Languages in Contrast - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2022

Abstract

This paper is the first contrastive study of impersonalization in Romanian and English. Taking an acceptability judgment approach, we describe the functional potential in all impersonal uses of not only the pronouns ‘one’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ but also the lesser studied passive. We find inter alia: a similar division of labor in the languages between ‘you’ and ‘they’ for contexts paraphrasable as, respectively, ‘everyone’ and ‘someone/some people’; a wider range of uses for pro-dropped ‘they’ than for its overt counterpart, as hypothesized in previous research; and a preference in English, but not Romanian, for passives to ‘they’ especially in contexts like ‘they’ve stolen my wallet!’, where the referent is entirely unidentifiable and likely to be singular. Levels of identifiability and number, each of which has been suggested in a separate semantic map as necessary for capturing impersonalization, are also shown to interact, supporting a proposal to combine them in one map.

Abstract

Informational-persuasive discourse may be encoded in promotional strategies through which a given product is described in a positive way to persuade potential customers. For this, evaluation may appeal to reason or may tickle emotions (Cook, 2001). This study compares the way in which advertising texts for herbal tea engage with customers’ emotions in English and in Spanish. We examined the strategies of ‘enjoying the experience’ and ‘aesthetic appeal’ from an Appraisal Theory approach (Martin and White, 2005). We categorised these according to the attitude sub-systems of ‘affect’, ‘appreciation’, and ‘judgement’, determined how explicit the evaluation was, and identified gradable resources. Results show that English texts display more ‘affect’-like resources that can awaken a desire in the customer. By contrast, in the Spanish sample ‘appreciation’ resources that evaluate the composition of the product play a greater role. ‘Enjoying the experience’ seems to engage with the customers’ emotions more overtly than ‘aesthetic appeal’.

Abstract

The paper discusses how language contact and borrowing can be established as a critical factor of quantitative and/or qualitative changes of abstract grammatical patterns, in particular if languages are genetically and areally closely related and thus structurally similar. More specifically, it deals with the question of whether the word-formation pattern of proper name compounding in German and Dutch is an instance of grammatical borrowing from English, as is often claimed in the literature. To this end, we conduct a structural analysis of the pattern in the three languages based on original and translation corpus data. We show that the pattern which, at first glance, seems to be identical in all three languages has in fact different properties in each language. Although this does not necessarily preclude transfer from English, we conclude that there is no evidence in favour of such an influence.

Abstract

This paper focuses on how Jean Pillot, author of the most popular French grammar of the sixteenth century in terms of editions, took efforts to contrast his native language with Greek. His Gallicæ linguæ institutio (1550/1561), although written in Latin, contains numerous passages where Pillot subtly confronted French with Greek, surveyed in Section 2, in order to give his audience of educated German speakers a clearer view of the idiosyncrasies of French. In Section 3, I analyze why he preferred Greek to the other languages he knew in quite a number of cases, arguing that this subtle contrastive endeavor bore an indirect pedagogical and ideological load. Section 4 discusses the terminological means Pillot used to confront Greek with French, and their origins. In Section 5, I frame Pillot’s appropriation of Greek grammar in the long history of contrastive language studies, with special reference to the pivotal role of sixteenth-century linguistic analysis.

Abstract

Motion event construal gives insight into the nature of the linguistic and conceptual representations underlying the encoding of events. Studies show that event descriptions differ cross-linguistically due to, amongst other factors, the absence or presence of grammatical aspect. While speakers of aspect languages generally focus on the process, speakers of non-aspect languages tend to perceive the event holistically and focus on endpoints. This investigation examines visual endpoint salience as a further factor that shapes event encoding. Thus, in this model, grammatical aspect is seen as a part of a more complex system of factors that determine event construal. The analyses, which cover German speakers, English speakers, and German-speaking learners of English, involve linguistic production data and results from memory performance tests. The findings show that the focus on endpoints increases for salient stimuli. While German speakers and learners of English show a tendency to focus on endpoints, a clear preference for focusing on the process can be observed in English speakers. Verbalizing endpoints correlates with the ability to remember them in a memorization task. The implications of these outcomes are discussed in the context of two factors which shape event encoding: grammatical aspect and endpoint salience.

This article reviews Contrastive Studies in Morphology and Syntax978-1-350-07918-2