Computer-assisted language learning

Multimedia computing, the Internet, and the World Wide Web have provided an incredible boost to Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) applications. Once relegated to “novelty” status, CALL is finally achieving the recognition it deserves thanks in large part to these developing technologies.

Linguistic control in schools

The linguistic inspection was instituted by article 18 of the law of 30 July 1963 concerning language use in education. It stipulated that the linguistic inspection is responsible for constantly monitoring application of the provisions of the law concerning the linguistic register of the students.

Interactional Linguistics:Developments and Prospects

Article Summary by: TsingHua
Author : Modern Foreign Languages
Published: October 30, 2003
This abstract was translated from 互动语言学的发展历程及其前景
People have spent so much time doing language only to realize that much of the20th century linguistic scholarship was static and unnatural instead of dynamic and natural in the sense that many researchers and scholars have more often than not resorted to imagined or invented examples in their account of real – time linguistic complexities.In other words,the language much researched by scholars is largely disconnected with that used by ordinary people in everyday interaction.Further – more,the context in which real language is used has been largely simplified,which,to use Morin ‘ s words(莫兰2002),is further represented by idealization,rationalization and standardization.This may partly account for why spoken language has been inadequately investigated.Fortunately,recent years,the last ten or so years in particular,have witnessed enthusiastic ef – forts to attach much importance to research in spoken language,which represents a big step forward in language studies and which is also counted as the first great step in the development of a new linguistic orientation called interactional linguistics.Drawing upon functional linguistics(functional grammar in particular),anthropological linguistics and talk – in – interaction(especially conversation analysis),interactional linguistics,fully aware of the dynamics and contextualization of language,aims to account for language as it occurs in everyday interaction.Language,according to interac – tional linguistics,shapes and is shaped by interaction.Specifically,interactional linguistics attempts to tackle two types of issues as follows:first,what linguistic resources do interlocutors recur to in their effort to express particular conversational structures and fulfill interactional functions?Second,what interactional functions or conversational structures can be generated by particular linguistic forms and ways of using them?The emergence of interactional linguistics forces us to ponder over many issues pertaining to language studies,and one of the issues dealt with in the present paper is our traditional view of and approaches to grammar.For long,grammar has been rigidly defined as”rules for speaking”,among other things,which has been proved impotent when it comes to ac – counting for language in use.As we understand it,grammar is a mode of social interaction and so – cio – cultural practice,which both shapes and is shaped by social interaction.Constructed in social in – teraction,grammar is ultimately an emergent phenomenon.This new view of grammar would cer – tainly shed much light upon approaches to grammar studies and upon our understanding of so – called ungrammatical language.The present article surveys interactional linguistics,a newly – emerging orientation to linguistic enterprise,touching upon its features,major concerns and how it has developed,arguing against in – venting examples to elaborate on real – life language phenomena in favor of collecting naturally oc – curring data for language studies with a view to figuring out how humans(re)construct their person – ality, social identity and social meaning.This paper ends with a discussion of what what interaction – al linguistics can bring to bear on language studies in general and Chinese linguistics in particular.

Synchronic linguistics

Descriptive Linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing the actual language spoken now, or in the past, by any group of people. Accurate description of real speech is a very difficult problem and linguists have often been reduced to very inaccurate approximations.
Almost all linguistic theory had its origin in practical problems of descriptive linguistics. Phonetics (and its theoretical developments such as phonemes) has dealt with how to pronounce languages. Syntax has developed to describe what is going on once phonetics has reduced spoken language to a control level. Lexicography collects “words” and has not given rise to much theory.
An extreme mentalist viewpoint appears to deny that the linguistic description of a language can be done by anyone but a competent speaker. Such a speaker has internalized something called “linguistic competence” which gives them the ability to correctly extrapolate from their experience to new but correct expressions and to reject unacceptable expressions. Be that as it may be there are practical immediate needs for linguistic descriptions and we cannot wait for a full exploration of linguistic competence.

The Adaptation of Solution-Focused Therapy in Chinese Culture: A Linguistic Perspective

Frederick K. C. Yeung
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Using solution-focused therapy as an example, this article discusses linguistic considerations in the cross-cultural adaptation of psychotherapy to Chinese-speaking clients. As the primary medium through which a client’s story is presented and transformed, language plays a crucial role in therapeutic conversation. Some differences between the Chinese and English languages, such as the construction of words and grammatical structure, are introduced. An examination of three linguistic dimensions – lexical usage, syntax and intonation and rhythm – illustrate the important role of language in the cross-cultural adaptation of psychotherapeutic techniques.

Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin

1. School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 14 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN, United Kingdom
1. Edited by Henry C. Harpending, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, and approved April 12, 2007 (received for review December 7, 2006)

Improving Written Language Skills Through Multiple-Linguistic Spelling Instruction Jan Wasowicz, Ph.D.

Spelling and word-level reading are written language skills that draw upon an individual’s repertoire of linguistic knowledge, including phonological awareness; knowledge of orthography, vocabulary, morphological and semantic relationships; and mental orthographic images (Apel & Masterson, 2001; Apel, Masterson, & Niessen, 2004). Although spelling (encoding) and word-level reading (decoding) draw upon these areas of linguistic knowledge in different ways, each type of linguistic knowledge contributes to spelling and reading success (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000). A collective body of current research demonstrates the importance of integrating multiple linguistic processes within spelling instruction. In comparison to traditional spelling instruction and traditional reading instruction, multiple-linguistic spelling instruction has been shown to be more effective for improving student’s spelling and reading performance (Apel, Masterson, & Hart, 2004; Kelman & Apel, 2004; Roberts & Meiring, 2006).

Corpus Linguistics (1): Meaning in Context

Author: Lia Fail
Last modified 2004-09-20 21:04:26

1.1. LINGUISTIC TRADITIONS

For de Saussure, language structure (langue), rather than language in use (parole), was the proper object of linguistic enquiry, a position also adopted by Chomsky, who labelled this dualism competence and performance. Language was a biologically determined mental process and social factors should therefore be excluded from linguistic analysis.

The principles underlying a corpus-based approach to the analysis of language, however, are concerned with language in use as opposed to language as a mental construct. This view of linguistics can be traced back to Firth – who posited that language be studied as part of the social process – and is a stance also adopted by Halliday, whose �grammar is semantic (concerned with meaning) and functional (concerned with how language is used)� (Bloor & Bloor 1995:2). John Sinclair, initiator of the first corpus-based dictionary of general language (Cobuild 1987) at Birmingham University, also advocates the notion of meaning and use as central to understanding language.

One particularly important de Saussurean concept refers to the syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of language. Syntagmatic (horizontal) relations represent a potential for the combination of items, whereas paradigmatic (vertical) relations represent a potential for substitution among items. Conventional linguistics has tended to focus on paradigmatic relations, a fact reflected in traditional dictionaries, which are constrained by orthographic considerations that would help a user locate items. Nonetheless, �paradigms are by definition things which do not go together� (Halliday 1994:xxxii), whereas �a substantial proportion of speakers� associations to word stimuli are syntagmatic� (Fellbaum 1998:9).

A syntagmatic view of language takes account of the contribution of sense and syntax to meaning. The argument that �sense and syntax� (Sinclair 1991), or �meaning and pattern� (Hunston & Francis 2000), are associated is based on two pieces of evidence. Firstly, meanings tend to be distinguished by differing patterns, and secondly, words with the same pattern sometimes share aspects of meaning. According to Hunston & Francis (ibid:255-259), the fact that there is no perfect one-to-one correspondence between meaning and pattern is attributable to a lexicographic rather than a semantic worldview.

1.2. THE NOTION OF CO-SELECTION

Co-selection describes the general phenomenon of words that habitually keep company, to paraphrase Firth. (Note: Given time and space constraints, two particular cases of very fixed syntagmatic relationships – multiword and idiomatic expressions � will be excluded from this discussion; for a general overview see, however, Partington 1998; Nelson 2000). Sinclair�s definiens of what he refers to as collocation is �the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text� (1991:170); this could logically refer to co-selection between lexical or grammatical items. Other authors draw a distinction between collocation and colligation (Firth 1957; Bahns 1993; Hoey 1997), using the former to refer to the co-occurrence of lexical items and the latter to the co-occurrence of grammatical items; Sinclair himself refers to colligation within a collocation context, yet has stated that �collocation in its purest sense recognises only the lexical co-occurrence of words� (1991:170). The debate is complicated further by the fact that the derived term collocate is generally used to refer to lexical items (cf. the Louw definition of semantic prosody below). For the purposes of this article, therefore, co-selection will henceforth be used to refer to the general phenomenon from a translator�s perspective, collocation to the co-occurrence of lexical items as per Sinclair, and colligation to co-occurrence with grammatical items. The preferred usage of individual authors will, naturally, be respected.

Sinclair describes what he terms as �collocational principles� (1991:109) as follows:

� The open-choice principle – on which virtually all grammars are based – refers to the possibility of selecting words to �slot and fill� a unit, with the only restrictions being grammatical ones.
� The idiom principle, on the other hand, refers to �the large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they might appear to be analysable into segments�.

The open choice principle, therefore, would broadly correspond to paradigmatic choice (restricted by grammaticality), whereas the idiom principle corresponds to syntagmatic choice (restrictions may be lexical, grammatical or semantic). Sinclair identified colligation and semantic prosody as particular features of the idiom principle.

Colligation (defined above) has also been referred to in terms of collocational frameworks (Renouf & Sinclair 1991:128-144), which are units based on a grammatical, as opposed to lexical, core (e.g., �the/an…of�, �too�to�). Hunston & Francis�s (2000) analysis of �words and their patterns� (from the perspective of concordance lines) and �patterns and their words� (from the perspective of word-class labels) describe a dual approach to patterning from the lexical and grammatical perspectives; likewise, Benson et al. (1997) organise their dictionary in terms of both grammatical collocations and lexical collocations.

Semantic prosody, defined as �the consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates� (Louw 1993:157), refers to an additional layer of perceived meaning, over and above that accorded by lexical and grammatical patterning alone. The notion of semantic prosody posits an initial selection of word or phrase in relation to which choices are realised at the lexical, grammatical and semantic levels. To use Sinclair�s example (as cited in Tognini-Bonelli 2001:104), the collocation �barely visible to the naked eye� reflects an expression of semantic prosody (difficulty experienced implied by barely), a lexical choice (the notion of seeing) and the requisite colligation (to the).

Although Sinclair has largely focused on positive and negative connotations, other authors (Nelson 2000; Stubbs 1996) have broadened the meaning of semantic prosody somewhat. Nelson�s (2000) use of the term to include people and places associated with �business� is possibly over-extended, since if semantic prosody is an �aura�, then it would typically occur at the textual or extra-textual level. Typical co-selection at the co-textual level is more correctly referred to as semantic preference.

1.3. CO-SELECTION AND TRANSLATION

Two issues relating to co-selection are of particular concern to the translator:

� The co-selection of items from memory may be affected by SL interference (what Toury has referred to as the �law of interference� (1995) or Baker (1992:54) as �the engrossing effect of source text patterning�), with the result that a translation seems unnatural. Bahns (1993:61), for example, attributes the majority of collocational errors to SL interference.
� Given that appropriate co-selection within a particular register is outside the range of everyday language, linguistic intuition may be inadequate in terms of producing appropriate language and style.

Traditional translation resources (e.g. dictionaries) are primarily word-focused and therefore of little help in resolving either problem. Indeed, a �dictionary answer� to a translation difficulty is the mark of the inexpert translator, who typically tends to translate word-for-word. A semantic rather than lexicographic worldview, however, is provided by text; to quote Lindquist (1999:179):

With the emergence of computer tools for translators, texts have become increasingly useful as a rich source of lexical data that enable translators not only to identify appropriate collocations but also to interpret lexical items in their pragmatic and linguistic contexts.

Moreover, as Heid (2001:793) points out in relation to the recording of terminological data:

The�structuring of collocations according to semantic criteria is most useful for tasks like text production because it not only helps organise the material but also to access collocations by the types of abstract meanings they potentially express.

For the translator, therefore, successful problem solution depends on a semantic representation of the word in context.

A Linguistic Big Bang

For the first time in history, scholars are witnessing the birth of a language — a complex sign system being created by deaf children in Nicaragua. By LAWRENCE OSBORNE Photographs by SUSAN MEISELAS

Linguistic typology

‘Typology is the classification of languages by grammatical features. Typological classification contrasts with the more familiar genetic’ classification of languages into families that share an ancestor language (see historical linguistics). A genetic class is a language family, while a typological class is a language type.