<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> At a meta-level this article seeks to reduce the perceived gap that exists between classical rhetoric on the one hand and linguistics on the other. The linguistic focus here will be on pragmatics and discourse phenomena. In this article, the main tenets of classical rhetoric will first be set out. Thereafter, some examples of productive crossover work from both sides that has sought to unify rhetoric and pragmatics will be discussed. Next, a number of suggestions will be put forward as to why there has been so little cooperation. These will highlight aspects of scope and audience. Finally, some solutions will be offered as to how those perceived stumbling blocks might be eliminated. In this discussion, there will be a particular focus on the pragmatic notion of implicature from the perspective of Grice, the neo-Griceans and also the Roman rhetorician Quintilian. In the case of the latter, his ideas on the importance of lucidity in productive discourse situations will be explored and recast within a light of modern pragmatic theory.</abstract>

Discourse implicature, Quintilian and the Lucidity Principle: rhetorical phenomena in pragmatics

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In this study, we analyse the nature of clitic “se” and low applicatives in Spanish L2 through the study of the non-native acquisition of this clitic by L1 English adult learners. In particular, we are going to discuss the question of how English adults acquire this clitic in the different syntactic configurations where it appears (anticausative inchoative verbs, inherent reflexive verbs, transitive verbs implying an inalienable possession relation, consumption verbs and non-anticausative inchoative verbs). Our main research hypothesis is that the acquisition of clitic “se” with some types of applicatives takes place in the later stages of the learning process, since it requires exposure to certain linguistic evidence to acquire a certain type of argument structure proper to applicatives. This study is going to be based on how our subjects perform using Grammaticality Judgment Tests (GJTs).</abstract>

The gradual acquisition of clitic “se” in Spanish L2

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Some (though not all) previous studies have documented the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB), i.e. the greater intelligibility of non-native (relative to native) speech to non-native listeners as compared to native listeners. Moreover, some studies (again not all) found that native listeners consider foreign-accented statements as less truthful than native-sounding ones. We join these two lines of research, asking whether foreign-accented statements sound more credible to non-native than to native listeners and whether difficult-to-process (less comprehensible) utterances are less credible. In two experiments we measure the intelligibility, comprehensibility and credibility of native and foreign-accented statements for native listeners and non-native listeners matched or mismatched in L1 with non-native talkers. We find an ISIB in both matched and mismatched non-native listeners, and an analogous matched comprehensibility benefit. However, we obtain no evidence of an interlanguage speech credibility benefit. Instead, both matched and mismatched non-native listeners tend to trust native statements more (i.e. statements produced by their target-language models). For native listeners, we do not confirm the tendency to mistrust non-native statements, but we do find a moderate correlation between the comprehensibility and credibility of foreign-accented utterances, giving limited support to the hypothesis that decreased perceptual fluency leads to decreased credibility.</abstract>

PhD. Department of English and American Studies Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Křížkovského 10 77180, Olomouc Czech Republic

Department of English and American Studies Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Křížkovského 10 77180, Olomouc Czech Republic

Is there an interlanguage speech credibility benefit?

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The role of English as a global lingua franca of academia has become indisputable in the on-going process of internationalization of all scholarship, even though the majority of writers and readers of academic texts are non-native speakers of English. Thus it is questionable whether there is any justification for imposing on international academic communication written in English the style conventions typical of the dominant Anglophone discourse community. Recommendations usually comprise qualities such as clarity, economy, linearity and precision in communication (cf. Bennett, 2015), which can be achieved, among other means, by certain overt guiding signals including conjuncts (Quirk et al., 1985). Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to reveal cross-cultural variation in the use of these important text-organizing means as it is believed that conjuncts can enhance the interaction and negotiation of meaning between the author and prospective readers of academic texts. The paper explores which semantic relations holding between parts of a text tend to be expressed overtly by conjuncts and which semantic classes, such as appositive, contrastive/concessive, listing and resultive conjuncts, contribute most to the interactive and dialogic nature of written academic discourse. The data are taken from research articles (RAs) selected from two journals, one representing academic discourse written by native speakers of English (Applied Linguistics) and the other representing academic texts written in English by Czech and Slovak scholars (Discourse and Interaction).</abstract>

A cross cultural analysis of conjuncts as indicators of the interaction and negotiation of meaning in research articles

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The present study focuses on the description of the semantic features of phrasal verbs (PVs) containing the particle on and specifically aims at analysing the historical development of aspectual and idiomatic combinations in Late Modern Spoken English. From a historical perspective, the “figurative usage” (Kennedy, 1920) of PVs is a very interesting feature because it is the product of historical processes resulting in the PVs as they are known in Present Day English (PDE). This study is a corpus-based investigation conducted on the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus (LModE-OBC), a corpus that has been compiled by using texts from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey and annotated with the Visual Interactive Syntax Learning interface (VISL). The findings reveal that there was a general shift from spatial to aspectual meaning and a relative stability in the frequency of PVs in the time span 1750-1850. It can be assumed that PVs “have undergone a lexical development from compositional to noncompositional” (Thim, 2012, p. 12), a process that led PVs from being literal to figurative in meaning (Denison, 1981, p. 108; Claridge, 2000, p. 47) due to the semantic shift of particles from a directional to an aspectual connotation (Brinton and Akimoto, 1999, p. 8).</abstract>

Aspectual and idiomatic properties of the particle on in Late Modern Spoken English

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The intention of this article is to demonstrate, within the framework of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980a), how slang words associated with substance abuse are conceptualized via metaphors. This study analyses recreational drug slang terms found in the Drug Slang Dictionary in order to reveal categories of metaphors involved in drug users’ language. The results of the data analysis effectively reveal that, within a thematic approach, classes of metaphor are coded to enable connections between metaphorical concepts and drug addicts’ physiological experiences in order to present their personal meanings and cognitive processes. The study also involves drug addicts’ narratives to identify conceptual metaphors in their experiences. Notably, it is argued within this research that figurative language use is also connected to the cultural background of users to a great extent.</abstract>

Conceptualizing the metaphors of drug abusers

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This paper revisits a range of theories of power in communication and argues that there has been no methodology able to grasp the multiplicity of power in communication as a concept. As a result, the present scholarship on power in communication is characterized by a multiplicity of approaches that a) use the concept of power as a self-explanatory or vague concept in the analysis of several interactional phenomena; b) draw on a particular approach to power, disregarding multiple workings of power; or c) acknowledge the complexity of power and synthesize various approaches to power.</abstract>

Power in communication: revisiting power studies

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Transitivity alternation refers to the causative/inchoative alternation of some unaccusative verbs. Different languages use different patterns to show transitivity alternation morphologically. While some languages like English use zero or no overt lexical marking, other languages (e.g. Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese) use overt morphological markers to show transitivity. This study aims to investigate the degree to which similarities and/or mismatches between English and Persian influence the use of unaccusative and unergative verbs by Persianspeaking learners of English. Based on different verb types in English and Persian, seven verb categories were identified as the basis for comparison. A forced-choice elicitation test including 48 items was developed based on these seven verb categories. A proficiency test was also used to divide participants (116 undergraduate students of English) into high and low proficiency groups. The results revealed findings more in line with transfer at the morphological rather than the argument structure level (Montrul, 2000). Alternating unaccusatives with similar equivalent structures for transitive/intransitive pairs in Persian and non-alternating unaccusatives with different structures for transitive/intransitive pairs in Persian seem to be the most difficult verb categories for learners. The effect of proficiency level was also significant on the recognition of correct structures.</abstract>

Department of English Language Teaching Farhangian University Shiraz Iran

English Department Yasouj University Kohgiluye & BoyerAhmad Iran

Transfer at the level of argument structure or morphology: a comparative study of English and Persian unaccusative and unergative verbs

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 24 (2023): Issue 2 (December 2023)

Volume 24 (2023): Issue 1 (June 2023)

Volume 23 (2022): Issue 2 (December 2022)

Volume 23 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 22 (2021): Issue 2 (December 2021)

Volume 22 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)

Volume 21 (2020): Issue 2 (December 2020)

Volume 21 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Volume 20 (2019): Issue 2 (December 2019)

Volume 20 (2019): Issue 1 (June 2019)

Volume 19 (2018): Issue 2 (December 2018)

Volume 19 (2018): Issue 1 (June 2018)

Volume 18 (2017): Issue 2 (December 2017)

Volume 18 (2017): Issue 1 (June 2017)

Volume 17 (2016): Issue 2 (December 2016)

Volume 17 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016)

Volume 16 (2015): Issue 1 (December 2015)

Volume 15 (2015): Issue 1 (June 2015)

Volume 14 (2014): Issue 1 (December 2014)

Volume 13 (2014): Issue 1 (July 2014)

Topics in Linguistics

 Topics in Linguistics is a double-blind, peer-reviewed international scientific journal issued twice a year by the Department of English and American Studies, the Faculty of Arts, at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.  The journal aims to foster interdisciplinary, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural approaches to language research. Topics in Linguistics seeks to publish high-quality, original papers which adopt diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives in exploring a wide range of current issues in linguistic studies. Although papers on world languages are considered, we especially encourage submissions dealing with the majority and minority languages spoken in Europe.  Subject areas of study include, but are not limited to:   general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics)  interfaces with general linguistics (neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics)  cognitive linguistics  comparative linguistics  corpus linguistics  applied linguistics  stylistics  (critical) discourse analysis  intercultural communication   Topics in Linguistics is published in English. Authors are requested to submit their papers (doc. format) anonymously. The authors will receive an automatic confirmation email and are notified within one month of submission of the results of the initial screening of their manuscript.From Volume 13, 2014 onwards, Topics in Linguistics has been published by De Gruyter Open (now Sciendo). Since 2016 Topics in Linguistics has been an electronic-only journal.  Acceptance Rate (2020-2021)   11.85%   Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 