<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The paper applies an interdisciplinary perspective to a fictional text showing that fractals as mathematical models are a powerful tool for conceptualizing life experience in biographical narratives. The multilevel construction of Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd is explored on the basis of fractal metaphor theory. This research focuses on the LIFE IS A STORY conceptual fractal metaphor which is built up on analogical mappings, mental space connections, and blends. The fractal model of metaphor in biographical narrative, which is assigned to the formula LIFE IS A STORY f (1) + f (2) + f (3) + … + f (n), contains the mental space of the intentional source domain story, which provides a way to structure the understanding of the limiting target domain of the concept life. Fractal metaphors aim at making the conceptual metaphor flexible and dynamic, renewing its ability of self-development and self-perfection, transforming itself into one of the means of changeable conceptualization of reality.</abstract>

Fractal metaphor LIFE IS A STORY in biographical narrative

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This paper aims at showing why the stylistician can be construed as a prolific “impostor” in a most positive sense: pledged to no specific linguistic prophet, she can opt for different theoretical linguistic tools (in the sphere of pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, cognitive grammar, etc.) depending on her object of study and what her research question is. The liberty claimed by the stylistician explains why stylistics is the “undisciplined” child of linguistics, shirking any clear definition of its boundaries. It will be argued that stylistics can only exist as a cross-disciplinary field given its conception of language as fundamentally contextualized. If it was a discipline determined by clear-cut pre-established boundaries, stylistics would be far more “disciplined” but would run the risk of serving only itself. The broad goal of this paper is thus to evince that the “indisciplinarity” of stylistics constitutes its very defining essence. With this aim in mind, it will demonstrate what stylistics owes to other disciplines, what it shares with similar language-based disciplines and what it can offer to other fields or practices of knowledge.</abstract>

The ‘indisciplinarity’ of stylistics

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The contrastive analysis of two sets of newspaper articles has been carried out in order to observe how the reports of the same events are constructed in two different languages and cultures as represented by El País and The Guardian newspapers. The first set of texts consists of two science popularization articles dealing with the same scientific finding (Bee Texts), whereas the second set consists of all the articles covering the opening day of a world summit held in Rome (Summit Texts) which were published in the online versions of El País and The Guardian respectively. Newsworthiness (Bell, 1991), attribution and lexicogrammatical strategies have been studied in order to show how ideological construction has been developed in these two different kinds of report, one dealing with a non-controversial event (as represented in the Bee Texts) and the other with a controversial event (as represented in the Summit Texts).</abstract>

Newsworthiness, attribution and lexicogrammatical strategies in two types of news articles in English and Spanish

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The factors that influence English speakers to classify a consonant as ambisyllabic are explored in 581 bisyllabic words. The /b/ in habit, for example, was considered ambisyllabic when a participant chose hab as the first part of the word and bit as the second. Geminate spelling was found to interact with social variables; older participants and more educated speakers provided more ambisyllabic responses. The influence of word-level phonotactics on syllabification was also evident. A consonant such as the medial /d/ in standard is attested as the second consonant in the coda of many English words (e.g. lard), as well as in the single-consonant onset of many others; for this reason such consonants were often made ambisyllabic. This contrasts with the /n/ in standard, which is never the first consonant in a word-initial cluster (e.g. *ndorf) and, therefore, rarely made ambisyllabic in the experiment. Ambisyllabicity was also found more often when the vowel preceding the single medialconsonant was lax, or stressed, or when the medial-consonant was a sonorant rather than an obstruent. The idea that a stressed lax vowel in the first syllable conditions both the ambisyllabicity of the consonant and its geminate spelling is not supported.</abstract>

An experimental approach to ambisyllabicity in English

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This study focuses on accounting for allomorphy in Latin case/number inflection. It attributes essentially all of it to the influence of adjacent features of standard segmental phonology on morphemes expressing case assignment. Indeed, other languages lead linguists to expect that allomorphy at a stem-suffix border can depend on any feature of a final vowel: ±Low, ±High, ±Round, ±Back, ±Consonantal or ±Syllabic. Empirically, it turns out that no two Latin stem-final vowels induce identical allomorphy in case/number suffixes, nor the same allomorphy as final consonants. Moreover, some (not much) phonologically conditioned allomorphy is phonetically opaque. These two factors have led traditional scholarship to conclude that each stem-final segment should define a separate classification of noun suffixation or “declension”. As there are basically six types of final segment (a, o, u, i, e and consonants), each then gives rise to a different declension (stems with final i are often put in some other group or considered irregular), thus creating five (or six) declensions. Tradition then goes on to analyse stem-final vowels not as part of stems but as some kind of separate morphemes called “thematic vowels” (with no role in either syntax or phonology). This essay argues rather that an unflinching modern and formal approach to inflectional allomorphy, exactly analogous to using phonology to reduce regular English plurals to a single lexical form, succeeds in sweeping away the sandcastle of Latin declensions and better captures the actual descriptive generalizations that account for Latin case inflection.</abstract>

The phonological basis of Latin case patterns

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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. 