Abstract Despite the significant role of politeness markers in managing interpersonal communication, relatively little attention has been paid to the modal forms could you and would you , particularly regarding their functional differences and sociolinguistic variation. This corpus-based study investigates these two politeness markers in contemporary British English using data from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014, a large collection of conversational British English across regions and social groups. Furthermore, the study examines how social variables (gender, age, and social class) influence the use of these expressions. The findings reveal significant functional differences between the two markers: could you is often used for checking possibilities, while would you is more commonly employed for making suggestions or offering something. Gender was found to have little impact on the use of could you , whereas would you was more frequently used by females. Age and social class also showed variation in the use of these markers, with younger speakers preferring could you for seeking information and middle-aged individuals using would you for making requests. This study contributes to the understanding of how politeness strategies vary across social contexts, offering new insights into how linguistic markers serve as tools for social negotiation and interpersonal communication.

Abstract This paper presents a study of regional and ethnic variation in the use of morphosyntactic features associated with African American English (AAE) among 35 Black high school students in Philadelphia and Boston. Twenty-five morphosyntactic features are examined by three measures of use: range of features, dialect density measure, and copula deletion rates. Results demonstrate marked differences in the use of AAE morphosyntax between cities, with Philadelphia speakers showing wider ranges, higher dialect density measures, and higher rates of copula deletion. Within ethnically diverse Boston, speakers with Afro-Latinx ancestry have the most restricted use of AAE features. This work represents the first description of AAE morphosyntax in Boston, and contributes to the study of diversity both within and between Black communities.

Abstract This paper presents a case study investigating how climate-related health risks are communicated in Qatar through news media and government messaging, with a particular focus on migrant workers. It assesses the accessibility of media coverage and public communication strategies, as well as their alignment with international guidelines for inclusive risk communication. The study analyses existing online climate communication messages, channels, and resources, both prior to and during emergency situations. Accessibility is understood as the extent to which information is retrievable, comprehensible, and usable by people with a wide range of abilities. This includes physical, digital, linguistic, and social dimensions of access. By examining Qatar’s approach to climate risk communication in a multilingual and socioeconomically diverse context, the study highlights existing challenges and offers insights for improving the inclusivity and effectiveness of public communication in similar settings. Findings highlight key gaps and structural barriers in current practices, offering insights for the development of more equitable and inclusive public communication strategies in climate-vulnerable settings such as Qatar.

Abstract It has long been argued that speakers’ choices of linguistic forms during production are influenced by the functional pressures of efficiency and ambiguity avoidance. A reduced form is often easier to produce but can potentially cause ambiguity. Examining bilinguals’ choices between the full and reduced forms can provide valuable insights into how the pressures compete with each other. In the present study, we explore the alternating use of full and reduced forms of Mandarin referring expressions through a multi-factorial analysis on three groups of Mandarin speakers (Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals, Mandarin-Cantonese bilinguals, and Mandarin monolinguals) to determine whether bilinguals with lower language proficiency can coordinate between production constraints and audience-related considerations. The findings revealed that all three groups of speakers show tendencies of saving effort and avoiding ambiguity in their production of referring expressions. However, bilinguals demonstrated an overuse of reduced forms, which indicates that they are less sensitive to audience-related considerations in language production.

Abstract Arabic dialects are often anecdotally described as existing on a continuum of guttural quality, driven by varying degrees of pharyngeal constriction. To empirically assess this, we collected phonetic data from two Jordanian dialects: rural and urban. We employ acoustic analysis and various metrics to quantify the upper and lower vocal tracts’ contribution to the production of emphatic sounds. Our analysis specifically aims to estimate the degree and location of articulatory constriction of emphatics in these dialects, and to identify the role of lip aperture in their production. We analyze vowel formants using generalized additive mixed models. Subsequently, we perform an articulatory estimation using the first two formants and their amplitudes to describe the labial posture and overall vocal tract configuration in emphatics. Our findings reveal that the rural dialect exhibits a more pronounced guttural quality, characterized by laryngopharyngeal constriction. In contrast, the urban dialect primarily shows upper pharyngeal (dorsal) constriction. Furthermore, the study reveals a causal relationship between lip protrusion and the degree and location of articulatory constriction of emphatics within the vocal tract.

Abstract Sign languages have been shown to favor two-handed forms to express plural meanings, and in this paper we investigate whether this pattern is similarly found in silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers. We use 100 concepts with corresponding plurality ratings as stimuli for a silent gesture elicitation task, in which five hearing non-signers are asked to improvise manual gestures for each of the concepts, and the elicited gestures are then coded for number of hands used (i.e., whether they are one- or two-handed). In line with previous findings from sign language research, we find that the silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers favor two-handed forms when expressing plural meanings. Thus, we argue that the iconic pattern of mapping multiple articulators (the hands) to a plural conceptualization of meaning is salient in the visual modality, such that this pattern arises from general cognitive preferences available to gesturers and signers alike.

Abstract The present study analyzes the types of interrogative, such as yes/no questions, wh-questions, or alternative questions, and their semantic and pragmatic functions in a multilingual parallel corpus of spoken monologues extracted from the TED Talks transcripts in five languages: English, European Portuguese, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, and Hebrew. The corpus was developed with English as the pivot language, and the examples are aligned in all five languages based on the occurrence of an interrogative. To conduct this study, we designed an annotation scheme that harmonizes two parts of ISO 24617 – Part 8: Semantic relations and Part 2: Dialogue acts. This framework enabled us to determine the discourse relations that questions establish with the segments to which they are connected and that precede them and their communicative function. In our analysis, we observed that, despite the monologic nature of the corpus, interrogatives are very frequent and diversified across the five languages. Our findings also reveal that the questions are mostly used with a pragmatic function and that the range of discourse relations is less varied. Additionally, the analysis disclosed some pertinent differences between the five languages concerning the translation choices.

Abstract In Early Medieval Chinese, 自 zì came to convey ideas related to phasal polarity. This paper describes how zì expresses three meanings: unexpectedly early already , unexpectedly late still , and the idea that a positive phase at reference time began earlier than expected. These uses are argued to derive from an abstract phase extension meaning: zì denies the occurrence of a change of state, causing the situation to hold true for a more extended period than expected. This meaning is argued to account for the appearance of zì in adverb- zì sequences. Finally, the meaning is shown to have derived metonymically from an earlier force-dynamic use of zì denying that an additional force impinged upon the situation, which in turn originates from zì ’s reflexive-emphatic uses.

Abstract This article proposes a paradigm of attitudinal analysis of commentary videos on a social media platform to illustrate attitudinal negotiation about a particular international event. It adopts a research-driven approach to evaluate verbal expressions of commentary videos concerning Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea posted on Chinese social media platform bilibili.com . The results show that the original appraiser might not be verified, but replaced by the influencer as the secondary appraiser, which features the subjectivity of social media. The appraised targets can be textually tracked or semantically interpreted. Their clusters unfold the development of themes in different phases and stages in digital discourses. The attitudinal value can be affected by sociocultural or ecological factor, the previous or subsequent utterances, or sarcasm. The clusters of attitudinal values could imply massive homogeneous groups in social media communication. The article offers insights for attitudinal analysis of other international events on social media.

Abstract In this article, I examine causal clauses in Polish introduced by the complementizer jako że/iż ‘because’ (lit. ‘as that’). Synchronically, I argue that jako-że/iż-clauses can express distinct reason relations operating on different semantic levels. By focusing on their content interpretation, I provide evidence showing that jako-że/iż-clauses are syntactically integrated adverbial clauses. The main arguments for this claim come from information-structural movement to the left periphery of the matrix clause and quantificational binding. Diachronically, I show that jako could already be used as a causal C-head in Old Polish (up to 1543), and that the declarative complementizer że/iż ‘that’ was incorporated into the causal clause structure in the transition from Old to Middle Polish.