Centre de Recherche sur la Langue et les Textes Basques

International audience

Scotland’s “1+2 Approach” introduces a second language (L2) for primary school pupils at age 5 and a third (L3) at age 9. While L2 has received most attention, L3 offers schools flexibility and more creativity. This chapter explores L3 as a radical space for pedagogical innovation, drawing on three Scottish studies of projects which actively engaged local communities, fostering encounters with local languages. They empowered students and teachers to learn and use languages in locally relevant ways, reshaping their identities as learners and educators. Through adopting a secondary analysis of teachers’ oral data, we illustrate how these local language encounters provided opportunities for potentially transformative experiences, for both teachers and pupils alike, and consider the implications for those involved in various teacher education contexts.

In this talk, we propose an account of the evolution of language that builds on the hypothesis of human self-domestication (HSD), arguing that the evolution of one of the hallmarks of communication, i.e., conversational abilities, is strongly linked to the reduction of reactive aggression, one of the characteristic features and one of the triggering factors of HSD. Our argument rests on two steps: to argue in favor of a continuity of animal proto-conversation (PC) with modern human conversation; to show that the analysis of how PC of human infants develop into sophisticated conversational skills, in part from changes in the management of aggression/emotions, can shed light on how full-fledged conversational abilities emerged from PC in modern humans under HSD forces. Overall, we argue for a gradual transition from PC to full-fledged conversation under the gradual increase of HSD features in our species.

Humans possess a cognitive faculty to acquire and practice multiple linguistic systems. As cognitive linguistics makes progress in understanding the organ that produces this multilingual faculty of language, monolingualism emerges as the marked case. Considering the biological foundations of human language, and the input impoverishment necessary for the realization of monolingualism, I propose that monolingualism is a social practice of body modification. Like cranial shape modification in babies, foot binding, or tight-lacing of girls, the social practice of monolingualism takes advantage of the plasticity of human bodies in order to alter the natural growth of children before puberty, obtaining a shape and behaviour that conspicuously mark their bodies and deliver a desired social signal. The social practice of monolingualism forces the faculty of language (the linguistic brain organ) into a state of functional atrophy. I explore the predictions that this proposal makes and discuss them in taking the French state as a case study that provides adequate historical context for the development of such a body modification practice in modern Europe.

In this paper we present an ongoing project to build a morphosyntactically annotated historical corpus of Basque. The corpus will have around one million words, encompassing the most significant written production of Basque between the 15th and 18th centuries. Morphosyntactic tagging will allow for systematic searches at different levels of complexity: lemma, form, part of speech, morphosyntactic feature, and also a number of syntactic constructions. In addition, a set of metadata will enable searches based on socio-historical criteria too. Beyond being the first annotated historical corpus of Basque, through this project tools for language processing will be improved by analysing Basque historical varieties more or less distant from present-day standard Basque. Moreover, this project aims to establish a model for further works in historical corpora of Basque.

I propose that the cross-linguistic lack of verbal <em>wh</em>-words derives from the illformed logical form (LF) representations they would generate: verbs are predicates of eventualities and predication (≈logical attribution) and questioning are incompatible. I revisit the literature on interrogative pro-verbs arguing that there are no genuine interrogative verbs unrestrictedly ranging over any eventuality type. Last, I argue that my proposal also predicts the universal lack of other conceivable interrogative elements such as adpositions or tense markers.

Aquest article tracta diferents maneres en què els components de la interfície poden afectar potencialment la sintaxi (o tradicionalment analitzats com a fenòmens sintàctics). Distingiré quatre tipus d’efectes potencials que els components de la interfície poden tenir sobre la sintaxi: (i) no hi ha interacció real, ja que gairebé res no pertoca a la sintaxi: tot (més enllà de combinar) és externalització; (ii) els càlculs dels components de la interfície afecten activament la computació sintàctica; (iii) les propietats de les representacions d’interfície funcionen per informar els biaixos per a l’adquisició d’idiomes; (iv) els components de la interfície imposen condicions de sortida nua (condicions de llegibilitat) que restringeixen el rang de representacions sintàctiques possibles a la interfície. Jo argumento que els dos primers són problemàtics, mentre que els dos últims poden ajudar-nos a comprendre una gamma universal i variable de fenòmens.

Artikulu honek partizipio prospektiboaren gauzatzearen formak aztertzen ditu. Egileak egungo aldakortasunetik abiatzen dira, Euskaltzaindiak laburbildu bezala: partizipio perfektiboari -ko atzizkia eranstea, salbu -n edo -l bukaera duenean, ekialdeko mintzoetan -en genitiboaren atzizkia baliatzen baita. Hala hainbat euskalkitako testuetan nola aditzaren morfologiaren gaineko lanetan oinarriturik, egileek hauxe erakusten dute: partizipio prospektiboaren markatzea onartzen ohi den baino aldakorragoa dela: 1) Lapurdin -(r)en atzizkiaren erabilpen berankorra bokalez bukatzen diren partizipioekin (biziren, ikusiren, harturen); eta 2) XVII. mendetik aitzina, izaren 'izanen' &amp; egoren 'egonen' bezalako formen agerpena lapurteraz eta mendebaldeko behe-nafarreraz. Ondoren izaren &amp; egoren moldeko forma prospektiboak ikertuak dira, haien agerpena bilduz: lehenik, azalpen fonologiko bat formulatzen da (cf. Mitxelena 1990); bigarrenik, forma horiek denbora-burutik argumentuaren hautapenaren aldaketaren emaitza gisara analizatuak dira, genitibo atzizkiaz lexikalizatua, aspektu sintagma ala aditz sintagma izan. Ikuspegi honetan, emaren edo egoren bezalako formak ez lirateke eman &amp; egon partizipioei, baizik ere -ma- &amp; -go- aditz erroei -(r)en atzizkia eranstearen emaitza.