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Special Issue: The adaptive nature of linguistic behavior

100%

Fried M.

Linguistica Pragensia

2022

vol. 32

issue 1

5-15

Not just diachronic change or synchronic variability in linguistic structure, but also the shape of speakers’ expressive strategies for navigating natural verbal interaction can be seen as reflections of the fundamental human capacity for adapting to novel communicative circumstances. The adjustments are observable at all layers of language — sounds, prosody, lexical changes, shifts in grammatical organization — and also pose questions concerning adaptation at both the individual and community levels. In this introductory framing of the present volume, the conceptual underpinnings of the quest for adequate explanations of adaptive processes are consistent with a set of assumptions that are associated with, broadly speaking, ‘socio-cognitive’ approaches to language: (i) socio-pragmatic and cultural grounding of verbal interaction, (ii) reference to domain-general cognitive capacities, and (iii) emergence of linguistic categories and their organization from recurring patterns of use. Linguistic analysis focused on the adaptive aspects of language and language use thus aims at capturing the speakers’ interactional competence; this includes both narrowly linguistic aspects and non-linguistic patterns of behavior, which, taken together, help us understand better all the factors involved in successful communication.

Fonetické redukce a vyjadřování jistotních postojů v insubordinačních strukturách

63%

Machač P., Fried M.

Časopis pro moderní filologii (Journal for Modern Philology)

2021

vol. 103

issue 1

7-35

The study tests the hypothesis that phonetic reductions in spontaneous interaction contribute interpretive clues which aid in assigning different meanings to an ostensibly single grammatical pattern. We focus on two variants of insubordinate clauses introduced by jestli ‘if/whether’, each associated with a specific evidential meaning, as attested in the corpus of conversational Czech (Ortofon): a speaker’s uncertainty about the truth of a given proposition vs. a speaker’s certainty that the proposition is invalid. Using phonetic feature analysis of the relevant words (jestli; nevím), we establish the degree of reduction by combining a word reduction rate with the number of segments and syllables that are actually pronounced. The analysis reflects a relationship between the degree of reduction and the functional split: highly reduced instances signal the interpretation of a speaker’s uncertainty, while low reductions signal negative certainty. These findings also suggest broader methodological and theoretical consequences, including the issue of adequate, multi-layered representational models of spontaneously produced language.

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1 Linguistica Pragensia

1 Časopis pro moderní filologii (Journal for Modern Philology)

2 Fried M.

1 Machač P.

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1 2021

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Special Issue: The adaptive nature of linguistic behavior

Fonetické redukce a vyjadřování jistotních postojů v insubordinačních strukturách