Form, Meaning and Function in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

We are pleased to announce that selected papers presented at Young Linguists' Seminars in 2014-2015 have been published in a reviewed monograph entitled Form, Meaning and Function in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, edited by Karolina Drabikowska, Marietta Izdebska and Anna Prażmowska (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017).

Part I of the book, devoted to Theoretical Linguistics, addresses a range of issues pertaining to phonology, morphophonology, morphology, cognitive semantics, syntax and lexicology, and consists of six chapters. Part II, Applied Linguistics, comprises four chapters, which investigate the intricacies of language acquisition, psycholinguistics and pragmatics, discourse analysis, and translation studies. The languages analysed include Polish, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Middle English, Middle French, Anglo-Norman and Bangor Welsh. Some of the phenomena analysed in the volume are the properties of Bangor Welsh diphthongs in the light of the Lateral Theory of Phonology, Polish palatalization within Element Theory, lexical convergence in Psalters, bilingual acquisition, impoliteness in talk-show political discourse, and translation and localisation of video games, among others.

The book can be found here: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/form-meaning-and-function-in-theoretical-and-applied-linguistics.

Table of Contents

Part I: Theoretical Linguistics

Chapter One. Bangor Welsh Diphthongs as Right-Headed Structures: Reducing Ambivalency (Tomasz Czerniak)
Chapter Two. Polish Palatalization as Element Addition (Sławomir Zdziebko)
Chapter Three. The Appeal of -ing in the Creation of Anglicised Forms in Polish and Other Languages:
A Cognitive Perspective (Ewelina Prażmo)
Chapter Four. Wordplay and Hidden Sense Relations (Konrad Żyśko)
Chapter Five. Degrees of Externality and Dative Case Selection in Dative Reflexive Construction in Polish (Aleksandra Gogłoza)
Chapter Six. On Lexical Convergence between Middle English, Middle French and Anglo-Norman Psalters (Kinga Lis)

Part II: Applied Linguistics

Chapter Seven. Language Acquisition in Bilinguals: To Make or Not to Make Your Child a Bilingual (Bibiána Bobčáková)
Chapter Eight. Applying the Relevance Theoretic Understanding of Concepts to the Pursuit of Transparency of Meaning in Psychotherapy (Elwira Szehidewicz)
Chapter Nine. Political Scandals and Impoliteness: The Polish “Amber Gold” Affair in Talk Shows (Bartholomäus Nowak)
Chapter Ten. The Role of Translation Studies in Video Game Localization (Paweł Tutka)

Young Linguists' Seminar VI: In Search of Solutions to Linguistic Puzzles

The sixth meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 28th May 2015. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

In Search of Solutions to Linguistic Puzzles

The following five papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

Tomasz Czerniak

The Elusive Character of the Welsh [ə]

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The IPA symbol which is frequently employed to denote the phonetic shape of the Welsh mid-central vowel is often misinterpreted as a weak or reduced vowel. The vowel, represented by <y> in spelling, might indeed be confusing to an English-centred linguist. Firstly, the formant structure is largely consistent with the reduced vowel of the English language found in words like about or phenomenon (Ball and Williams 2001). Secondly, its distribution is limited to a non-final position. Whenever <y> would occur in a final syllable, its melody is changed, which is known in the literature as Vowel Mutation (Ball and Jones 1984, Hannahs 2013). Thirdly, <y> seems to be the only vowel which is not lengthened in open stressed syllables (Buczek 1998). Moreover, it is unattested in monosyllables except in extremely rare borrowings (e.g. nyrs, fyr ‘nurse, fur’) or in clitics (Ball and Jones 1984).

  On the other hand, <y> appears in a stressed syllable, which should indicated anything but its weakness. Furthermore, it alternates mostly with [i] and [u] but not with other vowels and cannot be understood as a reduction product. On top of that, Awbery (1986) observes that it is indeed lengthened under stress in certain southern dialects of Welsh.

Both phonetic and phonological facts should shed some more light on the elusive character of Welsh <y>, what it should be represented with phonetically and what it should be named.

     References

Awbery, Gwenllian M. 1986. Pembrokeshire Welsh. A phonological study. Llandysul. National Museum of Wales.

Ball, Martin J. and Glyn E. Jones. 1984. eds. Welsh Phonology. Selected Readings. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Ball, Martin J. and Briony Williams. 2001. The phonetics of Welsh. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.

Buczek, Anita. 1988. The vowel that cannot be long: the story of the Welsh central vowel schwa. In 

Structure and Interpretation - Studies in Phonology, edited by E. Cyran, 55-64. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Folium.

Hannahs, S. J. 2013. The phonology of Welsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Anna Dąbrowska

Is the Verb  TO DIE Unaccusative in English?

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The Unaccusative Hypothesis, originally introduced by Perlmutter (1978) on the ground of the Relational Grammar, but later adopted by Burzio (1986) within the Government-and-Binding (GB) framework (Chomsky, 1981), divides the class of intransitive verbs into two syntactically different but semantically similar subclasses, i.e., unaccusative and unergative verbs. From the Government-and-Binding (GB) perspective, an unergative verb is a theta-marked as a deep-structure subject and there is no object involved (unergative: NP [VP V], Kate dances), while an unaccusative verb takes a theta-marked deep-structure object as its sole argument (unaccusative: [VP V NP], Kate fell) (cf. Alexiadou et al., 2004: 2).  

  Unaccusativity proves to be of a great significance within the debate upon the dual nature of verbs, their syntactic and lexical semantic characteristics, and the mutual correlation (B. Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 1995: 2). Thus, the paper addresses the question of the class status of the verb TO DIE in English, which although taken for granted as unaccusative by the encyclopaedic definition, does not represent a class of pure unaccusatives. To solve this problem, first, unaccusativity in the light of the Lexicon-Syntax Interface is examined, with a detailed analysis of the syntactic and semantic approaches towards unaccusativity. Afterwards, the taxonomy of unaccusative verbs, and their syntactic properties are scrutinised. Finally, the verb TO DIE is tested against the six commonly acknowledged unaccusativity diagnostics postulated in the literature for English. These are: (1) auxiliary selection, with a justification why this popular test does not apply to modern English; (2) causative alteration (not applicable for the verb TO DIE); (3) resultative constructions, that have no instances for the verb under scrutiny; (4) adjectival participles (A man died in the accident); (5) there-insertion (There died a young boy); and (6) locative inversion (In the room died the grandmother). In a nutshell, with the three diagnostics satisfied, the conclusion is drawn that the verb TO DIE in English belongs to the class of  unaccusative verbs.

     References

Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnostopoulou, Elena and Everaert, Martin (eds.) (2004). The Unaccusativity Puzzle: Explorations of the Syntax-Lexicon Interface. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Baker, Mark (1988). Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Belletti, Adriana and Rizzi, Luigi (1988). Psych-verbs and θ theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 291–352.

Burzio, Luigi (1986). Italian Syntax: a Government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Hawthorne, Westchester, New York: Foris Publications

Koontz-Garboden, Andrew (2009). Anticausativization. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 27, 77–138. 

Kitagawa,  Yoshihisa  (1986).  Subjects  in  Japanese  and  English.  Doctoral  dissertation,  University  of  Massachusetts, Amherst.

Koopman, Hilda and Sportiche, Dominique (1991). The position of subjects. Lingua, 85 (2/3), 211-258.

Kuroda,  Shige-Yuki (1988).  Whether  we  agree  or  not:  a  comparative  syntax  of  English  and  Japanese,  Lingvisticae Investigationes, 12, 1-47.

Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav (1995). Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantic Interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Levin, L. (1986). Operations on lexical forms: Unaccusative rules in Germanic languages. Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Perlmutter, D.M. (1978). Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. In: Proceedings of the 4th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 157-190. 

Rosen, C. (1984). The interface between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations. In D. Perlmutter and C. Rosen (eds.), Studies in Relational Grammar 2, 38-77. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Van Valin, Robert D. (1990). Semantic parameters of split intransitivity. Language, 66(2): 221-60.

Angelina Żyśko

On Being Cheerful: In Search of English-Polish Cognates in the Historical Development of Proto-Indo European *ker-

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Konrad Żyśko

Wordplay Based on Vagueness – A Cognitive Account

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Iza Batyra

Recent Trends in Teaching English to Young Foreign Language Learners – An Interactive Presentation for Teacher Trainees from the Department of Linguistics and English Studies

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

In the past few years, there has been a marked interest in young learners methodology. We owe its popularity to the recently increased international collaboration with English speaking countries and the number of emigrants whose children learn English abroad with ease in the natural setting, developing literacy and numeracy skills as well as communicative and linguistic competence in the target language.

  Since 2008, the study devoted to teaching young learners has become increasingly important when the Ministry of Education in Poland introduced the law stating that English language teaching is obligatory since the first year of primary education. Consequently, the overall system of primary education in a three-year cycle has been increased to six teaching hours a week making room for two teaching hours of English in years I, II and III. 

  The fact that English has become mandatory since the first years of formal education, contributed to the remodeling of the form the language content is transmitted to children who are in the process of developing their reading and writing skills as well as the ability to express their ideas in their native language.

  Although old methods such as the Grammar Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Audio-lingual Method, the Cognitive Method or Total Physical Response had their limitations and shortcomings, their elements are still applied in the present-day curriculum of English language teaching on various educational levels. Nevertheless,  in the 21st century eclectic approach should be supplemented with an innovative young learners methodology which should cater for the learners’ interest and hobbies, inspire and motivate them to discover the world of English and most importantly provide them with entertainment.

  All these events persuaded, encouraged and inspired highly distinguished researchers, scholars, academics and prominent English teachers such as A. Wright (1984, 1989, 1992, 1997), P. Ur (1992), S. Halliwell (1992), S. Phillips (1993), A. Edwards and P. Knight (1994, 2001), M. Toth (1995) L. Cameron (2001), P. McKay and J. Guse (2007), C. Nixon and M. Tomlinson (2005), A. Underhill and J. Moon (2005), R. Graham (Genki English), H. Doron (The Helen Doron Method) and the like to produce and publish tones of teaching aid and invent new educational and entertaining methods, techniques and activities for younger learners.

  The aim of the presentation is to demonstrate an accumulation of various ideas, i.e. methods, techniques, activities of teaching English in early education, such as learning through stories, songs, chants, games, clips, multimedia, colourful flashcards, charts, maps, senses etc. which are all inspiring ways of supplementing traditional course book-based primary teaching and ‘smuggling’ English world into young minds.

     Books

Cameron, L. and  McKay, P. (2010) Bringing Creative Teaching into the Young Learner Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cameron, L.  (2001) Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edwards, A. and P. Knight (2001) Effective Early Years Education. Teaching Young Children. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press. 

Halliwell, S. (1992)  Teaching English in the Primary Classroom.  Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers. Harlow: Longman.

McKay, P. and Guse, J. (2007) Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners. Cambridge Handbook for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moon, J. and A. Underhill (2005) Children Learning English. The Teacher Development Series. MacMillan Heinemen Books for Teachers.

Nixon, C. and Tomlinson, M. (2005) Primary Communication Box: Speaking and Listening Activities and Games for Younger Learners. Cambridge Copy Collection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nixon, C. and Tomlinson, M (2003) Primary Vocabulary Box: Word Games and Activities for Younger Learners. Cambridge Copy Collection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Philips. S. (1993) Young Learners. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ur, P. and Wright, A. (1992) Five-Minute Activities. A Resource Book of Short Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wright, A. (1997) Creating Stories with Children. Resource Books for Children. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Wright, A. (1984) 100+Pictures for Teachers to Copy. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited.

Wright, A. (1989) Pictures for Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wright, A. (1992) The Hairy Tree Man. Spellbinders. Level 1. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Links

http://jows.pl/sites/default/files/Rubka.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-MUMIcIOI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ezh2N9ZFkcM&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_barTKxikvA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwy3zpwA1rs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cq5VAZGXKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbymO5B8G6o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A76njbotTw4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yCCr3kA6sI

http://www.elflearning.jp/

http://www.eslflashcards.com/

http://genkienglish.net/teaching/curriculum/

http://www.eslkidstuff.com/flashcardgamescontent.htm#.VVSwS7ntmko

Photos by Karolina Drabikowska

Young Linguists' Seminar V: Linguistics and Its Applications in Specialised Contexts

The fifth meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 16th April 2015. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

Linguistics and Its Applications in Specialised Contexts

The following five papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.


Izabela Batyra

Human Animal – Animal in Human: On an English Course Book for Veterinary Science Specialists A2-B1 Level – Demo Version

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Necessity is the mother of invention…

            This research supplies the needs and expectations of all Polish and international non-native English speaking veterinary physicians working in or off the clinical settings, students, academics and the like specialist of veterinary medicine who wish to communicate in English on their professional arena.

            Frequent conferences which DVMs are obliged to participate in to stay on the surface and keep their licence, delegations outside the country, international workshops or student exchange demand from the specialists to operate with exceptionally technical and undoubtedly complicated medical language.

            The idea to write an English course book for veterinarians was born when my best friend and the most dedicated doctor of all my pets asked me to teach him general and specialized English. Although ESP has been expanding aggressively in the past few years satisfying English language needs of the majority of the professions, no single English course book for veterinary surgeons has been identified among the publishers.

            The outcome of the research is the presentation of the teaching aid dedicated to cattle and swine and sample section ‘Cats and Dogs’ with various task types concentrating around receptive and productive skills as well as language areas, that is grammar and specialized lexis catering for all possible learning styles and learners’ preferences.

Articles from magazines:

Bojdo-Brodnica, T. (DVM) (2014, December) Bezpieczne odsadzanie prosiąt. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, p. 138.

Grabowski Kalisz, A. (2014, December) Problem po uszy. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, pp. 157-158.

Jajor, M. (2015, January) Przebiegła paratuberkuloza. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 177-178.

Janusz, P. (2014, December) Nowe zasady bioasekuracji. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, pp. 134-135.

Janusz, P. (2014, December) Witalne mioty dały zarobić. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, pp. 136-141.

Kowalski, M. Z. (2015, January) Z chylatami żywienie mineralne może być tańsze. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 161-164.

Kurek, A. (2015, January) Bez pracy  nie ma…prosiąt. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 136-139.

Kurek, A. (2015, January) Ropiejące maciory. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 147-148.

Kurek, A. (2014, December) Zdążyć przed obrzękówką.  Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, pp. 159-160.

Lesiakowski, R. (2015, January) Genomika wkracza do obór. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 173-176.

Pająk Grabica, K. (2014, December) Hodowcy świń lekceważą miko toksyny. Sposób na splayleg. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Akcja Polskiego Cukru za buraki?, p. 155.

Wieczorek, M. (2015, January) Inwazja kokcydiów. Top Agrar Polska, Nowoczesne Rolnictwo – Nie ma rzetelnych zasad oceny ziarna, pp. 179-180.

Articles form weekly magazines:

Dąbrowska, B. (2015, January) Ketoza niejedną ma postać. Tygonik Poradnik roliczny, p. 25.

Dąbrowska, B. (2015, January) Zasadowa niestrawność. Tygonik Poradnik roliczny, p. 21.

Course books:

Clare, A. & Wilson, JJ. (2011) Speakout. Intermediate Students’ Book with Active Book. Pearson Longman.

Clare, A. & Wilson, JJ. (2011) Speakout. Pre-Intermediate Students’ Book with Active Book. Pearson Longman.

Evans, V., Dooley, J., Tran, M. T (M.D) (2012) Career Paths. Medical. Express Publishing.

O’Sullivan, N. & Libbin, J. D. (2011) Career Paths. Agriculture. Express Publishing.

Links:

http://www.vetlive.com/

http://www.vet.cam.ac.uk/

http://www.wet.up.wroc.pl/en/

http://www.vet.cornell.edu/

http://www.westpointfarmvets.co.uk/

Paweł Tutka

On the translation of video games: challenges and opportunities

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The XX century showed a rapid development of new types of media, chiefly the television and film industries. In the second half of the last century, a new type of media was introduced – video games, which has grown into a booming industry since then. This new genre of the entertainment industry started to offer something new – a greater degree of interactivity on the part of the player (as opposed to television and films). As time progressed, the level of interactivity became the main driving force behind video games, resulting in their unprecedented popularity. Ultimately, game developers started shipping their products abroad, and this required qualified translators to deliver as best quality of the product as it was possible. With the games becoming ever more complex, they started to pose certain challenges for the translators who had to be ready to work with many varieties of text, depending on the genre of a given video game. However, translators may use the complexities of video games to their advantage – it provides them with a plethora of work. Additionally, the number of genres within the video game industry is constantly increasing, meaning that translators will be able to find types of text which suits them best. Last but not least, we will consider what qualities make a good translator of video games.

Rafał Augustyn

Polysemy in specialised translation: A cognitive account

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Polysemy does not only refer to lexical items but also to other aspects of language and cognition. In Cognitive Linguistics lexical items are held to be representations of cognitive categories stored in human mind as mental concepts. However, each lexical item may provide access to a number of different mental concepts. Since meaning is not given but construed on the basis of the stored mental concepts and individual experience, the construal of meaning is highly subjective, influenced by language and the conceptualisers themselves. Further, concepts are not stable but flexible and can undergo some changes over time, which additionally contributes to the abundance of polysemy in any natural language.

            Polysemy is particularly problematic for translators, notably in case of specialised translation. For instance, in case of translation of legal texts, the conventional meaning of certain lexical items are juxtaposed with their specialised use, very frequently within the same text. For the translation to be successful the translator has to, first, properly construe the (terminologically ambiguous) ST, and then re-conceptualise it in such a manner that the TT-receiver’s conceptualisation of the TT is as close as possible to that of the ST.

            The paper attempts at accounting for the intricacies of the mental operations taking place while the conceptualisation of polysemous lexical items unfolds in the translator’s mind using Vyvyan Evans’s (2009) Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models theory combined with the Conceptual Integration Theory proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2002), and Ronald W. Langacker’s (2008) Current Discourse Space.

References

Evans, V. 2009. How Words Mean: Lexical Concepts, Cognitive Models and Meaning Construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Langacker, R. W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Daria Bębeniec

The many pitfalls of polysemy: gaps and bridges between the different methodologies in Cognitive Linguistics

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

In its over 30 years of research on polysemy, Cognitive Linguistics has embraced, quite unsurprisingly, a wide range of rather diverse methodological positions – from the early introspection-based approaches (Brugman 1981, Brugman and Lakoff 1988, Dewell 1994, Kreitzer 1997, Przybylska 2002, Tyler and Evans 2003) to the more recent corpus-driven perspectives and techniques (Gries 2006, Gries and Divjak 2009, Fabiszak et al. 2014, Glynn 2014a, Perek 2014, Robinson 2014). Perplexing to many, this diversity may also be seen as a strength, as it shows the complexity of the phenomenon at hand, and is a result of concerted efforts of a number of linguists, who, though employing and refining divergent methods, are certainly united by a set of shared theoretical assumptions and converging research goals.

            In this presentation, adopting both an insider’s view on the problems inherent in introspective methods (Bębeniec 2010) and a neophyte’s stance on the possibilities offered by usage-based analyses (Bębeniec and Cudna In prep.), I will systematically examine the gaps and also search for the bridges between the distinct methodological frameworks for studying semantic variation in Cognitive Linguistics. In the end, I will review some of the recently articulated gap-bridging ideas (Glynn 2014b), stressing that both kinds of methodologies in question can be usefully deployed, though to different extents, to inform a cognitively plausible theory of language.

References

Bębeniec, D., 2010. Directional prepositions in Polish and English: towards a cognitive account. PhD dissertation, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin.

Bębeniec, D. and M. Cudna, In prep. “Constructional variation from a semasiological perspective: a corpus-based approach.”

Brugman, C., 1981. Story of OVER. MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

Brugman, C. and G. Lakoff, 1988. “Cognitive Topology and Lexical Networks,” in S. Small, G. Cottrell and M. Tanenhaus (eds.) Lexical Ambiguity Resolution: Perspective from Psycholinguistics, Neuropsychology and Artificial Intelligence, 477-508. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Dewell, R. B., 1994. “Over again: Image-schema transformations in semantic analyses,” Cognitive Linguistics 5 (4): 351-380.

Fabiszak, M., Hebda, A., Kokorniak, I. and K. Krawczak, 2014. “The semasiological structure of Polish myśleć ‘to think’: A study in verb-prefix semantics,” in D. Glynn and J. A. Robinson (eds.) Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 223-251. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Glynn, D., 2014a. “The many uses of run: Corpus methods and Socio-Cognitive Semantics,” in D. Glynn and J. A. Robinson (eds.) Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 117-144. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Glynn, D., 2014b. “Polysemy and synonymy: Cognitive theory and corpus method,” in D. Glynn and J. A. Robinson (eds.) Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 7-38. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Gries, S. Th., 2006. “Corpus-based methods and cognitive semantics: The many senses of to run,” in  S. Th. Gries and A. Stefanowitsch (eds.) Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus-based Approaches to Syntax and Lexis, 57-99. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gries, S Th. and D. Divjak, 2009. “Behavioral profiles: a corpus-based approaches towards cognitive semantic analysis,” in V. Evans and S. Pourcel (eds.) New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics, 57-75. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Kreitzer, A., 1997. “Multiple levels of schematization: A study in the conceptualization of space,” Cognitive Linguistics 8 (4): 291-325.

Perek, F., 2014. “Rethinking constructional polysemy: The case of the English conative construction,” in D. Glynn and J. A. Robinson (eds.) Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 61-85. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Przybylska, R., 2002. Polisemia przyimków polskich w świetle gramatyki kognitywnej. Kraków: Universitas.

Robinson, J., 2014. “Quantifying polysemy in Cognitive Sociolinguistics,” in D. Glynn and J. A. Robinson (eds.) Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 87-115. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Tyler, A. and V. Evans, 2003. The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kinga Lis

Raison d'être for intertextual lexical divergences between the Wycliffite Psalters

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The objective of the paper is to establish the motivation behind the lexical divergences between otherwise uniform late-14th-century Middle English Wycliffite Psalters and observe how it affects the etymological make-up of the texts. For this purpose the paper analyses the nominal layer of the first fifty Psalms and tries to assign each case of divergence between the texts to one of four groups of probable causes, both intra- and extratextual, prompting the variation, while juxtaposing these nominal lexical items with the corresponding data from two earlier 14th-century Psalters – Richard Rolle's rendition and the Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter.

                                                                                                                              Photos by Anna Prażmowska and Karolina Drabikowska

Young Linguists’ Seminar IV: New Trends in Syntax and Morphology

The fourth meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 9th June 2014. The advisory board of YLS IV was comprised of prof. Maria Bloch-Trojnar, prof. Anna Bondaruk, prof. Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik and prof. Anna Malicka-Kleparska. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

New Trends in Syntax and Morphology

The following three papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.

Artur Bartnik
Correlativization as a relativization strategy in Old English
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

This paper argues that Old English free relative clauses should be considered as correlatives. Traditionally, free relatives in Old English fall into two types. The first one is headed because the case of the demonstrative pronoun is that required by the verb in the matrix clause, as in (1) below. The second type of Old English free relatives is headless, as the case of the demonstrative pronoun is clearly assigned by the embedded verb, as shown in (2) and (3) (cf. Allen 1980; Hirschbühler and Rivero 1983). This analysis is questioned by Harbert (1983), who claims that free relatives are uniformly headed. Type 2, exemplified in sentence (2), is the result of inverse attraction, in which the head of a relative clause assumes the case of the following relative pronoun. 

      This corpus-based study of headless free relatives will show that these analyses cannot explain all the facts. Instead we will argue that these structures behave like correlatives with the following structure:

[correlative clause... relative phrase... ] [main clause... correlate...] (Liptak 2009: 2)

These structures are characterised, among others, by the following properties (cf. Liptak 2009, Allen 1980, Truswell 2008):

1. The relative clause appears in the left periphery.

2. The correlate has to contain a demonstrative (or pronominal) item.

3. The syntactic relation between the two constituents is rather loose though they form one semantic unit.

4. Both the constituents involve movement of the relative and demonstrative/ pronominal element to their surface positions, since the case of these elements is that required by the lower clause. 

      Although Old English structures are not classic correlatives meeting all the criteria, they still can be subsumed under the family of correlative structures. 

(1) ðæt is, ðæt man for-gife, ðam       ðe    wið      hine  gegylte 

that is  that one  forgive   him-dat. that against him  sins 

'that is, that one2 forgive him1, who sins against him2'

Ver. 111.170

(2) And ðone      ðe   ðu   nu    hæfst, nis      se          ðin   wer

and him-acc.  that  you now hast    not-is he-nom. your husband 

'And him who you now have, he is not your husband'

Alc.P.V.37

(3) And swa hwæs       swa hie   rihtlice biddað for ðinum naman &    for ðinum gearningum hig  hyt onfoð. 

and  so   what-gen. as   they rightly  ask      for thy      name  and for thy     merit           they it   receive 

'And whatever they ask rightly, for your name and your merit, they receive it.'

30E p.74.4

  Selected references:

Allen, Cynthia. 1980. Movement and Deletion in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 11:  261-323.

Hirschbühler Paul and María-Luisa Rivero. 1983. Remarks on Free Relatives and  Matching Phenomena. Linguistic Inquiry 14: 505-520.

Lipták, Anikó. 2009. Correlatives Cross-Linguistically. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Harbert, Wayne. 1983. A Note on Old English Free Relatives. Linguistic Inquiry 14: 549-553.

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. York: University of   York.

Truswell, Robert. 2008. Wh-Correlatives in Early Modern English. Available at: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~rtruswel/correlatives.pdf.

Anna Dąbrowska 

Personal and place names in English and Polish fixed phrases

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

This paper focuses on English and Polish fixed phrases involving personal and place names. First, the definition of a name and the distinction between proper and common nouns (Quirk et al., 1985) or proprial lemmas and proper names (Van Langendonck, 2007) are provided, following a short overview of theories that constitute the basis for any discussion related to proper names (Frege, Russell, Mill, Kripke, Peirce, Katz, and Chalmers among others). Next, subcategories and sources of names, together with their linguistic characteristics are presented (Thrane, 1980; Carroll, 1983; Huddleston, 1984; Anderson, 2003). Afterwards, the study is undertaken of personal and place names in fixed phraseological units, surveying a broad list of English and Polish fixed entities that are classified according to five syntactic patterns: phrases with (1) NPs, (2) VPs, (3) PPs, (4) clauses, and (5) similes. Additionally, the biblical, literary, classical, cultural and historical origins of these expressions are pointed out. Finally, in the light of the examined data, the predominance of personal over place names is noticeable, while the items with NPs constitute the vast majority of the phraseological units. Investigating corpus and dictionary evidence, fixed elements typical either of English or only of Polish, or those common to both English and Polish are listed. The most frequent are the units from biblical and mythological sources, while the least popular are the expressions with historical and literary background, as these aspects are unique for each country. With regard to the meaning of the fixed phrases containing proper personal and place names, the data reveal that the units do convey information, recall connotations that arose some time ago in relation to the biblical, mythological, literary, cultural, and historical background, and are still relevant today. 

  References:

Anderson, J. M. (2003). On the structure of names. Folia Linguistica 37, 347-98.

Carroll, J. M. (1983). Toward a Functional Theory of Names and Naming. Linguistics 21, 341–71.

Chalmers, D. (2006). Two-Dimensional Semantics. In E. Lepore and B. Smith (Eds.), 574–

Frege, G. (1952). On Sense and Reference. In P. Geach, M. Black (Eds.), 56-78. Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Huddleston, R. (1984). An introduction to the grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In J. M. Anderson (Ed.), 349.

Katz, J. J. (1972). Semantic theory. New York: Harper and Row.

Katz, J. J. (1994). Names Without Bearers. Philosophical Review 103 (1), 1–39.

Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Boston: Basil Blackwell. 

Mill, J. S. (1882). A System of Logic. Ratiocinative and Inductive. Eighth edition; New York: Harper and Brothers. Retrieved on 2nd May 2014 from http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=27942 

Peirce C. S., (1931-1935). Collected Papers vols. I–VI, (Ed.) P. Weiss and C. Hartshorne, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of  the English Language. London: Longman.

Russell, B. (1905). On denoting. Mind 14, 479-493. 

Thrane, T. (1980). Referential-semantic analysis: aspects of a theory of linguistic reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Langendonck, W. (2007). Theory and Typology of Proper Names. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

  Dictionaries:

AHD = The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD). (Fourth Edition. 2000). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

APSIZ = Borkowski, P. (1988). Angielsko-polski słownik idiomów i zwrotów. An English-Polish dictionary of idioms and phrases.  Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM. 

CBEI =  Collins, V. H. (1964). A Book of English Idioms. London: Longmans.

ODCIE = Cowie, A. P., Mackin, R. & McCaig, I.R. (1983). Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ODI = The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (2nd ed, 2005). (Ed.) Siefring, J. New York: Oxford University Press.

ICWF = Philips, C. (2000). Idioms, collocations and word formations. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.

IPA = Wolfram-Romanowska, D.; P. Kaszubski, M. Parker (4th ed. 2013). Idiomy polsko-angielskie. Polish-English Idioms. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

SFO = Słownik frazeologiczny (online). In http://frazeologia.pl/index.php last accessed on 2nd May, 2014.

WMSAP-PA = Wielki multimedialny słownik angielsko-polski i polsko-angielski. (2005). PWN-Oxford.

WSFJP = Müldner-Nieckowski, P. (2003). Wielki słownik frazeologiczny języka polskiego. Warszawa: Świat Książki.

  Corpora:

COCA = Corpus of Contemporary American English. In http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ last accessed on 6th May 2014.

NKJP = Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego (wyszukiwarka Pecra). In http://www.nkjp.uni.lodz.pl/ last accessed on 6th May 2014.

BNC = The British National Corpus. In http://corpus.byu.edu/BNC last accessed on 6th May 2014.

Magdalena Chudak

Mutation schemas in Irish

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The aim of the presentations is to show that the concept of word schemas, as proposed by Booij (2010), Haspelmath (2010) and Ford, Singh and Martohardjono (1997), helps to account for the alteration of initial segments in Irish. The example of the latter phenomenon is a word for ‘cabbage’, it is realised either as cabáiste, or gabáiste.

      The basic assumption of the model is that the structure of the lexicon emerges from the generalisations about the relations between words, which are stored as wholes. As Booji (2010:50) puts it “a lexicon has to be conceived of as a web of words”. Accordingly, morphology is the lexicon and the patterns emerging therein. 

      The proposal is that mutations are stored in the lexicon in the form of mutation schemas, where the mutated forms and the radical one are interconnected (as evidenced by experiments by Boyce et al. 1987). This manner of storage allows for the immediate retrieval of the mutated and non-mutated forms, but has side effects, the example of which is the variation of the initial segment in the radical forms.

  References:

Bochner, H. 1993. Simplicity in generative morphology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Booij, G. 2010. Construction Morphology. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Boyce, S., C.P. Browman and L. Goldstein. 1997. Lexical Organization and Welsh Consonant Mutations. Journal of Memory and Language 26: 419-452.

Bybee, J. 1985. Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Bybee, J. 1995. Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes 10: 425-455.

Bybee, J. 2001. Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

de Bhaldraithe, T. 1945. The Irish of Cois Fhairrge, Co. Galway: a Phonetic Study. Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Green, A. D. 2003. The Independence of Phonology and Morphology: the Celtic Mutations. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 32, 47-86.

Griffen T. D. 1985. A new Welsh consonant shift, description and implications. PhD dissertation, Gainesville: University of Florida.

Haspelmath, M. & A. Sims. 2010. Understanding Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kelly, D. 1978. Morphologization in Irish and Southern Paiute. Phd Dissertation, University of Texas.

Lukatela, G., Popadic, D., Ognjenovic, P., & Turvey, M. T. 1980. Lexical decision in a phonologically shallow orthography. Memory and Cognition 8: 124-132.

Neuvel, S. and R. Singh. 2001. Vive la difference. What Morphology is really about. Folia Linguistica 35, 314-320. 

Ó Dónaill, N. 1977. Foclóir Gaeilge- Béarla. Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair.

Ó Siadhail, M. 1989. Modern Irish: Grammatical Structure and Dialectical Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rumelhart, D. E. and J. L. McClelland. 1986. On learning the past tense of English verbs. In J. L. McClelland, D. E. Rumelhart, PDP Research Group (eds.) Parallel distributed processing, vol. 2, 216-271. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Singh, R and R. K. Agnihotri. 1997. Modern Hindi Morphology. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.

Singh, R. and A. Ford. 2003. In praise of Śakaṭāyana: Some remarks on Whole Word Morphology. In Singh R. and S. Starosta (eds.) Explorations in seamless morphology, 66-76. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.

Photos by Anna Prażmowska

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Young Linguists' Seminar III: New Voices in Semantics and Pragmatics

The third meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 12th May 2014. The adviser to YLS III was prof. Przemysław Łozowski. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

New Voices in Semantics and Pragmatics

The following four papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

Angelina Rusinek
From 'sucking' and 'being smooth, shining' to 'happiness': in search of English-Polish cognates in the English 'happiness' vocabulary
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Language and culture are inextricably linked with each other, language being often understood as a mirror of culture. If we follow Sapir (1921: 218) and state that “[c]ulture may be defined as what a society does and thinks [and] (….) [l]anguage is a particular how of thought” we come to a conclusion that the principles of linguistic relativity and determinism are connected with the phenomenon of language change. The paper is done within the spirit of historical linguistics and analyzes the historical background of English and Polish etymologically related vocabulary, i.e. cognates, concentrating on English ‘happiness’ terms. The aim of the paper is to show the common etymological roots of two pairs of cognates: English felicity and Polish dziecko, as well as English glad and Polish gładki.

Konrad Żyśko
Wordplay and Hidden Sense Relations: polysemy or homonymy?
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

This work addresses the problem of distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy in relation to wordplay. It seems that the criterion of shared etymology does not provide adequate methods of delineation between these concepts, as there exist lexemes which are viewed as homonymous in spite of their shared etymology, as well as those viewed as polysemous although characterized by distinct etymologies (Łozowski 2000: 78). Thus, it can be concluded that what is the linking force between two concepts is not the etymology itself but rather resemblance-based conceptual connections that speakers create. However, since wordplay is frequently based on homonymy, it may direct towards some elements that used to be the motivating force behind meaning extension, yet which now could be only uncovered via a historical analysis.

Hubert Kowalewski
“So what's motivation, anyway?” Towards a comprehensive definition
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

In traditional linguistics, the issue of the motivated nature of the linguistic sign received relatively little attention. To large extent, this lack of interest was a part of Ferdinand de Saussure’s heritage (cf. Saussure 1966 [1916]), who deemphasized the importance of motivation in the linguistic system. With the advent of the cognitive paradigm, the role of this phenomenon has been reevaluated (cf. Taylor 2002; Cuyckens et al. 2003; Joseph 2000; Łozowski 2006; Hiraga 2005). Yet despite this positive reevaluation, there are few attempts at providing a comprehensive definition and a coherent methodological framework for actual analysis. This presentation addresses this gap by proposing a broad definition and a set of explanatory tools for systematic investigation of motivation in language.

  References:
Cuyckens, Hubert, Thomas Berg, René Dirven, and Klaus-Uwe Panther, eds. 2003. Motivation in Language: Studies in Honor of Günter Radden. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hiraga, M. K. 2005. Metaphor and Iconicity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Joseph, J. E. 2000. Limiting the Arbitrary. Linguistic Naturalism and Its Opposites in Plato’s Cratylus and Modern Theories of Language. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Łozowski, Przemysław. 2006. “Podobieństwo jako przejaw niedowolności (niearbitralności) znaku językowego.” Edited by Henryk Kardela, Zbysław Muszyński, and Maciej Rajewski. Kognitywistyka 2. Podobieństwo, 131–41.
Saussure, F. de. 1966. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York, Toronto and London: McGraw-Hill.
Taylor, J. R. 2002. Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Jolanta Sak-Wernicka
Pragmatics, Modularity and Visual Impairment
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Pragmatic interpretation is in large part a mind-reading task which involves going beyond the linguistic content of a speaker’s utterance and making inferences about what the speaker thinks, feels or believes. Drawing on the modularity hypothesis (Fodor 1983), Sperber and Wilson (2002) claim that this process is controlled by a dedicated comprehension module. The ability to reason about other people’s mental states, also known as Theory of Mind (ToM), has received considerable research attention and has been found to be related to linguistic and visual experience (e.g. de Villiers, 2007, Clark & Krych, 2004; Bayliss et al., 2007). To this day, however, it is unknown whether language and vision are both necessary for effective ToM. ToM deficits in individuals with neurological and developmental disorders have been observed to reflect their deficits in pragmatic language abilities (e.g. Dahlgren et al. 2010; Happé, 1994; Losh et al., 2012), but it still remains unknown what impact the lack of access to visual cues may have on mind-reading. The aim of this presentation is to investigate whether linguistic cues may compensate for the missing visual cues and whether people who are blind may be as successful in recognising other people’s mental states as people who are sighted. 

  References:
Bayliss, A., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. & Tripper, S. (2007) Affective evaluations of objects are influenced by observed gaze direction and emotional expression. Cognition 104, 644-653.
Clark, H. & Krych, M. (2004) Speaking while monitoring addressees for understanding. J. Mem. Lang. 50, 62-81.
Dahlgren, S., Dahlgren-Sandberg, A. & Larsson, M. (2010) Theory of mind in children with severe speech and physical impairments. Res. Dev. Disabil. 31, 617-624.
de Villiers, J. (2007) The Interface of Language and Theory of Mind. Lingua 117(11), 1858-1878.
Fodor, J. (1983) The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Happé, E. (1994) An advanced test of theory of mind: understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal children and adults. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 24, 129-154.
Losh, M., Martin, G., Klusek, J., Hogan-Brown, A. & Sideris, J. (2012) Social communication and theory of mind in boys with autism and fragile X syndrome. Front. Psychol. 3, 266.
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2002) Pragmatics, Modularity and Mind-reading. Mind and Language 17, 3-23.

Photos by Anna Prażmowska

Young Linguists' Seminar II: Issues in Phonology

The second meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 10th April 2014. The advisory board of YLS II was comprised of prof. Anna Bloch-Rozmej and prof. Eugeniusz Cyran. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

Issues in Phonology

The following four papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.

Sławomir Zdziebko
Świezi najemnicy vs. wraży piraci: competence and performance in the morpho-phonology of Polish
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The aim of the presentation is to show that the morpho-phonological replacement of /ʒ/ with /ʑ/ found in Polish in adjectives such as duż-y - duz-i (‘big, nom/voc, sg. - nom/voc, pl.’) is productive and accepted significantly more often than what dictionaries and standard descriptions would suggest. In order to show that I am going to present the results of two surveys conducted among the students of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. The first survey featuring 119 speakers, shows that the duż-y - duz-i -pattern is readily generalized to obsolete items such as wraż-y ‘hostile, nom/voc.sg’. Moreover, the recording of 69 speakers of Polish shows that the occurrence of the /ʒ/ → /ʑ/pattern is dependent on certain extra-grammatical factors such as the sex of the speakers (females palatalize more often than males) and the frequency of a relevant stem (more frequent stems are palatalized more often). The latter pattern is interrupted by some grammatical conditioning: frequent stems such as Boż-y ‘of god, nom/voc, sg.’ and chorz-y ‘sick, nom/voc, pl.’ are palatalized significantly less often than less frequent śwież-y ‘nom/voc. sg.’, chyż-y ‘swift, nom/voc. sg.’ and wraż-y ‘nom/voc, sg.’. I will show that the scarcity of forms such as ?Boz-i ‘of god, nom/voc, pl.’ and the virtual absence of forms such as ???choz-i ‘sick, nom/voc, pl.’ should be assigned to the derived nature of the /ʒ/ in both stems.

Ewa Pająk 

/o/-raising vs. voicing of obstruents in the history of Polish

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 

It is almost unanimously agreed that /o/-raising, in Present-day Polish manifesting itself in /o/~/u/ alternation, is a direct consequence of Compensatory Lengthening operative in c. 10th c., when there was still the distinction between short and long vowels in the system. CL consisted in the lengthening of a vowel at the expense of the jer vowel in the following syllable, which was weakened and ultimately lost. Certain conditions had to be met for the process of CL to operate, the most noticeable being the [+voice] value of the consonant directly following the vowel to be lengthened, and at the same time preceding the disappearing jer. 

  The significance of the [+voice] feature of the intervening consonant has been widely explored in the literature (e.g. Dunaj 1966, Koneczna 1965, Stieber 1973, Bethin 1998, Sanders 2003). The analyses available vary in their treatment of the unquestionable impact voicing / voicelessness had on the process. Phonetic analyses, phonological reinterpretation of phonetic lengthening and moraic explanations have been put forward, among others. All of the suggested solutions to the problem of voicing in Polish phonological history seem to ignore a crucial aspect of Compensatory Lengthening – that it was a crosslinguistic phenomenon and needs to be interpreted as one. A unified analysis of CL as affecting the majority of Slavic languages, as well as Germanic ones, points to the necessity of perceiving consonants as complex structures (Elements Theory), whose complexity directly impacts the possibility of lengthening. Voicelessness, expressed as an H element attached to fortis obstruents crosslinguistically, contravenes the Licensing relationship between successive nuclear positions in a representation by means of Licensing Absorption. 

  By manipulating the settings of Government, Licensing, FEN abilities and complexity of consonants (and the interplay of them all), CL and other quantitative processes may be given one common analysis across languages, which is a vital step towards understanding the universal character of linguistic changes and synchronic phonological processes. 

  References:

Bethin, Ch. (1998) Slavic Prosody. Cambridge: University Press

Carlton, T. (1991) Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages

Cyran E. (2012) Cracov voicing is neither phonological nor phonetic. It is both phonological and phonetic. In E. Cyran, H. Kardela and B. Szymanek (eds.), Sound, Structure and Sense. Studies in Memory of Edmund Gussmann. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL

Dunaj, B. (1966) Wzdłużenie zastępcze w języku polskim. (Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace językoznawcze PAN, 17.) Warszawa and Kraków: PWN

Harris, J. (1994) English Sound Structure. Oxford: Blackwell

Honeybone, P. (2005) Diachronic evidence in segmental phonology: the case of obstruents laryngeal specifications. In M. van Oostendorp et al. (eds.), The Internal Organization of Phonological Segments. Berlin: M. de Gruyter, 319-354

Koneczna (1965) Charakterystyka fonetyczna języka polskiego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe

Sanders, N. (2003) Opacity and Sound Change in Polish Lexicon. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California

Scheer, T., M. Zikova (2009) „The Coda Mirror v2”

Stieber, Z. (1973) A Historical Phonology of the Polish Language. Heidelberg: Carl Winter

Zdziebko (2012) Issues in Scotish vowel quantity. Cambrigde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Elżbieta Brzozowska

The syllable – towards a unified theory

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 

The syllable, referred to as “one of the oldest constructs in the study of language” (Goldsmith (2011: 164)) has found its place in all linguistic theories and frameworks, starting from structuralism (Pulgram (1970)), through natural generative phonology (Vennemann (1972)), the Optimality Theory (Féry and van de Vijver (2003)) and, finally, the Government Phonology framework (Cyran (2006), Harris and Gussman (1998)). Apart from theoretical considerations, experimental research aimed at testing (native) speakers’ intuitions concerning the location of syllable boundaries and the syllabic affiliation of given segments has always constituted an indispensable element of the quest for discovering the ultimate theory of the syllable.

       In the present paper we will be concerned with surveying a number of vital aspects of experimental studies on L1 syllabification. More specifically, drawing on the previous research in the field, we will seek to establish how experimental research into L1 syllabification should be structured and conducted so as to produce plausible results with a solid empirical ground. Three main aspects of such research, i.e. the choice of the stimuli, choice of the tasks and experimental procedures will be given attention to. The discussion will be preceded with a section devoted to adducing the major assumptions concerning the syllable structure, evidence that it is indeed existent and a brief overview of the details concerning the syllabification process itself. In the last section, on the other hand, we will discuss some findings of L2 syllabification studies so as to see how they pertain to the results obtained in L1 syllabification research.

  References:

Cyran, E. 2006. Polish and English syllable structures. How different are they? Zeszyty Wszechnicy Świętokrzyskiej. Filologia Angielska 1/23, 151-160.

Féry, C. and R. van de Vijver, eds. 2003. The syllable in Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goldsmith, J. 2011. The syllable. In: Goldsmith, J., Riggle,J. and A.C.L. Yu (eds.) The handbook of phonological theory. Wiley-Blackwell. 164-196.

Harris, J. and E. Gussman. 1998. Final codas: why the west was wrong. In: E. Cyran (ed.), Structure and interpretation – studies in phonology. Lublin: Folium. 132-162.

Pulgram, E. 1970. Syllable, word, nexus, cursus. The Hague: Mouton.

Vennemann, T. 1972. On the theory of syllabic phonology. Linguistische Berichte 18: 1-18.

Paweł Tomasz Czerniak

The structure of the North Welsh diphthongs in the CVCV theory

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Welsh diphthongs have received a substantial deal of attention from various theoretical standpoints, none of which provided an unambiguous account. Ambiguities concerning what a diphthong in Welsh is and what it is not appeared in early descriptive accounts of Welsh Phonology (e.g. Morris-Jones 1913, Sweet 1913) and recurred in theoretically-grounded analyses (e.g. Generative Phonology in Awbery 1984, Government Phonology in Buczek-Zawiła 2002, Substance-Free Phonology in Iosad 2012). 

         North Welsh has the total of thirteen closing diphthongs. The final member is always a lax vowel [ʊ], [ɪ] or [ɨ], while the initial one, except for [ɑːɨ], is generally short and lax but may be tense and lengthened (Ball and Williams 2001: 45-47). The problem with a phonological analysis of NW diphthongs is that the two members behave like two separate unit vowels: diphthongs share few distributional properties with long vowels, the first member often undergoes the same morphophonological changes as corresponding unit vowel, while only the second member takes part in epenthesis. These (ir)regularities will be captured from the viewpoint of the CVCV theory.

        Strict CV theory associates all segments with non-branching onsets (Cs) and non-branching nuclei (Vs) (Lowenstamm 1996, Szigetvári 1999, Scheer 2004). If a segment is long, its melody is associated with two constituents straddling an empty one of the opposite kind. Consequently, both diphthongs and vowel hiatuses are represented as two vocalic melodies attached to two Vs separated with an empty C. Owing to the fact that a diphthong is supposed to enjoy greater frequency and regularity in a language, it will be suggested that the two members of a diphthong are controlled by a lateral relation, while those of a hiatus are not.

  References:

Awbery, Gwellian M. 1984. “Phonotactic Constraints in Welsh.” In Welsh Phonology: Selected Readings, edited by Martin J. Ball and Glyn E. Miller, 65-104. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Ball, Martin J. and Briony Williams. 2001. Welsh Phonetics. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.

Buczek-Zawiła, Anita. 2002. “Diphthongs in Welsh – Hybrid Domains.” Beyond Philology 2: 7-33.

Iosad, Pavel. 2012. “Representation and Variation in Substance-Free Phonology. A Case Study in Celtic.” PhD diss., University of Tromsø.

Lowenstamm, Jean. 1996. “CV as the Only Syllable Type.” In Current Trends in Phonology. Models and Methods, edited by Jacques Durand and Bernard Laks, 419-441. Salford: ESRI.

Morris-Jones, John. 1913. A Welsh Grammar. Historical and Comparative. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Szigetvári, Péter. 1999. “VC Phonology: A Theory of Consonant Lenition and Phonotactics.” PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University.

Scheer, Tobias. 2004. A Lateral Theory of Phonology. What is CVCV, and why Should It Be?, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Sweet, Henry. 1913. “Spoken North Welsh.” In Collected Papers of Henry Sweet, edited by Henry Cecil Wyld, 409-484. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Photos by Anna Prażmowska

Young Linguists' Seminar I: Recent Developments in Translation Studies

The first meeting of Young Linguists' Seminar took place on 10th March 2014. The advisory board of YLS I was comprised of prof. Robert Looby and Konrad Klimkowski, PhD. The talks were guided by the following leitmotif:

Recent Developments in Translation Studies

The following four papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

Rafał Augustyn
Conceptual blending, neologisms and translation assessment
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Translation theories, which have proliferated over the past few decades (cf. Venuti 2012), generally suffer from theoretical eclecticism and, in consequence, appear to fail to provide satisfying answers to many questions fundamental to any theory of translation, one of them being the recurring problem of translation quality assessment. 

        As claimed by Tabakowska (1993), Cognitive Linguistics, being a relatively new linguistic paradigm, can nevertheless make a valuable contribution to Translation Studies by bringing into focus the semantic character of grammar. Within Cognitive Linguistics lexical items are held to be representations of cognitive categories based on human experiences of the world and are stored in human mind as mental concepts, while meaning is constructed through our interaction with the external world and is equated with conceptualization (Langacker 2008).

        With this in mind, the paper examines a number of translated neologism pairs from science-fiction genre (English and Polish novels/TV series) to identify the construal shifts performed by the translators in the target texts as compared with the source text conceptualizations. In particular, it is argued that the assessment of the quality of neologism translations referred to above can be made more objective if recourse is made to (i) Fauconnier & Turner’s (2002) Conceptual Blending Theory, a fundamental cognitive mechanism playing a crucial role in structuring of conceptual knowledge and inferential processes and (ii) communicative relevance and discourse context as discussed in Brandt’s (2013) revised model of conceptual blending.

  References:
Brandt, L. 2013. The Communicative Mind: A Linguistic Exploration of Conceptual Integration and Meaning Construction. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Langacker, R. W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tabakowska, E. 1993. Cognitive Linguistics and Poetics of Translation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Venuti, L (ed.). 2012. The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd ed. London, New York: Routledge.




Paweł Tutka
The interpreter’s status revisited: the concepts of neutrality and invisibility
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The status of the interpreter has been an ongoing debate for many years. While there are groups of researchers who state that the interpreter should be a ‘helper’ and act as a ‘conduit’ only, other groups proclaim that the interpreter has to take on the role of essential partner, who has to be present at all times when a multicultural dialogue takes place. This is why it is so important to recognize the interpreter’s status as an active participant between the speaker and the listener. 

        The following study encompasses the following things: what are neutrality and invisibility and how were they perceived in the previous years, and how they are viewed at present. Moreover, the above-mentioned concepts will be seen from the angle of the interpreter’s roles in Poland. Special attention will be paid to community interpreting in Poland, especially in the context of legal, medical and immigration interpreting. Last but not least, suggestions as to what the interpreting curriculum should additionally encompass will be presented at the end of the study.

Radosław Fenc
Machine Translation – age old questions and the state of play
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The main goal of this presentation is to show main issues and the ways of dealing with them in the field Machine Translation which is a part of computational linguistics. The problems with translating human-crafted texts lies in the very nature of human language – it is often ambiguous, metaphorical, and contextual in such ways that it is virtually impossible for a machine to accurately relay it into another code. However, the interdisciplinary science working in the background of translating machines has developed ways of coping with it, let it be Artificial Intelligence, linguistic analysis or purely mathematical/statistical approach, which has been a topic of academic dispute since the dawn of Natural Language Processing branch of linguistics in 1950’s. Short descriptions of mentioned approaches are provided and briefly discussed for their advantages, drawbacks, and possibilities.

Agata Kozielska
Teoria w dydaktyce translacji: balast akademicki czy narzędzie przyszłego tłumacza?
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University

Zgodnie z aktualnymi tendencjami w edukacji, nadrzędną rolę odgrywać powinna wartość aplikatywna treści programowych. W dydaktyce translacji, realizowanej w Polsce głównie na uniwersytetach, poszukuje się równowagi między postulowanym podejściem rynkowym, a tradycją kształcenia akademickiego, często kojarzonego z przerostem składnika teoretycznego.

        Czy obecność wiedzy teoretycznej z zakresu translatoryki ma rację bytu w nowoczesnym kształceniu tłumaczy? Co sądzą na ten temat studenci i jakie opinie przeważają w literaturze przedmiotu? Poszukiwanie odpowiedzi na powyższe pytania autorka zilustruje wynikami badania przeprowadzonego wśród przyszłych adeptów zawodu tłumacza.

Photos by Anna Prażmowska and Marietta Rusinek