Foong Ha Yap

Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and grammatical aspect

Temporal information is important in the construction of situation models, and many languages make use of perfective and imperfective aspect markers to distinguish between completed situations (e.g., He made a cake) and ongoing situations (e.g., He is making a cake). Previous studies in which the effect of grammatical aspect has been examined have shown that perfective sentences are often processed more quickly than imperfective ones (e.g., Chan, Yap, Shirai, & Matthews, 2004; Madden & Zwaan, 2003; Yap et al., 2004; Yap et al., 2006). However, these studies used only accomplishment verbs (i.e., verbs with an inherent endpoint, such as bake a cake). The present study on the processing of Cantonese includes activity verbs (i.e., durative verbs with no inherent endpoint, such as play the piano), and the results indicate a strong interaction between lexical aspect (i.e., verb type) and grammatical aspect. That is, perfective sentences were processed more quickly with accomplishment verbs, consistent with previous findings, but imperfective sentences were processed more quickly with activity verbs. We suggest that these different aspectual asymmetries emerge as a result of the inherent associations between accomplishment verbs and the bounded features of perfective aspect and between activity verbs and the unbounded features of imperfective aspect. The sentence stimuli from this study may be downloaded from mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Non-Referential Uses of Nominalization Constructions: Asian Perspectives

This study reviews extended uses of nominalization constructions in a wide range of Asian languages. It combines typological and diachronic perspectives, and traces how nominalization constructions over time develop from referential to non-referential uses. The latter include modifying functions (e.g. relativization and adverbialization); in some cases, nominalization constructions further develop into finite clauses, and sometimes are reanalyzed as stand-alone constructions with mirative, evidential, epistemic, attitudinal, or other speaker mood/stance interpretations. These developments form part of a general tendency for versatile constructions to extend from proposition-based uses to grammatical and pragmatic uses (a laTraugott 1982, 1989, 1995, inter alia). This review, in particular, focuses on semantic extensions within and beyond the nominal domain, with the latter extensions involving reanalyses in functions whereby nominalization constructions drift from referent identification to event predication and the expression of speaker’s stance.

Epistemicity, social identity and politeness marking : a pragmatic analysis of Bajjika verbal inflections

Abstract This article examines the pragmatic uses of the verbal inflections in Bajjika, a Bihari language within the “eastern” group of the Indo-Aryan family. Previous studies have shown that Bajjika has a very complex system of verb-agreement, which is typical of Bihari languages but atypical of other Indo-Aryan languages. Of particular interest here is that Bajjika allows a maximum of two person-agreement slots in its verbal morphology: the first slot for markers that co-index with nominative participants, and the second slot for those markers that co-index with non-nominative participants as well as third person referents that are outside the discourse context (cf. Kashyap 2012, The pragmatic principles of agreement in Bajjika verbs. Journal of Pragmatics 44(13). 1868−1887). Our analysis, based on conversational data of Bajjika, reveals that the person-agreement system in Bajjika also registers the social standing of the interlocutors and third person referents along factors reflecting social hierarchy (e.g., age, rank, profession, and social class). Additionally, the non-nominative person-agreement markers (involving second and third but not first person reference) combine with future tense markers to yield epistemic effects (e.g., pragmatic softening or hedging) that contribute to the negotiation of face-needs among discourse participants and discourse referents. These findings have implications for the relationship between deictic elements (e.g., tense and person-agreement markers) and politeness strategies, and may shed light on the pragmatic uses of verbal inflections in other Bihari languages as well as other languages with verbal morphology that encode deictic information.

“Did Obamacare create new jobs?” – An analysis of Mitt Romney’s use of rhetorical questions in the 2012 US presidential election campaign

Abstract This paper examines how Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s use of rhetorical questions (RQs) in the 2012 US presidential election varies depending on the target audience. We first classify the US states into: (i) Democrat-safe states, (ii) Republican-safe states, and (iii) swing states. We then examine Romney’s use of RQs in his 48 speeches in terms of their (i) frequency, (ii) question type, (iii) topic, and (iv) function. Our findings reveal that Romney tended to ask more RQs in the swing states and the Democrat-safe states in comparison to the Republican-safe states. Moreover, in the swing states, most of Romney’s RQs were yes/no questions, which tended to be more direct, while in the Democrat-safe states, Romney used both yes/no and wh-questions, the latter type intended to induce doubt in the rival candidate. His more forceful yes/no rhetorical questions focused more on economic issues, while his more indirect wh-rhetorical questions focused more on political issues, a move seen as a safe strategy for highlighting his skill as a financial whiz while downplaying his lack of experience in national politics and foreign relations. This study elucidates how politicians use effective communication strategies to compete for votes in election campaigns.

The grammar, meaning, and referential functions of else

Although else is recognized as a cohesive device (e.g. Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 76), it has received relatively little attention in the literature. To help remedy the situation, this article investigates how native speakers use else in both written and spoken discourse. We first review the literature for a description of the meaning(s) of else , then identify its most common meaning as reflected in its frequency of use in American English native-speaker discourse. More specifically, we undertake a quantitative analysis of the frequency and distribution of different types of else constructions, as well as a qualitative analysis of how else functions as a referential and cohesive marker. The unique referential role of else is then highlighted by contrasting it with its closest synonym, namely other . It is shown that these two referential and cohesive markers complement each other, with else playing a less specified semantic role than other .

Constructing Political Identities Through Characterization Metaphor, Humor and Sarcasm: An Analysis of the 2012 Legislative Council Election Debates in Hong Kong

This chapter examines how politicians use metaphor, humor and sarcasm to construct favorable political identities for themselves and unfavorable ones for their rivals. Data for analysis come from five televised debates during the 2012 Hong Kong Legislative Council Election. The chapter adopts Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002) Conceptual Blending framework and analyzes how rival candidates spar with each other using characterization metaphors, and pays special attention to how politicians make use of metaphors as verbal indirectness strategies that mitigate the negative impacts of their face-threatening acts and in this way help them enhance, or at least maintain, their positive image with the general public.

Pathways to adversity and speaker affectedness : on the emergence of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese

Abstract In this paper, we examine the characteristics of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese, and additionally identify the pathways for their emergence in some Chinese dialects, in particular Southern Min and Mandarin varieties. In this paper, the terms dialect and variety are sometimes used interchangeably, with the term variety being the more general term that can also include variations within dialects. We distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 unaccusative ‘give’ constructions, the former involving reversible ‘escape’-type intransitive predicates, and the latter irreversible ‘die’-type intransitive predicates. Type 1 constructions are attested in many Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Hui, Hakka and Cantonese, whereas Type 2 constructions are more rare and thus far are mainly attested in Southern Min and some Mandarin varieties. Two major pathways in the development of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions are identified in this paper, namely, the causative pathway and the passive-mediated pathway. Our analysis also traces how the unaccusative ‘give’ construction develops into a marker of adversity and speaker affectedness. The findings of this study have implications for understanding the relationship between changes in valence (i.e., the number of core arguments that are profiled in a given construction) and speaker’s subjective stance.