Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060130

Authors: Rea Delveroudi

This study examines the linguistic landscape of northern Lesbos at the turn of the 20th century through the lens of historical sociolinguistics. The research focuses on the scientific intersection and subsequent controversy between the native scholar Spyridon Anagnostou and the renowned German linguist Paul Kretschmer. Methodologically, the study employs archival research, biographical analysis, and a comparative study of Anagnostou’s original manuscripts held at the Research Center for Modern Greek Dialects (KENDI) against published editions. The results include the identification of 36 unpublished fairy tales and an analysis of phonetic and morphological phenomena, such as kappacism and rare feminine endings, which are largely absent from contemporary records. Comparative analysis further reveals significant “dialectal normalization” and ideological interventions in both scholars’ transcriptions. We conclude that Anagnostou’s manuscripts serve as a vital “linguistic fossil” and a proxy for unrecorded spontaneous speech, recovering diachronic depth lost to dialect leveling. Ultimately, the study highlights the importance of marginal local scholarship in reconstructing a “language history from below” and addressing epistemic injustice and the ideology of transcriptions in the history of dialectology.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060129

Authors: Hongdi Ding Hui Zhang

This study uses linguistic evidence to examine the cultural dimensions of the term “matchmaker” within Liangshan Yi society, Sichuan, China. The present linguistic analysis reveals that two distinct Chinese words related to marriage were borrowed into the Liangshan Yi language, based on morphological analyzability, cognate comparison within Sino-Tibetan languages, and phonological and semantic adaptation. Specifically, (i) the Chinese word 伐 (fá), meaning ‘to hew, chop, or matchmake’ was borrowed as a standalone verb, phonologically adapted as ho33/fu33 depending on dialect into Liangshan Yi with the meaning ‘to marry (generally)’; and (ii) the term 伐柯 (fákē), originally meaning ‘to cut wood for an axe handle’ and later to ‘matchmaking, matchmaker,’ was borrowed into Liangshan Yi as a noun meaning ‘matchmaker’ (hɔ44ka33/fu44ka33, depending on dialect). Phonological evidence suggests these borrowings occurred during the Late Middle Chinese period, prior to the completion of labiodentalization, but after the shift of labial consonants to labiodental sounds, between the late Tang and Song dynasties (ca. 9th to 13th centuries). The lower limit is 1324 CE, when Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn was compiled. The dating of these borrowings is corroborated by our further corpus analysis of the usage of 伐柯 fákē and 伐 fá in ancient Chinese texts. This analysis reveals that while the two Chinese words originated in Shījīng (Book of Odes, 11th–7th centuries BCE), their usage frequency was extremely low in Early Middle Chinese; a resurgence subsequently occurred in Late Middle Chinese, with the highest frequency attested in the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). Moreover, a survey of additional Loloish communities shows that 伐柯 fákē serves as the common source of the borrowing for the term “matchmaker” in many Northern Loloish and some Central Loloish varieties, reflecting the influence of Chinese marital customs across a broad range of Yi communities. Although the borrowing derives from a common source, given the similar phonetic forms, the terms for “matchmaker” in these Loloish languages lack sound correspondences. This indicates that the Loloish languages had already diverged from one another by the time the borrowing took place. Finally, the linguistic evidence from the present study illuminates the historical processes that shaped marital customs among Yi ethnic societies, demonstrating that the concept of matchmaker is a recent innovation within Yi cultural practice, linguistically and culturally borrowed from Han Chinese—probably during 9th century to early 14th century—rather than being an indigenous tradition.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060128

Authors: Chloé Diskin-Holdaway Paola Escudero

Little is known about parents’ attitudes towards their children’s accent and the role they play in transmitting an accent (and attitudes about accents) to their children. Even less is known about how these perceptions and attitudes emerge and are transmitted in multilingual families. We draw on an online survey of parental language attitudes in Australia (n = 267), where 45% of respondents were born overseas, and 61% reported speaking a language other than English. Parents were asked whether they think their children speak with an Australian or another accent; whether they change their accent when they speak to their children, and whether their children’s accents change when they speak to their parents as compared to other people. A total of 14% of parents reported that one or more of their children had an accent that was not Australian, with about half of these children having reportedly hybrid or mixed accents, and the other half no accent at all. Over 11% of parents reported frequently or occasionally changing their accent with their children. Of those parents, several disclosed specific strategies in changing their accents around their children, such as making a conscious effort to sound ‘clear’ or deliberately exposing their children to different accents. A total of 15% of parents reported that their children’s accents frequently or occasionally change when speaking to them. These findings have implications for the complex influences on children’s language and dialect repertoires as they relate to language attitudes, language ecology, and linguistic identity.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060127

Authors: Vasiliki Zarokanellou Maria Andreou Katerina Papanikolaou

Internal state terms (ISTs) include words describing emotions, thoughts, volitions, obligations, desires, and perceptions. This scoping review aimed to map and synthesize evidence regarding the production of ISTs in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability and to investigate the effects of age, gender, Theory of Mind (ToM) skills, and elicitation tasks on their production. A literature search was conducted manually and electronically in Scopus, ScienceDirect, ERIC, and PubMed, identifying 29 peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2006 and 2025. Findings were heterogeneous. Some studies reported lower IST production in individuals with ASD compared to neurotypical controls, whereas others found differences only in specific IST categories, mainly cognition and emotion terms, or reported no significant group differences. Findings regarding gender, ToM skills, and elicitation tasks were mixed. In both groups, older participants produced more ISTs than younger participants; however, developmental trajectories suggested that emotion and cognition terms were particularly challenging for individuals with ASD, who required more time to acquire them than their typically developing (TD) peers. Furthermore, TD participants produced significantly more ISTs when narrating people’s everyday interactions, whereas communication context did not appear to influence IST production in individuals with ASD. Research examining IST production in preschoolers and adults with ASD remains limited, and little is known about the developmental trajectories of ISTs in this population.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060126

Authors: Shaohua Fang Yue Li Yan Cong

This study investigates the real-time processing of quantifier scope ambiguity using self-paced reading, comparing surface and inverse interpretations of a–every sentences. Reaction time data revealed greater processing difficulty for inverse scope, supporting an account grounded in semantic computation rather than purely heuristic-based parsing. Offline interpretation results further indicate that abstract structural operations are engaged during scope computation. Surprisal estimates derived from a pre-trained autoregressive language model GPT-2 small successfully predicted both the locus and direction of scope effects observed in the human data, with partial convergence in effect magnitude. When surprisal was not considered, language experience, but not working memory, more robustly accounted for variability in complex scope interpretations. Crucially, incorporating individual differences into surprisal-based analyses showed that both language experience and working memory capacity modulate surprisal effects in scope processing: higher proficiency and greater working memory are associated with increased sensitivity to surprisal, whereas lower levels show reduced or even reversed effects, suggesting weaker engagement in expectation-based processing. Together, these findings highlight the interplay among structural complexity, cognitive resources, language experience, and expectation-based mechanisms in shaping real-time semantic processing.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060125

Authors: Annick Comblain

Orthographic depth varies across alphabetic writing systems and plays a central role in spelling acquisition. In immersion education, a second language (L2) is used as a language of instruction for part of the curriculum, such that learners are primarily confronted with its writing system during the initial stages of literacy development. This early exposure may shape the spelling strategies subsequently deployed in the first language (L1), which also corresponds to the dominant language of the surrounding community. This article provides a structured review of key mechanisms involved in spelling acquisition, orthographic depth, and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual and immersion contexts. On this basis, it proposes a conceptual and predictive framework specifying how the orthographic depth of the instructional language modulates spelling strategies and spelling error profiles in L1. Focusing on French-speaking pupils enrolled in immersion programmes with L2s characterised by either predominantly phonemic or opaque orthographies, the framework integrates strategy-based models of orthographic development. The model distinguishes phonological, lexical, and morphographic components of orthographic knowledge and predicts that immersion in phonemic-dominant orthographies favours phonographic dominance and regularisation patterns, whereas immersion in opaque orthographies promotes greater reliance on lexical–orthographic strategies, resulting in distinct and systematic spelling error profiles in French.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060124

Authors: Ayumi Matsuo Tamiko Ogura Letitia R. Naigles

This paper examines whether noun bias serves as an early default mechanism in lexical acquisition among Japanese toddlers, despite Japanese being categorized as a “verb-friendly” language. In Experiment 1, using two complementary methods—the Japanese MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory and an Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL) study—we investigated developmental changes in word-mapping tendencies among two age groups of Japanese toddlers (18 months and 26 months). Specifically, we explored whether younger toddlers (1- and 2-year-olds) exhibit a strong preference for mapping nonce words to objects rather than actions and whether individual differences in noun dominance influence word learning in the IPL task. In Experiment 2, we explored older children (3- and 4-year-olds) to examine whether an early verb shift takes place during that age group and compared whether there is any correlation between matured syntax and verb bias. Our findings reveal a robust noun bias as early as 18 months, with older toddlers displaying a shift that suggests an emerging sensitivity to verbs, aligning with the typological characteristics of Japanese. These results provide new insights into the developmental trajectory of verb acquisition and the interaction between lexical and syntactic learning in early childhood.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060123

Authors: Maria Rita Manzini Anna Roussou

Under the Markovian property of derivations the history of the derivation is not preserved in the current state, hence chains cannot be read off it. Instead, a Copy relation applies between identical inscriptions at the phase level, before Transfer. Consequently, Copy can take place between two identical theta-marked arguments, each separately introduced by External Merge, yielding control. In this article, we apply the Copy Theory of Control (CTC) to finite control in Greek. In finite control, the lower member of a Copy relation is interpreted as a bound variable (i.e., a ‘PRO’). At the same time its deletion is licensed in a null subject configuration, defined by Agree with rich I (like a ‘pro’). Since by hypothesis under the CTC there are no empty categories but only copies, the potential contradiction between PRO and pro properties can be avoided, under appropriate assumptions about the modular organization of the interfaces. We further predict that the same (subjunctive) structure in Greek can be ambiguous between control and pronominal null subject readings, and that non-null subject languages like English cannot have finite control.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060122

Authors: Costas Canakis Irene Kouniarelli

We focus on the use of the Modern Lesbian dialect in the linguistic landscape (LL), highlighting its diverse forms and functions. Since LL research primarily investigates written language in public space, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between language, place, and historicity, the growing visibility of the dialect in both physical and digital contexts (cf. the online–offline nexus) is particularly noteworthy. The presence of non-standard varieties in public discourse has been widely studied, revealing that aspects of language choice and use are related to the sustainability of minority languages, the shaping of linguistic attitudes and stereotypes, and the commodification of language as a cultural and economic resource. Within this framework, the data analyzed here illustrate positive attitudes toward Modern Lesbian, expressions of pride and comfort among its speakers, efforts to destigmatize dialectal speech, and indications of broader acceptance of Modern Lesbian. Meanwhile, the increasing commodification of the dialect is evident in its use for the promotion of products and services, capitalizing on its distinctiveness, despite its historical stigmatization vis-à-vis the standard. This development does not dissolve entrenched beliefs on the incompatibility of dialects with written discourse; rather, it capitalizes on the surprise (and humor) generated by their written presence in promotional contexts without resorting to humorous stereotyping.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060121

Authors: Sara Gómez Seibane

This study focuses on the Spanish spoken in the Basque Autonomous Community, where Spanish and Basque, two typologically distant languages, have coexisted for centuries. The research explores how specific morphosyntactic features result from pattern replication, i.e., changes in the target language (Spanish) inspired by structures of the source language (Basque) and triggered by the communicative needs of bilingual speakers. The analysis focuses on three key features: object-verb word order, non-standard gender agreement constructions, and the use of le/s for human female direct objects. Data from previous studies support these features as contact-induced changes, as they are either absent in non-contact varieties or follow different constraints. Specifically, in the Basque-Spanish variety, these phenomena exhibit higher frequency, a simplification of a paradigm, and the relaxation of grammatical restrictions, frequently aligning with Basque structures. Beyond internal factors, other empirical evidence supports contact as the primary driver. The paper explains how linguistic convergence leads to a shifting of constraints on these phenomena to reduce the cognitive load of processing two languages. Ultimately, these contact-induced changes went beyond individual bilingual strategies to become established features of the wider community, eventually reaching even monolingual Spanish speakers.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060120

Authors: Jocelyn Wright Robert J. Dickey Kara Mac Donald

We, the reviewers, explore Alex Baratta’s The Societal Codification of Korean English, highlighting Korean English (KE), since expanding circle English varieties are often overlooked despite their significant global role. Baratta argues that codification should be reconceptualized as a societal process driven by users themselves, where socially-used innovations become legitimate conventions, rather than having to be officially recognized as per tradition. Building on and moving beyond other works, he insists the field cannot wait for formal codification, even while acknowledging that some may find his framing of KE unconvincing or premature. We summarize such arguments around the legitimization of KE, offer insights into what Baratta’s work effectively addresses and leaves less explored. We then offer a conceptual matrix and metaphor to depict the complexity of KE and its codification. Finally, we introduce a new term, “K-English(es)”. The review aims to help readers better grasp the nuanced dynamics of KE that Baratta and the field engage with and to situate readers’ own interests (e.g., as English language teachers or Hallyu fans) around KE, while supporting the expanding scholarship on the topic.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060119

Authors: Ling Zhang

Previous research on Mandarin Chinese tones and intonation has focused primarily on universal sentence pitch patterns (declination) and sentence types (declarative and interrogative). The specific impact of internal syntactic structures remains under-explored. This study presents two acoustic experiments using controlled Tone 1 (high-level) stimuli to isolate intonational “big waves” from lexical “small ripples”. Experiment 1 investigates how syntactic position (subject vs. object), relative clause type (subject-relative vs. object-relative), and word class (verb vs. noun) influence pitch contours. Experiment 2 resolves conflicting findings regarding word-class pitch by testing nouns and verbs across four sentential contexts. The results indicate that subject positions carry significantly higher pitch than object positions, reflecting an interaction between SVO word order and declination. Crucially, subject-relative (SR) clauses exhibit a falling pitch tendency, while object-relative (OR) clauses show a rising trend. These results suggest that pitch realization is a complex “algebraic sum” of universal phonological trends, syntactic hierarchy, and semantic information structure.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060118

Authors: Andreas Baumann

To measure the emotional meaning of words, numerical sentiment scores are ascribed to them. However, within individual words these scores show variation: within and across annotation surveys, across linguistic contexts, and across semantic neighbors. While such variation could be set aside as undesirable noise, this study examines to what extent variation in lexical sentiment scores is in fact informative of the degree of the emotional ambiguity of words. Four different ways of estimating emotional polysemy and ambivalence are employed to analyze a set of 117 German words. Data from 16 sentiment dictionaries, an additional sentiment survey conducted for this study, automatically annotated contexts drawn from a contemporary German corpus, and pre-trained word embeddings were used for this purpose. These estimates are compared against subjectively rated ambivalence collected through crowdsourcing. It is shown that only variation within and across surveys robustly relates to subjective ambivalence. Context and neighborhood-based estimates, both of which are inherently sensitive to lexical frequency, cannot be shown to be related to ambivalence. This suggests, (i) that variation in lexical sentiment scores across dictionaries and annotators, but not across semantic neighbors and contexts, carries information about emotional meaning, and is hence valuable for cognitive-variationist research, and (ii) that speakers’ retrieval of positive and negative senses of words, in judging the degree of ambivalence, is not strongly affected by frequency, which is fundamental to NLP methods that build on distributional semantics. This implicitly challenges usage-based approaches to semantics that consider frequency as a predominant factor.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060117

Authors: Maria Karali

This study poses the question of whether certain linguistic features are not subject to dialectal variation, a question that requires thorough examination in the corpus of Ancient Greek dialects. To this end, the semantics and the pragmatic function of the injunctive/existential future is examined in the dialectal inscriptions of Ancient Mytilene, in the framework of cognitive semantics, deontic modality, and STIT, a semantic model of agency and control. The first line of enquiry regards the distribution of the semantic functions of the form: is it the case that all semantic nuances of ‘FUTURE TENSE’ are attested in the entirety of Ancient Greek dialects? A second line of enquiry regards the semantics of the form, and more particularly the fact that it expressed extreme deontic force, as if it were a type of injunctive. The form was detached from a specific deontic source, i.e., it merely represented a moral principle in a rather abstract, general form. Its meaning approximated that of infinitive pro imperativo, in that both types indicated what was morally right as a general legal requirement. Particular attention is given to the semantic/pragmatic distinction of the form from the imperative mood. It is claimed that a scale of an agent’s involvement in the verbal action distinguishes imperatival infinitives, injunctive futures and imperatives and that a shift from an objective to a more subjective expression of deontic necessity affects injunctive futures in the history of Greek. The existential future had no performative, directive force, this pragmatic task was performed by imperatives and imperatival infinitives. The existential future denoted absolute certainty in the realization of a prospective fact and presented a projected reality as if it were real in the present of the utterance, hence the characterization as existential. As such it lends support to the view that temporality is tightly connected to modality. The existential meaning of the future seems to be an innovation within Greek and became more frequent in (post)classical times. It appears as a panhellenic feature, but further verification is needed.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060116

Authors: Dan Roger Pozza Nuria Presencia Alapont Carmen Moret-Tatay Irani de Lima Argimon

Serious games represent a promising pedagogical approach by combining therapeutic and educational goals through play. This study examined the potential of a culturally adapted version of Érase una vez, a narrative-based card game originally developed in Brazil, to foster and assess narrative competence in school-aged children. Twenty typically developing children (ages 8–9 and 11–12) participated in both individual written and group oral storytelling tasks. Usability perceptions were assessed through questionnaires and the System Usability Scale, while linguistic performance was analyzed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. Statistical methods and computational linguistic tools were applied to measure lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic features. Results indicated high engagement and satisfaction, with over 95% of participants reporting positive experiences. Narrative productions revealed significant age-related differences: older children generated longer and syntactically more complex stories, while younger groups produced simpler structures with lower lexical variety. Group narratives reflected classroom-level effects, with sixth graders achieving greater cohesion and creativity. Findings support the integration of Érase una vez as both a pedagogical and therapeutic tool. Its playful and flexible format promotes motivation, reduces performance anxiety, and elicits rich, naturalistic language samples. Despite limitations of sample size and design, results encourage further exploration of serious games in educational and clinical contexts.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060115

Authors: Robert Marcelo Sevilla

The region today corresponding to modern Hunan province has been a site of stable language contact for over 2500 years, with the intensification of that contact occurring in particular between the 17th and 21st centuries. Major political developments during this time led to massive population movements which reshaped the demographics and linguistic ecology of Hunan. The region has considerable language and phylogenetic diversity, being home to three top-level groupings (Sino-Tibetan, Kra-Dai, and Hmong-Mien) and representing at least 17 different language varieties within a condensed area of around 211,800 km2; it is therefore the ideal setting to explore long-term language contact as mediated by degrees of relatedness. Structural diversity, in terms of morphological and phonological typology, is relatively low, owing to convergence over several thousand years. All language varieties in the province converge towards the MSEA typological profile; however, those that entered the region latest, such as varieties of Tujia, still retain features from outside the region (SOV, multisyllabic roots, etc.). In this paper the case is made that Hunan, with its geography, history of settlement, and contact between related and unrelated language families, represents a microcosm of linguistic contact situations which have taken place in other periods and regions of China. This is attributed to a combination of geographic and demographic patterns, historical patterns of settlement and ethnic conflict, and a complex sociolinguistic situation. Taken together, these lead to the formation of a unique linguistic niche where stable near-relative contact, distant-relative contact, and non-relative contact take place. The case is made that instances of near-relative contact between Xiang varieties and Mandarin (Standard and Southwestern) represent instances of koineization. This is evidenced by the formation of regional koines, such as Plastic Mandarin in Changsha, which present a degree of local prestige and show evidence of regional standard formation. Meanwhile distant- and non-relative contact between Southwestern/Standard Mandarin and Tujia and Waxiang, and Xiangxi Miao and Kam-Dong, respectively, are seen to result in extensive grammatical hybridization.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060114

Authors: Cristina Buenafuentes De La Mata

Every new phrasal preposition results from a process of grammaticalization, through which elements originally considered lexical acquire grammatical functions. At the same time, their complex status also entails a process of lexicalization, given that these constructions lose their syntactic analyzability. To address this apparent contradiction, the aim of this article is to provide a theoretical account within the theories of grammaticalization and lexicalization. Based on new empirical evidence taken from the historical analysis of the Spanish complex preposition por vía de ‘by way of’, as documented in the Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), this research demonstrates the relationship between grammaticalization and lexicalization. The diachronic data show that the locative noun vía undergoes grammaticalization. This process involves semantic bleaching (locative-perlative, perlative-figurative intermediation, perlative-figurative mediation, cause, purpose; e.g., por vía de Francia ‘by way of France’, por vía de intérprete ‘through an interpreter’, por vía de matrimonio ‘by means of marriage’, por vía de padre ‘on my father’s side’), recategorization, loss of morphological properties, external fixation, and condensation. However, this development is conditioned by lexicalization, as the noun is grammaticalized only when it becomes fixed in combination with the two prepositions (por and de). Nonetheless, the diachronic evidence also shows that the degree of syntactic analyzability varies according to meaning, indicating that analyzability does not necessarily entail semantic compositionality.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060113

Authors: Pablo E. Requena

Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) is conditioned by well-known local properties of the direct object, but also by clause- and discourse-level factors. In this study, we examine whether these factors are also available as potential learning cues in child-directed speech (CDS). We analyzed longitudinal naturalistic CDS from two monolingual and three bilingual (heritage) Spanish-learning children, manually extracting transitive clauses and coding DOM presence alongside discourse specificity, verb class, coreferential pronoun (clitic doubling), relative animacy, and DO placement, plus two local cues for comparison. Regression analyses revealed that a wider range of local and global factors conditioned DOM in monolingual than in bilingual CDS. The potential informativeness of these factors as learning cues was quantified using Competition Model measures of availability, reliability, and validity. In monolingual CDS, local cues (+human, pronominal/proper name DOs) were highly reliable, and two global cues (clitic doubling and relative animacy) showed moderate reliability. Whereas discourse specificity and verb class were highly available, they were comparatively unreliable. Validity values were uniformly low; although several global cues matched or exceeded local cues in validity, this pattern largely reflected their greater availability rather than higher reliability. In bilingual CDS, reliability and validity were reduced across nearly all cues, with little differentiation among cues. These findings suggest that Spanish-learning children encounter potentially usable utterance- and discourse-level evidence for DOM in CDS, but that the robustness of this evidence is markedly weaker in bilingual input.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060112

Authors: Serkan Uygun Leyla Zidani-Eroğlu

In Turkish, definiteness is marked through accusative case marking -(y)I and the presence or absence of the prenominal determiner bir (one). Crucially the latter may function as an indefinite determiner depending on the context. Previous studies have shown that definiteness is a vulnerable phenomenon for Turkish heritage speakers, as they have to integrate different language modules (e.g., morphosyntax and discourse/pragmatics). This study tested 49 monolingual Turkish speakers from Türkiye and 32 heritage speakers from the USA via an acceptability judgment task. Twenty-three of the heritage speakers were first-generation, and nine were second-generation heritage speakers. The experimental stimuli were created by manipulating both the grammatical number of the object (singular bir kitap ‘one/a book’ vs. plural kitap-lar ‘books’) and whether the object was preceded by a numeric determiner (bare kitap ‘a book’ vs. non-bare beş kitap ‘five books’) to test the acceptability of the nominal’s correct definiteness marking in a subsequent sentence. The results indicate significant discrepancies between the first- and second-generation heritage speakers, indicating crucial transgenerational variation in the use of the correct form of Turkish definiteness, while the first-generation and monolingual speakers do not differ from each other. These findings suggest that the integration of morphosyntax and discourse/pragmatics in definiteness marking, a particular aspect of linguistic competence within theorizing in generative grammar, does not seem to be fully acquired by second-generation heritage speakers as a result of acquiring Turkish under heritage language conditions.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060111

Authors: Flavia Pompeo

In studies on the polysemy of tactile verbs, there is a semantic field that has hitherto received scant attention: the expression of “chance events”. In an effort to partially fill this gap and lay the foundations for future research, this paper has two interrelated aims: (a) to clarify what constitutes a chance event when Latin contingo, obtingo, and, in particular, Italian toccare convey this type of meaning; and (b) to identify the semantic motivation and the conceptual mechanisms that underlie such use. To this end, using a corpus-based, largely qualitative analysis, occurrences of the Latin and Italian verbs will be examined, focusing on their constructions and the semantics of their arguments. Data will be collected from dictionaries, other lexicographical sources, and digital corpora. The theoretical approach adopted is that of Cognitive Linguistics. In conclusion, the analysis will evidence that verbs related to the meaning ‘to touch’, when used to express chance events in Latin and Italian, involve similar constructions that are explicable from a cognitive perspective. Ultimately, it will be suggested that the “bipolarity of touch” and other related characteristics help explain why tactile verbs can express chance events. This is consistent with Fernández Jaén’s 2014 classification.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060110

Authors: Seunggon Jeong Eun Young Bae

Traditional grammatical theories, particularly those rooted in Indo-European languages, conceptualize the clause as a fundamental syntactic unit consisting of a verb and its overt arguments. However, studies of spontaneous conversation across diverse languages reveal that interactants often organize utterances around predicates, omitting explicit subjects and objects when referents are recoverable from context. By combining Conversation Analysis with frequency analysis, the present study illustrates that the preference for predicate-centered utterances in Korean conversation is robust, even in sequential environments where interactants have addressed understanding problems arising from argument omission through repair sequences. Specifically, interactants tend to maintain predicate-centered utterances after repair, showing little inclination to shift toward using overt arguments. These findings support the view that predicates serve as the central unit of utterance construction and underscore the need to re-examine the nature of grammar to fully account for the context-sensitive and interactional dynamics of language use.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060109

Authors: Marjolein Poortvliet

This article traces the syntactic and semantic development of the Descriptive Perception Verb Construction from Early Middle Dutch to present-day Dutch. The Dutch Descriptive Perception Verb Construction takes the simplified form [SUBJSTIM V PRED], e.g., Hij klinkt moe ‘He sounds tired’, where the subject is the stimulus of the perceptual event and the verb is followed by a predicative complement, e.g., an adjective. In its verb slot, this construction has one of the five Dutch descriptive perception verbs: eruitzien ‘look’, klinken ‘sound’, voelen ‘feel’, ruiken ‘smell’, and smaken ‘taste’. In this article, I show that while there are two attested initial stages (i.e., the transitive construction and the intransitive construction) with two distinct bridging contexts enabling the emergence of this construction, the endpoint is the same: the constructionalization of the new Descriptive Perception Verb Construction. This new construction allows for the coercion of an implicit proposition, which expresses factivity, subjectivity and whose verb marks direct evidence. I hypothesize that over time the requirement to mark factivity is loosened for all verbs, and the marking of direct evidence is lost for eruitzien and klinken, indicating that these two verbs are further ahead in the semantic development of the Descriptive Perception Verb Construction.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11060108

Authors: Kyoko Masuda Amy Snyder Ohta

L1 transfer is well-attested in SLA; negative transfer is common when learners encounter a typologically distinct language. English-speaking learners often struggle with Japanese passives, which differ significantly from English passives both conceptually and grammatically. While English passives primarily defocus the agent, Japanese passives serve multiple semantic and discourse functions, often maintaining a focus on (and empathy toward) the experiencer. This small study examines how conceptual understandings drawn from usage-based (UB) analyses influence the acquisition of Japanese passives. Using corpus studies and acquisition research as a foundation, we developed concept-based language instruction (C-BLI) integrating UB-focused concepts. Our analysis of students’ oral languaging, gesture, and story-writing data from an immediate post-test and two delayed (3 weeks and 6 months post-instruction) post-tests show individual differences and demonstrate how a UB-based C-BLI approach facilitated developmental processes in Japanese over time; students improved their grasp of concepts taught via multi-modal materials, including visual materializations of concepts and ocean wave gestures. Conceptual and linguistic development were evidenced via oral languaging and story-writing. The most frequently used passive verb was iu ‘say,’ which has been found to be often passivized in L1 speakers’ production and previous SLA research. Findings contribute to broader discussions of how conceptual restructuring may affect L2 acquisition of complex grammatical constructions.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050107

Authors: Stavros Assimakopoulos Anna Piata

This paper aims to offer a state-of-the-art overview of the ways in which research on Modern Greek has informed—and been informed by—theorizing in the field of pragmatics. In charting this (rather uncharted) territory, our aim is to demonstrate that Modern Greek pragmatics does not only reflect the evolution of pragmatic enquiry from a narrow conceptualization to a much broader one that encompasses interactional, social and cultural specifications, but has also contributed new insights into pragmatic theory that surpass the purview of Modern Greek linguistics. While acknowledging that delimiting the remit of pragmatics is far from evident or even unanimously agreed, our overview envisages to provide the reader with a roadmap of past and ongoing research with a view to highlighting how general pragmatic principles interact with the language- and culture-specific parameters that are available to speakers of Modern Greek.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050106

Authors: Elena Casadei Adriana Belletti

This study presents a newly developed Sentence Repetition Task/SRT as a tool designed to investigate the acquisition of different syntactic structures in children with typical development (TD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The tool is grounded in the Growing Trees (GT, henceforth) approach, which assumes that developmental progression reflects the hierarchical growth of the syntactic tree, as described in cartographic analyses of clause structure. The SRT Protocol was constructed following the three developmental stages identified by GT: VP/TP, lower zone of the Left Periphery (LP henceforth), and higher LP zone. A preliminary pilot version was administered to 27 TD and 28 DLD children, followed by a revised second version with improved item design and broader syntactic coverage, administered to 28 TD and 21 DLD children. Descriptive and inferential analyses demonstrate a clear hierarchy in the acquisition of Italian morphosyntax, fully consistent with the three-stage developmental progression predicted by the model. Children with DLD follow the same path but with delayed acquisition and slower consolidation of certain structures. These findings provide developmentally grounded benchmarks for identifying morphosyntactic delays and show that the SRT Protocol is a reliable tool for profiling early syntactic development. Crucially, the protocol supports diagnosis and clinical practice by helping clinicians ensuring interventions that are both theoretically informed and aligned with syntactic growth.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050105

Authors: Laura Cabré Lunas Esther Artigas Álvarez

This article examines the Latin construction i nunc et Vimp from the perspective of diachronic analyzability. The expression consists of two imperative forms with identical morphological marking—the first a motion verb (V1), the second a lexical verb—linked by the conjunction et. Rather than encoding a literal directive sequence, the construction conveys a rhetorical exhortative value that systematically guides discourse interpretation in a direction different from that suggested by its surface form. Although attested from the Imperial period onward, the construction is analyzed against the background of serial imperatives with a motion verb in initial position and verbal pseudocoordination, patterns documented not only in Archaic Latin but also in other historical Indo-European languages. On the basis of an exhaustive corpus, the study assesses the contribution of each constituent in order to account for the construction’s global value. The analysis shows that i nunc et Vimp displays an uneven degree of analyzability: while its components remain formally and syntactically transparent, its semantic and pragmatic analyzability is reduced, as the elements do not contribute compositionally to propositional content but function as a pragmatically unitized block. Overall, the article highlights the central role of analyzability in diachronic change, including processes of unitization and constructional de/recategorization.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050104

Authors: Alexander Angsongna Samuel Alhassan Issah Hasiyatu Abubakari Darius Adjong Abraham Kwesi Bisilki Samuel Awinkene Atintono Adams Bodomo

The Mabia languages belong to the Niger–Congo family and are spoken primarily across the savannah and Sahelian regions of West Africa, including northern Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. Tone plays a crucial role in these languages, shaping both lexical meaning and grammatical structure. This study is a synthesis or an overview of previously described facts about the tonal phenomena in six Mabia languages, Dagaare, Dagbani, Gurenɛ, Kusaal, Likpakpaln, and Buli—highlighting their tonal inventories, structures, and distinctive tonal processes. Dagaare and Dagbani exhibit a two-tone system (high and low), with an additional down-stepped high tone. Kusaal, Likpakpaln, and Buli employ a three-tone system (high, mid, and low), while the tonal status of Gurenɛ remains contested: some scholars describe it as a two-tone language, whereas others provide evidence for a three-tone system. The mid tone, though relatively less productive, appears to represent a later innovation within the group. The mid tone performs both lexical and grammatical functions. Notable tonal phenomena across these languages include tonal polarity, low tone spreading, and restrictions on contour tones, with Buli exhibiting particularly productive low tone spread. In all six languages, tone plays both lexical and grammatical functions. This paper explores these features and offers basic theoretical explanations for their occurrence. Overall, tone is a defining characteristic of the Mabia languages, intricately shaping their phonological and morphological structures.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050103

Authors: Margarita N. Borreguero Zuloaga

This study examines the historical and functional divergence between two Spanish general extenders, y todo eso and y todo, in order to determine whether the loss of syntactic analyzability can serve as a criterion for distinguishing stages of grammaticalization and identifying pragmatic shifts. Drawing on extensive diachronic and synchronic corpus data, the analysis compares the formal evolution, semantic properties and pragmatic functions of both constructions. The results show that y todo eso follows a prototypical grammaticalization path marked by a progressive reduction in its internal structure, the weakening of referential meaning, and increasing freedom from syntactic constraints, while preserving analyzability through alternation with the simpler form y eso. In contrast, y todo displays an earlier and more advanced process of grammaticalization, dating back to medieval Spanish, in which the construction undergoes semantic bleaching, loss of additive value, and reanalysis as a scalar focus marker. These findings support the view that y todo no longer functions as a general extender in contemporary Spanish, whereas y todo eso retains this status, illustrating how syntactic analyzability correlates with shifts between pragmatic categories.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050102

Authors: Alexandra N. Lenz Andreas Baumann Wolfgang Koppensteiner Claudia Mattes Theresa Ziegler Amelie Dorn

The focus of our contribution is on lexical Austriacisms, i.e., lexical features of the Austrian standard language. Whereas in previous studies, only a small set of Austriacisms has been examined, with food terms being particularly popular, this contribution considers 76 lexical variables with 205 variants (Austriacisms and their co-variants), which are examined through complex variationist corpus analyses. The data is provided by the Austrian Media Corpus (amc), which represents the language use of the Austrian print media landscape in the 21st century. The analyses are both (short-term) diachronic and synchronic, taking into account the variation in vivo. Irrespective of the frequency-based “starting point” of a variant at the beginning of the 21st century, its relative frequency remains at comparable levels in the course of the observation period. Contrary to the threat scenarios of previous studies, our corpus analyses indicate the relative stability of the majority of Austriacisms over the 23 years studied (2001–2023).

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050101

Authors: Elena García-Guerrero Cristóbal Lozano

This study investigates first language attrition in the interpretation and processing of relative clause attachment ambiguities among instructed late sequential L1 Spanish–L2 English bilinguals. Traditionally, L1 attrition has been associated with limited L1 use and exposure, along with extensive naturalistic immersion. This study questions these conditions as prerequisites of attrition, examining bilinguals who live in an L1 environment but are extensively exposed to their second language in an instructed, classroom-based university setting. Bilinguals were compared with two native control groups of Spanish and English monolinguals. Results from a picture selection task reveal L1 attrition effects in instructed bilinguals, as they rely less frequently on their L1-preferred disambiguation strategy, i.e., high attachment, when resolving ambiguous relative clauses, particularly in comparison to Spanish monolinguals. Instructed bilinguals also exhibit higher processing when processing ambiguous sentences. Additionally, the study explores whether language dominance modulates attrition effects. We consider the implications of these findings for our understanding of grammatical attrition across different input contexts.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050100

Authors: Dimitra Melissaropoulou

This paper investigates evaluative morphology in the modern dialect of Lesbos, focusing on the morphological strategies used for nominal evaluation, the range of meanings they express, and the characteristics that distinguish Modern Lesbian from other varieties. Special attention is given to borrowing and the integration of markers serving evaluative functions in the dialect. Dialectal data are drawn from available primary and secondary written sources. The analysis shows that Modern Greek dialects, Lesbian in particular, which have largely escaped the effects of diglossia and standardization, constitute an especially valuable resource for linguistic research, as they reveal prototypical tendencies of linguistic systems. These tendencies include the preference for specific gender values as defaults in the expression of diminution and augmentation, the overwhelming productivity of specific markers, closely linked to the local dialectal identity, the symmetrical distribution of suffixes and prefixoids in the realization of positive and negative evaluative meanings, and the creative adaptation of borrowed evaluative elements.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050099

Authors: Arash Ashrafzadeh Julian Hough Arash Eshghi

Recent research in grounded language learning has seen remarkable success due to advances in large vision and language models (VLMs). However, these models (i) are extremely costly to train and update; (ii) struggle with generalisation; and (iii) do not support continual learning. In this paper, we introduce baby-ds integrating the Dynamic Syntax (DS) framework with automated planning within the multimodal BabyAI platform as a testbed. We provide methods whereby DS lexicons are induced continually from teacher demonstrations within BabyAI. We study (i–iii) by experimenting with the compositional complexity of natural language instructions in the data to compare data efficiency, generalisation, and continual learning properties of baby-ds with a simple neural model. The results show that the baby-ds model: (i) needs much less data than the neural model to reach threshold performance; (ii) generalises much faster to more complex instructions; and (iii) is a more effective continual learner. We argue that it is the attendant linguistic bias within DS and the rich inferential power of TTR that enables (i–iii), highlighting the importance of further research on hybrid grammar–neural approaches. Finally, we discuss several important limitations of baby-ds and sketch a path forward for further DS research.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050098

Authors: Olga Maxwell Elinor Payne Debbie Loakes Mitko Sabev

Increased global mobility has intensified contact between regional English varieties, creating new opportunities for large-scale second dialect acquisition. Australia, with its rapidly growing population due to migration, offers a particularly dynamic context for exploring such contact. This study investigates how first-generation Indian migrants in the Australian city of Melbourne perceive Australian English vowels in the lexical items dress and trap, a contrast chosen because of sound changes that are well-documented for this location. Listeners completed a vowel categorization task involving target words in non-lateral and lateral contexts. To assess contact-induced adaptation, their responses were compared with those of Australian English speakers in Australia and those of Indian English speakers in India. The results reveal that perceptual adaptation among first-generation Indian migrants in Australia is context-dependent. In the non‑lateral coda context, migrant Indian English listeners (in Australia) showed intermediate responses, between those of Australian English listeners (in Australia) and Indian English listeners (in India), indicative of a relatively ‘linear’ adaptation towards Australian English. Responses to stimuli in the lateral coda context, however, revealed a more complex picture. Australian English listeners (in Australia) and Indian English listeners (in India) responded more closely to one another than migrant Indian English listeners (in Australia), with the latter instead exhibiting a substantial degree of perceptual confusion toward the endpoint of the continuum for hell–Hal and, to a lesser extent, for shell–shall and pell–pal. These findings suggest that in the perceptual adaptation to a second dialect, the acquisition of a wider pool of phonetic variants is mediated by the acquisition of structural knowledge.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050097

Authors: Theodora Papastefanou Theodoros Marinis

The present study aimed to investigate the performance of bilingual/biliterate children on expressive vocabulary and morpho-syntactic skills and the extent to which home literacy activities (HLA) contribute to primary school Greek–English bilingual children’s performance on reading comprehension. Forty children attending Years 1 and 3 at an English primary school in the UK were assessed in language and decoding skills. After one school year, they were assessed in oral language skills, decoding, and reading comprehension in Years 2 and 4. The children performed better on all tasks at Time 2 than at Time 1, and the older children performed better than the younger ones. Their performance was better in the English tasks than in the Greek tasks. Greek morpho-syntactic skills and HLA were significant predictors of Greek reading comprehension, suggesting that children may use their morpho-syntactic knowledge to support their reading comprehension in their heritage language. Moreover, heritage language exposure through HLA can benefit literacy of the heritage language.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050096

Authors: Liz Smeets

A major question in L1 attrition research is whether cross-linguistic influence from a speaker’s second language onto their first constitutes only a temporary, superficial effect or whether it can also lead to a structural change, often discussed as a distinction between effects on language processing as opposed to changes to the mental representation of grammatical properties. Some have argued that L1 grammars of adult L2 speakers are entirely impervious to change, while others stated that some of the available findings can be interpreted as grammatical representations themselves being vulnerable. This paper contributes to the question of how we can distinguish between these two types of attrition. I argue that it is challenging to use behavioral differences across tasks as well as experimental results showing optionality between L1 and L2 options to distinguish between a superficial and a structural change. Instead, situations where properties of an attriter’s L1 grammar converge on the L2 constitute the clearest case of structural change as these cannot be explained as temporary effects of L2 influence. Using data from an earlier study on attrition found in Romanian native speakers living in Italy, I furthermore challenge the claim that L2 convergence only occurs in rare situations where attriters lose contact with the L1. To better understand the contexts in which attrition at the level of representation may be possible, I suggest that future studies focus on (1) a variety of linguistic properties where the L1 allows a grammatical construction or interpretation also in situations where it is not used in the L2, (2) properties where options from both the L1 and the L2 are less likely to co-exist in an attritred grammar and (3) consistently include analyses of individual response patterns.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050095

Authors: Angeliki Efthymiou

This paper investigates two derivational suffixes of the Lesbian dialect -ˈaδa and -iˈa, focusing on their shared characteristics, historical development, and semantic range. Both suffixes display dual etymological origins, form feminine nouns, and exhibit notable polysemy. The study focuses on assessing the degree and patterns of polysemy associated with these suffixes in the Modern Lesbian dialect, with particular emphasis on their comparison to Standard Modern Greek and on cases of morphological competition. It is argued that both suffixes are closely linked to a subjectively delimited reality, as shaped by direct perception and observation in everyday life, and at the same time they function within a complex morphological ecosystem, where they display areas of both competition and functional differentiation. The suffix -ˈaδa typically refers to a property or state directly observable by the speaker, and thus to an entity defined by a dominantly noticeable characteristic. In contrast, the suffix -iˈa is considerably more polysemous than ˈaδa, conveying individualization, and forming nouns that reflect the speaker’s viewpoint while denoting entities perceived as bounded.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050094

Authors: Debbie Loakes Kirsty McDougall Adele Gregory

A sociophonetic study of coda /t/ in Australian Englishes spoken in Warrnambool and Mildura, Victoria, Australia, is described. A total of 2112 coda /t/ tokens produced by 61 adult L1 speakers was analyzed using auditory and acoustic profiling, focusing on four social factors (location, dialect, age and gender). The corpus included 33 Aboriginal English and 28 Mainstream Australian English speakers (24 male, 37 female) who fell into roughly equal age groups of <40 and >40 years. Overall, the “canonical” (aspirated) variant [th] was most frequently observed, followed by affricate [ts] and pre-glottalized [ˀt]; these variants accounted for 79% of all tokens. As for sociophonetic patterning, the best-fitting model included all four predictors (location, dialect, age and gender), with random intercepts for speaker and word. Dialect (Aboriginal or Mainstream Australian English) and age showed the strongest sociophonetic patterning, followed by limited effects for location. Variants were subsequently grouped into three superordinate categories—“breathy”, “canonical” (aspirated) and “glottal”—and a model was created including all four predictors and all two-way interactions between them, with random intercepts for speaker and word. This model showed that linking variants with broad voice qualities highlights even stronger sociophonetic patterning in some cases and is a promising direction for future research. The study contributes findings to three under-explored areas: consonant variability in Australian Englishes, fine-grained phonetic variation in Australian Aboriginal English, and analysis of speech from non-urban locations.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050093

Authors: Sofia Kouvava Katerina Antonopoulou Aglaia Stampoltzis Sofia Mavropoulou Eirini Patroumpa Aggelos Tzoumailis Eleni Peristeri

Background/Objectives: Narrative skills play an important role in children’s overall development from a very young age, and they are linked to social behavior, as well as several emotional and cognitive outcomes. Young autistic children often experience difficulties in their narrative skills and these difficulties may impact their social interactions. The present study reviews recent findings to detect factors influencing narrative development in autistic and non-autistic preschool children, and to identify trends or gaps in the existing literature. Following screening and eligibility assessment, 39 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines were followed. Results: Non-autistic children show a clear, age-related progression in narrative skill development, moving from simple to complex structures at the level of microstructure and advanced inferential abilities at the level of macrostructure, which are strongly linked to core language and cognitive development. Conversely, autistic children primarily face challenges in narrative macrostructure and coherence, demonstrating deficits in integrating information and making inferences, which is consistent with weak central coherence in autism. Conclusions: The evidence suggests that narrative development in autism reflects qualitative differences rather than mere delay, particularly in the organization and integration of macrostructural story elements. These findings underscore the importance of interventions that move beyond surface-level linguistic skills to explicitly target global coherence, causal structuring, and inferential reasoning. Future research should further clarify developmental trajectories and the mechanisms linking narrative competence with broader social and cognitive outcomes.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050092

Authors: Paul Roger Bassong Edmond Ossoko Luigi Rizzi

In many African languages, there exists a type of subject–object asymmetry by which subject focus must be expressed by A-bar movement to a morphologically marked left peripheral position whereas object focalisation can be expressed by movement and morphological marking in the left periphery, or in situ. In this article, we discuss and analyse this structural asymmetry in the Bantu languages Basaá and Mmaala. We argue that overt and covert movement of the focused object to Spec-FocP in the left periphery is allowed while covert movement of the subject is blocked, so that overt movement is the only possible option. Contrary to previous analyses, which attribute the obligatoriness of subject focus movement and marking to an interpretive conflict, we propose a formal characterisation of this phenomenon by which the blocking of subject focalisation in situ is deduced from criterial freezing, so that overt movement to the left periphery is the only option, through a familiar strategy of overt subject extraction.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050091

Authors: Georgia Katsouda

Scientific etymological analysis, applicable to both standard and dialectal vocabulary/lexicon, is predicated on core methodological principles that necessitate a word’s cross-regional and diachronic examination. A fundamental principle of etymological research is that successfully identifying a word’s origin requires systematic examination and comparison of all available sources and dialectal data. The aim of this article is to address lacunae in the etymological record of the Lesbian dialect by presenting new data that either resolves longstanding uncertainties or necessitates a scholarly revision of specific word origins. The dialectal words of Lesbos and the etymologies under examination were extracted from dictionaries of the dialect of Lesbos. More specifically, fresh etymological data and new etymological proposals are presented for words from the dialectal vocabulary of Lesbos, such as ɣraɣúða ‘a kind of pot’, karnokáftis ‘stingy’, kumsú/kumpsú ‘gossiper, mocker’, lulúða ‘silly woman’, malastúfa ‘oakum’, tsiróɲ ‘fork’, fáirop ‘order to do something immediately’, psirúts ‘a traditional crème’, xaxóʎs ‘rowdy, noisy person’, and xʎimídza ‘purslane’.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050090

Authors: Carlos I. Echeverría

The concept of verbal periphrasis has historically been a controversial one in Romance linguistics, especially in the Hispanic context, where there has been disagreement as to what multiverbal constructions should be considered periphrastic. One of the points of contention has been the class of infinitive causatives. This article revisits the controversy by focusing on Spanish “enviar/mandar a + infinitive” structures and drawing on historical corpus data. The analysis of various examples leads to the conclusion that strictly periphrastic instances of this constructional class are present across all main stages of the history of Spanish. Additionally, a series of quantitative analyses reveals what appear to be two distinct grammaticalization processes and a degrammaticalization process. These findings are discussed in connection with broader themes in the field, such as syntactic ambiguity and the concept of analyzability.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050088

Authors: Jill C. Murray

Throughout the English-speaking world, there are numerous Greek-speaking diaspora communities whose language is simultaneously influenced by English and local varieties of Greek. This study builds on the body of knowledge in cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics to explore a case of pragmatic acquisition in a study abroad context by one member of such a community. Data were collected from a third-generation young adult Greek Australian student prior to commencement of a 6-week Greek language programme in Athens, and on three other occasions. She described her experiences and responded to a set of scenarios involving Greek requests, refusals and apologies. The responses were analysed using established frameworks and subjectively evaluated for appropriateness by a matched Greek native speaker. The student showed evidence of a shift towards documented Standard Modern Greek pragmatic norms in some but not all speech acts, and change appeared to be loosely linked to opportunities for use. There was also some evidence of reversion to diaspora variants after her return. This study contributes to our understanding of the interaction between learning outcomes, individual learner variables, prior exposure, the nature of communicative events and levels of pragmatic awareness. It is argued that Greek and diaspora contexts involve subtly distinct pragmatic varieties of Greek and that learners can benefit from explicit awareness-raising regarding the nature of these differences.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050089

Authors: Ruben Roberto Peralta-Rivera Rafael Saldívar-Arreola

Loanword Research on Anglicisms has largely centered on lexical borrowing and phonological adaptation with comparatively limited attention to morphosyntactic integration in recipient grammars. This study examines the morphosyntactic behavior of 74 single-word Anglicisms—monosyllabic structures with monophthongal vowels—drawn from phonetically classified corpora of spontaneous Mexican Spanish produced by Spanish–English bilinguals in the Tijuana–San Diego border region. Building on prior acoustic analyses based on F1 and F2 vowel measurements, the study investigates the relationship between phonological adaptation and morphosyntactic integration. Results reveal a gradient pattern of incorporation. Anglicisms exhibiting Spanish-like phonetic properties tend to occupy canonical syntactic positions and show greater compatibility with Spanish functional morphology, whereas phonetically non-adapted forms more frequently resist morphological marking and display island-like behavior within otherwise Spanish clauses. The analysis examines distribution across nominal, adjectival, and prepositional domains and object positions to assess morphosyntactic integration degrees. The former is illustrated as follows: (1) guardo cash ([kaʃ]) por si acaso; (2) si hacen match ([mæʧ]), puede funcionar. Adopting a usage-based and contact-oriented perspective for syntactic borrowing, the study is situated within the Matrix Language Frame model and recent approaches to insertional borrowing. A central contribution lies in establishing a principled link between morphosyntactic behavior and an independently motivated phonetic classification, offering convergent evidence for the systematic integration of Anglicisms into Spanish grammar. At a broader analytical level, the study advances debates on syntactic borrowing and contact-induced change by demonstrating that Anglicisms are subject to Spanish morphosyntactic constraints rather than functioning as unconstrained lexical insertions, and by developing an interface-based account of borrowing that captures the gradient nature of grammatical incorporation in contact settings and contributes a corpus-based, empirically grounded perspective to typologies of borrowing in Spanish contact linguistics.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050087

Authors: Chiara Meluzzi Nicholas Nese

This study investigates the phonetic variation in Italian dental affricates, focusing on the role of lexical frequency, phonological context, geographical origin, and speech style (read speech vs. collaborative dialogue). Previous research on lexically based phonetics has emphasised the link between item frequency and phonetic realisation; in this paper, we test these premises on a class of rare and marked sounds—dental affricates. A corpus of read sentences and map-task dialogues produced by northern and southern Italian speakers was analysed acoustically with respect to voicing and duration. Results show that phonological context and geographical origin are the primary determinants of voicing, with southern speakers favouring voiced realisations and word-initial position strongly conditioning voicing patterns. Lexical frequency does not significantly predict voicing category once between-speaker and between-item variability are appropriately modelled, but it does exert a positive effect on affricate duration: higher-frequency words contain relatively longer affricates, reflecting compensatory preservation of segmental identity within otherwise reduced words. Speech style significantly affects duration, with reading favouring longer realisations. These findings reveal a dissociation between categorical and gradient levels of phonetic variation, supporting usage-based models in which lexical frequency modulates fine-grained phonetic implementation rather than determining phonological categorisation.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050086

Authors: Abdelrahim Fathy Ismail Rabha Adnan Alqudah Rawan Abdul Mahdi Neyef Al-Saliti Alaaeldin Ahmed Hamid

Despite significant advances in AI language models, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) remains a linguistically complex domain in which apparent fluency often masks deeper grammatical instability. This study investigates recurrent grammatical error patterns in ChatGPT-generated Arabic texts, focusing on how these patterns reflect underlying morpho-syntactic challenges and the constraints of probabilistic language generation. Adopting a qualitative, pattern-oriented analytical framework, the study draws on online focus group discussions with secondary-level Arabic teachers, who served as expert linguistic evaluators. Participants collaboratively examined a set of AI-generated texts to identify and interpret systematic grammatical deviations across five key domains: agreement, inflection and case marking, sentence structure, prepositions and transitivity, and cross-linguistic influence. The findings indicate that grammatical errors in AI-generated Arabic are not random but occur as recurring, structured patterns, particularly in contexts involving long-distance dependencies and morphologically complex constructions. These patterns suggest a reliance on surface-level fluency at the expense of deeper grammatical coherence, reflecting limitations in maintaining consistent morpho-syntactic relationships. This study contributes by identifying and characterizing systematic grammatical patterns in AI-generated MSA as interpreted through expert linguistic judgment, offering a qualitative perspective that complements existing quantitative approaches and advances understanding of how large language models engage with morphologically rich languages.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050084

Authors: Haiyan Zhu

This study investigates how Chinese learners of English express manners of motion, examining systematic features, cognitive motivations, and compensatory strategies. While Talmy’s motion events typology and Levin’s verb classification system provide important foundations, both have limitations in capturing the internal semantic granularity of manner verbs and the complexity of learner acquisition. To address this, we construct a 10-level verb typology establishing a “semantic granularity” continuum from concrete to abstract, physical to metaphorical, and lexical to grammatical. Using experimental data (N = 600) and corpus comparisons (COCA vs. learner corpus), we analyze Chinese learners’ manner expression patterns. Results reveal the following: (1) Chinese learners prioritize Path over Manner, overusing lower-level verbs (go, walk, run) while underusing higher-level and fine-grained manner verbs (stroll, scramble), which are preferred by native speakers. (2) Learners favor semi-tight or loose syntactic structures and show a preference for describing Manner precisely by adding other modifiers such as adverbials, prepositions, complements, or subordinate clauses. When it comes to precisely describing specific manners of motion, Chinese learners of English tend to use four strategies—analytic manner externalization, path salience, image-schematic transfer, and semantic simplification—whereas native English speakers typically rely on single verbs with high semantic density. These findings suggest learners’ expression of manner involves both L1 syntactic transfer and target language conceptual adaptation. The 10-level classification continuum advances the theoretical understanding of motion event lexicalization patterns, provides new perspectives for conceptual transfer research, and offer pedagogical implications for Chinese English learners’ accuracy of their expression of manner.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050085

Authors: Rosangela Lai

This paper investigates ongoing phonological changes in Campidanese Sardinian and its morphosyntactic repercussions, focusing on the weakening of word-final codas under increasing pressure from Italian. Sardinian preserves the Latin nominal and verbal endings -s and -t, whose interaction with external sandhi processes traditionally sustains crucial distinctions of person and number. Through a comparison between a conservative variety (Tertenia) and an innovative one (Pula), the study shows that total regressive assimilation of -s and -t is becoming generalized in innovative areas, neutralizing the contrast between second- and third-person singulars. The decline of vowel epenthesis in contexts involving heterosyllabic clusters further destabilizes the system, occasionally generating ambiguity in clitic number and verbal person marking. A Strict CV analysis demonstrates that epenthesis-less outputs are structurally well-formed only if final codas are assumed to be absent at the underlying level, pointing to a deeper restructuring of phonological representations. Overall, the data document a shift from a morphologically transparent system toward one increasingly aligned with Italian phonotactics, with significant consequences for morphosyntactic disambiguation.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050083

Authors: Andreas Wölfle Eva Knopp Helen de Hoop

Research has shown that bilinguals’ first (L1) and second language (L2) interact constantly. One well-documented case is the gender congruency effect, where grammatical gender retrieval is facilitated when a noun has the same gender in both languages. While this effect has been extensively studied in the direction of the L1 influencing the L2, less is known about how gender retrieval in the L1 is influenced by gender in the L2. The present study investigated whether exposure to L2 Dutch affects grammatical gender retrieval in L1 German among speakers who are constantly exposed to the L2. We tested 40 L1 German–L2 Dutch bilinguals living in the Netherlands and 28 L1 German monolinguals using a gender decision task in German. Stimuli included nouns with congruent and incongruent gender in the two languages, as well as cognates and non-cognates. Results revealed no evidence that L2 Dutch affected L1 German gender retrieval in bilinguals, indicating that grammatical gender in the L1 appears robust to L2 influence during online processing, even after prolonged immersion in the L2 environment.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050082

Authors: Janel Zoske Tanja Ackermann

In this article, we address the issue of the sometimes indeterminate grammatical and functional status of vocatives and vocative-like NPs by proposing a prototype-based approach to their classification. We then explore the socio-pragmatic functions of these vocative types, adopting a variationist perspective that considers both macro- and micro-social factors to determine when the different types of vocatives occur and how they contribute to managing interpersonal relationships. This exploratory analysis is based on data from an online questionnaire featuring Discourse Completion Tasks of over 3000 participants in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The findings show that different vocative types fulfill distinct socio-pragmatic functions, ranging from signaling positive politeness to heightening the face-threatening potential of an utterance, depending on the communicative task performed. In addition, their use varies between participants, based on the speakers’ regional background, gender, age, or personality traits.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11050081

Authors: Wafaa Alshangiti

Increased experience with a second language (L2) can affect one’s speech perception and production. Some studies have suggested that experience does not affect the production of English bilabial stops by Arabic speakers. They produce the English bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ as the Arabic /b/, which differs in VOT. However, the effect of English experience on the perception of English bilabial stops remains underinvestigated. This study examines the effect of L2 immersion experience on the perception of the English stops /p/–/b/ to investigate whether the lack of /p/ in Arabic can affect the perception of the /p/–/b/ contrast and whether L2 experience shifts the category boundary toward that of native speakers. Sixtysix participants, comprising two groups of Arabic speakers with differing L2 experience and a control group of native English speakers, completed identification and discrimination tasks using the /p/–/b/ VOT continuum. The regression analysis showed that listeners with more L2 experience (i.e., ≥3 years in the UK) had a closer category boundary to that of native listeners than those with less L2 experience. However, category discrimination accuracy did not differ significantly between the Arabic groups. The results highlight the importance of L2 immersion experience in altering VOT perceptual strategies, which can help in designing future training studies that focus on VOT perception as an L2 phonetic cue.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040080

Authors: Nikolaos Vogiatzis

The present study undertakes a comparative investigation of the dialects of Thassos and Lesbos, systematically examining both shared and distinctive linguistic features across phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, and the lexicon. Based on primary ethnographic data and contemporary linguistic methodologies, the analysis demonstrates that, although the two varieties belong to the Northeastern Aegean dialectal continuum, they display both substantial similarities and significant divergences shaped by historical and sociolinguistic factors. These differences reflect the geopolitical position of each island: Thassos emerges as a more conservative enclave due to relative isolation, whereas Lesbos functions as a site of linguistic fusion shaped by sustained contact with Asia Minor populations. The study thus underscores the importance of comparative dialectology for understanding the dynamics of insular linguistic systems within the Northeastern Greek-speaking territory.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040079

Authors: Miriam Heila Reyes Núñez

This study examines the diachronic development of Spanish perception verbs into deverbal topic markers (DTMs), focusing on tocar (‘to touch’), e.g., en/por lo que toca a, as representative of sensory perception. While the grammaticalization of visual perception verbs into discourse markers (DMs) has been extensively documented, sensory verbs remain understudied. Drawing on data from three electronic corpora—CORDIAM, CORDE, and CORPES—this paper traces the semantic and syntactic evolution of these constructions from the 15th to the 21st century. There are three main conclusions: (a) the semantic development of tocar (‘to touch’) is driven by the interaction of metonymy and metaphor, corresponding to a process of metaphtonymy; (b) en/por lo que toca a arises through gradual grammaticalization processes, including semantic bleaching, decategorialization, increase in scope, and a positional shift toward the left periphery; (c) the corpus evidence suggests a gradual diffusion of the construction across textual genres, beginning in legal and administrative texts and later spreading to other registers.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040078

Authors: Alexandre Rodríguez Guerra

This contribution studies the behavior of the four main general light verbs (LVs) in the history of Galician (dar, facer and haber/ter). The research is structured around the following three fundamental axes: first, we study the evolution, comparison with equivalent full verbs and the morphosyntactic behavior of 26 different LV constructions (with examples that the literature identifies with different degrees of fixation) from medieval to contemporary Galician, all of which form a corpus with 8728 occurrences. Next, we discuss the results of a survey distributed to 162 respondents, which allows an assessment of these LVs from several perspectives, especially syntactic. Finally, we offer an original proposal to measure the degree of syntactic analyzability, based on the quantified review of the various parameters analyzed (of which we also provide a scale, applied synchronically and diachronically) and the results in the specific survey question. We call it Syntactic Analyzability Index (SAI) and, thanks to this index, we obtain an objective scale that projects each example on a gradation that explains the greater or lesser distance or proximity of a construction with LV from freely combined elements or from the most fixed of phrasemes.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040077

Authors: Pravaal Yadav Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu

This paper investigates how referentiality interacts with the syntax of Hindi–Urdu. It argues that three patterns, namely, object reduplication, association with the focus particle hī, and cross-clausal agreement, are manifestations of a single structural contrast determined by object shift. With our novel observations, we show that only objects that introduce discourse referents undergo displacement to a higher syntactic position, where they can trigger agreement or serve as associates of the focus particle hī. Reduplicated nominals, which lack referential features, must remain inside the VP and are consequently excluded from these dependencies. The analysis formalizes this correlation through a referential licensing condition that restricts movement to SpecvP to arguments bearing a referential feature [+Ref]. This condition derives the observed interactions between object shift and interpretation of the object. The resulting account integrates phenomena of agreement and focus with the semantics of specificity, offering a unified model of how referential interpretation is encoded in the clause structure of Hindi–Urdu.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040076

Authors: Sonia López-Serrano Ariadna Sánchez-Hernández Alicia Martínez-Flor

The present study investigates the relationship between initial learner motivation, engagement, and pragmatic development within a self-access web-based instructional environment. Focused on the development of awareness and production of English email requests to faculty, the study involved 65 first-year English Studies students at a Spanish public university. Motivation was assessed qualitatively through open-ended responses which were classified as having Pragmatic orientation, Linguistic orientation, or No orientation. Engagement was captured multidimensionally via project-linked indices of behavioural, cognitive, and affective involvement. Findings reveal that initial motivation predicted greater overall engagement, including increased time invested and deeper cognitive processing. A distinct modality gap was identified: while engagement related positively to pragmatic gains, it exerted stronger effects on awareness than production. Most crucially, profile analyses revealed that sustained engagement can override initial motivational deficits. Learners who entered the module with no initial orientation but still engaged at a moderate level significantly outperformed unmotivated, disengaged peers and achieved gains comparable to those of more motivated students. These findings underscore the mediating role of engagement in pragmatic instruction and advocate for specific motivational and engagement assessments over general scales to better account for the effects of these individual differences in L2 pragmatic gains.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040075

Authors: Nikos Liosis Dionysis Mertyris

Modern Greek was spoken along the northwestern coast of Asia Minor until the early 20th century, yet neither its precise geographical extent nor its dialectal classification is well established. This paper seeks to clarify both issues by focusing on the variety of Adramytti (Edremit). The available evidence suggests that Adramyttian, despite its close relationship to and partial origin in Modern Lesbian, was essentially a mixed variety that leveled out many characteristic Modern Lesbian features, such as the raising of unstressed mid vowels and certain morphological phenomena. Such differences can be attributed to the diverse character of the speech community that led to contact between speakers of Modern Lesbian origin and speakers of other Greek dialects. In addition to providing a grammatical description of Adramyttian, which demonstrates its mixed profile, the paper offers a tentative classification of this variety in relation to Modern Lesbian and the other insular varieties of northeastern Aegean, as well as in relation to other neighboring varieties of northwestern Asia Minor (Aeolis, Mysia, northern Ionia).

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040074

Authors: Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen

In research on verbal periphrases, analyzability constitutes a central parameter, both for describing the grammaticalization processes to which these constructions are subject and for defining their categorical status. This paper focuses on a specific verbal periphrasis: [tardar en + infinitive]. Its historical development is examined, along with the recent emergence of a dative of interest in this construction, drawing on quantitative data from various digital corpora. The findings show that over time en became the predominant linking element between the auxiliary and the infinitive and that the order of the components of the periphrasis gradually became fixed. The data also reveal that the new pattern with the dative of interest occurs more frequently in informal written language and colloquial registers, where the object pronoun contributes to clarifying the construction’s potentially opaque meaning. We argue that grammaticalization has reduced the syntactic analyzability of the construction, whereas the incorporation of the dative of interest points to speakers’ perception of tardar as an independent verb, thereby reflecting increased analyzability. This case study illustrates that the analyzability of a construction is not necessarily unidirectional, but may fluctuate over time, shifting in different directions at distinct historical stages.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040073

Authors: Laura Bafile

Several southern Italian dialects show a systematic alternation in the forms of the third person object clitic between proclisis and enclisis; moreover, in proclisis, the object clitic and the definite article have different forms that alternate between prevocalic and preconsonantal contexts. On the whole, the distribution of forms constitutes a varied and complex picture, which has often been treated in terms of allomorphy. In particular, this article examines the arrangement of proclitic forms in the Neapolitan variety in which the forms are distributed according to three different patterns. The article explores the possibility of analysing the alternations in purely phonological terms, using the representational tools of “floating melody”, “stress space” and “virtual geminate”. The results obtained are encouraging: while some alternations have proven to be allomorphic in nature, a unified phonological explanation has been developed for challenging issues, including the so-called “l-deletion” and the corresponding vowel lengthening.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040072

Authors: Ronan Pereira Catarina Rosa Mariana Silva

This study investigates cross-dialectal influence in native Brazilian Portuguese (BP) immigrants in Portugal regarding the pragmatic distribution of pronominal subjects within a novel framework of second dialect acquisition and first dialect attrition, the Bidialectal Dynamics Model (BDM). Twenty-eight immigrants completed a spontaneous oral production task in both BP and European Portuguese (EP). Two control groups (24 BP speakers in Brazil and 24 EP speakers in Portugal) did the same in their respective native varieties only. All groups favored overt subjects for topic shift. For topic maintenance, BP speakers in Brazil preferred overt subjects despite omitting more pronouns in this context than in topic shift, while EP speakers strongly favored null subjects. At the group level, immigrants produced fewer null subjects than EP controls and more than BP controls, suggesting bidirectional cross-dialectal influence. At the individual level, profiles varied: most participants displayed bidirectional cross-dialectal influence, some maintained their native preferences, others used their second dialect across the board, and only a few displayed target-like behavior. Following the BDM, it is argued that this cross-dialectal influence stems from the co-activation of dialects’ overlapping grammars, particularly in the lexicon, and the different profiles observed reflect bidialectals’ diverse and dynamic environments.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040071

Authors: Jorge Fernández Jaén

Verbs of perception show complex linguistic behavior, both grammatically and in semantic terms. Owing to their connection with perceptual processes (sight, hearing, smell…), they always operate in a heterogeneous way, since these types of verbs must code highly diverse events. In light of all the above, the specialized literature has tried to systematize the use of these verbs during the last few years, for the purpose of identifying the overall patterns which govern their utilization in natural languages. To that end, numerous authors chose to formulate dichotomous oppositions (for example, active vs passive perception), aiming to describe the syntax of verbs of perception rigorously. The aim of our paper is to critically analyze such dichotomies, which will allow us to ascertain how verbs of perception relate to grammar (type of transitivity, resultative nature of perception, aspectual typology of events, link between perception and space, etc.). This work will additionally provide evidence that, contrary to what has been argued at times, the dichotomies proposed by scholars are quite gradual or prototypical rather than rigid. In short, the aim sought with our study consists of offering an up-to-date review about a topic of great interest—namely, the methodology to analyze verbs of perception—insofar as these verbs stand out for being one of the most frequently used lexical categories in all languages around the world.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040070

Authors: Claudia Marzi Marcello Ferro Andrea Nadalini Vito Pirrelli Maria Todorova Tsvetana Dimitrova Valentina Stefanova Hristina Kukova Svetla Koeva

Transparent orthographies, such as Bulgarian and Italian, feature highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences, enabling rapid acquisition of decoding skills. Despite belonging to different language families and using distinct scripts (i.e., Cyrillic vs. Latin), these languages provide an ideal framework to investigate whether orthographic transparency can outweigh script differences in shaping reading development. We conducted a cross-sectional study with primary school children from Grades 2 to 5 in Bulgaria and Italy. Reading performance was recorded using a novel finger-tracking technique, which allows the capture of temporal dynamics of reading in a portable, low-cost, and classroom-friendly format. Measures of reading time and text comprehension accuracy were compared across grades and languages. Developmental trajectories for both speed and comprehension accuracy showed remarkable similarity across Bulgarian and Italian, with both languages exhibiting steady improvement from grade 2 to grade 5. Our cross-linguistic results showed that reading development in primary school children follows both universal and language-specific trajectories. While broad developmental trajectories were similar, cross-linguistic differences emerged in the impact of morphological complexity, pointing to both universal and language-specific mechanisms. Our findings indicate that orthographic transparency may exert a stronger influence on early reading development than script type, even across languages from different families. The study also highlights the potential of finger-tracking for large-scale literacy research. Establishing comparable developmental benchmarks in transparent orthographies may inform cross-linguistic screening tools and early interventions.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040069

Authors: Guilherme Galhoz Maria Roque Quanzhen Zhang

This exploratory study examines the perception and production of the aspiration contrast in Mandarin voiceless retroflex affricates zh [tʂ] and ch [tʂh] by ten adult Spanish speakers (three Peruvian, seven Chilean) at Nanjing University. Participants completed a perception identification task and a production reading task using the same set of 128 syllables. Voice Onset Time (VOT) measurements from the production task were converted to binary classifications for cross-modality comparison. Perception accuracy was moderately high (zh [tʂ]: 84.43%; ch [tʂh]: 82.39%), whilst production accuracy was substantially lower (zh [tʂ]: 32.61%; ch [tʂh]: 19.15% within native VOT ranges). Participants maintained the aspiration contrast (zh [tʂ] = 58 ms, ch [tʂh] = 125 ms) but consistently underproduced VOT compared to native speakers (zh [tʂ] = 67 ms, ch [tʂh] = 164 ms). Perception patterns align with Category Goodness (CG) assimilation within PAM-L2: both Mandarin sounds map to Spanish [tʃ] but with different goodness-of-fit, enabling moderate discrimination. Production follows SLM-r predictions, with learners developing a Composite L1–L2 Category that maintains the aspiration contrast but fails to establish new phonetic categories. The small sample size (n = 10) precluded robust statistical testing of individual differences. The perception–production asymmetry supports independent modality development in L2 phonetic acquisition.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040068

Authors: Kristine M. Yu Sameer ud Dowla Khan Megha Sundara

This study builds on a small body of work, all on Japanese, demonstrating how intonational phonology is critical for understanding prosodic modifications in infant-directed speech (IDS) relative to adult-directed speech. We performed similar analyses on simulated infant-directed speech vs. reading of a story in English and Bengali: two languages that – unlike Japanese – both have stress and do not use fundamental frequency (F0) to signal changes in word-level meaning, but that have two very different intonational grammars. These differences allowed us to disentangle previous hypotheses about intonational exaggeration in IDS being concentrated in a particular part of the melody. We tested hypotheses that state this locus of exaggeration is either at: the final position in the melody (final in the intonational phrase), the most unpredictable part of the melody, or in pragmatically informative tones. Our results support the first hypothesis. We found that the phonological choices of speakers to chunk the story into shorter, larger prosodic constituents drive intonational exaggeration in IDS. This is because the intonational phrase-final position in both languages is the site of greatest pre-boundary lengthening and F0 range expansion. We also demonstrate: (i) quantification of predictability in intonational melodies using probabilistic finite state automaton representations of intonational grammars and (ii) F0 statistical analyses that are robust and scalable to large, naturalistic IDS corpora.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040067

Authors: Anthony Pak-Hin Kong John Nerbonne

Just as Anthony entered his second year as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Languages, he extended a warm welcome to John Nerbonne as Co-Editor-in-Chief beginning in 2026 [...]

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040066

Authors: Marko Modiano

In this study, the role French maintains in education is assessed across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Statistics on the numbers of L1 users, those who have French as an additional language, as well as other demographic data, are used to chart trends in acquisition patterns across these three regions. The decline in the learning of traditional additional languages is juxtaposed with Englishization. What languages are utilized in school as the language of instruction, as well as what foreign languages are promoted in educational systems, has a profound impact on patterns of second-language acquisition. Here, in all three regions, English is gaining ground at the expense of other languages in primary and secondary school, as well as in higher education, and one result of this historic shift in the acquisition of additional languages is that English is now significantly reducing the importance of French in Francophone Africa.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040065

Authors: Orsolya Bilgory-Fazakas Sharon Armon-Lotem

In a globalised and interconnected world, transnational families must navigate heritage language (HL) practices within dominant majority languages (ML), often with limited institutional support. Focusing on a small and understudied community of Hungarian-speaking transnational families in Israel, this study explores how HL development is maintained and negotiated within the framework of family language policy in a dynamic multilingual environment. Fifteen Hungarian-speaking parents from bilingual Hungarian-Hebrew families participated in semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Hungarian. A mixed-methods approach was used to analyze the interview data. Quantitative analysis was used to identify the distribution and relative frequency of language use across families. At the same time, qualitative analyses show how parental ideologies and strategies relate to HL development. The findings show that while HL input remains central in parental speech, children frequently respond using both HL and ML, indicating a dynamic bilingual repertoire and a translanguaging orientation. Overall, HL development is negotiated, maintained through cultural and emotional ties, flexible bilingual practices and dynamic family language policies.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040064

Authors: Hui-chi Lee

This study examines the grammaticalization of visual perception verbs in Hlai, a Kra–Dai language spoken on Hainan Island. Based on original fieldwork data, the paper identifies two core verbs of visual perception, zo33 and laai55, which differ systematically in their semantic profiles and diachronic developments. While both verbs encode basic visual perception, zo33 exhibits a broader range of activity-oriented meanings (e.g., ‘watch’, ‘read’, ‘visit’, ‘judge’) and has developed a tentative marker function. In contrast, laai55 patterns as an experience-type perception verb and has undergone a distinct grammaticalization pathway, developing into a conditional conjunction meaning ‘if’ and, in combination with negation, an ‘otherwise’ marker. Adopting a typological framework of perception verbs and a model of semantic extension, this study demonstrates that the two verbs diverge not only in aspectual type (activity vs. experience) but also in their susceptibility to functional reanalysis. A comparative analysis with Mandarin and Hainan Min suggests that the tentative use of zo33 is plausibly contact-induced, whereas the conditional development of laai55 lacks a clear parallel in the contact languages and is more likely to represent a language-internal innovation. The findings contribute to the documentation of Hlai and to cross-linguistic discussions of perception verbs, semantic change, and the typology of conditional marking.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040063

Authors: Hiwa Asadpour Masoumeh Zarei

In this study, we investigate the formation of passive structures in Garrusi Kurdish across two datasets: experimental and narrative free speech. For our data collection, we interviewed 30 native speakers of this language variety, located in Mehraban District in Hamadan Province, Iran. For our methodology, we conducted an image-description task and a story-narration task. In the first controlled task, the speakers were asked to describe 20 event-oriented pictures prompted by questions relating to the intended construction. In the free narrative task, the speakers were asked to renarrate the film “The Pear Story.” According to our observations, the choice of voice and the use of passive structures vary depending on the context. Our investigations show that passive is a context-oriented and contact-sensitive feature in Mehraban Garrusi Kurdish. In the controlled descriptive context, where the actor was intentionally ignored, the speakers tended to use passive verbal structures, specifically the prototypical form. However, in the free narrative context, where they were allowed to freely renarrate what they observed, they tended to express active predications in the presence of the animate actor, resorting to anticausative forms with patientive subjects affected by inanimate actors. We also found that the rare emergence of the non-prototypical passive suffix, the non-passivization of certain verbal forms, and the exceptional existence of agent phrases in passive diathesis were products of contact-induced change occurring in interaction with Chaharduli Kurdish, Shahsevan Turkic, and Standard Persian.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11040062

Authors: Lu Wang

While previous studies on assessment as learning (AaL) in second language (L2) writing have mainly focused on writing teachers’ practices and perceptions of AaL, scant research has examined the relation between students’ engagement and writing performance in an AaL context. To fill the void, this study examined how students’ engagement related to their writing performance. Drawing on writing drafts, interviews, verbal reports, observation field notes, and documents, cross-case analyses of two focal students demonstrated that learner engagement in an AaL context was positively associated with improvements in writing performance. The student who demonstrated greater reciprocity in collaborating with teachers and peers in the AaL context, as well as proactivity in taking charge of her learning in L2 writing, showed greater improvements in content, organization, and language of argumentative writing.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030061

Authors: Adrian Leemann Simon Kistler Fabian Tomaschek

Moving beyond traditional sociodemographic models, this study investigates the psychometric drivers of lexical change. Using Swiss German as a case study, we compare historical data from the Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz (1939–1958) with a recent large-scale app-based survey (N = 1013) to quantify trajectories over the past century. We identify four distinct mechanisms: exogenous convergence (Schmetterling), endo-normative leveling (Rande), endogenous innovation and divergence (schlittschuhlaufen), and diachronic persistence (Stäge). For the locally rooted speakers in our dataset, structural analysis indicates that traditional variables carry less weight than expected. While age remains the primary vertical predictor, psychological factors outperform traditional variables (e.g., gender, social networks) in this environment of ubiquitous exposure. Multivariate models demonstrate that lexical choices are strongly influenced by individual disposition: traits such as agreeableness accelerate the adoption of supraregional forms, whereas a strong local identity functions as a “brake” against standardization. Ultimately, while macro-factors create the pressure for change, individual micro-factors determine whether it takes hold. A speaker’s attitude acts as a “filter” and their personality as a “gate,” deciding whether they accept or resist new forms. These findings challenge purely structural accounts, suggesting that for these locally rooter speakers, even without high physical mobility, lexical change is shaped by a psychometric architecture.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030060

Authors: Silvia Tort-Ranson Aarnes Gudmestad

The current investigation, couched within variationist sociolinguistics, has the purpose of advancing knowledge of regional variation in mood use (the subjunctive and indicative contrast) in Spanish. Prior cross-dialectal research has reported that mood use in Spanish varies geographically. To contribute to the understanding of mood variation in Spanish, this study explored a range of sociolinguistic independent variables across three Spanish-speaking regions. The participant pool (N = 107) consisted of Spanish speakers residing in three metropolitan areas (Rosario, Argentina; Barcelona, Spain; and Seville, Spain). The analysis substantiated evidence of geographical variation in the frequency of use of verbal moods, the governors (e.g., preferir que ‘to prefer that’) that exhibited categorical and variable use, and the influence of time reference on mood use. These results provide additional insights into the presence of regional variation in mood use and reinforce the value of cross-dialectal analyses with the same type of data and mood-use contexts.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030059

Authors: Abdulrahman Almalki Alaina Smith Idoia Elola Heather Kaplan

Heritage speakers’ language acquisition is a complex process that is affected by linguistic, social, cultural, and affective factors. Studies on heritage speakers (HSs) have primarily focused on challenges HSs face in the classroom and scarcely investigated these challenges outside of instructional settings. This study addresses this gap by exploring the lived experiences of two young adult Spanish HSs outside of educational settings through a series of interviews to create personal narratives of their HL and experiences. Through Narrative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (NIPA), three main themes emerged from these narratives: (1) Spanish heritage language (HL) knowledge and language use, (2) emotional factors that hinder language knowledge and language use, and (3) self-positioning towards SHL and culture. The findings indicated that the participants’ experiences with their Spanish heritage language (SHL) were profoundly impacted by the nature of language input they received, hostile environments, and negative interactions with members of their communities, which led to emotional distress and communicative avoidance. This situated study also offers potential conceptual and community-based implications for the Spanish HSs.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030058

Authors: S. Rajamathangi Anita Auer Gurujegan Murugesan

Since the mid-1980s, many Tamils left their homeland because of the civil war in Sri Lanka (1983–2009) and for other reasons and settled in different countries. More than 40,000 Tamil migrants have come to Switzerland since then, and Tamil is spoken as a heritage language by second- and third-generation speakers who were born and raised in Switzerland. Within this context, it is the aim of the current study to shed light on the difference between Tamil spoken in the first generation (migrant language) and the second generation (heritage language) in the Swiss German and Swiss French parts of Switzerland. We therefore study Tamil, which is part of the Dravidian language family, in different majority language contexts, i.e., a Germanic language and a Romance language, respectively. While some research on Tamil in a diaspora setting already exists on migrated Tamil communities in Lancaster, California (US), East London (UK) and Toronto (Canada), the focus on Switzerland and contact with German and French has not previously been investigated. The data under investigation, which stems from 20 speakers in total (i.e., 5 first-generation and 5 second-generation speakers from the Swiss German and the Swiss French parts respectively), was collected in 2024 by way of a semi-structured interview based on a sociolinguistic questionnaire and a linguistic test. The data serves as the basis for the intergenerational and typological comparison. The analysis reveals systematic intergenerational differences across several morphosyntactic domains, including agreement, negation pattern, case marking, and subject pro-drop. While first-generation speakers retain greater access to dialect-specific and register-sensitive patterns, second-generation speakers show increased reliance on discourse-pragmatic cues and reduced sensitivity to morphologically encoded distinctions. These findings highlight the role of register, input conditions, and discourse context in shaping heritage Tamil across generations in Switzerland.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030057

Authors: Aroldo Leal de Andrade Glayson Martins Oliveira

This paper investigates the diachronic development of the sequence assim que (lit. ‘such that’) in the history of Portuguese, with a comparative perspective on the parallel construction así que in Spanish. A corpus-based approach was employed, analyzing approximately 1800 tokens from the Corpus do Português: Historical Genres, spanning eight centuries of written European Portuguese. The results show that assim que remained highly analyzable until the end of the Old Portuguese period, with the adverb assim often followed by a complement or result clause. The grammaticalization of assim que appears to have evolved partly independently from standalone assim. While Portuguese and Spanish share many uses of the construction, modern European Portuguese has diverged, with assim que losing its status as a discourse marker. This change is best explained by the frequent use of cleft constructions (e.g., foi assim que), which reanalyzed que as a subordinating connector, undoing the earlier single-unit interpretation. These findings suggest that even deeply entrenched grammaticalization processes may undergo retraction when the semantic analyzability of component elements allows it.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030056

Authors: Alfred Lameli Matthias Hahn

This study reconstructs the geography of meaning of the German perception verb schmecken on the basis of 30 major dialect dictionaries, treating them as a distributed semantic corpus and coding attestations as binary variables reflecting the presence or absence of semantic options. Combining a construal-based framework with spatial modeling, the analysis shows that the polysemy of schmecken is structured by three mutually reinforcing forces: embodied sensory organization, construal-based perspectivization, and regionally patterned areal dynamics. The gustatory–olfactory axis forms the semantic core of the verb, from which tactile, visual, affective, and epistemic extensions emerge. These extensions align with systematic pathways constrained by agentive, experiential, emissive, and evaluative construals, demonstrating that semantic extension is channeled through specific construal modes—notably emissive and agentive—rather than determined by sensory modality alone. A detailed areal analysis reveals a pronounced north–south divide. While Low German dialects conform to the cross-linguistically more common tendency to avoid colexifying taste and smekk—itself the outcome of historical change rather than uninterrupted differentiation—Upper German varieties preserve a typologically rare gustatory–olfactory cluster and exhibit the richest range of cross-modal and abstract extensions. The resulting semantic graph formalizes how regional varieties activate different subsets of a lexeme’s semantic potential and demonstrates that semantic networks themselves display spatial organization. The study thus provides an empirically grounded reconstruction of a German geography of meaning and illustrates how dialect data illuminate the interplay between embodied cognition, construal-based lexical architecture, and areal dynamics.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030055

Authors: Jordi Ginebra Serrabou

This study aims, first, to contribute to our understanding of the regularities of light verb constructions (LVCs) by identifying syntactic–semantic patterns and, secondly, to provide data and reflections on how syntactic analyzability and semantic compositionality interact to shape the diachronic evolution of LVCs. To this end, the paper analyzes and describes, through corpus research, a subset of LVCs from Old Catalan—psych LVC or those denoting emotional states—and compares them with those from Contemporary Catalan. The main contrast between Old Catalan and Contemporary Catalan in this domain is that Contemporary Catalan tends to place the Experiencer in non-localist positions. Localist metaphors no longer structure the form–meaning pairing of Catalan psych LVCs. Once these metaphorical extensions no longer link P(sych)LVCs to their dominating construction, what remains can be described as a situation of vacuous analyzability: linguistic chains that are syntactically analyzable but lack semantic pairing.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030053

Authors: Yuhan Zhang Huiping Wei

This study investigated family language policies (FLP) in the current context of the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR). It explored family language ideologies, management strategies, and intergenerational practices through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and participant observations. The findings indicate that Macao permanent residents’ families take Cantonese Chinese as the primary medium of communication and cultural identity. Simultaneously, Mandarin and English are often valued for their roles in academic and professional advancement. Portuguese exhibits a trend of marginalization, despite remaining one of the official languages of the Macao SAR. As for other dialects, they may be used in family conversations but are not considered important languages. Beyond this hierarchy of language values, the researchers also revealed that the FLP of Macao’s permanent residents’ families tends to be driven by both experience and foresight, enabling family members to engage in effective consultation on language choice and language learning. Regarding language practice, children’s multilingual fluency is significantly better than that of their parents. The dominant family language tendency does not influence the consensus of multilingualism and allows code-mixing to appear in conversations. In this article, FLP in Macao families is found to be shaped by both experiential knowledge and future-oriented practical considerations, while also reflecting parents’ affective concerns and responses to broader structural pressures. All these factors together form a decision-making system. In this system, both emotion and reason play their roles simultaneously. If a hierarchical distinction must be made, the rational recognition of the diverse characteristics of the linguistic environment and the dominant status of the main language will be primary.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030054

Authors: Andrea Miglietta Eva-Maria Remberger

In (colloquial) Italian, the fixed expression mi sa functions as an evidential/epistemic marker, requiring the dative 1SG clitic experiencer and the 3SG default form of the verb sapere. Mi sa diachronically develops from the verb for taste/smell, sapere, which is still productive in contemporary Italian, and the structure that it projects. This comprises an obligatory PP introduced by di encoding the type/quality of taste/smell (often metaphorically extended); a subject expressing the perceived entity; and an optional dative experiencer. We systematically analyzed data from the KIParla corpus, comparing the distribution of mi sa to the distribution of one of the most frequent Italian epistemic verb forms, namely, credo ‘I believe’. This study aimed to establish how the original perceptual meaning of mi sa influences its epistemic meaning. The results suggest that the persistence of the original object-oriented perception verb makes mi sa more likely to appear in particular contexts, i.e., events/situations that are known by the speaker through an inferential-like process. Furthermore, mi sa can only rarely be uttered out of the blue and seems to need a situative context (a stage), often containing an explicit QUD.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030052

Authors: Karolina Zuchewicz

This article focuses on the realization of incrementality in Polish verbal and nominal constructions. The object of investigation is clause-embedding reveal-type concepts like ‘prove’, ‘reveal’, or ‘show’. In Slavic languages, incremental relations have traditionally been examined in direct relation to (im)perfectivity, with imperfective verbs enforcing partial affectedness of events and objects, and perfective verbs enforcing their total affectedness. In the present paper, I take a closer look at the incremental output within the reveal-type concept. I investigate whether an incremental event comes with a fixed incremental path that remains intact independently of any morphological or syntactic modifications. My research question is: Is an incremental feature specified in the lexicon as is the aspectual value ‘(im)perfective’, or does it rather arise compositionally? To answer this question, I analyze the impact of the dative argument and the nominalization on the incremental output of clause-embedding reveal-type predicates. I demonstrate that incremental meanings are affected by the properties of an entire construction. Based on that, I propose to distinguish between two types of incrementality: the non-modifiable (im)perfectivity-dependent partial and total integration requirement, and the compositional incrementality that arises as an interplay between lexical semantics, argument structure, and the morphological shape of the respective lexeme.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030051

Authors: Claudia Matachana López

This qualitative study examines the language ideologies surrounding code-switching and Puerto Rican Spanish among Puerto Rican bilingual speakers in Massachusetts, focusing on how these ideologies interact with identity construction in the diaspora. Participants in this study commonly described their own language use as Spanglish, emphasizing both its practical role in everyday communication and its significance as a marker of cultural and linguistic identity. Drawing on data collected through sociolinguistic interviews and focus groups, this research explores how participants perceive code-switching not only as a communicative strategy but also as a meaningful expression of Puerto Rican identity. Although negative ideologies persist–framing code-switching as linguistic inadequacy–this study centers on how speakers actively negotiate and redefine these views within their communities. Puerto Rican Spanish, shaped by historical contact with English and sociopolitical ties to the U.S., offers a unique lens through which to explore these dynamics. The findings also suggest that media representations, particularly through music genres such as reggaetón, contribute to shaping and reflecting language ideologies. By centering on speakers’ voices, this paper contributes to understanding how language ideologies form and are shaped by bilingual practices, and how code-switching functions as a form of linguistic citizenship in the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030050

Authors: Tiffany Judy Eloi Puig-Mayenco

This study examines offline acceptance and online processing of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in the Spanish of Catalan–Spanish bilinguals in Catalonia. Both languages evidence DOM, though prescriptive grammars claim only partial overlap. Empirical research on Catalan DOM within these bilinguals reveals differences in distribution. Based on these factors, along with sustained bilingualism at the community and individual levels, more optionality was predicted for the distribution of Spanish DOM. Results from an offline scalar Acceptability Judgment Task and a Self-Paced Reading Task reveal three important findings. First, each task revealed distinct distributions. Participants aligned more with prescriptive grammars for DOs that are high on the animacy and definiteness scales in the offline task and were more tolerant of greater variability with the same DOs in the online task, possibly indicating weakening of the obligatory DOM constraint in these contexts. Second, geographic area modulated acceptance of the absence of DOM with animate DOs, suggesting microvariation. Third, unmarked inanimate DOs were preferred across both tasks. Overall, the results are interpreted as revealing divergence from prescriptive descriptions of Peninsular Spanish DOM system.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030049

Authors: Angeliki Tzanne

Digital communication has been discussed as the locus of impoliteness and conflict par excellence. The aim of this paper is to examine impoliteness in a context of digital communication, that of food blogs, where impoliteness seems to be rather rare. The dataset consists of 2660 comments from 11 Greek food blogs. The data are analysed with the aid of strategies proposed in impoliteness research. The study aims to examine the frequency of offensive behaviour and to identify the issues that may trigger it. Furthermore, it purports to delve into the types and strategies of impoliteness used, and into interactants’ responses to offence. Data analysis showed that impolite behaviour is rare in this specific context and that it is triggered by issues related to features of good recipes and healthy eating practices, among others. It was also found that offence is usually mitigated through politeness strategies. Finally, several cases of offence were found to be disregarded by interactants, while others were resolved amicably. A tendency emerges in Greek food blogs towards the avoidance of impoliteness and the cultivation of relationships of closeness and solidarity.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030048

Authors: Ifigeneia Dosi Zoe Gavriilidou

This study investigates grammatical aspect in Greek and English oral narratives produced by Greek heritage speakers in the United States, examining aspectual marking across the bilingual repertoire, patterns of cross-linguistic alignment, and morphological restructuring. Using 31 narratives from the Greek Heritage Language Corpus, the analysis addressed (a) the role of background variables, (b) default aspectual preferences, (c) cross-linguistic alignment between Greek and English, and (d) morphological variation relative to baseline Greek. Quantitative results revealed a strong preference for the perfective aspect in both Greek and English, suggesting that past-time reference is typically conceptualized as completed or bounded. Education was the only factor associated with aspectual choice, with more educated speakers producing more progressive forms in English; no effects emerged for age group, generational status, schooling context, or years of schooling in Greek. Qualitative findings identified a limited number of systematic morphological simplification and analogical leveling patterns, including overregularization, and occasional periphrastic forms consistent with restructuring and possible cross-linguistic alignment. The results indicate that heritage speakers maintain the core distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, despite favoring perfective forms across both languages. Meanwhile, they show emerging tendencies toward more transparent and analytic realizations, although such patterns remain quantitatively marginal in the present dataset. Overall, the findings support the view that heritage grammars are systematic, adaptive, and resilient linguistic systems.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030047

Authors: Jana Pflaeging Erik Schleef

Sociolinguistic competence (SC) has been recognised as essential for Communicative Language Teaching since the 1970s and features prominently in policy documents like the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Research demonstrates that explicit, systematic instruction effectively develops learners’ SC. While the academic case for SC in language teaching remains strong, we identify significant weaknesses and barriers to its implementation in contemporary EFL teacher education. These challenges span three key domains: integration into secondary-school and higher-education curricula, teacher cognition, and classroom practice—specifically how and how often SC is taught in EFL contexts across different regions and schools. While our findings have relevance for EFL contexts globally, we use Austria as a case study to illustrate these challenges and opportunities. Based on a review of existing theoretical, methodological, and empirical work, we formulate five critical research questions across these three domains. We conclude that comprehensive mixed-methods research triangulating curriculum, teacher cognition, and classroom practice is essential for transforming SC from a curricular ideal into classroom reality, equipping learners with communicative skills required for navigating increasingly diverse linguistic landscapes.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030046

Authors: Xingcheng Wang Helen Zhao

This study investigates how second language (L2) learners acquire morphologically complex English words, focusing on affixal neutrality—whether suffixes preserve the phonological form and semantic transparency of the base (e.g., -ness in happiness) or trigger phonological/orthographic changes (e.g., -ity in activity). Drawing on linguistic theories of morphological decomposition and lexical representation, we examine how this property influences different dimensions of derivational knowledge. Fifty-four Mandarin-speaking secondary school EFL learners completed three receptive tasks targeting relational knowledge (morphological relatedness), syntactic knowledge (category awareness), and distributional knowledge (contextual appropriateness). Lexical items varied in affixal neutrality, and participants’ accuracy and response times were analysed across three L2 proficiency levels. Affixal neutrality significantly affected performance in the relational knowledge task, with neutral suffixes facilitating accuracy and faster responses. Effects were attenuated in syntactic and distributional tasks, suggesting domain-specific sensitivity to neutrality. L2 Proficiency was associated with higher accuracy across all three domains but did not substantially affect processing speed. These findings highlight the selective role of a theoretically motivated morphological property in L2 lexical acquisition and show how linguistic concepts such as affixal neutrality can form the basis of targeted hypotheses, bridging theoretical linguistics and empirical research in second language learning.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030045

Authors: Yanmei Dai Cong Wang

Amidst global concerns for linguistic diversity, this systematic review synthesizes six decades (1965–2025) of research on Tanka, a critically endangered language spoken by the boat people along Southeast China. Analyzing 42 studies identified through the PRISMA framework, the review reveals significant sociolinguistic and epistemological imbalances. Research output disproportionately focuses on phonetics and phonology (50%), while neglecting grammar, lexicon, and sociolinguistic vitality. Linguistically, Tanka demonstrates substantial contact-induced convergence with Cantonese or Pinghua within multilingual ecologies; nevertheless, it retains distinctive phonological shifts, a unique maritime lexicon, and grammatical innovations, reflecting both regional alignment and endogenous community practices. Its heterogeneous genetic affiliation highlights local sociohistorical contact dynamics. Rapid intergenerational language shift is documented across communities, driven by intersecting pressures, including state-led urbanization, Mandarin-centric education policies, demographic shifts, occupational change, and enduring social stigmatization. Therefore, community attitudes often prioritize socio-economic mobility through dominant languages over heritage maintenance. Persistent gaps include limited syntactic and discourse analysis, minimal use of quantitative and computational methods (e.g., AI-assisted documentation), insufficient geographic coverage, and a lack of longitudinal shift studies. The field thus urgently requires enhanced international engagement via English publications and a decisive shift towards collaborative, community-centered revitalization frameworks that address power asymmetries and harness cultural resilience.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030044

Authors: Ludovico Franco Federico Schirato

This study examines the structure and use of Axial Parts and Relational Nouns in Italian from both a syntactic and diachronic perspective. In the first part, we argue that these elements function as nouns and establish an elementary predicate relation of inclusion with an adjacent noun. This relation can be analyzed in terms of Ground and Figure: the Axial Part acts as a possessum of the Ground linked, in turn, to a nominal phrase functioning as possessor/Figure. The interpretation of Axial Parts depends on the context, and while the predicative relation is marked by an adpositional relator, its lexical shape varies, precluding a fixed argumental or complemental relation. This Double-Relator Model contrasts with hierarchical functional projections in the PP structure. The second part supports this view with data from early Italian texts. Focusing on common nouns (e.g., front, head, foot, etc.) used as Relational Nouns or Axial Parts, we show that the Double-Relator Model captures the variability in terms of phonological realization and grammatical function of Old Italian complex PPs, at the same time making it possible to clearly analyze each component of these structures from the syntactic point of view.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030043

Authors: Xiaotong Xi Peng Li

This narrative review synthesizes 24 empirical studies on the role of four types of pedagogical gestures (beat, durational, pitch, and articulatory) in second language (L2) phonetic training since 2010. We reviewed studies involving training interventions to assess the efficacy, mediating factors, and robustness of multimodal training. The findings confirm that gestural training is a powerful tool, yielding the most robust positive effects for L2 speech production and the acquisition of suprasegmental features. Crucially, the effectiveness is highly dependent on gesture-sound consistency and visual saliency of the target phonetic/prosodic feature. However, results are mixed regarding perceptual learning and the generalization of gains to untrained items or novel contexts. While the literature supports the value of gestural training, there are gaps in determining the optimal training paradigm (observing gestures vs. performing gestures), accounting for individual learner differences, and establishing long-term retention and ecological validity. Future research should incorporate longitudinal designs and neurophysiological methods to fully illuminate the cognitive mechanisms that drive the body–mind link in L2 speech acquisition.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030042

Authors: Muhammad Alasmari Rashad Ahmed Amna Shamim Nief Aied Al-Gamdi

This study investigates the family language policies (FLPs) of two North Indian Muslim families residing in Saudi Arabia, focusing on how they navigate multilingualism to balance cultural heritage, religious practices, and sociolinguistic adaptation. Using Spolsky’s FLP framework and a qualitative case study approach, the research examines the dynamic roles of Urdu, Arabic, and English in these households. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with mothers and children to explore language ideologies, practices, and management strategies. The findings reveal that Urdu serves as a cornerstone of cultural identity, while Arabic is pivotal for religious education and social integration. English plays a supplementary role as a tool for academic and professional aspirations. Despite shared goals, the families adopt distinct approaches: one emphasizes heritage preservation and liturgical Arabic, while the other integrates Arabic more comprehensively alongside Urdu. These insights contribute to FLP scholarship by highlighting the intersection of language, faith, and identity in transnational families in non-western context, offering practical implications for educators and policymakers working with multilingual communities.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030041

Authors: Xinyi Zeng Jidong Guo

Reporting verbs are commonly employed in academic writing, yet second language learners often encounter uncertainties regarding their appropriate usage during the writing process. This corpus-based study investigated the use of reporting verbs in Chinese MA theses in linguistics and international linguistics journal articles. It focused on the semantic categories of reporting verbs, the source types and the subject types of reporting clauses, as well as the interrelationships among these elements. The results showed the following: (1) regarding the semantic categories of reporting verbs, authors of MA theses tended to use SHOW verbs, whereas authors of journal articles were likely to employ ARGUE verbs; (2) in terms of reporting sources, while both groups of authors most frequently used textual references, authors of MA theses showed a secondary preference for uncited generalizations, whereas authors of journal articles more often employed self-sourced reporting; (3) when using reporting verbs, both groups of authors employed non-human subjects most frequently, followed by human and it subjects; (4) the usage of reporting verbs by two groups of authors revealed close interrelationships among the semantic categories of reporting verbs as well as the source types and the subject types of reporting clauses. Implications for L2 learners’ academic writing and EAP teachers’ instruction were also discussed.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030040

Authors: Leonardo Maria Savoia Benedetta Baldi

In this article, we analyze the order verb-(clitic) subject that characterizes Rhaeto-Romance languages in V2 and interrogative contexts. In these varieties, the subject is necessarily realized by lexical or pronominal elements in preverbal position, except in inversion contexts. Some of these varieties have subject clitics (SCls) that display a distribution similar to that of full pronouns. Furthermore, in some, subject-verb inversion involves the enclisis of SCls on the verb. Enclitics are distributionally different from proclitics and are characterized by distinct paradigms, which show specialized properties somewhat comparable to inflections. We will study subject syntax in inversion contexts within the Phase framework, where enclitics will be viewed as the result of syntactic Merge and of amalgamation with the verb stem in INFL. A crucial topic is the relationship between functional morphemes and spelling domains.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030039

Authors: Renata Enghels Mariia Baltais

This article investigates how cognitive and grammatical mechanisms shape variable singular–plural agreement in Spanish perception–verb constructions, a domain where speakers alternate between agreement with the postverbal NP2 and agreement with the infinitival complement. Building on usage-based and cognitive linguistics approaches, this study examines whether factors related to perceptual modality and conceptual salience underlie these alternations. A corpus analysis of pronominal infinitive constructions with ver and oír reveals divergent patterns across modalities, with visual perception favoring plural agreement and auditory perception favoring singular agreement. To evaluate whether these tendencies reflect deeper linguistic preferences, an acceptability-rating task systematically manipulated modality, agreement, and animacy. The results show no overall interaction between modality and agreement, but they identify a robust effect of animacy: sentences with human referents received higher ratings than those with inanimate referents. Moreover, animacy modulated the influence of modality and agreement in opposite directions, suggesting that speakers’ evaluations are sensitive to the ontological nature of the perceived stimulus. Together, the findings show that agreement variation reflects flexible conceptual construal and that corpus and experimental evidence offer complementary insights into the interface between morphosyntax, perception and salience in Spanish.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030038

Authors: Ludovico Franco Paolo Lorusso

This paper proposes a unified analysis of reduplication as the lexical spell-out of a relational part–whole/inclusion predicate (⊆) in morphosyntax. Adopting the framework of Manzini and colleagues, we argue that reduplicative morphology—across diverse languages and domains—encodes a subset relation, whereby an event, individual, or property is interpreted as included in a larger set or continuum of similar instances. We bring evidence from a range of typologically diverse languages (Tagalog, Bikol, Malay, Fulfulde, Italian, and sign languages) to show that reduplication correlates with non-maximality: plural number (members of a set), distributivity (individuals/events taken one by one), iterative aspect (sub-events in a larger event), and evaluative attenuation or intensification (a degree as part of a scale). The analysis is developed in a formal syntactic representation where reduplication is triggered by an elementary inclusion operator (⊆) at the X or XP level. We show that a single semantic primitive (⊆) can account for the varied meanings of reduplication in nominal, verbal, and adjectival domains. We discuss the implications of this unified approach, suggesting that reduplication is not a mere iconic or phonological process, but rather the surface reflex of a fundamental grammatical operation of inclusion.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030037

Authors: Jacopo Garzonio Emanuela Sanfelici

This paper investigates the syntax and diachrony of Italian causal clauses introduced by perché, siccome, and poiché. Although often treated as near-synonyms in Contemporary Italian, these subordinators differ systematically in their syntactic distribution, interpretive properties, and diachronic development. We show that perché introduces central adverbial clauses, merged within the vP/TP domain, whereas siccome and poiché introduce peripheral adverbial clauses, merged in the left periphery. This structural split correlates with a cluster of diagnostics: only perché-clauses can occur within the scope of matrix focus, negation, or epistemic operators, and only they can function as fragment answers. Conversely, siccome- and poiché-clauses consistently outscope matrix operators and encode non-at-issue content. A diachronic study reveals that the internal and external syntax of causal clauses introduced by each subordinator has remained stable from Old Italian to the present. However, siccome- and poiché-clauses display different semantics, as they derive from non-causal constructions (they originate from comparative and temporal clauses, respectively). We argue that the contrasting behaviors follow from the structural composition of the subordinators.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030036

Authors: Tania Stortini

This study investigates how argument structure interacts with Information Structure (IS) in Dative Experiencer (DE) psych-verbs of the piacere/gustar type in Italian and Spanish. These verbs display non-canonical mapping between thematic and grammatical roles, in which the Experiencer surfaces as a dative object and the Theme as the subject. Through a semi-spontaneous production experiment based on the Question with a Delayed Answer (QDA) methodology, the study elicited natural utterances to investigate how speakers encode Information Focus (IF) on the Theme. The results show a consistent pattern across the two languages, with a strong preference for postverbal realizations of the Theme and frequent overt expression of the Experiencer, interpreted as a Familiar Topic. Preliminary prosodic data further support this interpretation, showing that the Experiencer bears a low tonal contour typical of given material, whereas the postverbal subject has included in the prosodic boundary of the sentence. Taken together, these findings suggest that DE psych-verbs encode a grammar-internal mechanism that links thematic and informational hierarchies, where morphosyntactic structure, case, position and prosody jointly contribute to the interpretability of discourse relations.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030035

Authors: Alvaro David Monterroza-Rios Olga Anatolyevna Novikova Juan Fernando Gomez-Paniagua

This article argues that learning a foreign language cannot be understood solely as the acquisition of internal grammatical or lexical rules, but rather as a form of action situated and corporeally embodied in a social, material, and cultural environment from which new linguistic skills emerge. Hence, we propose to describe foreign language learning under an ecological–enactive approach to cognition, that is, a coordination of two simultaneous multilevel processes: (i) at the subpersonal level, as the coordination of sensorimotor loops that adjust phonation, prosody, and auditory discrimination, and (ii) at the personal level, as the organism–environment coupling led by sociomaterial affordances that guide linguistic exploration. We conclude that active and immersive methodologies are more effective because they synchronize sensorimotor plasticity with the detection of affordances, enabling linguistic competence to emerge as a progressive self-organization of the agent–world system.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030034

Authors: Saira Zahid Ho-Young Lee Muhammad Asim Mahmood

This study examines the distribution and acoustic characteristics of filled pauses (FPs) in Urdu, a language underrepresented in disfluency research. Drawing on a spontaneous speech dataset from 18 female speakers, the analysis considers the types of FPs, their immediate segmental context, and their utterance position. The analysis also evaluates the effects of segmental context and utterance position on acoustic measures of FPs. Results show a dominant use of vocalic FPs. Moreover, FPs observe systematic contextual patterns and cluster in specific utterance positions. Acoustically, vowel-only and vowel–nasal FPs differ in duration and vowel height (F1). For vowel-only FPs, utterance position significantly conditions duration and prosodic properties (F0, intensity), whereas segmental context does not show any effects. Taken together, the findings demonstrate a language-specific organization of FPs in Urdu. This study offers a detailed phonetic account of Urdu FPs to date and highlights the importance of language-sensitive disfluency modeling in speech technology applications.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11030033

Authors: Petr Biskup

This article concerns the morpheme a in Czech. It occurs in nominals, conjunctions, and various verbal predicates. In contrast to the common practice of treating such a exponents as independent, accidentally homophonous elements, it is argued that some of these as can be treated as one item. What the syncretic as have in common is pluralizing semantics. Thus, the article proposes that verbal number (specifically, plurality) is related to nominal number and conjunctions. The article addresses the questions of how the multifunctionality of morphemes—such as the Czech a—can be analyzed and which tools of lexical–realizational approaches to morphology are most suitable for the analysis. In addition to the plural interpretation, a brings about changes in the argument structure of verbal predicates and fulfills several functions in the nominal and conjunction domains. The analysis is couched in the Distributed Morphology framework. However, contrary to expectations, the multifunctional a is not treated as an underspecified marker. It is analyzed as an overspecified marker that can realize (i.e., span) several syntactic heads: the pluralization head with the pluralization operator, the voice head, plus some other heads present in verbs and nominals. It is argued that the best option for deriving the multifunctional property of a is to assume the superset principle and pre-linearization spanning.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11020032

Authors: Yingsheng Liu

This study examines a theoretically revealing subtype of interrogatives in Chinese that are formulated with the first person singular pronoun wo ‘I’ as subject, termed first person formulated interrogatives. Unlike most interrogatives that are conventionally answer-seeking, first person interrogatives in Chinese are found to serve a dual function, operating either as answer-seeking or as non-answer-seeking actions. This duality raises a fundamental question for action ascription: how do participants interpret such grammatically underspecified interrogatives and respond accordingly? Drawing on 116 instances from a large corpus of Chinese telephone conversations, this study identifies the crucial role of interrogative markers and recipient-addressed terms in action ascription. Further analyses show that these two sets of morphosyntactic resources function by signaling the epistemic relationship between speakers and recipients as well as the recipient’s relevance to the matter at hand. Interrogative designs that imply low epistemic stance of speaker and high relevance of recipients are commonly treated by recipients as answer-seeking, whereas those that imply high epistemic stance of speakers are commonly treated by recipients as non-answer-seeking. These findings advance our understanding of the importance of optional, redundant linguistic resources in action ascription, highlighting that social action is not structurally pre-given but interactionally achieved through cumulative turn-design practices.

Languages doi: 10.3390/languages11020031

Authors: Fariha Yasmeen Yap Ngee Thai Zalina Mohammad Kasim Vahid Nimehchisalem

Interpreting event completion is a core difficulty in second language acquisition, as it underpins temporal reference and communication. This study investigates how L1 Urdu Pakistani learners of English acquire telicity, a semantic property that distinguishes completed and ongoing events. The analysis centers on bounded and unbounded object noun phrases (NPs) in marking telic/atelic events within accomplishment predicates. In English, telicity is compositionally encoded through verb types, object NPs, and temporal adverbials, whereas Urdu relies on aspectual morphology, creating challenges for learners in mapping event completion. The study is framed within the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) model and the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH). Data were collected through an Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) administered to Pakistani ESL learners at elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, alongside a native English control group. Results support the FTFA model, revealing a significant developmental trajectory where accuracy in distinguishing telic/atelic contrasts increases with proficiency. At the elementary level, an L1-based accuracy gradient emerged across NP types, reflecting the transfer of Urdu nominal underspecification. While advanced learners demonstrated successful restructuring in bounded contexts, partial support for the IH was found in atelic contexts. Continued divergence from native judgements in unbounded NP conditions highlights a persistent mapping deficit at the syntax–semantics interface. The study advances second language event semantics, emphasizing the role of object structure and cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of L2 event boundaries.