Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2014

The vocabulary of emotion terms has been treated both within and across cultures. Emotion terms, especially terms of universal emotion concepts, have been largely discussed. What has received little or no attention at all is the state of no emotion. The paper explores this state in English and Greek. It discusses the terms and the mechanisms (metaphors and metonymies) that feature in expressions showing no emotion. It will be argued (a) that the interplay between metaphor and metonymy is a very important operation for the conceptualization of no emotion; (b) in addition to shared experience, the culture-specific schemas govern this state in the two languages.

The kernel of the semantic representation of a predicate in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is based on its characterization in terms of an Aktionsart typology based on Vendler’s (1957) classes plus some additional elements from Smith (1997) and Dowty (1979). This means that event structures are mainly considered a lexical phenomenon pertaining to predicates, and only occasionally higher predicational structures are considered in event construction. Even though this approach is adequate to a great extent, there are still some problems in the approach taken in RRG. The most significant drawback is that non-lexical aspects appear intermingled with predicate-only features, which leads to misinterpretations and misclassifications of predicates. Consequently, it sees more sensible to bring a functional model of grammar like RRG to a compromise position and, thus, consider in what ways different units identified as belonging to the different layers in RRG’s syntactic projections ‘conspire’ in the final aspectual characterization of events. In this line, this paper will propose a classification of aspectual features in terms of the levels found in the functional projection of the clause as devised in RRG, namely the Predicate Level (the domain of Aktionsart typology), the Nucleus (where morphological aspect has scope) and the Core (the locus for what will be described as ‘aspectuality’ features).

In Spanish locative constructions, a different form of the copula is selected in relation to the semantic properties of the grammatical subject: sentences that locate objects require estar while those that locate events require ser (both translated in English as ‘to be’). In an ERP study, we examined whether second language (L2) speakers of Spanish are sensitive to the selectional restrictions that the different types of subjects impose on the choice of the two copulas. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish and two groups of L2 Spanish speakers (24 beginners and 18 advanced speakers) were recruited to investigate the processing of ‘object/event + estar/ser’ permutations. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on correct (object + estar; event + ser) and incorrect (object + ser; event + estar) sentences while their brain activity was recorded. In line with previous studies (Leone-Fernández, Molinaro, Carreiras, & Barber, 2012; Sera, Gathje, & Pintado, 1999), the results of the grammaticality judgment for the native speakers showed that participants correctly accepted object + estar and event + ser constructions. In addition, while ‘object + ser’ constructions were considered grossly ungrammatical, ‘event + estar’ combinations were perceived as unacceptable to a lesser degree. For these same participants, ERP recording time-locked to the onset of the critical word ‘en’ showed a larger P600 for the ser predicates when the subject was an object than when it was an event (*La silla es en la cocina vs. La fiesta es en la cocina). This P600 effect is consistent with syntactic repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. For estar predicates (La silla está en la cocina vs. *La fiesta está en la cocina), the findings showed a central-frontal negativity between 500–700 ms. Grammaticality judgment data for the L2 speakers of Spanish showed that beginners were significantly less accurate than native speakers in all conditions, while the advanced speakers only differed from the natives in the event+ser and event+estar conditions. For the ERPs, the beginning learners did not show any effects in the time-windows under analysis. The advanced speakers showed a pattern similar to that of native speakers: (1) a P600 response to ‘object + ser’ violation more central and frontally distributed, and (2) a central-frontal negativity between 500–700 ms for ‘event + estar’ violation. Findings for the advanced speakers suggest that behavioral methods commonly used to assess grammatical knowledge in the L2 may be underestimating what L2 speakers have actually learned.

Cast within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper sheds new light on the ‘thematic management’ of discourse and its interaction with ‘rhetorical management’ in particular, by exploring how the interplay between thematic structure and thematic progression is instantiated in a specific genre, news reports, in English and Spanish. The study shows that, even though there exist a number of differences that are language-determined, genre constraints seem to exert a greater influence because, generally speaking, English and Spanish news reports show greater similarities than differences.

The lexicon of a language is not an unstructured list of words. In this paper, we exemplify some of the basic conceptual structures that cognitive linguists work with and we discuss their potential applications to lexicographic work. Specifically, we focus on the possible advantages of using cognitive linguistics as a theoretical background in the structuring of entries, meanings, and idioms in dictionaries. In connection with these organizational issues, we discuss the knowledge-based organization of the mental lexicon (known as conceptual frames), and a type of organization of the mental lexicon that seems to be much more characteristic of Hungarian than of English: organization according to certain “root morphemes.” We also deal with the conceptualization of an element within a topic area through another element within the same topic area (known as conceptual metonymy), the conceptualization of a topic area in terms of another topic area (known as conceptual metaphor); and the internal organization of the various senses of a word-concept (known as polysemy). We devote a section to idioms and their role as well as possible arrangement in the dictionary. Such thematic structures have, on the whole, remained outside the focus of everyday lexicographic practice. Here, we hope to demonstrate their importance and usefulness.

This paper characterises complex predicates and light verb constructions in Modern Irish. Light verbs are attested in many of the world’s languages (Alsina, Bresnan & Sells, 2001; Butt, 1995, 2003). Cross linguistically, there appears to be a common class of verbs involved in these constructions and generally there is agreement that light verbs contribute to the formation of complex predicates. Light verbs seem have a non-light or ‘heavy’ verb counterpart. In this paper we discuss the light verb constructions (LVC) as found in modern Irish and how they form complex predicates. We claim that the light verb (LV) encodes the event process initiation (or cause) and the matrix verb indicates the bounded component or result. In light verb constructions, the matrix verb appears in Modern Irish syntax as a verbal-noun form. The function of light verbs in these constructions is to modulate the event and sub-event semantics. We distinguish between auxiliary verbs constructions (AVC) and those constructions involving complex predicated and light verbs (Aikhenvald & Dixon, 2006; Anderson, 2006). We provide evidence based on an analysis of Irish data that shows how aspect and argument structure considerations are resolved for the complex predicate within the light verb construction via the linking system between semantics and syntax. We motivate a functional account, based on Role and Reference Grammar (Nolan, 2012; Nolan & Diedrichsen, 2013; Van Valin, 2005; Van Valin & LaPolla, 1997), that appeals to the analysis of complex predicates within a consideration of the layered structure of the clause.

In this article we investigate correlations between semantically equivalent expressions (organized in manner scales according to the formal properties of length, prosodic prominence, and grammaticalization) and their varying potential to trigger a certain metonymic interpretation. We focus on manner scales of past ability as well as semantically and logically similar expressions relating to human character traits/dispositions and external circumstances. Using the concepts of strength of metonymic link and coercion, we show that shorter, prosodically weaker and more grammaticalized members in these manner scales more strongly trigger the potentiality for actuality metonymy than their longer, prosodically stronger, and less grammaticalized counterparts.

The notion of “conceptual mapping”, as a set of correspondences between conceptual domains, was popularized in Cognitive Semantics, following seminal work by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), as a way of accounting for the basic cognitive activity underlying metaphor and metonymy. Strangely enough, Cognitive Semantics has paid little, if any, attention to other cases of so-called figurative language such as hyperbole, irony, paradox, and oxymoron. This paper contends that it is possible to account for these and other figures of thought in terms of the notion of conceptual mapping. It argues that the differences between these and other figurative uses of language are a matter of the nature of the domains involved in mappings and how they are made to correspond. Additionally, this paper examines constraints on mappings and concludes that the same factors that constrain metaphor and metonymy are operational in the case of mappings for the other figures of thought under discussion.

The small South American country of Ecuador has recently come to international attention for perceived threats to journalistic freedom: first a major defamation lawsuit against El Universo (filed in March 2011) for unfounded criticisms of President Correa, and more recently passage of a highly controversial law of communications in June, 2013. Due to these developments, there is reason to believe that media reportage in Ecuador will currently be highly circumspect in the expression of opinions and evaluations, discourse functions that have been investigated under the umbrella of ‘stance’ in previous linguistic investigations. However, the situation of media language use in Ecuador is further interesting in that there are both government newspapers as well as privately owned newspapers competing on the open market. Presumably these different newspapers will not be affected in the same ways by the legal actions of the last few years.To investigate that possibility, the present study documents the lexico-grammatical expression of stance in a large corpus of Ecuadorian newspaper reportage, comparing and contrasting the expression of stance in two major newspapers: El Telégrafo, controlled by the government, and El Comercio, a privately owned outlet. The study focuses on two major types of lexico-grammatical features used to express stance: que-complement clauses and adverbials. Although the two newspapers are quite similar in the devices preferred for the expression of stance, the analysis also identifies systematic patterns of difference. Surprisingly, the results show that it is the government-controlled newspaper that consistently expresses stance to a greater extent than the privately-owned paper. These results are interpreted relative to the recent legal events in Ecuador, perhaps indicating increased scrutiny of media reportage in the private sector than in the public sector.