The Linguistic Proceedings Library is an ongoing initiative of The International Linguistic Society dedicated to preserving, publishing, and promoting linguistic research through an open-access, researcher-focused platform. Our vision is simple: to make linguistic research as accessible, discoverable, and connected as possible. The library currently contains conference proceedings and research papers dating back to 2006, providing a growing archive of linguistic scholarship spanning multiple conferences, disciplines, and areas of research. By combining modern publishing infrastructure with open-access principles, we aim to ensure that valuable research remains available to researchers, educators, students, and institutions worldwide. Explore the Platform Proceedings Library Proceedings Hub Current Features Open-access access to all published content DOI registration through Crossref Dedicated article landing pages Structured metadata designed to improve discoverability Citation linking through Crossref metadata Long-term preservation of proceedings Archive spanning multiple conferences and disciplines since 2006 Looking Ahead The Linguistic Proceedings Library continues to evolve as we expand our publishing and preservation capabilities. Planned developments include: ISBN assignment for proceedings volumes Additional indexing and discovery opportunities Enhanced citation tracking and linking Author profile integration and researcher identifiers Improved metadata standardisation Expanded digital preservation and archiving services Greater interoperability with academic platforms and repositories As the library grows, our focus remains on improving visibility, accessibility, and long-term preservation while supporting researchers throughout the publication lifecycle.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Search strategy and resolution during word finding difficulties
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: speech production, lexical access, word finding failures, blocking, incomplete activation A tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience refers to the state in which a speaker is temporally unable to retrieve a word from memory, while being sure that he knows the word. The recovered partial information can consist of competing items that resemble the target word phonologically or semantically and could give rise to competiti on or conflict during attempts to resolve the TOT. A question that has been discussed recently is whether phonologically similar words block or facilitate lexical retrieval. A study at Frankfurt University (cf. Hofferberth 2008) found that participants preferred searching for their intended word by a semantic search strategy instead of a phonological one.
Copyright (c) 2011 Nina Jeanette Hofferberth (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: sonority scale, sound symbolism, kiki-bouba effect The current study investigates whether the sonority scale can linearly predict the roundness of a phoneme as a visual attribute. The results revealed that for vowels, it is the underlying roundness feature, not sonority, that predicts visual roundness. For consonants, however, the ranking generally follows the sonority scale, with the exception that voiceless fricatives ranked relatively higher than voiced fricatives and voiced stops.
Copyright (c) 2012 Jixing Li, Charles Spence, Klemens Knöferle (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The acquisition of plus-que-parfait in French by Chinese learners in French L2 and L3
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Chinese learners, plus-que-parfait, double anteriority, FL2, FL3 The purpose of this research is to show the differences of French plus-que-parfait acquisition by Chinese learners in French seconde language (L2) and third language (L3) at the initial and intermediate level. Through the comparison of written samples of four groups (native speakers and learners), we found that (1) two groups of French learners sometimes uses the passé composé to replace the plus-que-parfait; (2) FL2 learners use the subordination with perfective value or lexical means to mark the double anteriority, which is influenced by their L1 Chinese; (3) FL3 learners, who have learned English as L2, are very familiar with the double anteriority indicated by the pluperfect. This likely facilitates the acquisition of the plus-que-parfait.
Copyright (c) 2017 Xingzi Zhang (Author)
Applying critical discourse analysis in the translation of Maghrebian literature
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, ideology, translation Within the frames of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper examines the several factors that exert influence upon translating texts both as a process and a product. More precisely, it investigates the notion of ideology with particular use of critical discourse analysis. The purpose is to see the degree to which the translator’s socio-cultural and ideological backgrounds have impacts on translations. It also aims to shed light on the potential relationship between language (as a discourse) and ideology in translated texts. This work is a mixed-methods study whose corpus is a combination of two literary Maghribi texts along with their translated counterparts. Through a two-level analysis (the macro-level and the micro-level), data analysis aims to find out the dissimilarity between the proportions of the information obtained from the target texts (TTs) and their equivalents in the source texts (STs). The results obtained in this research prove that the application of CDA to the STs and TTs helps researchers become aware of the genre conventions, as well as the social and situational context of both the ST and TT, and outlines the formation of power and ideological relations on the text-linguistic level.
Copyright (c) 2018 Hassan Ou-hssata (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring the potential of visual shadowing as an L2 listening pedagogy at universities in Japan
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: shadowing, listening pedagogy, EFL, university, Japan Since MEXT announced the “Action plan for cultivating Japanese with English abilities” in 2003, universities in Japan have been expected to improve students' English communication competence. However, many Japanese students still tend to struggle with English listening comprehension. Given this inclination, several scholars have pointed out the effectiveness of repetition, visual shadowing, and standard shadowing practices as effective SLA (Second Language Acquisition) listening pedagogies. This paper explores how visual shadowing activities help students improve their English listening skills, utilizing student TOEIC listening scores alongside interview data from specific case-study students.
Copyright (c) 2018 Fuyu Shimomura (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Tonology and sentence structure in Greek
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: tonal production, sentence structure, prosody, phonetics, Greek This is an experimental investigation of tonal production as a function of lexical stress variability and sentence types in Greek. One production experiment was carried out according to which the lexical stress assignment in the last words varie d in the last three syllables in the context of polylectic and monolectic statement and alternative (polar) question sentence conte xts. The results indicate that statements are associated with a rise-fall tonal pattern encompassing the last stressed syllable whereas the questions are associated with a rise-fall tonal pattern encompassing the last syllable of the utterance. The initial rise of the rise-fall in statements may be trancated whereas the rise-fall in alternative questions remained fairly invariable.
Factors affecting resolution of anaphora with collective nouns in Russian
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: anaphoric agreement, rhetorical structure, collective nouns, eye-tracking, experimental linguistics It is assumed that anaphoric agreement is more sensitive to semantic rather than grammatical information of an antecedent. Higher linear distance between a pronoun and its antecedent has proven to trigger semantic agreement, yet hierarchical distance is hardly examined in the research field. In the eye-tracking experiment, we investigated factors of linear and rhetorical (hierarchical) distance as well as the factor of working memory volume in their ability to facilitate interpretation of the number feature of a collective noun in Russian. The results indicate that linear distance is of great importance in interpreting pronouns, and the same is true for hierarchical distance.
Copyright (c) 2024 Anna Moskaleva (Author)
Speaker and prosodic peculiarity classification in emotional speech
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: rhythm, speaker classification, between-speaker variation, prosodic peculiarity, emotional speech In this study, the relationship between rhythmic metrics, emotion recognition, and speaker variability is investigated using the German emotional speech corpus (VMEmo). Using principal component analysis and linear discriminant, the results show accuracies close to 0.40 when rhythmic features from different acoustic domains of time, intensity, and frequency are merged to identify linguistic behavior. However, the fluctuating accuracies of 0.44 to 0.17 in classifying speakers based on specific rhythmic feature categories emphasize the significant differences within these feature subgroups. These variations suggest possible nuances or complexities that require deeper exploration and thorough investigation to better understand the differences between these features and their impact on speaker classification accuracy.
Copyright (c) 2024 Neda Mousavi (Author)
Does story-type affect the assessment of age-related differences in discourse production?
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: image, vignette, discourse analysis, story-type, cognition Assessing discourse production is essential for understanding the effects of healthy aging on language across the lifespan. The choice of task for collecting speech samples is critical, as different tasks can elicit varying types of discourse. Building on prior research (Marini, 2022), we examined potential effects of story type on age-related differences in discourse production among healthy adults. Speech samples from 143 participants across various ages were collected using both single pictures and vignettes. A multilevel discourse analysis revealed age-related differences and story-type effects on measures of productivity and discourse organization. This study is relevant for clinical practice, highlighting the importance of story type in discourse production assessment.
Copyright (c) 2024 Giulia Gasparotto (Author)
Sociophonetic perception of Dh-Stopping in South Yorkshire English
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: dh-stopping, linguistic attitudes, Sheffield English, solidarity, rurality This study investigates covert linguistic attitudes towards the phenomenon known as dh-stopping ([ð] → [d]) in Sheffield English. This feature is particularly salient in the pronunciation of Old English second-person pronouns (thee, thou), although it also occurs in function words. The study explores how different sociodemographic groups perceive this variation in relation to solidarity, accent, rurality, and perceived age. A total of 111 participants from Sheffield and surrounding areas completed a matched-guise experiment in which they rated speakers based on pronunciations using the dental fricative [ð] and dental stop [d] variants. The results showed that gender, age, and geographic background strongly influenced perceptions of these variants, highlighting the complex social meanings associated with phonetic variation in Sheffield English.
Copyright (c) 2025 Bartolomé Díaz Martínez (Author)
The phonology and phonetics of prenuclear and nuclear accents in French
Section: Proceedings Papers The goal of this paper was to determine whether there is a formal difference between high-ending nuclear (IP-final) and prenuclear accents in French. After transcribing the relevant items, we then compared the different accentual and phrasal categories by analyzing, among the other things, the tonal and temporal characteristics of their tonal targets as well as durational characteristics of the target syllables. The hy -pothesis tested is that nuclear accents differ from prenuclear ones in terms of formal characteristics of the contour wh ich cannot be explained, for instance, by invoking the presence or absence of an upcoming tone. We show th at both alignment and scaling differences can be found between the two accents types, thus motivating a contrastive phonological analysis.
Copyright (c) 2006 Mariapaola D’Imperio (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Section: Proceedings Papers The study of speech perception over the past 60 years has tried to determine the human processes that underlie the rapid understanding of fluent speech. A first step was to determine the units of speech that could be experimentally manipulated. Years of examining the acoustic properties associated with phonemes led to theories such as the Motor Theory which postulate larger units that integrate vowel and con-sonant information. Current approaches find better support for the syllable as the most robust and coherent unit of speech. A complete theory of speech perception should systematically map how speech acoustic information is processed bot tom-up through the peripheral and central auditory system, as well as how linguistic knowl-edge interacts top-down with the acoustic-phonetic information to extract meaning.
Copyright (c) 2006 Diane Kewley-Port (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Quantal phonetics and distinctive features
Section: Proceedings Papers This paper reviews some of the basic premises of Quantal-Enhancement Theory as developed by K. N. Stevens and his colleagues. Quantal theory seeks to explain why some articulatory and acoustic dimensions are favored ove r others in distinctive feature contrasts across languages. In this paper, after a review of basic concepts, a protocol for q uantal feature definitions is proposed and problems in the interpretation of vowel features are discusse d.
Copyright (c) 2006 George N. Clements (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Frequency effects in language acquisition: a case study of plural forms in Brazilian Portuguese
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: acquisition, plural, language use, frequency, schemas This paper discusses the acquisition of plural forms of words that end in a back glide in Brazilian Portuguese and may take two plural forms: either –s (the regular suffix) or the suffix –is. Forty children were presented with picture cards containing words ending in a back glide and were asked to identify what they saw. Children’s answers presented the suffix –is for the vast majority of words rather than the regular plural suffix –s. Our results indicate that children abstract schemas rather than acquire default rules. The –is suffix has a very high frequency rate for words that end in a back glide, which leads to the establishment of robust schemas. We argue that the plural suffix –is is adopted by children due to frequency effects, which foments a very robust schema and enhances productivity.
Copyright (c) 2008 Thais Cristófaro Silva (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Receptive and productive skills of English /l/ and /r/ by Japanese college students in relation to their motivation
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: receptive, productive, motivation The objectives of the present study were threefold: (1) the effects of training in /r/–/l/ perceptual identification on /r/–/l/ production; (2) the effects of training in /r/–/l/ production on /r/–/l/ perceptual identification ; and (3) the effects of perceptual and production training on learners’ motivation to study English. Results indicate that both the perceptual and the production training sessions resu lted in improving not only the intended skill but both the receptive and productive skills. Thus, either receptive or productive skill sessions can be used to promote Japanese college EFL learners' English oral communication skills. Nevertheless, the motivation questionnaire shows (1) the importance for teachers to encourage their students to self -study to improve receptive skills and (2) the significance for teachers to understand the efficacy of output practice in small groups to help their students gain confidence in productive skills.
Copyright (c) 2008 Yuichi Todaka (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The effect of focus on lexical tones in Vietnamese
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: lexical tone, Vietnamese, focus, intonation We investigated the effect of focus on the formation of f0 in two of the six tones of the Hà Nội dialect of Vietnamese. This dialect contrasts six lexical tones, has no tone-sandhi, the language does not have focus markers and uses prosody exclusively to express pragmatic contrasts (Jannedy, 2007) by means of intonational emphasis in ways similar to English or German. To tease out the effect of focus on the duration and f0 of the level tone ngang and the rising tone s ắc, identical short SVO-type utterances were elicited with a question-answer paradigm under three focus conditions (subje ct-, verb-, and object focus). Results indicate that the tone especially under subject- and verb- but also object focus shows an f0-excursion for the ngang tone and a scoop an d sharp r ise for sắc. Duration of the focused syllable also increases.
Copyright (c) 2008 Stefanie Jannedy (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Phonetic factors influencing /l/-rhoticisation in Greek
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: laterals, rhotics, perception, sound change This study investigates phonetic factors – vocalic/consonantal context, duration, stress - favouring rhotic perception of the lateral approximant in Greek. Nonsense words containing the lateral in different lengths in both intervocalic and interna l coda position, alongside similar words containing a rhotic, were presented to Greek listeners for categorisation as /l/ or /r/. Results showed that laterals were perceived as rhotics if they matched the rhotic in duration. R hotics, on the other hand, were only perceived as laterals if they were articulated as an approximant rather than as a tap.
Copyright (c) 2010 Daniela Müller (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The processing of asymmetric and symmetric sentential conjunction
Section: Proceedings Papers
Copyright (c) 2011 Ellen Thompson, Javier Collado, Maria Omana, Amanda Yousuf-Little (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
‘Seeing and thinking for speaking’ across languages: spatial encoding and attention allocation in agrammatic aphasia
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: spatial language, eye movements, agrammatism Current typological research has shown that languages encode space in strikingly different ways, mapping spatial concepts onto divergent lexical and syntactic structures. These typological properties seem to strongly guide speakers’ "speaking" and "thinking" in both typical and atypical (pathological) contexts. Such asymmetries in the distribution of lexical and grammatical elements are also particularly interesting for the study of agrammatic speakers, who frequently show dissociations between these two elements when speaking. The present research investigates whether language-specific factors influence how speakers of typologically different languages, both with and without agrammatism, encode motion events verbally (speaking), as well as how they allocate their visual attention (seeing) when constructing spatial representations (thinking).
Copyright (c) 2012 Efstathia Soroli (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A neural basis for the effect of bilingual language control on cognitive control
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: neurolinguistics, langanguage control, ognitive control It has been observed that bilinguals have an advantage on tests of cognitive control, such as the Simon task (Bialystok et al. 2004). This advantage has been attributed to the bilingual’s need to constantly manage two competing languages. However, the neural correlates of this effect are not yet fully understood. Although many of the brain networks used for cognitive control are also recruited for language control, it has been argued (Frühholz et al. 2010) that different types of conflict rely on distinct neural mechanisms of conflict processing. The present study sought to explore potential overlaps in the brain circuits involved in language and cognitive control in order to provide a tentative basis for the bilingual cognitive advantage.
Copyright (c) 2012 Thomas Somers, Lilith Van Biesen, Esli Struys, Ghazal Mohades (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Automatic assignment of labels in Topic Modelling for Russian Corpora
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: topic modelling, topic labelling, Russian corpora The main goal of this paper was to improve topic modelling algorithms by introducing automatic topic labelling, a procedure which chooses a label for a cluster of words in a topic. Topic modelling is a widely used statistical technique which allows to reveal internal conceptual organization of text corpora. We have chosen an unsupervised graph-based method and elaborated it with regard to Russian. The proposed algorith m consists of two stages: candidate generation by means of PageRank and morphological filters, and candidate ranking. Our topic labelling experiments on a corpus of encyclo pedic texts on linguistics has shown the advantages of labelled topic models for NLP applications.
Copyright (c) 2016 Aliya Mirzagitova, Olga Mitrofanova (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Phonostylistic study of Spanish-speaking politicians: Populist vs. Conservative
Section: Proceedings Papers Conservative and Populist politicians can be easily recognized thanks to their phonostyle characterized by specific prosodic patterns. In this study, I analyzed four politicians’ phonostyle in public ‘spontaneous’ speeches: Hugo Chavez (HC), José D. Ortega (JO), José R. Zapatero (Z) and Enrique Peña (EP). The acoustic analysis suggests that two main types of phonostyles can be found: a populi st’s phonostyles (HC and JO) and a conservative one (Z and EP).
Copyright (c) 2016 Carmen Patricia Pérez (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A corpus-based study of metadiscourse markers in English and Urdu
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Metadiscourse, interactional markers, corpus Interactional metadiscourse markers are self-reflective linguistic expressions that give writers a stronger presence in an interaction (Hyland, 2004). In this study, a large corpus was compiled from English and Urdu newspapers. The compiled corpus was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, drawing results based on Hyland’s (2005) model of interaction. The quantitative findings demonstrate that news writers in both English and Urdu prefer to shape the viewpoint of their readers through personal judgments when deploying stance markers. The contrastive analysis of interaction markers across both corpora reveals that Urdu journalistic discourse is more persuasive, convincing, and influential, as it contains a higher frequency of interaction markers compared to English journalistic discourse.
Copyright (c) 2018 Haroon Shafique (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Preliminaries to the Tuvan interrogative intonation
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: intonation, yes/no questions, Tuvan, PRAAT, endangered languages Tuvan is one of the minority Turkic languages of Siberia (RF). Its segmental structure is described quite well, whereas its suprasegmental level has not been studied yet. The purpose of this paper is to give a preliminary description of the Tuvan interrogative intonation. Several topical dialogues were recorded by three Tuvan wom en, yes/no questions were cut out and their structure and F0 changes were analyzed. The preliminary results show that T uvan intonation seems to closely correlate with the information structure. The interrogative particle be appears to be pronounced with different F0 movement in accordance with the utterance focus. Generally Tuvan yes/no questions prove to be characterized by inclination of the tone, though the patterns are not as strict as in Altay, for example.
Effect of face mask and noise on word recognition by children and adults
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: face masks, noise, word recognition, children, adults Previous studies have shown that noise has a detrimental effect on speech intelligibility and language comprehension, more so for children than adults. Furthermore, the mandatory use of face masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic presents an additional communication and learning barrier. The current study investigates the effect of face mask on low frequency word recognition in quiet and noise by adults and, more importantly, by young children who just completed the first grade of primary school. Preliminary results indicate that word identification is significantly compromised when produced with a surgical face mask, with more pronounced negative effects for children listening in noise. Implications on new word recognition and learning by first graders in noisy classrooms with compulsory mask usage are considered.
Listeners’ categorisation behaviour correlates with gradient changes in exposure statistics
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: speech perception, speech adaptation, distributional learning Listeners can successfully understand talkers despite substantial cross-talker variability in the mapping between phonetic cues and linguistic categories. However, the mechanisms underlying this adaptive ability remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates the extent to which listeners can adapt their interpretation of speech based on the distribution of phonetic cues in recent input, and whether prior expectations regarding how talkers typically sound guide and constrain this adaptation process.
Copyright (c) 2022 Tan, Maryann (Author)
Tempo, information rate, and communicative efficiency in L2 speech
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Bilingual speech communication, Speech rate, Information transmission rate, Communicative efficiency This presentation seeks links between speech tempo, information transmission rate, and communicative efficiency in conversations involving L2 participants. First, we show that L2 speech tempo is influenced by both “state” and “trait” characteristics. Specifically, while L2 speech is invariably slower than L1 speech (L1 vs. L2 “state”), within bilingual individuals L1 rate is a significant predictor of L2 rate (individual “trait”). Next, we show that the slower rate of L2 speech (fewer syllables/second) is compounded by lower L2 information density (more syllables/text), yielding a very low L2 information transmission rate (fewer bits of information transmitted/second). Finally, we show variation in conversation-based cooperative task completion time depending on the degree of language background overlap between task participants. Together, these studies provide a scaffold for eventually linking acoustic-level temporal variation to discourse-level communicative efficiency in L2 speech communication.
Copyright (c) 2022 Bradlow, Ann R. (Author)
Tracking participants’ behaviour when performing linguistic tasks
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Psycholinguistics, Offline task, Plausibility judgement, Acceptability judgement, Decision-making process This study aims to identify behaviours accompanying the psychological processes involved in reading sentences and deciding on a response. The response times associated with different participant actions while completing a questionnaire were measured. We focus on two datasets from the sample: cases in which participants changed their responses and cases in which they did not. The results show that changing a response has an impact on response times. More importantly, this impact occurs not only during the decision-making process but throughout the entire task. This research may contribute to a better understanding of response-time data in offline techniques and to the fine-tuning of experimental designs.
Copyright (c) 2022 Lourenço-Gomes, Maria (Author)
Sentence repetition as a function of episodic buffer: a pilot study in Croatian
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Sentence repetition, Long-term linguistic knowledge, Episodic buffer, Working memory In sentence repetition tasks, the function of the episodic buffer of working memory is to adjust semantic and syntactic information stored in long-term memory. To explain how working memory uses linguistic knowledge about words and constraints on their order in sentences, the constrained sentence span task was adapted and developed. The aim of the study was to determine how many words in sentences children could repeat under conditions both with and without articulatory suppression. Sixteen ten-year-old children participated in the study (M = 10;04). The results showed that success in repeating sentences under both conditions increased up to sentences containing six words. This experimental task accounts for the function of the episodic buffer when controlling various linguistic aspects.
Copyright (c) 2022 Gabaj, Mateja (Author)
Zhangzhou Yangping tone and its variations: going beyond convention
Section: Proceedings Papers Keywords: Yangping tone, F0, Contexts, Zhangzhou, Southern Min This study explores the encoding of Yangping tone in Zhangzhou Southern Min across three linguistic contexts. This tone is shown to have multiple realisations comprising a low level [22], a mid-level [33], a mid-falling with level [311], and a low falling with level [211], which are conditioned by positional factors and the phonetics of surrounding tones. The findings contradict prior auditory transcriptions and question certain conventional assumptions used to define a right-dominant tone sandhi system in Sinitic dialects. This study contributes valuable empirical data to the investigation of the typology of tone as an important linguistic phenomenon in China and worldwide.
Copyright (c) 2022 Huang, Yishan (Author)