Research Lectures & Conferences Fall 2008

Communicative Approaches to Grammar Teaching

Presenter	Dr. Michael Leeser					Location	Oasis, 308 GH
From	Florida State University					Day	Thursday, October 2nd
RSVP	by noon, Oct. 1st					Time	3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Contact	David Rodríguez

Sponsored by the Spanish department. Talk given in English.

Facebook event for this talk

Dialect differences and the bilingual vowel space in Peruvian Spanish

Presenter	Erin O’Rourke					Location	1750 UH
From	University of Pittsburgh					Day	Monday, October 6th
Contact	Mirta Lee					Time	2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Contact	Kay González

Sponsored by SFIP-tip. Talk given in English.

Why do Advanced Learners of German sound Non-Native Like? A Cognitive Linguistic Explanation on the Use of Phrasal Verbs.

Presenter	Susanne Rott					Location	1750 UH
From	UIC					Day	Monday, October 20th
Contact	Mirta Lee					Time	2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Sponsored by SFIP-tip. Talk given in English.

Phrasal verbs are taught within the first weeks of basic language instruction. Nevertheless, using them correctly from both a grammatical and semantic point of view is challenging even for advanced learners of German. Part of the difficulty lies in the inadequate analysis provided to learners of German in grammars and textbooks. This paper explores the possibilities of applying Cognitive Linguistic theories (e.g., Langacker, 1997, 2007; Goldberg, 1995, 2008) to better understand the challenge that phrasal verbs pose for learners of German. One of the fundamental premises of Cognitive Linguistics is the assumption that grammatical categories are not arbitrary but are motivated by meaning. I will first describe the prototypical meanings (e.g., Bybee, 2001; Tyler, 2006) of German phrasal verbs and explore the metaphorical and pragmatic meaning extensions. I will then describe from a cognitive processing perspective why learners of German fail to learn phrasal verb constructions. Based on empirical data, I demonstrate how native and advanced users of German store phrasal verbs differently in their linguistic systems. Finally, I will identify instructional techniques that can be used to overcome these shortcomings.

WHO’S THE PAD THAI? THAT WOULD BE ME. A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF EQUATIVES AND OPEN PROPOSITIONS

In this talk, I analyze two English equative constructions – deferred equatives and epistemic would equatives – illustrated in (1)-(2), respectively:

I argue that these two types of equatives are focus-presuppositional constructions in that they each require that an OPEN PROPOSITION be contextually salient (i.e., evoked or inferrable) at the time of utterance. They differ, however, in the number of variables being instantiated as foci within that open proposition (OP). The deferred equative in (1) instantiates the two variables in the OP ‘X corresponds to Y’, while the epistemic would equative in (2) instantiates the single variable in the OP ‘Chris ordered X’, with the demonstrative subject being used to refer deictically to the instantiation of the variable in the OP, as a type of discourse deixis. Unlike marked syntactic constructions that employ noncanonical word order to signal the OP requirement (e.g, clefts, gappings, preposings, inversions), these equatives perform this discourse function by other means, through, e.g., a non-literal equative (as in (1)) or the presence of epistemic would (as in (2)).