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