Problems of methodology and explanation in word order universals research

Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals

A Corpus-Based, Pilot Study of Lexical Stress Variation in American English

Phonological free variation describes the phenomenon of there being more than one pronunciation for a word without any change in meaning (e.g. because, schedule, vehicle). The term also applies to words that exhibit different stress patterns (e.g. academic, resources, comparable) with no change in meaning or grammatical category. A corpus-based analysis of free variation is a useful tool for testing the validity of surveys of speakers' pronunciation preferences for certain variants. The current paper presents the results of a corpus-based pilot study of American English, in an attempt to replicate Mompéan's 2009 study of British English

Laryngeal stop systems in contact: connecting present-day acquisition findings and historical contact hypotheses

This article examines the linguistic forces at work in present-day second language and bilingual acquisition of laryngeal contrasts, and to what extent these can give us insight into the origin of laryngeal systems of Germanic voicing languages like Dutch, with its contrast between prevoiced and unaspirated stops. The results of present-day child and adult second language acquisition studies reveal that both imposition and borrowing may occur when the laryngeal systems of a voicing and an aspirating language come into contact with each other. A scenario is explored in which socially dominant Germanic-speaking people came into contact with a Romance-speaking population, and borrowed the Romance stop system

Translation and linguistic innovation : the rise and fall of Russian loanwords in literary translation into Dutch

This paper examines the use of Russian loanwords in Dutch translations of Russian literary texts from the period 1970-2009. In an increasingly globalized world, as more information is exchanged across cultural borders worldwide, one might expect a growth in the number and use of loanwords, even between cultures that are relatively distant from each other such as Dutch and Russian. In the case study conducted, which was based on a representative corpus of 20 Dutch translations of Russian novels, we found that while there was a relative growth in the number of loanwords used in the 1970's and 1980's, the trend since the 1990's has been downwards. In the earlier period the public's interest in dissident Russian literature and in the cultural developments of the Glasnost period was intense, which in turn stimulated literary translators to use foreignizing translation strategies, bringing the (Russian) source text closer to the (Dutch) target public. With the rise of new genres (postmodernism and crime novels) in Russian literature and the changes in publishing policies this tendency diminished and the number of loanwords in translation decreased, which indicates a rise of domesticating translation strategies in Dutch culture in recent decades

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

A New Paradigm for the Etymology and Trend Study from the Perspective of Culturomics

As an emerging discipline in 2011, culturomics belongs to cultural studies mainly by way of diachronic research and large-scale corpora, so it could be significative for the etymology and trend studies. In this paper, a large-scale diachronic corpus was established based on culturomics, and the condition and quality basic-level category vocabulary (BLCV) is taken as examples for analyses, so as to obtain relevant data and conclusions. It is shown that about 90% of the condition and quality BLCV was originated earlier than Sui, Tang and the Five Dynasties, and the first-level BLCV is earlier than the second-level and the third-level in aspect of origin time. The higher BLCV level, the greater the use rate increase, with more obvious stable development in the diachronic respect. Thus, culturomics, as a new paradigm in linguistic researches, is confirmed to be feasible, distinctive and irreplaceable in an era of big data