The typology of motion and posture verbs: A variationist account

According to work by Talmy, Slobin and others, satellite-framed (S)-languages tend to express the path of motion in a verb particle and the manner of motion in the verb (jump, run, etc.), whereas verb-framed (V)-languages express the path in the verb (enter, exit) and the manner in an adverbial – if at all. In this paper, this typological distinction will be applied to data from Swiss German (Muotathal dialect), Standard German and French. As expected, French narratives use more path verbs than German narratives. However, there are surprising differences within the S-framed German varieties: Muotathal dialect rarely expresses manner, in some cases even less frequently than French. It is argued that two typological categories are not sufficient once dialects are taken into account. The categories not only need to be refined. It also needs to be recognized that there are additional dimensions (e.g. orality/literacy) which are important factors affecting typological affiliations

Biestmilch, Schafspferche und Schamanen: Überlegungen zur Verwendung whorfoiden Gedankenguts im Diskurs über sprachliche Diversität

Summary. The article discusses the discursive use of ideas related to language and thought in the context of texts advocating linguistic diversity. Drawing on examples from a variety of texts on the matter, it shows how arguments that can be associated with Whorfian ideas in the broadest sense of the term are used to complement an identity- oriented, romantic construal of small or ‘threatened’ languages by an instrumental, ratio- nalist component. On the basis of the assumption that they determine particular views of the world, words and languages are deemed to store valuable (or invaluable) cultur- al and other information and therefore seem to need preservation. Tensions and prob- lems with this use of Whorfoid arguments are discussed. Most importantly, there is a tendency towards the assumption of a deterministic effect of language on thought, which is scientifically obsolete. Furthermore, many authors subscribe to an essentializing view of language instead of a theoretically more appropriate view of languages as phenom- ena emerging in social and cultural practices. Finally, there is a problem of coherence in that Whorfianism, if used as an argument for linguistic diversity, is not suitable when advocating bilingualism, since psycholinguistic studies systematically show that bilin- gualism cancels or attenuates Whorfian effects of the first language(s) in the bilingual mind.Zusammenfassung. In diesem Artikel werden Beispiele aus dem sprachenpolitischen Diskurs zur Rettung der sprachlichen Diversität diskutiert. Der besondere Fokus liegt dabei auf der diskursiven Verwendung von als unbestritten präsentierten ‚Theorien‘ über den Zusammenhang von Sprache und Denken. Verschiedene Texte zum Thema wer- den analysiert, und es wird gezeigt, dass whorfoides Gedankengut im weitesten Sinne herangezogen wird, um dem eher identitätsorientierten und romantischen Diskurs zu Sprachminderheiten und ‚kleinen‘ Sprachen eine rationalistische, instrumentelle Kom- ponente zur Seite zu stellen: Da Wörter und Sprachen für eine jeweils einzigartige Welt- sicht stehen, sind sie wertvolle Informationsspeicher und scheinen deshalb zum Wohle der Menschheit erhalten bleiben zu müssen. Spannungen und Probleme, die sich aus diesen Prämissen ergeben, werden diskutiert. Erstens zeigt sich, dass viele Autoren eine deterministische Sicht des Effekts von Sprache auf das Denken haben, die wis- senschaftlich obsolet ist. Zweitens wird Sprache in den Texten zu einer Art Wesen hypo- stasiert und essenzialisiert, statt dass sie als emergentes Phänomen verstanden wird, das sich im Zusammenspiel mit anderen sozialen und kulturellen Praktiken dynamisch entwickelt und anpasst. Drittens stellt sich ein fundamentales Kohärenzproblem, denn viele Diversitäts-Anwälte setzen sich gleichzeitig für großflächige individuelle Zwei- und Mehrsprachigkeit ein, doch hat die psycholinguistische Forschung gezeigt, dass Zwei- sprachigkeit allfällig präsente subtile whorfianische Effekte der jeweiligen Erstsprache(n) entweder ganz oder teilweise aufhebt

Wenn viele Wege aus dem Fenster führen - Konzeptuelle Variation im Bereich von Bewegungsereignissen

In this contribution, different varieties of German (Swiss German dialects, Standard High German) are compared with regard to their conceptual and syntactic elaboration of spatial descriptions. The case study examines a particular scene from the informant's picture-book based narratives, a scene wich refers to a dog climbing onto a window sill and then falling out of the window. The analysis shows considerable variability with respect to the linguistic means used to describe the scene, and the author argues that there are corresponding differences in the cognitive construal of the spatial event. The data show consistently that the Swiss German dialects tend to be more detailed in their elaboration of the path of the moving figure (e.g., the dog can be construed as falling "into" the window "out"), whereas speakers of Standard High German tend to use a generic, semantically and syntactically simpler construction. The analysis of this particular scene is demonstrated to coincide with a generally observable tendency of Swiss German dialects: Within motion verb predicates, the constituents encoding spatial arguments tend to be both syntactically and semantically enriched

Googling Toubon: Testing the effects of institutional French language purism

This study investigates the impact of French corpus planning efforts in two semantic domains, telecommunication and sport. Lists of Anglicisms and their French counterparts pertaining to these two domains are used in a corpus study using the Google Books corpus. A method to explore this corpus diachronically is proposed, and analyses assessing the odds of encountering the ‘official’ French terms over English loanwords are carried out. Despite a certain success of the French competitors in some specific cases, the overall analyses, modelling the odds ratios using mixed effect models, show no sustainable effect of the efforts to impose French alternatives to English neologisms. The results and possible explanations for the statistical patterns are discussed in the light of previous research on Anglicisms and language planning

Demography vs. Legitimacy: Current issues in Swiss language policy

This paper discusses current language policy debates on national and immigrated languages in Switzerland. Problems with the principle of territoriality, which represents a locally monolingual regime in an officially quadrilingual country, and other issues related to the legal status of languages are discussed. The proportional representation of the national minorities and the use of their languages in particular contexts such as the federal administration or the army is discussed, as well as the current debate on which foreign languages should be given priority in compulsory primary education. Drawing on language ideology research, the contribution shows how specific aspects of linguistic diversity are focused and addressed in particular contexts (e.g. national languages, standard languages), whereas others are backgrounded, denied legitimacy or simply erased (e.g. immigrated languages, dialects). The discussion addresses also the demographic weight of the languages and varieties in Switzerland as well as in the world and uses census data to illustrate the stability and changes regarding the official and immigrated languages across time

Zur linguistischen Sinnsuche in- und ausserhalb von schriftsprachlichen Korpora. Eine Replik auf Wolfgang Teuberts Beitrag

In this reply to Wolfgang Teubert's contribution, some of the central tenets of his position are questioned. The primacy of literacy for linguistic investigations as advocated by Teubert is challenged, since the most important function of language is oral communication, and most of the world's languages exist exclusively in oral use. Counter-evidence to Teubert's claim according to which oral languages do not develop metalinguistic awareness (as e.g. the concept of "word") is given. The author scrutinizes the value added by Teubert's programmatic suggestion of "hermeneutic corpus linguistics" to the linguistic disciplines, since the sole focus on "discourse objects" unnecessarily narrows down the scope of linguistic investigation. Moreover, it seems to lead to backgrounding and neglect of what linguistics is all about: the comprehensive study of the structures, meaning potentials and usage patterns of the languages and varieties of the world, and the study of their usage-based emergence and evolution

La langue partenaire: Régimes politico-linguistiques, conceptualisations et conséquences linguistiques

Dans cette contribution, le concept très métaphorique de « langue partenaire » est analysé, de manière assez critique, au regard du principe de territorialité des langues et du multilinguisme institutionnel, deux régimes politico-linguistiques qui cohabitent dans la Confédération helvétique. Les enjeux d’un partenariat entre langues, au niveau des institutions mais également des phénomènes linguistiques qui caractérisent les langues en contact, sont discutés. La notion de partenariat est ensuite mise à l’épreuve de trois exemples représentatifs des questions linguistiques suisses : le cas de la ville bilingue de Fribourg, celui de l’administration fédérale plurilingue et le choix des langues étrangères à l’école en Suisse alémanique. Enfin, l’auteur suggère des conditions d’aménagement linguistique permettant d’envisager un partenariat réaliste entre membres de différentes communautés linguistiques, dans un contexte de globalisation des échanges favorable à l’anglais