Words in Context: A Japanese perspective on language and culture

takao suzuki

The book includes an contrastive lexical study of the English lip and the Japanese kuchibiru: In Japanese, you cannot say "hair grew on her lip" because kuchibiru does not encompass the skin above the lip. Lip does not equal kuchibiru.

He discusses covert and overt culture: rice is eaten in both Japan and Italy, but it holds a different place in both places. Its cultural role differs, though the substance is almost the same.

Suzuki discusses how unwanted dogs are killed by their English masters, but the Japanese usually abandon them. He attributes this to differing ideas of man's control over nature. He says the English control their dogs utterly, up to and including their lives. He says the Japanese do not think they control dogs at all.

Kinship terms and self- and other- referents in Japanese are also discussed. He says that Indo-European languages are self-oriented: I am me no matter the circumstance. Japanese (and, I think, other honorific languages) is other-oriented: the speaker cannot express his views unless he can locate the other in a social hierarchy. He says that the Japanese are not accomplished lanaguge-learners because of this other-orientation. It makes them loathe to express their opinions without knowing the addressee's opinion.

He builds up to this argument using the facts that kinship terms are used fictively (calling a stranger "Uncle" or "Big Brother" AND a wife calling her husband "Father") in ways not possible in English. Personal pronouns are generally avoided.

"man does not use words to describe things which exist in the objective world; rather words, which reflect a particular view of the world or a specific way of dissecting, make us feel as though objects with such characteristics and properties actually exist." 54

contrastive rhetoric studies in applied linguistics

ulla connor

"Three approaches concerning tranfer have dominated: contrastive analysis; error analysis; and its later development, an analysis of the transitional system called 'interlanguage'."

"Non-Anglo-American English as in international language encourages tolerance for nonnative norms of English."

"English readers expect and require landmarks of coherence and unity as they read. The writer needs to provide transitional statements. In Japanese, on the other hand, trasnsitions may be lacking. The reader is expected to piece sections together to make a coherent text."

"In addition to emphasizing the personal growth and integration inherent in such self-evaluation, social constructionist theory in L1 composition has allied itself with an anti-authoritarian ideology."

"...critical pedagogy...has not been embraced by ESL teachers and researchers..."

The role of repetition in Arabic argumentative discourse

adnan j.r. al-jubouri

"the different types of formal devices that Arabic employs for expressing repetition and achieving rhetorical effect."

"Repetition in Arabic discourse...is realized at several levels...the morphological level, the word level, and the 'chunk' level."

"k-t-b has to do with writing"

"Notice that the repetition of a morphological pattern creates repetition on the phonological level if said aloud, which intensifies the effect of repetition."

"English discourse rules, codified in rhetoric textbooks under 'variety in word choice', encourage writers to avoid repetition of this sort. The converse is true in Arabic."

"They occur in English in a number of frozen, or semi-frozen idiomatic expressions, particularly in legal English where they are known as 'doublets'.

"The consttuents in the word strings of this group are antonyms or near-antonyms. This is an old rhetorical device in Arabic and has been used for centuries in poetry as well as in prose."

"When reiterated through an argument they tend to create an immediate emotional impact."

"Parallelism is a rhetorical as well as text-building device."

"The tendency towards forceful assertion also explains what, in the eye of a Western recipient, appears to be a florid and verbose style of argumentative discourse. Brevity will simply fail to convey the required effect."

"Expository paragraph structure in Slavic and Romance languages"

paul neubauer and elizabeth riddle

Kaplan claimed that English is more linear and contains fewer digressions than Slavic or Romance texts.

This study found that "the Romance and Slavic paragraphs in our sample exhibited no more digression than the English paragraphs. Furthermore, in none of the cases does this data support a claim that digressiveness is typical of expository prose paragraphs in that language."


Kaplan's doodles should not be repeated by other researchers as "gospel."

linguistic rituals for thanking in japanese: balancing obligations

jun ohashi

"The data of this investigation are naturally ocurring telephone conversations which took place in the Japanese enf-of-year gift-giving seaosn, seibo."

"This study reveals that conversational participants cooperate to achieve a mutual pragmatic goal of 'debt-credit equilibrium'."

"o-rei does not free the debtor form debt."

"the mutual and reciprocal aspects need to be taken into account."

"The norm of reciprocity--the social obligation to reciprocate benefits to one another--is claimed to be universal (Goulder, 1960)..."

"THe social goal of reciprocity is not debtless or creditless state in social relationship, but the continuation of the relationship."

rei can mean politness/social hierarchy or a bow

"'the giver and the thanker collabortate in the development of a successful thanking episode' (Eisenstein and Bodman, 1993: 74)"

"were also told that any conversations they had reservations about presenting to the researcher should be erased....The transcripts ...are simplified and modified for the purpose of this study."

"A(11) can be interpreted as a topic change to end an o-rei. This exmaple is unique because the beneficiary changed the topic. In other xamples it was always the benefactor who changed the topic."

"benefactive verbs emphasises imbalance and 'ie ie' denigrates it."

"...'thanking' and 'apologizing' are hardly distinguishable in Japanese; they are closely related in the indebtedness the speaker feels towards the interlocutor."

speakers repeat "'No, not at all'."

"It is often the case that doomo is used alone, that is, the later parts are unsaid. The frequent se of doomo supports the view that Japanese native speakers may not be conscious of distinguishing the speech act of thanking and apology in particular contexts where the speaker needs to express indebtedness."

"Imbalance is overtly acknowledged by beneficiary and the imbalance is dneied by benefactor."

"Such a sudden topic change, which is initiated by the benefactor, is observed frequently in the data."

"Working on the debt-credit equilibrium emerged clearly as a common practice outside a family circle."

'The more intimate the interlocutors were, the more a 'complimenting-gladness' pair tended to emerge. This is clearly a norm for intimate situations."

"Both ends of the continuum of social distance tend to have predictable sequences; the minimum end tends to be complimenting-gladness', while the maximum end tends to be 'thanking, apology, debt-sensitive speech formula, and/or a benefactive verb-denial."

"Working on debt-credit equilibrium is observed as a default except for conversations between family members."

"Overlaps:
When conversationsl participants work together on debt-crdit equilibrium, overlapping speech frequently ocurred. In otehr words, as soon as the beneficiary indicates his/her pragmatic intention of compensating debt, even partially with thanking apology, debt-sensitive formulae or a benefactive verb, the benefactor counteracts with a 'dneial'. A 'denial' serves the pragmatic function of de-burdening the beneficiary, thus, it often overlaps, or at least is latched with the beneficiary's attempt to work on o-rei. This conversational overlap or harmony is also evidence that mutual work on the debt-credit equilibrium is in operation. If I use the notion of face, as a motivational drive, derived from Goffman (1967:5): "the positive value a person effetively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact", the state of being in debt without an acknowldgment is dishonorable, and for the benefactor, claiming that s/he is a creditor is seen as arrogant and a social disgrace. 'Dnial', as an expected follow up of beneficiary's acknowledgement of benefit/debt, may in fact care for both beneficiary's and benefactor's face."

"This supports Apte's description of thanking (verbalization of gratitude) in Marathi and Hindi, that is "verbalization of gratitude indicates a distant relationship" (Apte, 1974:75), and thus it should be avoided among family members."

sociolinguistic competence in the complimenting act of native chinese and american english speakers: a mirror of cultural value

ming-chung yu

"The present study examines sociolinguistic features of a particular speech act, paying compliments, by comparing and contrasting native CHinese and native American speakers' performances...this apper aims at illuminating the fact that, in cross-cultural communication, foreign langauge speakers have to pay close attention to sociolinguistic rules of the target language in addition to structure and discourse rules to meet the needs of linguistic accuracy and fluency."

"Complimenting is chosen in that this speech act, while seemingly common and simple at first glance, is often considered so complex as to cause a great deal of troble in intercultural encounters (e.g., Wolfson, 1989)."

"The issue of universality versus culture-speciicity in speech act studies is still hotly debated."

"It has been argued that the main function of compliments is to establish solidarity between speaker and addressee (e.g., Herbert, 1989;...)"

"...people frequently offer praise to reinforce or encourage the desired behavior in specific situations, such as teaching and learning. Another possible function compliments may serve is to strengthen or replace other speech acts like aplogizing, greeting, reprimanding, or thanking, or to soften acts such as criticism, or even to serve as acts like sarcasm or a conversation opener 9Wolfson, 1983, pp. 86-93)."

"American compliments serve to negotiate social solidarity, South African praise functions non-negotiatively, probably as a way to affirm such solidarity." (Herbert and Stright, 1989)

"complimenting can also be seen as...action that attends to the addressee's positive face by including him or her in the group...complimenting itself can also be deemed as a face-threatening act." both "positive politness device as well as face-threatening act"

"each field worker was asked to note as soon and as accurately as possible the exact compliment exchange and relevant contextual information he or she observed in his or her everyday life right after each exchange had taken place."

"two-year data collecting period" "audio-tape the observed spoken exchanges."

"In the Chinese data, 356 participants produced 410 compliments, while in the Americna ENglish data, 636 participants produced 789 compliments."

"Direct compliments, which refers to remarks including linguistic forms that dircetly and unambiguously frame these comments as compliments, such as, "Isn't the food great!"

"Indirect compliments, which refers to remarks which would be seen as compliments by the addressee, althought he positive semantic carrier generally assoicated with complimenting is missing at the level of the linguistic form...."Wow, I hope I'll have a coat like this.""

"(a) that complimenting frequency is much lower for CHinese speakers than for English speakers, (b) that direct complimenting was the most often adopted strategy for both speaker groups, and (c) that CHinese speakers used indirect compliments proportionately more than Americans did."

Direct: CHinese: 334. American: 719
Indirect: CHinese: 76. 18.5% Americans: 70 8.9%

"there were more Chinese speakers than expected who complimented indircetly, and fewer American English speakers who did so."

"there seem to be conceptual differences of directness/indirectmess between Chinese and English speakers."

"many Chinese speakers believe that the Chinese tend to consider these strategies equally direct when presented as single utterances."

Chinese compliments: "You must have put a lot of thought into it. That's a very clever idea." To Yuanyuan, the first part seems indirect and the second part seems direct. "You smell great. What kind of perfume are you wearing?" small talk and compliments overlap. The second sentence of the 2nd example here, "when ocurring on its own, can be considered a core compliment."

"...for native CHinese speakers, supportive moves and/or small talk are likely to be found before the core request in seemingly high imposition situations, whereas for American English speakers, they usually occur after the core request (Yu 1999b)."

Chinese: "Hi, I stood in line right behind you, so I got a chance to see you play. Do you often come here? Maybe we cna practice together some day. I think you play pretty well." long
American: "Nice shot! Wanna play together sometime?" short

"whereas the complimenting utterances of Americans were mostly so straightforward that few supportive moves or little small talk were used, Chinese speakers employed such moves or talk much more frequently so that many of their complimenting sequences tended to be longer, as we can see above in Examples (9) and (10). In practice, native CHinese speakers' use of small talk and/or supportive moves has to do with a socio-cultural convention that embraces a communicative style valuing reciprocal face work very highly."

"the use of linguistic devices that serve functions like supportive moves or small talk plays a very important role in CHinese politeness behavior and face concerns."

"compliments have been found to occur in a much wider variety of speech situations in AMerican culture than in other cultures (e.g. Wolfson, 1989."


this is unusual for the Chinese; they usually won't say this to a stranger: "Hi, we were just sitting near each other. By the way, I think you look great in this dress."
B: "So so!" A normal response
A: Do you come here often? How do you like the food here?"
B: Just so so!
A: Maybe we can get together again."
B: We'll see. I've been very busy recently. We'll probably meet again at school." this means I don't want to see you again. An exmaple that complimenting a stranger doesn't work with the CHinese

"In these two exchanges, compliments appear to function primarily as a conversation opener for the speaker to try to establish some rapport with the addressee."

"Not only is this behavior generally considered inappropriate, but also the addressee may think that the speaker is in effect contriving something."


"Given that the Chinese tend to offer fewer compliments in everyday discoursal activities than Americans, the question arises whether the Chinese have less of a need to establish solidarity than native ENglish speakers."

American-democratic
South AFrican-elitist
"...comliments in American culture function primarily as a vehicle to negotiate solidarity between speaker and hearer, wheeas compliments in South Afrucan society serve mainly as an instrument to show the speaker's admiration."

"Oliver (1971) argued that Chinese society traditionally legitimizes a hierarchical class structure that places a high value on subordination to and respect for authorities."

"
Therefore, compliments in CHinese culture, like those in South African society, may be primarily used to display the speaker's positive assessment of some object or concern relevant to the addressee instead of offering solidarity." Compliemts in South African and CHinese cultures "may serve a more restricted set of functions and are thus more limited in discourse."

"cultural norms play an important role in determining language behavior."

"In Chinese culture, the speaker is generally expected to employ compliments as assertions of admiration."

"In American culture, however, it is common practice for the speaker to employ compliments to establish solidarity or rapport."

"...compliments could also serve to replace other speech acts such as aplogizing, greeting, or thanking, and so forth, and both speaker groups employed compliments this way."

"compliments in AMericna ENglish mostly fall into two main categories: (a) appearance and/or possessions; and (b) ability and/or performance."

"The Chinese speakers' tendency to compliment on ability and/or performance can be accounted for by the fact that the Chinese traditionally tend to emphasize the virtues and qualities of individuals, and thus do not regard good looks or possessions as having great social value (Yang, 1987)."

"First...the act of explicitly admiring a person's appearance and/or possessions will usually be regarded as uncultivated...Second, physicla appearnce in Chinese socio-cultural contexts traidtionally has a sexual implication, and is, therefore, seen as taboo in social intercation.

"...newness is very highly valued in American society. Thus, offering a compliment is appropriate whenever an acquaintance is seen with something new (Wolfson, 1989)."

Recipient is higher in status: Chinese: 4.9%. American 15%

"For both speaker groups, the great majority of compliments occur in interactions between people of equal status."

"...Chinese socio-cultural convention...legitimizes a vertical class structure following Confucian political philosophy that places special emphasis on respect for and subordination to the authorities."

..."in American culture...the asymmetric power relations in conversational dyads are often not recognized."

"...where status is concerned, there were more compliments downwards than upwards for Chinese speakers, whereas there were more compliments upwards than downwards for Chinese speakers."

"for both speech groups, the great majority of compliments occur in interactions between interlocutors who are casual friends, co-workers, non-intimates, and acquaintances rather than intimates or total strangers."

In CHinese culture, complimenting a close friend or intimate is considered distancing.

Recipient is a close friend or intimate: Chinese 7.8% American 16.4%

"social distance appears to be seen as an easily surmountable boundary to everyday interactions in American culture, while in CHinese culture, a vertical social class structure is still observed."



"this Chinese word, due to its stronger semantic force, is employed in indirect requesting more often than in complimenting; in contrast, "like" in ENglish, due to its stronger complimentary force, is used in complimenting much more frequently than in requesting."

politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversation: the case of advice

nieves hernandez-flores

"...politeness is based on a social ideology, i.e. on a set of ideas about behaviour which are shared by a community...the members of this community have to follow the rules in order to continue their membership in the group."

"the social ideology arising in European SPanish colloquial conversation."


autonomy: "the fact of perceiving, and to be perceived by people, as someone with his/her own surroundings inside the group."
affiliation: "the fact of perceiving, and to be perceived by people, as an integrated part of the group."

"what the categories of autonomy and affiliation aim at in terms of behaviour is open to cultural interpretation."

in Spanish groups:
self-affirmation: (Thuren 1988): "It is important to express your opinions forcefully and persuasively; one should be able to persuade through showing the invinsible structure and logic of one's opinions and also demonstrating their emotional charge, because what is emotionally strong carries its own logic."
confianza: (Thuren) "closeness or a sense of deep familiarity"

"the face want of self-affirmation (the desire to be seen by others as someone with good social qualities) does not refer to the fact of being or not being unimpeded in one's actions, as negative face does, but to the wish of standing out form the group...With regard to confianze (sense of deep familiarity), this notion does not refer to the wish of being appreciated and approved of (positive face) but to the wish of achieving closeness..."

"advice would be understood as a speaker's imposition on the hearer's freedom of decision and action."

note 8: "Also in American English, by using Brown and Levinson's features for face, Decapua and Huber display that unsolicited advice shows people's enagagement in related stories or descriptions arising in daily conversation and this is not seen as a threat in many situations...advice has other functions...to establish or maintain rapport."

"she plays down her task by using a diminutive in the adjective (tranquilita)"

"advice arises without a demand deom th addressee, it presents clear assertions and it is rejected by the hearer."

a cross-cultural comparison of apologies by native speakers of American English and jordanian arabic

rula fahmi bataineh, ruba fahmi bataineh

"This study investigates the apology strategies used by the speakers of American English and Jordanian Arabic...there were more differences between Jordanian male and female resondents than between American male and female respondents, which may be attributed to the fact that there is a greater similarity between how boys and girls are raised in the US than between how they are raised in Jordan."

apologies

survey taken by undergraduates

"Westerners concentrate more on culpability and Easterners on consequences."

"only Jordanians used strategies such as praising God for what happened, attacking the victim, minimizing the degree of offense, and interjection."

Strategies differed, but not that much.

developing awareness of crosscultural pragmatics: the case of american/german sociable interaction

catherine evans davies

"...this article draws teachers' attention to three interrelated aspects of conversational style which are important in initial crosscultural encounters between Americans and Germans."

criticizes the natural approach

"The argument is made that language teachers should give pragmatic competence/awareness the highest priority in the classroom, form the beginning of language study."

3 points:

1. "we need to organize teaching around speech activities as discourse rather than around isolated speech acts."
2. "we need to develop in learners the ability to looks for patterns, through discourse analysis and a certain critical distance, rather than 'facts' or 'rules' about language and culture."
3. "we need to present cultural themes (e.g., the public versus the private self: what is the boundary betwen an acceptable and unacceptable degree of self-disclosure in small talk?) as opportunities to explore diversity within the home and target cultures."

"Too often we also find an avoidance of cultural generalizations."

"...compared to German strategies, American conversationalist style (in particular with reference to the experience of university students engaged in crosscultural conversations) 'is weighted toward deference strategies' (Byrnes 1986)...Such a conversational style in fact allows the individualism which Americans favor ideologically, in that respect for the individuality of others protects one's own by maintaining reciprocal respect."

Byrned characterizes "conversational style among German univeristy students not in terms of solidarity or deference politeness strategies, but rather as placing greater emphasis on the 'information-conveying function of language, as compared with the social bonding function' (1986). She suggests further that this emphasis leads naturally to more dircet strategies."

Example in which a roommate stains another roommate's blouse. "Germans were much more willing to pass judgment on the violators, exercising a more overt social control function than English speakers."

"An alternative explanation might be that Germans have more of a sense of homogeneity with a shared set of norms which they can enforce, whereas Americans are more aware of their heterogeneity."

"...among Americans the average 'social distance' between different individuals seems to be smaller than among Germans, but only in regard to the peripheral regions."

(1) SMALL TALK
"The existence of the expression 'small talk' in English suggests that it is a cultural category; in contrast, German simply describes the practice as ...(unconstrained, unrestricted, easy interaction).

"Germans seemed to have obligatory opening and closing rituals for public encounters, with nothing in between; whereas Americans seemed to have more flexible (and sometimes optional) openings and closings, with the focus on the sociable interaction in the middle."

"It is easy to envision the difficulties of an Americna trying to develop small talk along American cultural lines."

"Germans in the US often misunderstand small talk to be the initiation of a 'close friendship' and can feel set up for a disappointment."

(2) JOKING
"...for Germans, joking is private behavior, whereas for Americans it is public as well as private...English speakers (and Austrian German speakers) have a more creative and lighthearted attitude and less prescriptive approach to language than Germans do."

"Germans tend to judge Americans negatively on the basis of what was seen to be their excessive joking; they were assumed to be 'frivolous' and 'not serious enough.'"

"human beings are not cultural robots."

aspects of polite behaviour in French and Syrian service encounters: a data-based comparative study

veronique traverso
2006

conversational routine: highly predictable expressions in specific social situations

ritual acts (related to sociology): "conventionalised act through which an individual portrays his respect and regard for some object of ultimate value." (Goffman)

The script in the service encounter:

• opening sequence of the encounter
• sequence including the request
• (payment sequence)
• leave-taking sequence

To what extent are encounters determined by cultural norms? How far away could one stray form those norms?

Syrian: "may it be blessed" can be used in many situations

"In the Syrian corpus, the request is routinized through the use of even fewer formulas, including indirect devices:
'Is there?' 'have you got?'"

"at your service, willingly (lit. 'on my eye,' 'on my eye and on my head')"

theories of identity and the analysis of face

helen spencer-oatey

"I propose that in cognitive terms, face and identity are similar in that both relate to the notion of 'self'-image..., and both comprise multiple self-aspects or attributes. However, face is only associated with attributes that are affectively sensitive to the claimant. It is associated with positively evaluated attributes that the claimant wants others to acknowledge..., and with negatively evaluated attributes that the claimant wants others NOT to ascribe to him/her."

A Hungarian student called Spencer-Oatey a kind old lady, hurting her face. She didn't want to be considered old.

A British businessman gave a welcome speech but didn't allow the Chinese to make a return speech, insulting them.

At a meeting, each British person introduced himself. Then it was the Chinese's turn. They spoke together, then allowed the delegation leader to introduce all of them. The interpreter interrupted and insisted they follow the British lead. "...the Chinese visitors were not used to introducing themselves and were expecting the delegation leader both to handle all the introductions and to give a return speech. Their acceptance of business meeting conventions, as well as their belief in hierarchical differentiation (cf. Pan 2000) significantly influenced how they interpreted and reacted to the British chairman's behavior."


"...important insights into why people experience certain ocurrences as face threatening can be gained by considering their underlying conceptions of sociality rights--obligations. Such considerations may also help us anticipate people's face sensitivities and thereby help us to manage them more effectively."

data collection in pragmatics research

gabriele kasper

How you collect data depends on what you are studying.

"Depending on the research purpose, it may take an unreasonable amount of data to obtain sufficient quantities of the pragmatic feature under study--for instance, of a particular speech act."

Online: authentic discourse, elicited conversation, role-play, multiple choice, think-aloud protocols

Offline: production questionnaire, multiple choice, scales, interview, diary

power pragmatics in asian languages

jyh wee sew

quote Power in Language by Ng and Bradoc, 1993: "facts and logic alone are often insufficient for persuasion. Facts and logic--the prescribed basis of persuasion--must be adapted to the situation, and it is language and language style that will bear the burden of this mission."

quotes Robin Lakoff, 1990: "we are always involved in persuasion...If we succeed, we have power."

Hong 1985: "...since the addressee is supposed to anticipate your needs, if you mention them to him, it will embarrass him."

Sew: "Therefore, indirectness is understood as a style of formulating speech acts, which has an inherent pragmatic role."

In a Tamil family, "The wife in the family usually addressed the husband 'father of X: X being the eldest son/daughter' whereas the husband called his wife by her name." Not true now.

"Some explicator markers (V2), for instance, convey contempt" in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kurukh.

Indirectness is tied to face-saving. Can be tied to powerlessness, but not necessarily.

complexity in isolating languages: lexical elaboration versus grammatical economy

elizabeth m. riddle

"I argue that although isolating Asian languages such as Hmong, Mandarin Chinese, and Thai may be economical in terms of inflection, they exhibit significantly more complex lexical patterns of particular types than more synthetic lanaguges such as Polish and English in like contexts."

non-inflecting languages have lots of complexity in other ways.

linguistic typology and sinospheric languages

elizabeth riddle and herbert stahlke

Why are West African and SE Asian languages so similar?

Overspecifying languages: subordination, polysyllabic words, derivational affixes, high degree of inflection

Underspecifying languages: juxtaposition, monosyllabic words, compounding, no inflection, verb classes blend together

Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Language

charles n. li and sandra a. thompson
1975

subject-prominent lanaguges: English
Topic-Prominent Languages: Chinese
Subject-Prominent and Topic-Prominent Langauges: Japanese, Korean
Neither Subject nor Topic Prominent Languages: Tagalog

Mandarin (TP):
"here very hot
'It is hot in here.'

possible this-CLASS war will soon end aspect
'It is possible that this war will soon end.'"

double subject constructions:
Japanese:
"fish-TOPIC red snapper SUBJ delicious
'Fish (topic), red snapper is delicious

Korean:
airplane-top. 747-subj. big-stative
'Airplanes (topic), the 747 is big.'

Mandarin:
that tree leaves big
'That tree (topic) the leaves are big.'"

some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements

joseph h. greenberg, 1963

"Appendix III
Universals Restated
1. In declarative sentences with nominal subject and object, the dominant order is almost always one in which the subject precedes the object.
2. In languages with prepositions, the genitive almost always follows the governing noun, while in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes. [English is an exception. French holds to the rule.]
3. Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional.
4. With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional.

7. If in a language with dominant SOV order there is no alternative basic order, or only OSV as the alternative, then all adverbial modifiers of the verb likewise precede the verb. (This is the "rigid" subtype of III."

29. If a language has inflection, it always has derivation.
30. If the verb has categories of person-numer or if it has categories of gender, it always has tense-mode categories.

32. Whenever the verb agrees with a nominal subject or nominal object in gender, it also agrees in number.

34. No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural."

the relevance of complement choice: a corpus study of 'believe'

"...the 'to-/that' complement alternation is sensitive to whether the writer intends the reader to focus on the implications of the proposition expressed by the embedded clause, or on the those of the proposition expressed by the sentence as a whole."

Dr. Riddle said this is wrong: "...the use of the infinitive complement is not unconstrained: on the one hand, it can only be used with stative verbs or those marked for perfective aspect; on the other, it is limited to formal, generally written, genres."

Predictions:
"As Noel found, 'believe' complements which introduce information new to the discourse should be more common in a sample of 'believe(s) that X is/are' cases than in a sample of 'believe(s) X to be' cases."
"There should be a higher incidence of behaviour/reaction-explaining cases in a 'believe(s) X to be' sample, for the reasons explained above."

He didn't find a big difefrence.

clause combining across languages: a corpus-based study of english-french translation shifts

christelle cosme.

This study uses bilingual corpora to test “the claim that English shows a strong preference for coordination while French makes more extensive use of subordination” (71). The results support this claim.
This article has two primary goals: “(a) gain more insight into the contrast between English and French in terms of clause-combining; (b) shed more light on clause combining in general – and, more particularly, on the relationship between coordination and subordination” (72). The article also has two secondary goals: (a) demonstrate how “corpus linguistics can serve the needs of syntactic cross-linguistic research” and (b) encourage language teachers to introduce translation corpora as a teaching tool (95-99).

Syntactical Background Information
There are three types of interclausal relations (73-74).
Juxtaposition He ate too much for dinner; he was ill the next day. Parataxis: establishes equivalent relation between clauses
Coordination He ate too much for dinner and (he) was ill the next day. Parataxis
Subordination Because he ate too much for dinner, he was ill the next day. Hypotaxis: establishes hierarchical relation between clauses

“No clear borderline seems to exist between coordination and subordination.”
The claim is that English prefers coordination, while French prefers subordination (76, example 8).

Methodology

Cosme used both monolingual and translation corpora for this study, analyzing two registers: fiction and journalese (78-79).


Monolingual corpus results

“Interclausal and is significantly more frequent than interclausal et” in fiction; this difference is not observed in journalese (80-81).

French is more apt to coordinate full clauses than English, which is more likely to coordinate predicates by ellipting the subject in the second clause (82).

Coordinating conjunctions convey two separate meanings: the static meaning (pure addition) or dynamic meaning (temporal sequence or consequence). In journalese, French tends to use et to convey a static meaning more often than English, which tends to use and to convey a dynamic meaning (83-84).


Translation corpus results

“It is more common for inter-clausal and to be translated by something else other than inter-clausal et ( . . .) than vice-versa” (84). This occurs in both fiction and journalese (85).

In the majority of examples, translators have the option of either coordinating or subordinating: the change is not obligatory (86).

Translations from English to French shift to subordinating structures by use of the following:
• Participle clause (28.3%)
• Purpose clause
• Relative clause (23.9%)
French-to-English translations display the following shift strategies:
• Participle clause (41.2%)

complementation

michael noonan

• That Cartier defeated Dugue would be significant (that-clause)
• For Cartier to defeat Dugue would be significant (infinitive clause)
• Cartier's defeating Dugue is significant (gerundal or verbal noun clause)
  
• Nelson saw Cartier defeating Dugue (participial clause)

"Derivational affixes, such as English -ing, which are used to convert a form from one part of speech to another are not considered here to be complementizers."

"Complementizers typically derive historically form pronouns, conjunctions, adpositions or case markers, and, rarely, verbs, and so may resemble words currently used in these capacities." In SE Asia, it's common for complementizers to derive form verbs.

"Parataxis and verb serialization may be used in complementation."
IN 100s of E. and SE Asian languages, "Each verb phrase contains a fully inflected verb."

In Lango, and African language:
"woman told (3SG DAT) man sifted (3SG) millet
'The woman said it to the man, he sifted millet'
The woman told the man to sift millet (and he did)"

Complement types: indicative, subjunctive, paratactic, infinitive, nominalization, participle

"Zeke wants Norma to plant the corn.
Zeke wants to plant the corn."