%

Tajsner P.

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

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2015

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vol. 50

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issue 4

25-66

EN

The paper offers a consistently derivational account of Polish predicational and specificational copular clauses with the occurrence of a particle to instead of a verbal copula być (‘be’). The particle to is given the status of a predicative head with the potential of designating a phrase in its c-command domain as a specification predicate. Such a phrase is then interpreted as the focus at the C-I interface. Thus, a view is promoted in which the focus, a category of information structure, is not directly coded in narrow syntax, but is rather an interpretive outcome of a more general syntactic relation, referred to as Specification Predication. This view has been inspired by Kiss’s (2006, 2010) idea that focusing is predication but it substantially differs from her approach. The analysis is limited to copular-to clauses, but it is suggested to have a potential for the account of two more syntactic types with the occurrence of the particle to, namely, so-called to-clefts, and topic-to sentences. The proposal advanced in the paper is confronted with three earlier accounts dealing with copular-to clauses, and is shown to avoid some empirical and conceptual problems they have posed. It is shown how the derivation of copular-to clauses proceeds through a sequence of minimal and well-defined steps starting from the formation of an array of two nominal phrases, through a Small Clause stage to a Specification Predicative Phrase. Couched in the recent minimalist framework, the analysis specifically dwells on the theoretical advancements determining the nature of syntactic derivations, such as Hornstein’s (2009) distinctions between operations Concatenate, Merge and Label, Moro’s (2000, 2008) idea of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking or Chomsky’s (2013) view of Labeling.

11

Focus and Effects of Peer and Machine Feedback on Chinese University EFL Learners’ Revisions of English Argumentative Essays

63%

Liu M.

Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition

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2021

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vol. 7

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issue 1

75-98

DE

In Anlehnung an eine empirische Untersuchung präsentiert der vorliegende Artikel die Ziele und Ergebnisse eines kollegialen und automatisierten Feedbacks (engl. peer feedback, machine feedback) bei der Korrektur des Inhalts eines englischsprachigen Argumentationsaufsatzes. An der Untersuchung nahmen 127 Studierende einer chinesischen Universität teil, für die Englisch eine Fremdsprache ist. Die gesammelten Daten entstammen verschiedenen Versionen des Aufsatzes (Arbeitsversion Nr. 1, kollegiales Feedback (PF), Arbeitsversion Nr. 2 – basiert auf kollegialem Feedback, automatisiertes Feedback (MF), Arbeitsversion Nr. 2 – basiert auf automatisiertem Feedback) sowie Fragebögen und aufgenommenen Interviews. Aus der Analyse erhobener Daten ergeben sich wesentliche Unterschiede in Bezug auf die erhaltenen Feedbacks, die im Text auf Grundlage verschiedener Versionen des Aufsatzes im Einzelnen erläutert werden. Es wird beispielsweise unter Beweis gestellt, dass das kollegiale Feedback in erster Linie auf inhaltliche Fehler konzentriert war, während sich das automatisierte Feedback meistens auf sprachliche Fehler bezog. In Anlehnung an die durchgeführte Analyse werden Implikationen betreffend kollegiales und automatisiertes Feedback präsentiert.

EN

The present mixed-method study examined the foci and effects of peer and machine feedback on the revisions of Chinese university EFL learners’ English argumentative essays. The data included Draft 1, peer feedback (PF), PF-based Draft 2, machine feedback (MF), MF-based feedback, questionnaires, and interview recordings. The main findings were: (a) peer feedback was primarily concerned with content errors, while machine feedback mainly involved non-content errors, (b) significant differences occurred in errors of most types between Draft 1, PF and PF-based Draft 2, and between Draft 1, MF, and MF-based Draft 2, (c) the intake of ‘introducing a new topic in Conclusion’ was a powerful predictor of PF-based Draft 2 scores, and (d) the participants generally moderately considered peer and machine feedback to be useful. Based on the findings, some implications are discussed on how to better implement and enhance the quality of peer and machine feedback.

12

Versetzungsstrukturen als topologische Mittel der Informationsstruktur in deutschen und polnischen Pressetexten

63%

Jaremkiewicz-Kwiatkowska A.

Studia Germanica Gedanensia

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2021

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vol. 45

75-86

EN

Dislocation structures are increasingly becoming an object of linguistic research. This interest is determined communicatively and pragmatically, i. e. it results from the awareness of these constructions in information-structural aspects of utterances. The aim of the present paper is to determine frequency of occurrence as well as complexity of dislocation structures in this function in German and Polish print media.

DE

Seit kurzem werden die Versetzungsstrukturen immer haufiger zum Untersuchungsgegenstand der linguistischen Forschung. Dieses Interesse ist kommunikativ-pragmatisch determiniert, d. h. es erfolgt aus dem Bewusstsein ihrer Bedeutung bei der informationsstrukturellen Gliederung von Auserungen. Das Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist die Vorkommenshaufigkeit sowie Vielsichtigkeit der Herausstellungsstrukturen in der betreffenden Funktion in Pressetexten der beiden Sprachen (Deutsch-Polnisch) aufzuzeigen.

13

Złota elipsa i złota hiperbola

51%

Janaszak T.

Didactics of Mathematics

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2011

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issue 8 (12)

55-69

EN

An ellipse, parabola and hyperbola are the curve that can be obtained as the plane section of cone; there are characterizations, one of which is by means of the focus and directrix property. The golden ellipse or the golden hyperbola is the curve, which has golden eccentricity.

14

Nowatorska metoda gamifikacji błędów oraz faktów w praktyce szkolnej – kilka słów o jej wdrożeniu w kontekście podtrzymywania uwagi uczniów

51%

Prościak B., Prościak M., Samko H.

Wychowanie w Rodzinie

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2023

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vol. XXX

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issue (2/2023)

183-204

EN

Aim. Balancing the attention deficit of students, thanks to the use of the latest activating method in teaching - gamification of errors and facts (taking into account student dysfunctions). Methods. Among the research methods in social research, an international internet survey was used and another nationwide survey in groups dealing with SEN (special educational needs) and gamers on Facebook. Results. Two proprietary algorithms of teacher’' motivation were created: an algorithm for maintaining attention and motivation for mentally strong students, based on the classic algorithm of computer game developers, and an algorithm for maintaining attention and motivation for mentally weak students, based on a modern algorithm for computer game developers. Conclusion. It has been shown that problems with understanding the text result from the deficit of students' attention is now a problem for the entire digital generation. The level of general attention in the group of respondents with SEN was 25.13% and in the group of respondents without SEN – 31.89%. The rate of loss of attention in the group of respondents with SEN was 8.2% and in the group without SEN – 9,95%. The unusual approach to the topic consists of creating an original method of calculating the coefficients: the level of general attention and the loss of attention. An original method of activating teaching was created – gamification of errors and facts (taking into account student dysfunctions).

PL

Cel. Równoważenie deficytu uwagi uczniów dzięki zastosowaniu najnowszej metody aktywizującej w nauczaniu – gamifikacji błędów i faktów (uwzględniającej dysfunkcje uczniowskie). Metody. Wśród metod badawczych w badaniach społecznych wykorzystano ankietę internetową o zasięgu międzynarodowym oraz drugą – o zasięgu ogólnopolskim – w grupach dla osób ze specjalnymi potrzebami edukacyjnymi (SPE) oraz wśród graczy na Facebooku. Wyniki. Stworzono dwa autorskie algorytmy postępowania motywacyjnego nauczycieli: algorytm podtrzymywania uwagi i motywacji dla uczniów silnych psychicznie, oparty na klasycznym algorytmie twórców gier komputerowych oraz algorytm podtrzymywania uwagi i motywacji dla uczniów słabych psychicznie, oparty na nowoczesnym algorytmie twórców gier komputerowych. Wnioski. Wykazano, że kłopoty ze zrozumieniem tekstu wynikają z deficytu uwagi uczniów, co stanowi obecnie już problemem całego pokolenia cyfrowego. Poziom ogólnego skupienia uwagi w grupie respondentów ze SPE wyniósł 25,13% oraz w grupie respondentów bez SPE–31,89%. Współczynnik utraty skupienia uwagi w grupie respondentów ze SPE wyniósł 8,2% oraz w grupie bez SPE–9,95%. Nietypowość ujęcia tematu polega na stworzeniu autorskiej metody wyliczenia współczynników: poziomu ogólnego skupienia uwagi oraz utraty skupienia uwagi. Stworzono autorską metodę aktywizującą w nauczaniu – gamifikację błędów i faktów (uwzględniającą dysfunkcje uczniowskie).

Refine search results

The semantics of the Spanish adjective positions: a matter of focus

The Semantics of the Spanish Adjective Positions: a Matter of Focus

Prosodic and Semantic Properties of Intonational Phrases

What Does Only Assert and Entail?

Fokusakzente als rhetorische Hervorhebungsmarker in der gesprochenen Wissenschaftssprache. Eine deutsch-polnische vergleichende Signaluntersuchung

On focus marking and predication. Evidence from Polish with some notes on Hausa

Do they understand more? Turkish EFL speakers perception of sentence stress in English

Encapsulació i estructura informativa en el debat parlamentari. Una anàlisi contrastiva (català – espanyol – anglès)

Системность просодического уровня языка

On Specification Predication and the derivation of copular to-clauses in Polish

Focus and Effects of Peer and Machine Feedback on Chinese University EFL Learners’ Revisions of English Argumentative Essays

Versetzungsstrukturen als topologische Mittel der Informationsstruktur in deutschen und polnischen Pressetexten

Złota elipsa i złota hiperbola

Nowatorska metoda gamifikacji błędów oraz faktów w praktyce szkolnej – kilka słów o jej wdrożeniu w kontekście podtrzymywania uwagi uczniów