CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

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LINGUISTICS

An Historical Novel or a Historical Novel? A Case of Variation in Spelling

Rodica Calciu, Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III

The form of the indefinite article before h is not an easy matter, as mentioned among others, by Jespersen, in A Modern English Grammar . The existence today of written corpora and other online resources allows for a wider and, hopefully, a more reliable examination of variants. The present paper presents the results obtained from an analysis of the forms of the indefinite article before words beginning with h found in the Gutenberg corpus, therefore, in literature, in a number of online reports of news and reviews published in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers (The Guardian, The Independent etc.) and, a considerable number of articles on marketing and management published in prestigious magazines (Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management etc.). And last but not least, the BNC. Quantitative data are presented and accounted for. An examination of the form of the indefinite article before u [ju:] is also undergone and data presented in the second part of the paper.

Ogden's Basic English, a Forerunner of Our “Unofficial” Lingua Franca English in the European Union.

Ingrid Fernandez de Retana, University of Klagenfurt

In the 1930s, the Cambridge linguist, philosopher and logician Charles K. Ogden developed a simplified language called Basic. Basic is an acronym and stands for British American Scientific International Commercial.

A vocabulary of 850 words and a few grammar rules constitute the essence of English, which is meant to be an instrument for communication and not a means for identification.

In Ogden's own words: Basic English is an attempt to give to everyone a second, or international, language which will take as little of the learner's time as possible… Basic is designed to be the international language of the future.

English and Stress-timing

Sonja Filipovic , Sonja" , University of Novi Sad

English is said to be a language with strongly rhythmical nature. Its typical rhythmical structure involves the alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables at roughly equal intervals, which is the phenomenon referred to as stress-timing.

This paper tries to show that this phenomenon is ubiquitous in English – it operates in the domain of the word, the phrase and connected speech. In addition to this, the paper tries to account for the way in which it works and also points to some other phenomena which it initiates (like stress clash avoidance and phonemic changes: gradation, elision, assimilation). Thus, at word level it accounts for the typical stress patterns of English words and stress pattern variability (e.g. antidisestablishmentarianism /" Q nt I " dIsIs " t Q blI S m « n ' tE« rI « nIzm /, cigarette /' sIg«ret /, /" sIg« ' ret /). At phrase level it accounts for stress clash avoidance (e.g. antique / Q n ' ti : k /, but antique chair /' Q nti : k ' tSE« /. At the level of connected speech, it accounts for the distribution of stress and the resulting phonemic changes (e.g. 'John should have 'come 'yesterday / dZn S«d«v kAm jest«deI /.)

On Not Remembering/Knowing the Right Words

Dušan Gabrovšek, University of Ljubljana

The paper focuses on the onomasiological situation in monolingual dictionary consultation, that is, one when the reference need is not one of looking up the meaning of an unfamiliar word or sense, which we are probably most aware of, but one of knowing what you want to say but cannot think of or do not know the right word(s). There are several English-language reference sources available for this kind of reference need, notably several »reverse« dictionaries, the »Lexicon«, the »Language Activator«, the »Superthesaurus«, and a few more, including at least one online reference. Such sources are typically hybrid works, in the sense that they try to provide several kinds of information that we normally expect to find selectively in different sources (general dictionaries, thesauruses, dictionaries of quotations, etc.). The work analyzed in more detail is the recent (2000) American Flip Dictionary , by Barbara Ann Kipfer, designed »for when you know what you want to say but can't think of the word« (cover subtitle). User perspective in particular is highlighted throughout.

Belletristic Translation into English: What Price the Same Order of Words?

Nada Marija Grošelj, University of Ljubljana

The order of clause constituents in Slovene is largely guided by functional sentence perspective, while the sequencing in English is grammar-based and much less flexible. This means that the English translation of a Slovene clause will often display a different order of constituents, e.g. the shift of a non-initial subject into initial position. In poetry, however, the position assigned to an entity, action, or concept within a line of verse has important implications for the overall meaning, text pattern, and poetic effect. Accordingly, efforts are made to preserve the same order of participants in translation, which often results in the assignment of a new syntactic role to the participant and the restructuring of the entire clause, as in passivisation. This paper discusses such instances of clause restructuring in regard to the contemporary Slovene poet Dane Zajc and the English translation of his poetry, focusing on the most common structures undergoing such changes (such as Slovene non-initial subject or non-final object) and on the most frequent types of restructuring (such as passivisation and there- clauses).

A Not Unimportant Question – the Multiple Negation

Gašper Ilc, University of Ljubljana

In regard to the semantic interpretation of the multiple negation, languages have been divided into two major groups: (i) languages where a syntactic construction containing two or more negative elements is interpreted as negative ( negative concord languages ); and (ii) languages where two or more negative elements within the same syntactic construction semantically cancel one another out, therefore, the construction is interpreted as affirmative ( double negation languages ). Romance and Slavic languages have been claimed to belong to the former, and Germanic languages, including English, to the latter group. The paper addresses the problem of this classification and shows that within the same language multiple negation constructions with both semantic interpretations can be found. Examining English data in a greater detail, we argue that the semantic interpretation of the multiple negation depends on two factors: (i) the scope of negation ( clausal / predicate / constituent negation ), and (ii) the negative relationship between the negative elements ( contradictory / contrary opposition ).

Unenthusiastic Europeans or Affected English: the Impact of Rhythm, Tones and Pitch Range on the Expression of Attitudes

Smiljana Komar, University of Ljubljana

Attitudes and emotions are expressed by linguistic as well as extra-linguistic features. The linguistic features comprise the lexis, the word-order and the intonation of the utterance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that rhythm, tones and pitch range have on our perception of emotions and attitudes. I will show that our expression as well as our perception and understanding of attitudes and emotions are realized in accordance with the intonation patterns typical of the mother tongue. When listening to non-native speakers using our mother tongue we expect and tolerate errors in pronunciation, grammar and lexis but are quite ignorant and intolerant of non-native intonation patterns.

Slovenes speaking English often sound unenthusiastic to English ears. An analysis of speech produced by 11 speakers of other European languages has shown that they all sound unenthusiastic, flat and even rude to English ears. I will show that the reasons for such an impression are to be found in the syllable-timed rhythm, the lack of the fall-rise tone and a narrow pitch range with no or very few pitch jumps or slumps.

Some Reflections on the Language of Contemporary Scottish Prose

Dora Macek, University of Zagreb

A northern variety of Old English dialects developed in Scotland into what became known as Scots. This language of the Scottish court and literature prior to the Acts of Union was abandoned by both king and poets. English replaced Scots in public institutions from the church and administration, to the courts and schools and literature as well. The most fatal development however, was the change of attitude of the Scottish themselves, who came to regard Scots as an inferior variety of English. There have been repeated attempts by Scottish writers from Burns to the present day to revive Scots as a national language of Scotland. Since the 1970ies a number of projects have been launched to study the present state of Scots with the aim of initiating a language policy which would reintroduce Scots into public life as one of the national languages of Scotland. A number of Scottish authors have used Scots in their works, particularly in poetry. This paper will examine the language of some contemporary prose texts seeking to establish the density of Scots elements and estimate their place on the scale between Standard Scottish English and Scots.

The Interaction between Structure and Pronunciation in English Affixation

Tatjana Marvin, University of Ljubljana

It is a well-known fact that in English, syllabification of derived words differs according to the attaching affix, Chomsky and Halle (1968). In words such as hinder , meter , burgle the final sonorant of the roots /hindr/, /mitr/, /burgl/ is syllabic in word final position, following the rule of schwa insertion that makes a final sonorant preceded by a consonant syllabic. However, in related forms where these words are followed by a vowel-initial affix, such as hindrance , metric , burglar , the sonorants in question are not syllabic, but are syllabified as onsets of the following syllable. Not all affixes beginning in a vowel have the same effect on syllabification. The participle forming affix - ing triggers the schwa-insertion regardless of its vowel-initial status, e.g. ( hinder / hInd « /; hindrance / hIndr«ns /, but hindering / hInd«rIN /, */ hIndrIN /). Chomsky and Halle (1968) treat this property as inherent to the attaching affix; i.e. - ance in hindrance differs from - ing in hindering with respect to triggering the schwa-insertion rule. Using a finer-grained syntax of words, this paper derives the differences in pronunciation of the above mentioned words as following not exclusively from a diacritic on the affix, as in Chomsky and Halle (1968), but also from the attachment position of the affix in the syntactic structure of the word.

“House-high Favourites?” – A Contrastive Analysis of Adjective-Noun Collocations in German and English

Philippa Maurer-Stroh, University of Klagenfurt

Everybody is talking about collocational analyses these days… Despite recent advances in the monolingual sector, the bilingual environment has not yet come under close scrutiny. It is especially the adjective-noun combinations that have become the focus of attention when it comes to contrastive phraseological studies. Adjectives in particular are subject to semantic tailoring and it is important to bear in mind that (predictable) interlingual lexical one-to-one occurrence, such as the English starless night and the German sternlose Nacht , is a mere exception rather than the rule in the bilingual adjective-noun state of affairs. Factors that have to be considered are (non-) compositionality in contrastive multiword units, like barefaced lie faustdicke Lüge (‘a lie as thick as a man's fist'), and metaphorical extensions, like haushoher Favorit hot favourite (* house-high favourite ) as well as structural differences in the two languages in question, like (at) short notice kurzfristig .

Particles and Prefixes in English and Serbian

Nataša Milivojevic, University of Novi Sad

This paper attempts to, by means of contrastive analysis, prove that particles belonging to phrasal verbs in English are in their linguistic essence equivalent to Serbian perfective verbal prefixes. This hypothesis has been backed up by a brief research of 40 translation equivalents, which has shown that the phrasal verb particles in English and the perfective prefixes in Serbian are both markers of telic aktionsart on the lexical level of the verb. Also, the particles and the prefixes alike do affect ‘aspectual use' of verbs in their respective languages: while the particles in English do not block their use with the progressive, the prefixes in Serbian block their use with imperfective aspect. It has also been shown that both semantically and grammatically, the appropriate solution for translating the English progressive of phrasal verbs into Serbian is MODAL AORIST of Serbian perfective verbs. On both lexical and grammatical level, Serbian

(lg. A) and English (lg. B) seem to have a CONVERGENT relationship, hence there exists a contrast between Serbian and English; the analysed language elements are also SIMILAR with respect to distribution and EQUIVALENT with respect to meaning.

Some Like It Progressive

Silvana Orel Kos, University of Ljubljana

The English verb system includes the category of aspect. English aspect is expressed through the Simple and the Progressive form. The paper investigates the relation between the notion of habit and that of aspectual choice. The notion of habit is often associated with States or stative situation types and the use of the Simple form. The author tries to show that the notion of habit is not a semantic feature inherent in the Simple form, but rather an extralinguistic notion that can be expressed by either aspectual form, depending on the communicative function chosen by the language user. The paper illustrates the different communicative functions in their respective communicative settings, focusing on the use of the Progressive form to express habits and how to deal with the notion of ‘emotional colouring'.

The -ing Forms in English Word-formation

Jelena Parizoska, University of Zagreb

English grammars traditionally analyse the -ing forms of verbs as either gerunds or present participles. As gerunds, they have a nominal function, while as participles their function is either verbal or adjectival. These distinctions are also reflected in the morphological processes in English. The paper reviews the different definitions of -ing forms in a number of major English grammars and English word-formation manuals. Specifically, it focuses on the collocations of an -ing form and a noun and explores how the first element is defined in word-formation. Whereas some authors consider the -ing form in such collocations to be an adjective, others define it as a (verbal) noun and treat the entire collocation as a compound. The paper reviews the criteria used to establish the different definitions of -ing forms and tries to show that the relationship between the -ing form and the verb are more complex than the simple classification which recognizes only the verbal or the gerundial interpretation of such forms.

The Semantics of Heart : Translational Problems

Hortensia Pârlog, University of Timisoara

Words hardly ever occur on their own, because they can hardly mean anything on their own; when asked about the meaning of an isolated word, in order to figure it out, what one does is try to place it in a context or use it in a collocation. The verbal contexts in which words appear influence or at least clarify their semantic value; it is because of contextual factors that a word may have more than one meaning. Therefore, the analysis above word level is extremely important. An analysis of translational decisions may also prove to be a valuable source of information in establishing the semantics of a lexical item.

The above statements are illustrated by discussing the semantics of heart . The word occurs in a great number of collocations in both English and Romanian, of which eight will be analysed: heart + verb; verb + heart ; heart + of phrase; adjective + heart ; heart + head noun; head noun + of heart ; adjective + preposition + heart ; sayings, fixed expressions.

Phonemic Transcriptions in British and American Dictionaries

Rastislav Šuštaršic, University of Ljubljana

In view of recent criticisms (e.g. J. Windsor Lewis in JIPA, 2003) concerning vowel symbols in some British English dictionaries (in particular in the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation, 2001), I would like to extend the discussion on English phonemic transcriptions by including those that typically occur in standard American dictionaries, and by comparing the most common conventions of British and American dictionaries. In addition to symbols for both vowels and consonants, the paper will also deal with the different representations of word accentuation and the issue of consistency regarding application of phonemic (systemic, broad), rather than phonetic (allophonic, narrow) transcription. The different transcriptions are assessed from the points of view of their departures from the International Phonetic Alphabet, their overlapping with orthographic representation (spelling) and their appropriateness in terms of reflecting actual pronunciation in standard British and/or American pronunciation. This appropriateness is judged within the specific context of EFL rather than native speakers' use of English monolingual (general and pronunciation) dictionaries.

Towards an Atlas of English Surnames

Wolfgang Viereck, University of Bamberg

The English of England has already been put on the map in a number of atlases. There are national atlases as well as regional ones; there are very detailed maps and simplified ones.

Surprisingly perhaps, there is not yet an atlas of family names.

In addition to the atlas proper and as part of the atlas it is my intention to produce a grammar of family names that will consist of two parts. The first part will be concerned with aspects of expression and the second part with aspects of content. Thus the first part will deal with, e.g., graphemics, that is variant spellings of names. A further aspect will be family names in relation to the history of word-formation. The arrangement of the second part of the atlas will be according to the origin of the family names, namely local surnames, surnames of relationship, surnames of occupation or office and nicknames.

Just as a linguistic atlas must be selective with regard to the features presented, the projected atlas of English surnames must be of the same type. The number of surnames is just far too high. My treatment will be both synchronic and diachronic, exploring present-day telephone directories, but also, among other sources, late 19th century census data and the still earlier Mormon International Genealogical Index. For my presentation I shall select a few names, some with a rather short history in England and some whose spellings still reveal Old English dialectal peculiarities.

An Empirical Study of Dictionary Use: The Case of Slovenia

Marjeta Vrbinc, University of Ljubljana

The paper presents the results of the first research into dictionary use conducted in Slovenia on a sample of 70 students from the Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The first part deals with test subjects and their level of knowledge and describes the questionnaire used in the study. The second part presents the results and compares the achievements of this group of test subjects, while the final part deals with the causes for these differences and proposes steps that could be taken to increase student and teacher awareness concerning dictionary use and dictionary skills.

Can Inflectional Suffixes Function as the Derivational Ones?

Jelena Vujic, University of Belgrade

Inflection is one of the morphological processes, traditionally used for formation of grammatical categories. However, a great number of words in the lexicon of English are formed by the means of inflectional affixes, which apart from the grammatical possess a significant level of lexical meaning, proving that these inflectional suffixes can indeed have a derivational function. That is a central problem of this paper whose main aim is to emphasize the need to regard inflection as a potential, and not so scarcely used, word-formation mechanism in English. For that purpose a thorough research was conducted, and some of the examples found are given in this paper as I tried to answer the question from the title. The variety and illustrativeness of the examples given support the intention of contemporary linguists to redefine the traditional morphological theory in the way that both derivation and inflection would be regarded as complementary processes operating within a much larger system and that is a lexicon.

Simplification of Language

Brigitte Weber, University of Klagenfurt

It is tempting to wonder if the simplification of our lifestyles would lead to better mental and physical health? If we offer an analogy from cuisine, simplification might be the equivalent of offering one nutritious main dish instead of a seven-course meal.

In language, simplification may be seen as the use of a clear, predictable, easy-to-learn system as opposed to one which is idiosyncratic and complex linguistic.

Using an excerpt from the Cameroon Pidgin Bible, I will illustrate aspects of the simplification of a codified European language. A bible passage is not ideal because the translators believe they are dealing with the inspired word of God and so do not want to alter the meaning. However, it is chosen here because it is well known to most people. We might ask if this Pidgin passage loses or gains impact when compared with the version in the Standard lexical source language.

Indefinite and Continuative Interpretations of the English Present Perfect

Katarina Dea Žetko, Vocational school of postal services and telecommunications

The objective of our paper is to demonstrate that the English present perfect is not by inherent meaning either indefinite or continuative. Notions like indefinite and continuative are context-dependent interpretations of whole constructions. However, context is not the only factor that triggers these two interpretations. Continuative interpretation can also be triggered by certain adverbials, negative constructions and verbs in the progressive form. However, even these factors do not always guarantee continuative interpretations. Even if there is the adverbial for... in the perfect construction, continuative meaning can be cancelled by the context, this fact being a proof that this meaning is merely an implicature. Our objective will be, hopefully, achieved by demonstrating how different factors interact and trigger either indefinite or continuative interpretations which are not inherent in the present perfect itself, but arise from other factors belonging to the pragmatics of the linguistic and/or extra-linguistic context. In sum, our paper will attempt to provide sufficient evidence that there is no indefinite/continuative distinction in the English perfect and reach the conclusion that the inherent meaning of the perfect is merely locating the situation somewhere in a period that starts before the time of utterance and leads up to it.