Forum for Linguistic Studies

The grammaticality of adverb positions varies by language. Consequently, L2 and L1 speakers may differ from each other in their acquisition of adverb positions. Given that L2 Welsh speakers outnumber L1 Welsh speakers in Wales, differences in acquisition may change which adverb positions occur in contemporary Welsh. This study compares which adverb positions L2 and L1 speakers produce in the spoken data from Cardiff in the CorCenCC corpus (Knight et al., 2020) in order to identify any differences in acquisition. Comparisons of L2 and L1 English speakers find that L2 speakers consistently acquire novel adverb positions yet they frequently use ungrammatical adverb positions. They also do not acquire additional constraints on adverb positions. This study largely reinforces these findings. First, L2 Welsh speakers produce every adverb position that L1 speakers produce. Secondly, although the definiteness constraint that Borsley et al. (2009: 50) describe is not productive in the sample of Cardiff Welsh speakers, L1 speakers exhibit a heaviness constraint on V-Adv-O that L2 speakers do not. Therefore, L1 transfer neither inhibits the acquisition of adverb positions nor facilitates the acquisition of additional constraints. However, unlike L2 English speakers, L2 Welsh speakers do not produce ungrammatical adverb positions. This likely derives from the lack of transferable adverb positions between Welsh and English rather than a lack of transfer. Therefore, this sample of Cardiff Welsh reinforces the crosslinguistic consistency of L2 speakers’ acquisition of adverb positions. It also suggests that L2 Welsh speakers most likely diverge from L1 speakers in the contexts in which they use adverb positions rather than the adverb positions that they use. 

Based on deficiencies of existing researches, this paper, aiming at taking the tolerance of counterexamples reflecting seeming syntax-semantic mismatch in generic sentences, and the online cognitive process of these sentences into the same analyzing framework, proposes the Interactive Reference Point-target Relationship and Re-categorization Model (IRPR-RC Model) to give a unified explanation to the main types of counterexample-tolerating generic sentences (GS), thus further fulfilling the generalization commitment of cognitive linguistics. According to this model: 1) there is an interaction relationship between reference points and targets connecting generic words and attribute words in counterexample-tolerating generic sentences (GS); 2) this interactive relationship provides the premise for re-categorization, which selects a particular sub-category and makes it salient. This process can also be viewed as a phenomenon of attribute words coercing the generic words; 3) the model can be divided into three types: Focusing Type, Imbedding Type and Repulsing Type, according to different operation mechanism of IRPR-RC Model in counterexample-tolerating generic sentences (GS).

As the basic notion in cognitive grammar, construal is expounded from various aspects in terms of different conversational purposes in linguistic communication. Based on the well-discussed dimensions of construal from Langacker’s view, this study investigates the dimensions of construal from a dialogic view, particularly in cases of English wh-dialogues, with the aim of deciphering how the dialogic focus, the wh-word positioned at the head of the wh-question, is cognitively grounded in the answer. According to the ways that such wh-words are grounded, the dynamic adjustment of dialogic focuses in wh-dialogues is then examined, hopefully to shed some light on the interpretation of the utterance meaning from a dialogic view.

The process from individual language to communal language, from individual experience to communal embodiment, and from individual cognition to collective cognition is based on human embodiment and social interactions. Metaphor and metonymy are two basic cognitive approaches to the world. Thus, human cognition is metaphorical and metonymic in essence, and metaphonymy is embodied and social in nature. In the perspective of social embodied cognition, this paper, taking social metaphonymy as a theoretical foundation and the Chinese age appellations as the corpus, demonstrates that Chinese age appellation has eight metaphonymic categories, namely, physiology, gender, wisdom, accessories, raising, behavior, animal and plant, and number. The paper, by expounding the embodiment and metaphonymy, aims to reveal metaphonymic cognitive mechanism of Chinese age appellations.

This empirical study investigates Chinese children’s developmental trajectory of pure metonymy comprehension. In the light of the experiment design in Jiang’s (2019) and Köder and Falkum’s (2020) studies, the present study, adopting a quantitative approach, employed a modified behavioral experiment and an eye-tracking experiment. Drawing on the experimental data, the study finds that: a) children’s metonymy comprehension performance showed a tendency towards the U-shape in the behavioral experiment tasks; b) children’s target (metonymy) fixation proportion, however, developed with age in the eye-tracking tasks; c) children’s metonymy comprehension not only developed with age but also showed different features in different difficulty levels of metonymies. Thus, this study explains the U-shape by arguing that age-4 and -5 children’s pure metonymy comprehension ability can be masked not only by a literal preference reported in Köder and Falkum’s (2020) study but also by the high randomness of task results of the age-3 participants and the high level of difficulty of culture-related metonymies. Moreover, the study also argues that year six is a crucial stage for children’s metonymy comprehension development, which provides implications for children’s early figurative language education.

Based on corpus data, this paper finds that the semantics of “跑/run” have similarities, which lie in the consistency of the central meanings and common usages. The differences are: 1) the meanings of “run” are significantly more than those of “跑”, resulting in a great divergence in the numbers of meanings; 2) compared with “跑”, the implications of “run” display a higher level of specificity.
On the basis of cognitive theories, the paper has yielded the following findings. The semantic overlaps of “跑/run” root in their identical prototypical meanings. The semantic differences are generated by the following factors: 1) the image-schema distribution of “run” is wider with more abstract representations than that of “跑”, due to which many unique semantic items come into being; 2) semantic systems of “跑/run” adopt different metaphorical methods, contributing to more comprehensive cognitive domains of the semantic mapping and closer semantic interrelations of “run” than those of “跑”.

This paper examines the role of Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) and linguistic typological similarity in the L3 acquisition of English tense and aspect among Uygur speakers with L2 Mandarin Chinese (Chinese hereafter). LAH asserts that the emerging verbal inflections at the early stage of language acquisition primarily function as markers of the lexical aspect and thus predicts universality for acquisition of tense and aspect. However, with an assumption of language transfer, the typological closer relationship of Uygur with English in terms of the tense and aspect system was expected to trigger L1 transfer in L3 acquisition. The study analyzed the English tense and aspect forms used by the participants (N = 25) for verbs of four distinct lexical aspects (50 target items) in contexts of past. The result shows that the lexical aspect influences the appropriate use of past tense—past tense marker aligned with telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments), -ing with activities (for inappropriate uses), and nonpast with states (for inappropriate uses), and the influence is observed at each proficiency level. The results show little evidence for language transfer in the acquisition of the English past tense, either from L1 Uygur or L2 Chinese; instead, the data suggest that L3 acquisition of tense and aspect is more subject to acquisitional universality (LAH).

With increasing internationalization in higher education, more and more Chinese universities are providing students with exchange programs in cooperation with foreign universities. Hitherto, however, research about Chinese university students’ intercultural competence in a study-abroad context has been relatively rare. The present study, adopting a mixed-method research design, examines the development of Chinese students’ intercultural competence in a short-term study-abroad program, as well as the factors that might have a role to play in the process. It is found that the students made significant progress in intercultural competence after participating in the program and factors such as attitudes towards intercultural communication, cultural knowledge storage, English language proficiency and engagement in intercultural communication are important contributors to the development of intercultural competence in a short-term study-abroad context.

As the foundation of English learning, the acquisition of vocabulary has always been a hot topic in the fields of second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. Contrasted with intentional vocabulary acquisition, incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) relates to lexical gains as a by-product of main cognitive activities. In the field of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Chinese high schools, the incidental acquisition of English vocabulary has increasingly attracted the academic attention in recent years. However, few empirical studies have focused on the incidental acquisition of English vocabulary engendered by doing content retelling tasks. In light of the inadequacy, this study adopted the quality audio-visual material as input and content retelling as output (forming an input-output-input circle), aiming at exploring the effect of retelling on Chinese high school EFL learners’ IVA. Results indicated that learners who retold the content of the audio-visual material between two viewings can pick up more words. In this process, the attempted use of new words in oral reproduction plays a positive role in strengthening the immediate acquisition and long-term retention of the target words.

The past eighteen years witnessed the rapid development of experimental philosophy of language. Adopting a bibliometric approach, this study examines the research trends and status quo of this burgeoning field based on a corpus of 237 publications retrieved from PhilPapers. It is observed that experimental philosophy of language has undergone three stages, the initiation stage, the development stage, and the extension stage, across which there is a clear upward trend in the annual number of publications. Michael Devitt, Edouard Machery, John Turri, Nat Hansen, et al., are found to be the most productive philosophers, testifying their leading positions in this field. Journals, instead of books, are the major homes of works in this area. The analysis also yields a list of influential works, including the seminal work “Semantics, Cross-cultural Style” and other significant publications on the semantics of various types of expressions. Relatedly, the major research themes are found to include not only intuitions about the reference of proper names, but also a wide array of philosophically and linguistically interesting issues like the meaning of color adjectives, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste, the norms of assertions and the essence of lies, etc. These findings showcase that experimental philosophy of language has broadened the research territory and offered deep insights into central issues of philosophy of language that are beyond the reach of the conventional armchair methodology.