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Modal hedging verbs in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Business Management research articles
Get PDFWhen publishing the results of their research, scholars need to convince their readers of the validity of their claims, adjusting their writing to the prevailing discursive and rhetorical conventions. Hedges play a crucial role in persuading readers of such validity. Previous cross-cultural research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has revealed significant differences in the use of these interpersonal features in research articles (RAs) in different languages and publication contexts. In this paper, hedging modal verbs will be contrastively analysed in a corpus of RAs written by English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) users and by native English scholars affiliated to Anglophone institutions in the field of Business Management. The frequency of use of hedging modal verbs, their main functional uses, and their particular phraseological realizations will be examined. The results will help us gain an insight into how new knowledge claims are negotiated in international English-medium publications in this discipline as well as into the particular shaping of ELF written academic communication
Indirect evidentiality in Dutch and German: a contrastive corpus study of the seem-type verbs schijnen and scheinen
Get PDFThe present study deals with the seem-type verbs schijnen and scheinen in Dutch and German. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of spoken and written corpus material, the construction types these verbs typically appear in as well as their function and meaning are analysed. As seem-type verbs often develop into evidential markers (this is the case in e.g. English, French and Spanish), I will particularly concentrate on evidential uses (and the syntactic patterns that are associated with those uses). The study will lay bare important differences between German, Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch regarding both verbs. Moreover, the distinction between spoken and written language will be shown to play a crucial role with respect to the construction types found. Finally, the fact that the verbs exhibit different constructional preferences will be linked to different semantic properties as well
Adverbs as evidentials: an English-Spanish contrastive analysis of twelve adverbs in spoken and newspaper discourse
Get PDFThis paper presents a contrastive analysis of six English evidential adverbs ending in -ly with their Spanish nearest translation equivalents, in spoken and newspaper discourse. The adverbs may be associated with varying degrees of reliability: high (clearly/claramente, evidently/evidentemente, obviously/obviamente), medium (apparently/al parecer) and low (seemingly/aparentemente, supposedly/supuestamente). The analysis is based on tokens of authentic language extracted from two contemporary corpora, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA). The qualitative analysis focuses on the evidential functions of the adverbs and on their pragmatic interactional uses; the quantitative analysis centres on the relative frequency of type of evidential functions and the clausal position of the adverbs. The results uncover a number of differences between the English adverbs and their Spanish correlates and also between the two discourse types. Practically all the adverbs are strongly specialized in expressing either indirect-inferential or indirect-reportative evidentiality. English obviously and Spanish evidentemente show a high frequency of cases of loss of evidential meaning due to pragmaticalization, specifically in spoken discourse. Regarding position, the English adverbs are more frequent in medial clausal position, while some Spanish adverbs are often found in the more prominent parenthetical position
Bringing home the bacon! A contrastive study of the cognates bring/bringe in English and Norwegian
Get PDFThis paper highlights the value of a bidirectional translation corpus in contrastive studies in an investigation of the cross-linguistic relationship between two cognates in English and Norwegian: bring and bringe. Although monolingual and bilingual dictionaries prove to be excellent sources of information in respect of this relationship, the present study contributes further to our knowledge regarding the cognates’ conditions of use. Drawing on material from the fiction part of the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC), the study reveals that English bring is far more frequent than its Norwegian counterpart. By exploring the close to 500 occurrences of the two words in original and translated texts, it becomes clear that the two verbs have a relatively low Mutual Correspondence. That is, overall, they only correspond to each other in translation in roughly 20% of the cases. This low correspondence rate is surprising, given the fact that we are looking at verbs stemming from the same origin in two closely related languages. The corpus correspondences suggest that there may be at least two main reasons for this. First, Norwegian bringe may be considered more formal than English bring and there is thus a preference for using less formal verbs in Norwegian to express the meaning of bring, notably the multi-word verbs ha med (REFL) ‘have with (REFL)’, ta med (REFL) ‘take with (REFL)’ and komme med ‘come with’. Second, English bring is more versatile than Norwegian bringe, particularly in the sense that it more readily forms part of phrasal verbs and fixed phrases. It is also the case that English bring has come to be used with a wider range of meanings than Norwegian bringe, as attested in the dictionaries consulted. These ‘extra’ meanings include ‘initiate legal action against someone’ and ‘force oneself to do something (unpleasant)’; however, neither of these meanings is particularly salient in the current data. The findings underline the role a parallel corpus such as the ENPC can play in shedding light on contrastive nuances that contribute to a broader understanding of cross-linguistic relationships
Evidential and epistemic adverbials in Lithuanian: evidence from intra-linguistic and cross-linguistic analysis
Get PDFIn the recent decade the realisations of evidentiality and epistemic modality in European languages have received a great scholarly interest and resulted in important investigations concerning the relation between evidentiality and epistemic modality, their means of expression and meaning extensions in various types of discourse. The present paper deals with the adverbials akivaizdžiai ‘evidently’, aiškiai ‘clearly’, ryškiai ‘visibly, clearly’, matyt ‘apparently, evidently’ and regis ‘seemingly’, which derive from the source domain of perception, and the epistemic necessity adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’. The aim of the paper is to explore the morphosyntactic properties of the adverbials when they are used as evidential or epistemic markers and compare the distribution of their evidential and epistemic functions in Lithuanian fiction, news and academic discourse. The data have been drawn from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, the Corpus of Academic Lithuanian and the bidirectional translation corpus ParaCorpEN→LT→EN (Šolienė 2012, 2015). The quantitative findings reveal distributional differences of the adverbials under study across different types of discourse. Functional variation of the evidential perception-based adverbials is determined to a great extent by the degree of epistemic commitment, evidenced not only by intra-linguistic but also cross-linguistic data. The non-perception based adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’ are the primary adverbial markers of epistemic necessity in Lithuanian, though some of them may have evidential meaning extensions. A parallel and comparable corpus-based analysis has once again proved to be a very efficient tool for diagnosing language-specific features and describing an inventory used to code language-specific evidential and epistemic meanings
Lietuvių tada ir anglų then daugiafunkciškumas sakytinėje kalboje: tarpkalbinė analizė
Get PDFThe present study examines the multifunctionality of the Lithuanian tada and the corresponding English then. The aim of the analysis is to compare their semantic and functional behaviour in spoken discourse. In English and Lithuanian dictionaries, the meanings of tada and then differ: Lithuanian dictionaries only provide definitions related to time and result, whereas English dictionaries offer a few pragmatic meanings alongside the meanings of time and result. This raises the question of whether the Lithuanian adverbial tada possesses any pragmatic meanings. Several studies have closely analysed then as both a temporal adverbial and as a discourse marker but there have been no studies to date of tada as a discourse marker. The process of a predication adverbial turning into a sentence adverbial and then into a discourse marker is common in many languages and, as such, this transformation may be considered universal. One of the aims of the paper is to verify if this adverbial cline exists in the Lithuanian language. The analysis is corpus-based and the data are obtained from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language and the British National Corpus.Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas lietuvių kalbos tada ir anglų kalbos then daugiafunkciškumas. Tyrimo tikslas – atskleisti tada ir then daugiafunkciškumo aspektus, palyginti jų semantinę ir funkcinę raišką sakytiniame diskurse. Anglų ir lietuvių kalbų žodynuose šių žodžių pateikiamos reikšmės skiriasi: lietuvių kalboje vyrauja su laiku susijusios reikšmės, taip pat pateikiama rezultato reikšmė, o anglų kalboje, be šių reikšmių, nurodoma ir keletas pragmatinių reikšmių. Kyla klausimas, ar lietuvių kalbos tada neturi pragmatinių reikšmių. Anglų kalbos then lingvistų tirtas ir kaip laiko adverbialas, ir kaip diskurso markeris, o lietuvių kalbos tada kaip diskurso markeris dar netyrinėtas. Tačiau procesas, kai prieveiksmis virsta diskurso markeriu, desemantizuojasi ir įgyja naujų funkcijų bei pragmatinių reikšmių, būdingas daugeliui pasaulio kalbų, galbūt jis net universalus, todėl vienas šio straipsnio tikslų ir yra patikrinti, ar šis virsmas lietuvių kalbai iš tiesų nebūdingas, ar tiesiog žodynai jo neatspindi.Tyrimas paremtas tekstynų metodologija – empirinė medžiaga paimta iš Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyno ir Britų nacionalinio tekstyno. Atliktos kokybinės analizės rezultatai rodo, kad tiek lietuvių tada, tiek anglų then funkcionuoja ir kaip laiko adverbialas, ir kaip diskurso markeris. Kaip laiko adverbialai tada ir then atlieka dvi funkcijas: nusako sutampantį laiką ir nesutampantį laiką, arba įvykių seką. Kaip diskurso markeriai tada ir then sieja vienas po kito einančius diskurso vienetus, jais gali būti nusakomas rezultatas esant hipotetinei arba nehipotetinei situacijai, taip pat prielaida, pridūrimas (perėjimas prie kito tos pačios temos aspekto), žymima pokalbio (teiginio ir pan.) pradžia arba pabaiga
Dviskiemenių daiktavardžių kirčiavimo modeliai pietų aukštaičių patarmėje
Get PDFThe article provides an analysis of the accentuation of disyllabic nouns in the Southern Aukštaitian (SAuk) dialect spoken in Southern Lithuania (Alytus, Lazdijai, Varėna, Šalčininkai, Druskininkai and Trakai districts). The term pietų aukštaičiai (southern Aukštaitians) was coined by scholars; because of certain phonetic peculiarities of the dialect, the inhabitants of southern Lithuania consider themselves to be dzūkai (Dzūkians).The SAuk has been of special interest to both dialectologists and Baltic language specialists for a long time. The archaic grammatical forms, syntactic constructions, phonetic, accentual and lexical peculiarities that are features of these dialects are intertwined with new phenomena and thus reveal many stages of the development of the dialect of the Southern Aukštaitians, which in turn can be of help in finding answers to some unanswered questions about the development and usage of language. For this reason more attention and research has been devoted to the SAuk dialect and its broader connections with language as a whole.The article analyses the tendencies of the accentuation parallels of disyllabic nouns with ā, ē, a and i̯a1 stems in the SAuk dialect. Drawing on audio and written sources dating from 1952–2015, the spread of the accentuation variants of the words and their forms in the same subdialect, separate subdialects and/or their groups are discussed; the accentuation patterns of disyllabic nouns with the productive ā, ē, a and i̯a1 stems that are stressed in various ways are described, and the nature of their prevalence in the area of the dialect is established. The study uses quantitative, geolinguistic and comparative methods.Upon completion of the research three important things were established. Firstly, the area with the largest number of variously stressed ā, ē, a and i̯a1 disyllabic words and their forms in the same subdialect is the same, which is a comparatively small part of the southwestern area of the SAuk subdialects. Secondly, when it comes to the different frequency and intensity of the usage of the variants that are characteristic of the declension of feminine and masculine gender word stems in the same subdialect in the entire area of the SAuk dialect, parallel forms of ā and ē stem words have been observed considerably less frequently than the a and i̯a1 stem variants. Thirdly, the number of parallel forms of the accentuation of noun stems in the same subdialect and in the speech of the informant decreases unevenly as one moves from the southwest of the country towards the north. Furthermore, the accentuation variants of feminine nouns are used in a smaller area than those of masculine nouns.Straipsnyje nagrinėjami kirčiavimo gretybių turinčių dviskiemenių ā, ē, a ir i̯a1 kamienų daiktavardžių akcentuacijos polinkiai pietų aukštaičių patarmėje. Remiantis1952–2015 m. garsinių ir rašytinių šaltinių medžiaga aptariamas šių žodžių ir jų formų kirčiavimo variantų paplitimas toje pačioje šnektoje, paskirose šnektose ir (ar) jų grupėse, aprašomi įvairiai kirčiuojamų dviskiemenių daiktavardžių produktyviųjų ā, ē, a ir i̯a1 kamienų akcentiniai modeliai, nustatomas jų paplitimo pobūdis patarmės plote. Tyrimui atlikti pasirinkti kiekybinis, geolingvistinis ir lyginamasis metodai.Nevienodas kirčiavimo variantų paplitimas patarmės plote (toje pačioje šnektoje, paskirose šnektose ar jų grupėse) leidžia manyti buvus skirtingų produktyviųjų kamienų kirčiavimo tendencijų pietų aukštaičių patarmėje. Atlikus tyrimą nustatyti trys svarbūs dalykai. Pirma, kad toje pačioje šnektoje įvairiai kirčiuojamų ā, ē, a ir i̯a1 kamienų žodžių ir jų formų didžiausio kirčiavimo variantų paplitimo plotas yra tas pats – palyginti nedidelis pietvakarinių pietų aukštaičių šnektų arealas. Antra, kad moteriškojo ir vyriškojo linksniavimo kamienams būdingas skirtingas variantų vartojimo dažnumas ir intensyvumas toje pačioje šnektoje visame pietų aukštaičių patarmės plote – ā ir ē kamienų gretybės užrašomos gerokai rečiau nei a ir i̯a1 kamienų variantai. Trečia, kad aptariamų kamienų daiktavardžių kirčiavimo gretybių toje pačioje šnektoje ir to paties informanto kalboje einant nuo pietvakarių šiaurės kryptimi mažėja netolygiai – moteriškojo linksniavimo žodžių akcentinės gretybės vartojamos mažesniame plote nei vyriškojo linksniavimo daiktavardžių.Moteriškojo ir vyriškojo linksniavimo daiktavardžių arealinių paplitimo skirtumų esama ir tada, kai paskirose šnektose vartojamas vienas iš daiktavardžio akcentinių variantų. Produktyviųjų ā ir ē kamienų pietų aukštaičių patarmės vakarinėje ir pietinėje ploto dalyje labiau paplitusios oksitoninio kirčiavimo gretybės, rytinėje ir šiaurinėje dažnesni yra baritoninio kirčiavimo atvejai. Dviskiemenių a ir i̯a1 kamienų daiktavardžių tiriamoje patarmėje, ypač vakarinėje ir pietinėje dalyje, linkstama apibendrinti oksitoninio kirčiavimo modelį
J. Ledesmos ir M. Daukšos katekizmų įtaka 1605 m. anoniminio katekizmo tekstui
Get PDFThe article compares the relationship between the texts of the Polish Ledesma’s catechism, the catechism of Mikalojus Daukša and the catechism of 1605. The problem of the source for the Polish translation of Ledesma’s text and, consequently, for the two Lithuanian versions of the catechism is briefly introduced: scholarly opinions differ as to when the Italian original of Ledesma’s catechism was published. Likewise unknown is the exact date of the translation of Ledesma’s catechism into the Polish language. Both Lithuanian translations were accomplished from the Polish Ledesma’s catechism; however, there are significant differences between them. Daukša was the first to accomplish a translation of such nature into Lithuanian, whereas the anonymous translator of the catechism of 1605 used not only the Polish source, but also Daukša’s catechism, which had been rendered ten years earlier. Although the relationship between the latter text and the Polish translation as well as the Italian original has already been investigated, the comparison of the catechism of 1605 to the Polish version of Ledesma’s catechism and to the catechism translated by Daukša still needs to be drawn. The aim of the present article is to compare the three catechisms and to investigate the textual influence of Daukša’s catechism (which had been published earlier) on the anonymous translation of the catechism of 1605; in other words, to determine whether the catechism of 1605 was translated directly from the Polish catechism of Ledesma, or whether the translator relied more on the text of Daukša’s catechism; also, to identify the authorial lines of the anonymous author.Paskutinį XVI a. ketvirtį J. Ledesmos katekizmas buvo išverstas į lenkų kalbą, o iš šios – į lietuvių. Žinomi du J. Ledesmos vertimai į lietuvių kalbą: Mikalojaus Daukšos „Kathechismas arba moksłas kiekwienam krikszczionii priwalvs“ (1595 m.) ir anoniminis katekizmas (1605 m.). Anksčiau teigta, kad nežinomas vertėjas J. Ledesmos katekizmą vertė smarkiai remdamasis M. Daukšos katekizmu. Pastarasis autorius J. Ledesmos katekizmą iš lenkų kalbos vietomis vertė laisvai, todėl anoniminio katekizmo vertimas šiame straipsnyje buvo lygintas ne tik su M. Daukšos katekizmu, bet ir J. Ledesmos lenkiškuoju vertimu. Taip buvo nustatyti abiejų lietuviškų katekizmų vertimų panašumai ir skirtumai su Ledesmos katekizmu ir tarpusavyje, autentiško teksto vietos. Sugretinus visus tris katekizmus paaiškėjo, kad 1605 m. katekizme papildomo teksto yra daugiau nei M. Daukšos vertime. Pastarasis lenkiško Ledesmos katekizmo vertimas yra tikslesnis, o anoniminis vertėjas nevengdavo perfrazuoti verčiamas mintis. Nors abiejuose lietuviškuose katekizmuose yra nemažai teksto, kurio trūksta lenkiškame katekizme, nėra pagrindo manyti, kad 1595 m. ir 1605 m. katekizmų vertimai atlikti iš skirtingų lenkiško katekizmo vertimų
The modal verb galėti ʻcan/could/may/mightʼ in academic Lithuanian: distribution, frequency and semantic properties
Get PDFThe aim of the present paper is to investigate the frequency and distribution patterns as well as the spectrum of modal meanings conveyed by the Lithuanian modal verb of possibility galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ in academic Lithuanian. The study is based on Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum (www.coralit.lt), a specialized synchronic corpus of written academic Lithuanian (roughly 9 million words). In order to allow a disciplinary comparison, the paper analyses the use of this modal verb in academic texts from three science fields: the humanities, the biomedical sciences and the technological sciences. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed alongside corpus-based analysis to reveal the ways in which this modal verb of possibility is used in academic language. The first part of the paper investigates the frequency patterns of various forms of galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ in the three science fields. The second part looks at the variety of meanings this modal verb can convey in Lithuanian specialised language. The results show that there is a fairly similar distribution of this modal verb across different science fields. In terms of its semantic functional capacities, galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ is used to convey all three types of modality (epistemic, deontic and dynamic), however, the most frequent use in Lithuanian academic discourse seems to be that of dynamic modality