Linguistics Beyond and Within, 2021, Vol. 7
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- ItemSpreading digital literacy via Minimal English. The concept of ‘class’ in Swift programming language(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Biegajło, BartłomiejThe article aims at providing explications of the concept of a class, as it is implemented in the Swift programming language offered by Apple. The explications are framed in Minimal English, which is based on the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Detailed analysis of the Swift concept of class leads to four distinct core explications of the programming construct in question and the related feature that Swift classes possess, namely the concept of property. The article’s primary purpose is to offer a more smooth experience with programming, especially with beginners in mind. Their initial exposure to programming might face several challenges due to the complicated digital jargon of the documentation. Minimal English is implemented to ease the learning curve and promote digital literacy as one of the most fundamental skills in today’s world.
- ItemTree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Drabikowska, KarolinaThe article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status switching, the structural approach employs the procedure of tree pruning with a heavily limited role of melodic annotation. This paper will take a closer look at node removal with special attention to its trajectory. In particular, two basic directionalities are considered: top-down and bottom-up. The former has been proposed to account for vowel reduction whereby the highest positions are deleted retaining the head and potentially its sister. The acquisition of plosives and fricatives points to the latter trajectory, which disposes of nodes closer to the head. However, the choice of positions that are targeted in weak contexts might be also related to the inherently encoded hierarchy of terminal nodes within the constituents in question.
- ItemAbandoning the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses by redefining the predication relation(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Jurczyk, RafałThis paper questions the logic behind the presence and the working of the EPP-feature in Polish dual copula clauses (henceforth, DCCs) with the pronominal copula to, the verbal copula być ‘to be’, and two nominative 3rd person DPs, as represented in Bondaruk (2019). The criticism follows from: (i) – Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) downward Agree operation; (ii) – the view that the predicator encodes the predication relation between the pre-copular subject and the post-copular predicate; (iii) – selective multiple Agree, whereby the satisfaction of the EPP- and uφ-features is divorced. Adopting (i)–(iii), Bondaruk’s scrutiny allows either the pre- or the post-copular DP to occupy SpecTP, thereby accounting for DCCs’ agreement and configurational patterns, but, simultaneously, suffering from theoretical shortcomings it creates. We argue for a simpler satisfaction of the subject requirement which does not rely on the troublesome EPP-feature, but is motivated formally by the relation between T and the higher DP. We derive this requirement by following Zeiljstra’s (2012) upward Agree which only takes place once interpretable features c-command uninterpretable features, and Rothstein’s (2004) approach which is based on a neo-Davidsonian event semantics and which argues that be and its complement form a complex predicate, separated from the pre-copular DP both semantically and syntactically.
- ItemA study on the relationship between musical ability and EFL pronunciation proficiency(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Kaszycka, MariolaThis study investigates the relationship between musical ability and pronunciation proficiency of English as a foreign language [EFL] of university students of English philology. English pronunciation of the participants is evaluated by academic teachers of English in three categories: the general impression of the foreign or native accent, the accuracy of production of English sounds and the use of word stress and intonation. This experiment was conducted entirely online. Participants’ musical ability was tested using Gordon’s Advanced Measure of Music Audiation [AMMA]. The results of this study demonstrate a moderately positive correlation between musicality and FL pronunciation proficiency. The more musical students, the higher marks from the judges. The present findings seem to be consistent with other studies which suggest that musical skills may positively affect the acquisition of foreign language pronunciation.
- ItemA time for consolidation: A bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research 1985–1989(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Meara, PaulThis paper uses a co-citation analysis to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition that was published in 1989. Two analyses are presented. The first is a detailed account of the 1989 research on its own terms. The second analysis places this work in a larger context by looking at research published in a five-year window covering 1985–89. The analyses identify important themes in the research and significant sources who are influencing the way the research is developing at this time. The main features of this work are the substantial growth in dictionary and corpus research, and the emergence of Paul Nation as the Most Significant Source in 1989.