Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self

Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy “a face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated ‘selfie’ as a social practice. The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized ‘icon’ and idealized ‘symbol’ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003). The selfie is arguably ‘a sui generis,’ whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice). The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and its’ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or “self-sexualisation” (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive. In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like ‘Reality TV’ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debord’s (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction

Nahuatl contemporary writing: studying convergence in the absence of a written norm

Language revitalisation (LR) is influenced by a concern with authenticity around which written conventions are largely seen as the result of careful designs based on authentic spoken usage. This dissertation proposes to see written conventions as the result of an authentication process carried on by a community of practice of writers, and to explore the points of convergence in this practice as a set of examples which could eventually become shared conventions in most varieties of a linguistic continuum. I focus on the revitalisation of Nahuatl, a linguistic continuum spoken in Mexico. The study of convergence in the written practice of Nahuatl must be carried out in a context of ideological, linguistic, and orthographical heterogeneity. I have tested a methodology to extensively investigate points of convergence between eight contemporary Nahuatl texts from eight contemporary varieties, comparing them with Classical Nahuatl (CN), an old Nahuatl variety codified in prescriptive sources. I have attempted to locate commonalities in these texts by identifying nuclear clauses (NCs): morphosyntactic structures which are a common feature across the Nahuatl continuum. I have used a Finite State (FS) model of CN to attempt a morphological analysis of the word types found in the contemporary texts. The word types that could be plausibly analysed as CN NCs by our FS model, were proposed as plausible points of convergence between the texts and CN. Using a force atlas diagram, each text was represented as a node in a network, with the distance between them being proportional to the number of plausible points of convergence between them. Findings are that the ambiguity of analyses proposed by the developing FS model are currently a pitfall of our approach, but that the plausible points of convergence could be used to locate texts occupying a ‘central’ position in an expanding network

A particle-centred approach on italian verb-particle constructions

2010 - 2011The following doctoral thesis, titled “A particle-centred approach on Italian Verb Particle Constructions” (hereinafter VPCs) aims at showing that the particle characterizing Italian Phrasal verbs such as su (up), giù (down), fuori (out), dentro (in/inside) and so on plays a key role in the constructions both syntactically and semantically. The framework adopted is based on the main syntactic theories developed by Z.Harris (1976) as well as on the Lexicon Grammar Method as pointed out by M. Gross (1981). I will suggest, gradually during the dissertation, that the spatial, aspectual and metaphorical meaning of a large portion of Italian VPCs such as scappare fuori di casa (to escape out of the house), tirare via un chiodo (to pull out the nail from the wall), mettere dentro il ladro (to put the thief inside), portare avanti un progetto (to carry out a project), tagliare fuori qualcuno da un discorso (to cut sb.out from a discussion) - are embedded only into the particle slot as the head verb can vary into a finite range of possibilities or it not occur at all. The head verb is in other words ‘week’ while the particle represents the powerful element (or ‘operator’ in lexicon-grammar terms) so that it cannot be considered a small added element (lat. ‘particula’): the particle affects the argument structure of the verb and carries the aspectual or spatial or idiomatic meaning. Moreover its syntactic autonomy is demonstrated by the fact that it can also occur without the head verb, in sentences such as su le mani (hand up), via di qui (away from here), fuori i soldi (money out), giù il governo (down with the government), Lazio avanti (Lazio ahead) that are defined “verbless particle constructions”. The thesis provides an in depth syntactic and semantic analysis of Italian VPCs, with interesting evidence from dictionaries and corpora, stressing the need to substitute the traditional “Verbocentrism” with an original Particle-Centred Approach. Finally the theoretical and applicative implications of such a change of perspective are pointed out. [edited by author]La tesi analizza i verbi sintagmatici dell’italiano – come tirare su, andare avanti, fare fuori - sulla base di un approccio trasformazionalista e distribuzionalista di matrice harrisiana (Harris 1976) e di una metodologia empirica di chiara derivazione grossiana (Gross 1992, Elia 2013). Un primo lemmario di più di 700 lemmi Verbo + particella locativa è stato collezionato a partire da una decina di opere lessicografiche. La nozione di lemma è stata poi sostituita con quella di ‘uso lessicale’ permettendo di distinguere con un costante processo di ‘moltiplicazione delle entrate’ due macroclassi ci costruzioni, composizionali e idiomatiche, per un totale di circa 800 usi lessicali diversi. Le costruzioni idiomatiche di tipo transitivo (213 entrate) sono state poi classificate entro nove distinte classi lessico-grammaticali. Queste costruzioni sono stata proiettate sul corpus LIP al fine di verificare empiricamente la presenza e la distribuzione di frequenza delle costruzioni V + particella (sia composizionali che idiomatiche) nel parlato dell’italiano. L’esplosione di usi idiomatici ha spinto ad indagare il fenomeno dell’ambiguità con maggiore acutezza fino a sostituire il verbocentrsmo delle prime analisi con un approccio del tutto particle-centred: la particella lungi dall’essere considerate un piccolo elemento inerte (lat. ‘particula’) svolge un ruolo centrale all’interno dell’enunciato, comportandosi harrisianamente da operatore cioè da elemento pienamente predicativo che seleziona il numero e la tipologia di argomenti e che determina il significato dell’intera costruzione. La parte finale della tesi è dedicata ad uno specifico set di costruzioni assolute con particella predicativa ma prive di verbo come su le mani, via di qui, avanti il prossimo, giù il Governo, definite ‘verbless-particle constructions’. [a cura dell'autore]X n.s

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Partitions and Atoms of Clause Structure

This collection brings together some of Dominique Sportiche's best work, including essays that are published here for the first time. The articles discuss the architecture of syntax in natural languages and Sportiche suggests that languages do not differ at all in their syntactic organization. This view takes shape through the analysis of a variety of syntactic configurations and essays examine what it means to be a Subject, how Case marking functions, how it relates to Agreement, and how Pronominal Clitic Constructions should be analyzed

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

Grammatical theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches. Second revised and extended edition.

This book is superseded by the third edition, available at http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/255. This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured. The book is a translation of the German book Grammatiktheorie, which was published by Stauffenburg in 2010. The following quotes are taken from reviews: With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what was a major gap in the literature. Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für Rezen­sio­nen zur ger­man­is­tis­chen Sprach­wis­senschaft, 2012 Stefan Müller’s recent introductory textbook, Gram­matik­the­o­rie, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey for beginning students of the present state of syntactic theory. Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für Sprach­wissen­schaft, 2012 This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing. Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 2012   This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25