Moderna Språk

Burkette, Allison & Warhol, Tamara (2021), Crossing Borders, Making Connections. Interdisciplinarity in Linguistics. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton

2022-09-22T10:58:20+02:00

Lobin, Henning, Andreas Witt & Angelika Wöllstein (Hgg.) (2021), Deutsch in Europa. Sprachpolitisch – grammatisch – methodisch. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. (IDS Leibniz Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Jahrbuch 2020)

2022-09-22T11:02:47+02:00

The Common European Framework of Reference: Transcending perspectives

2022-09-20T16:37:34+02:00

Stressing a balanced and constrained interplay between the individual and the collective and tending towards transdisciplinarity as a consequence, a socio-cognitive perspective prevails in second language acquisition research (Larsen-Freeman 2018). Advancing several theories, including the task-based approach, the ecological approach as well as sociocultural and socio-constructivist theories, the latest version of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2020) has adopted a transdisciplinary perspective. However, the nature of the transdisciplinary approach declared by the Framework (Council of Europe 2020) remains an empirical question. Thus, the present paper explores the extent to which the CEFR (Council of Europe 2020) abides by the principles of a motivated socio-cognitive perspective. The structure of the paper is the following. First, it outlines a transdisciplinary approach to second language development basing on cognitive linguistics, intercultural pragmatics and elements of the teaching learning process. Then, this socio-cognitive approach is sought in the CEFR (Council of Europe 2020). The analysis of the document demonstrates that the social and the individual perspective are symmetrical but not fully integrated, i.e. there is no common denominator linking the two approaches.

An introductory overview on representation of dissident sexualities, abjection, and subversion in queer Gothic fiction

2022-09-20T16:42:36+02:00

Queer Gothic may be considered one of the most recent subgenres of Gothic literature, being understood as a type of fiction in which body, gender and sexuality assume a central role. I approach the representation of queer sexualities in queer Gothic works, basing my analysis on the theory of abjection, as well as on other authors who work with Gothic fiction and Queer Studies, such as Judith Butler (1990), William Hughes and Andrew L Smith (2009) and Paulina Palmer (2016). My analysis consists of drawing a critical panorama, then commenting on Gothic works such as The Monk (1796), by Matthew Gregory Lewis, and The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), by Edgar Allan Poe, culminating in contemporary works such as the novel The Lazarus Heart (1998), by the trans author Poppy Z. Brite. It is possible to consider that in the aforementioned works Queer desires are articulated with supernatural or psychological phantasmagorias, assuming a liminal aspect which denounces the fragmentation of the Queer subject in face of hegemonic society. On the other hand, the representation of Queer sexualities has subversive potentials, while the hegemonic discourse imposes on them the stigma of abjection.

Das Wiener Kaffeehaus als Lebenswelt und Spiegel gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen am Beispiel der Novelle Buchmendel von Stefan Zweig

2022-09-21T13:36:34+02:00

In his novella Buchmendel (1929), Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) refers to the tradition of the coffee house as an explicit place of cultural and social exchange in the 20^th century Vienna. The aim of this study is to show the Viennese coffee house tradition not only as a breeding ground for social developments, but also as a kind of microcosm in which the oscillations of social life are reflected. The novella Buchmendel (1929) will be used to analyse the coffee house culture of Viennese society as a seismograph of social changes. The main focus of the study is the story of the protagonist Buchmendel, whose life circumstances will be described and analysed against the backdrop of the Viennese coffee house tradition culture.

University students' self-regulation in standard and enforced online language learning

2022-09-22T10:27:53+02:00

Since new learning environments are believed to affect student motivation and cognition, and thus, have a huge impact on the processes underlying self-regulated learning, the transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have challenged students’ ability to remain in charge of the learning process. Distance language learners could be particularly challenged by profusion of material, cognitive overload or unsettled participation patterns. Based on introspective data obtained from a representative sample of 321 university students majoring in various foreign languages, the present study aims to compare participants’ self-regulation in standard and online education and identify problem areas which demand action. At the same time, it seeks to respond to earlier calls for providing teachers with insights into students’ changing self-regulation routines and the processes underlying these changes. Data analysis clearly indicates that participants’ self-regulation (SR) has significantly deteriorated due to the shift from standard to online learning with respect to all the investigated SR areas. Also, while the investigated students reported a relatively high level of SR in the planning stage, their dramatically low level of reflection over the learning process could be seen as an impediment to a smooth transition from standard to distance learning.

Angekommen im Schwedischen? – deutsche Partizipialkonstruktionen in schwedischer Übersetzung

2022-09-22T10:31:46+02:00

Das Thema dieses Beitrags ist die Übersetzung deutscher Partizipialkonstruktionen ins Schwedische – ein Thema, dem die bisherige Forschung kaum Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt hat. Die Studie ist sowohl quantitativer als auch qualitativer Natur. Als Korpus dienen deutsche Sachprosatexte und ihre schwedischen Übersetzungen, von denen anzunehmen ist, dass sie im Einklang mit den entsprechenden deutschen beziehungsweise schwedischen Gebrauchsnormen verfasst wurden, eher als dass sie einen spezifischen Autorenstil reflektieren.

Anhand der quantitativen Analyse wird untersucht, ob und inwiefern eine Korrelation zwischen dem Subtyp der Partizipialkonstruktion und der gewählten Übersetzungsstrategie besteht. Ausgehend von den intuitiven Annahmen der einschlägigen Literatur wäre in den schwedischen Übersetzungen ein größerer Anteil an finiten Strukturen zu erwarten, die zur semantischen und syntaktischen Explizierung führen könnten. Das Ergebnis der Studie zeigt allerdings, dass die Übersetzer im hohen Ausmaß nach Strukturerhalt streben. Als frequenteste Übersetzungsstrategie kann die Verwendung einer entsprechenden Partizipialkonstruktion belegt werden, aber auch das strukturerhaltende Adjektiv stellt eine häufig vorkommende Strategie dar. Für die Strategienwahl spielt in der Tat der Subtyp der Partizipialkonstruktion eine Rolle, vor allem im Hinblick auf deren Komplexität. So werden Partizipialkonstruktionen in der schwedischen Übersetzung viel öfter verwendet, wenn der Originaltext eine einfache Partizipialkonstruktion aufweist. Dagegen sind finite Strukturen viel häufiger bei der Übersetzung von erweiterten Konstruktionen. Vorangestellte Partizipialattribute werden dabei oft durch einen Relativsatz wiedergegeben und die freistehenden adverbialen Partizipialkonstruktionen nicht selten durch Hauptsatzstrukturen.

Entre la teoría del afecto, los estudios de género y la narratología: Casa de muñecas de Patricia Esteban Erlés

2022-09-22T10:35:01+02:00

Casa de muñecas (2012) de Patricia Esteban Erlés es una obra en cuyo seno abundan temas femeninos y feministas: el confinamiento en el ambiente doméstico, las experiencias de violencia, las maneras de escaparse del enredo del patriarcado, etcétera. En ella, la narración doble (textual y visual), la estructura (subordinada a la temática) y la convención literaria (narrativa fantástica y gótica) junto con un sinfín de elementos paratextuales son factores que inducen ciertos afectos en los lectores y el despertar de emociones concretas. El presente artículo constituye un intento de traducción de algunos conceptos del giro afectivo al estudio de textos literarios, que aspira a dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas: ¿cómo es que el narrador intenta estimular el afecto de los lectores? ¿En qué medida la forma literaria (como cognado de la noción sociológica y psicológica del «ambiente») es capaz de afectar a los lectores? ¿Qué recursos literarios y componentes extradiegéticos inducen el afecto? ¿Puede la misma estructura del texto influenciarlo?

Weniger ist mehr: Zur Pragmatik verbloser (Nicht-)Sätze

2022-09-22T10:37:36+02:00

In spite of the existence of a variety of syntactic approaches, it is generally acknowledged that the verbal clauses are a central topic of the syntax. In contrast, verbless clauses which contain no verb element, and often also no subject, are not included in the prominent theoretical approaches to the syntax. Although there are many similarities between both these categories of clauses, there are also many differences, especially with respect to the way they are usually treated. Verbless clauses are mostly described as a reduction of finite clauses or an exception to the syntactic structures.

This paper is offered as a contribution to the long-standing discussion related to the grammatical status and usage of the constructions without a finite verb. A corpus-based analysis of these constructions shows that the verbless clauses tend to occur in various forms and contexts. Moreover, the results of this study suggest that in many cases verbless clauses are able to fulfill specific communicative functions, which cannot be expressed by any other syntactic units, including finite clauses.

Tenis ‘zapatillas de deporte’ en los diccionarios: origen, número gramatical y distribución geográfica

2022-09-22T10:40:17+02:00

Tras realizar una aproximación de carácter etimológico y lexicográfico a la voz tenis, el estudio se centra en la naturaleza morfológica de este sustantivo, concretamente en la categoría de número, cuando posee el significado de ‘zapatillas de deporte’. Frente a la solución que ofrece la 23.ª edición del Diccionario de la lengua española, donde tenis, con dicho sentido, figura con la marca de plural, se propone sustituir esta por “U. m. en pl.” (= ‘usado más en plural’) y considerar el sustantivo como dual léxico. De manera complementaria, se proporcionan datos acerca de la incorporación y la distribución geográfica de este vocablo y de otros equivalentes en los países de habla hispánica.

« Comme une morue des îles Lofoten mise à sécher dans le vent du nord » : la traduction de la comparaison similative en rapport avec la nature dans un roman norvégien pour la jeunesse

2022-09-22T10:42:43+02:00

Cet article adopte une approche plurielle pour étudier la traduction en suédois et en français du roman jeunesse norvégien Keeperen og havet (2017) de Maria Parr, et plus particulièrement la traduction des comparaisons similatives en rapport avec la nature. La perspective traductologique est donc ici complétée par une perspective écocritique, et le « NatCul Matrix » de Goga et al. (2018) est employé comme outil d’analyse. La nature joue une place importante dans l’œuvre de Maria Parr et il est ainsi intéressant de voir que plusieurs de ces comparaisons similatives sont utilisées, en norvégien et en suédois introduites par « som », et en français dans la majorité des cas par « comme ». Dans certains cas, la traductrice vers le français en a même aussi ajouté. Dans les deux cas (comparaisons similatives traduites ou ajoutées) c’est majoritairement le monde animal qui est utilisé comme standard. Cet article montre aussi clairement des versions cibles aussi écocentriques que la version originale, mis à part quelques cas intéressants de traductions non littérales.

Análisis dialectométrico del nivel fonético del Atlas Lingüístico Pluridimensional de Panamá

2022-09-22T10:45:27+02:00

This work examines the dialectal division of Spanish in Panama based on the quantitative distribution of the phonetic features found in the Atlas Lingüístico Pluridimensional de Panamá (ALPEP) and its dialectometric analysis. The results allowed identifying five dialectal zones: the first zone, central-western composed of Panama, Portobelo, Salud, Penonomé, Santa Fe, Chitré, and Puerto Armuelles; the second area, which is known as the western zone, includes Pedasí, Santiago, El Tigre, Tolé, Cerro Punta and Changuinola; the third zone, central-eastern, formed by Metetí and Cañita; the fourth zone, eastern, given by the populations of La Palma and Yaviza; and the Guna Yala zone composed of El Porvenir.

Elastic language in scientific writing: Evidence from the Corpus of English Life of Sciences Texts

2022-09-22T10:48:01+02:00

This paper sets out to explore the expression of vagueness in eighteenth and nineteenth century scientific writing, specifically in the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts. Following Zhang’s (2015) pragmatic-oriented approach to vague language, vague expressions are viewed through the lenses of elasticity. This notion applies to the strategic use of vagueness insofar as it provides a space for the negotiation of pragmatic meanings in writer-reader interaction. The exploration of elastic language involves four lexical categories: (i) approximate stretchers, i.e., approximators and vague quantifiers, (ii) general stretchers, i.e., general terms, placeholders and vague category markers, (iii) scalar stretchers, i.e., intensifiers and softeners, and (iv) epistemic stretchers. The Coruña Corpus Tool has been used to elicit data, but classification and contextualised interpretations have necessarily relied on manual analysis. Findings reveal that elastic language fulfils a variety of relational functions in scientific writing, including making generalisations when the information is either not available or relevant for the purposes of communication, marking shared knowledge and group membership, or self-protection.

Noun phrase in Nigerian Pidgin English

2022-09-22T10:51:24+02:00

Works showing the extent to which structural complexity characterizes syntactic structures in contemporary Nigerian Pidgin English are underrepresented in the main literature. For instance no works have shown the extent to which noun phrase (NP), an important syntactic measure of variability and complexity, exhibits variability and complexity, and the extent to which pattern found converges with /diverges from similar linguistic varieties. The present study provides the basic corpus-driven contemporary nature of simple-complex NP structures in NPE, including how factors such as syntactic function and weight explain context where we might find simple or complex NPs. Our results, though tentative, show that NPs in NPE exhibit considerable complexity, which is against simplification hypothesis exemplified in standard Nigerian English.