This study investigates the role of emotional linguistic input in learning novel words with abstract and concrete denotations. It is widely accepted that concrete words are processed more easily than abstract ones. Several theories of vocabulary acquisition additionally propose a critical role of sensorimotor and emotional information during novel…

This article explores how multiple linguistic cues interact in predictive processing among second language (L2) learners. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated whether learners of German use case and prosody cues together to assign thematic roles and predict post-verbal arguments. During the experiment, participants listened…

"One" anaphora (e.g., "this is a good one") has been used as a key diagnostic in syntactic analyses of the English noun phrase, and "'one'-replacement" has also figured prominently in debates about the learnability of language. However, much of this work has been based on faulty premises, as a few perceptive…

The article deals with the analysis of the addressee's factor foregrounding in the limerick discourse. The study demonstrates that the limerick discourse is characterised by an addresser-writer's and an addressee-reader/listener's reciprocality via idiosyncratic protagonists portrayed by an addresser-writer. A limerick presents a laconic…

To avoid potential miscommunication resulting from structural ambiguity, speakers and listeners often rely on differences in prosodic realization. For instance, the sentence "Jennifer blackmailed the boss of the clerk [who was dishonest"][subscript RC'] is realized with different prosody depending on the attachment of the relative clause…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

South Africa is a country characterised by great linguistic diversity. Large indigenous languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, are spoken by many millions of people, as well as the languages with European roots, such as Afrikaans and English, which are spoken by several millions and used by many more in daily life. This situation provides a…

The concept of semantic prosody has attracted great research interest in language teaching. Identifying learners' perception of semantic prosody and collocation may be beneficial to vocabulary teaching. This study analyzes two pairs of synonyms in English writings of Chinese students and English native speakers based on the ICNALE corpus. The…

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the…

This study looks at the discursive construction and negotiation of hybrid identities within binational couples. I analyze conversations produced by Anglophones married to German-speaking Swiss residing in central Switzerland. I employ Bucholtz & Hall's sociocultural linguistic model (2004, 2005, 2010), which views identity as emergent in…

Identical rhymes (right/write, attire/retire) are considered satisfactory and even artistic in French poetry but are considered unsatisfactory in English. This has been a consistent generalization over the course of centuries, a surprising fact given that other aspects of poetic form in French were happily applied in English. This paper puts…

A series of phonetic production and perception experiments were designed to describe the phonological or phonetic domains of two effects in spoken English: final lengthening, generally interpreted as a mark for the edge of some linguistically-defined unit of speech production, and stress-timed shortening, generally interpreted as evidence for…

Sociolinguistic research on linguistic change, i.e., the use of high rising terminal contours (HRTs) in declarative clauses, is reported based on interviews from 75 inhabitants of Porirua. Results show that linguistic change is in progress, with HRTs favored by young Maori and young Pakeha women. Results are explained in terms of HRTs as positive…

Reports a preliminary investigation into the pitch correlates of politeness formulae produced by English and Japanese informants of both sexes. Because of differences in sociosemiotic function of pitch, Japanese females' pitch is more differentiated from the Japanese male pitch than is that of the English female from the English male. (Author/PJM)

Despite a survey carried out on the teaching of Spanish language in British and Irish universities that showed one-third of the respondents considered the teaching of Spanish intonation unimportant, examples are presented to show that it is necessary in Spanish language instruction. (HP)