LingBaW. Linguistics Beyond and Within

Evolution in the Use of Evolution? An Overview of the Term in the Corpus of Historical American English

Shala Barczewska — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

While synchronous analyses of the interaction between language and society abound, e.g., in discourse studies, diachronic corpus-based studies are rare. This paper attempts to fill that gap with an investigation into the frequency and collocational preferences of evolution in COHA: The Corpus of Historical American English (Davies 2010). This lexeme was chosen for two reasons. First, the acceptance and teaching of biological evolution, especially in public schools, have been points of contention in American culture for 100, if not 150, years, comprising one of America’s “culture wars.” Hence, the topic is of contemporary as well as historical discourse interest. Second, a pattern between the frequency of evolution and the popularity of the theory in American history was noted by Barczewska (2017). This suggests a link between the use of the lexeme and the theory’s reception. The current analysis investigates the frequency of evolution in COHA as a whole and according to genre. Collocational preferences within the corpus reveal changes in the way evolution is used over time. The paper also highlights the advantages and disadvantages of using COHA for similar research projects and suggests that the process applied here could be used to study the verbalization of other culture-shaping phenomena.

The Teacher and the Frog: Unveiling the Morphosyntax of Gender Shifts in Czech with Nanosyntax

Daniel Boucník — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This study examines the formation of nouns in Czech that show grammatical gender through stem morphemes and three productive suffixes: -a, -k-(a), and -ák. These suffixes are the main morphological exponents across three noun classes – monomorphemic (e.g. kmotr/kmotr-a), bimorphemic (učitel/učitel-k-a), and stem–suffix compounds (žáb-a/žab-ák). Using nanosyntax, the study shows that gender alternations arise from hierarchical syntactic structures rather than lexical or semantic defaults.

By investigating noun pairs such as učitel (‘teacher.Masc’) / učitel-k-a (‘teacher.Fem’) and žáb-a (‘frog.FEM’) / žab-ák (‘frog.MASC’), the study shows that masculine forms contain Class and Masc, while feminine forms emerge through the addition of Fem. Suffixes such as -k-a and -ák function as lexicalization solutions, structured through movement-based operations.

This approach refines our understanding of Czech gender morphology, demonstrating that nanosyntax captures gender alternations systematically even when surface forms are unpredictable. By modeling these alternations within a unified syntactic framework, the study provides a principled account of morphological derivation and paves the way for further cross-linguistic extensions.

Some Partial Considerations on Partial Control Instances in Romanian

Maria Aurelia Cotfas — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The paper looks at the possibility of Partial Control (henceforth, PC) instances in Romanian, a language which uses finite (subjunctive) complements in typical control contexts and where PC has therefore been deemed impossible. We show that PC effects can indeed be manifested in Romanian under a putea ‘can’, which we analyze as a neutral circumstantial modal in these contexts. We show, following Matsuda (2021), that these PC instances are sensitive to indexicality (viz., the current speech situation) and represent an interplay of (inclusion of) [+Speaker], [+Addressee] or both. We therefore identify three typical PC instances: a) 1^st singular antecedent + 1^st plural embedded reference (inclusion of current speaker); b) 2^nd singular antecedent + 2^nd plural embedded subject (inclusion of Addressee) and c) 2^nd singular antecedent + 1^st plural embedded subject (inclusion of both). This shows that in spite of the raising behaviour of most O(bligatory)C(ontrol)/E(xaustive) C(ontrol) verbs in Romanian (cf. Alboiu 2007, Cotfas 2012), there are contexts for which a control analysis needs to be maintained, and, more broadly, that PRO is to be maintained as an empty category and cannot be reduced to raising/movement.

Teaching Language-Specific Preferences in the Native Language: An Interactive Web App for Prospective Teachers

Renate Delucchi Danhier, Paula González Ávalos — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Natural languages offer diverse means for conveying the same idea, with each language typically exhibiting a predominant way of selecting and packaging information, referred to as a language-specific preference. Cross-linguistic research on motion events has shown that native speakers tend to favor such patterns and intuitively recognize non-preferred lexicalizations, particularly in the domain of motion event description. Due to subtle differences in grammar and vocabulary, these preferences are language-specific.

Acquiring the language-specific preferences of a second or foreign language poses a challenge even for advanced learners, especially when these preferences diverge from those internalized in the native language. Language teachers, however, are often unaware of both the existence of such preferences and the difficulties they pose for learners. This study therefore aims (1) to enable prospective teachers to discover language-specific preferences through a bottom-up, data-driven approach, and (2) to raise awareness of the challenges involved in acquiring them.

Accordingly, the online application LexiGraph was developed to enable prospective German teachers to identify patterns in linguistic data. Using an interactive dataset, students explored the expression of motion events across languages and speaker groups. The app supports visual exploration and provides a threshold learning experience that fosters an engaging and intellectually challenging learning environment by encoding complex semantic and syntactic information.

Student feedback highlights the novelty of the technological approach, although some participants perceived the material as cognitively demanding. Developing an understanding of language-specific lexicalization patterns can support prospective teachers in working with language learners and contribute to more inclusive multilingual education.

AI the Teacher? A Study on the Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Learning

Miriam Kobierski — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The use of AI-based tools in the classroom is only one example of how artificial intelligence has influenced various realms of everyday life. It is impossible to overlook the growing impact of this technology and the potential repercussions of using it. AI-based tools such as ChatGPT or Google Translate and specialised AI language learning tools, such as Duolingo and Busuu offer many possibilities for learners to study, including: creating specific learning sets for individual users, translations, and detailed explanations (De la Vall & Araya 2023). Recent studies have shown that this solution is becoming increasingly popular. One study conducted at a university in Germany found that every fourth student used AI-based tools very frequently, while half of the students used them occasionally (von Garrel & Mayer 2023).

This study investigates which group of learners use such tools the most and examines the experience of using AI tools to aid learning. I apply methods of statistical analysis to examine how the use of AI tools influences teaching and learning. I gathered three different focus groups (high school students, university students, and university graduates) to examine various aspects such as: whether they used AI tools to aid their learning process, what types of tools were used, if these tools proved to be effective, their overall satisfaction while using these ways of learning, and what (other) benefits they gained from these methods of learning.

Investigating Academic Writing Workload Among English Department Students: A NASA-TLX Analysis of Gamified Instruction

Monika Łodej — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This study investigates the workload experienced by English Department students in a gamified academic writing task. The NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) serves as the primary instrument for analyzing workload distribution across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. Additionally, the study examines its correlation with self-reported perceived learning and learning outcomes. Data collected from 23 Master’s students in Poland indicate a moderate overall workload, with effort and frustration emerging as the primary contributors. While students reported improvements in citation mastery, perceived workload did not exhibit a significant correlation with final grades. The findings suggest that gamification can enhance student engagement without imposing excessive cognitive strain.

Back to Normality? A Bibliometric Analysis of L2 Vocabulary Research 1989–93

Paul Meara — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper is the latest in a series of studies published in LingBaW that contribute towards a historical review of research into L2 vocabulary acquisition. This instalment uses an author co-citation analysis (Small 1973) to examine the research on L2 vocabulary acquisition published in 1993. Two analyses are presented. The first analysis provides a context for the 1993 data. It looks at work that was being cited in a five-year window covering 1989–93. The second analysis is a more detailed account of the 1993 research on its own terms. These analyses suggest that a surge in psycholinguistic research identified in 1992 may be a transient feature of the field. 1993 exhibits a return the patterns noted in our earlier studies, where the most significant influences come from an applied linguistics perspective.

Polish Modal Ellipsis

Nadia Modrzejewska — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Over the past years, Modal Ellipsis (ME) has been the focus of some cross-linguistic investigations in languages such as Spanish (Dagnac 2010, Fernández-Sánchez 2023), Dutch (Aelbrecht 2010), French (Authier 2011), and Czech (Gruet-Skrabalova 2017), among others. Initially, it was considered to involve a null proform – a silent pronominal element standing in for the missing complement (Brucart 1999, Depiante 2000). More recent analyses, however, argue that this elliptical construction should be analysed as PF-deletion. According to this approach, the ellipsis site has a full syntactic structure deleted at Phonetic Form. In this paper, I propose that Polish ME follows the PF-deletion pattern, specifically targeting the complement of VoiceP. To test this hypothesis, I examine three diagnostics – extraction, case connectivity effects, and syntactic mismatches. The data reveal that Polish ME allows extraction and exhibits case-matching effects between the remnant and the elided structure. These findings provide compelling evidence that Polish ME involves an underlying syntactic structure deleted at PF.

Metaphoric Sense Developments in the Names of Places of Worship in Contemporary American English

Sylwester Łodej, John G. Newman — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper offers an account of the metaphorical extension of the names of religious houses of worship such as temple, church, mosque, and synagogue in contemporary American English, reflecting processes of linguistic secularization. Using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the study investigates how the meanings of religious terms enter into secular domains, signalling shifts in societal perceptions of religious experience. The findings show that temple and church frequently undergo metaphorization, appearing in phrases like temple of learning and church of football, where non-religious modifiers drive semantic extension. These terms increasingly denote secular places characterized by human passion, knowledge, and community, disclosing broader patterns of cultural engagement that evidently mirror religious practices and behaviours. In contrast, mosque and synagogue demonstrate greater resistance to metaphorical extension, retaining religious denotations more typically. The study identifies SOCIETY, CULTURE, and LIFESTYLE as the principal domains for metaphorical extension, suggesting an alignment between linguistic secularization and usage shifts into non-religious contexts. Conversely, domains such as SPORT, TECHNOLOGY, and MILITARY show minimal metaphorical usage, reflecting the selective nature of this process. The results underscore the role of metaphor in bridging sacred and secular spheres, demonstrating how language adapts in order to reflect evolving cultural frameworks. By applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory and insights from cultural linguistics, this research advances our understanding of linguistic metaphorization, and more particularly secularization, as significant drivers of semantic change.

Phonological Relations Between Palatalizers and the Phonemic System: A Case Study on Czech

Anna Poĺomská — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper examines palatalization in Czech, focusing on its behaviour in the domain of noun-deriving suffixes. It argues that Czech palatalization is not an assimilatory process, but a repair mechanism triggered by structurally and lexically deficient phonological units, referred to as palatalizers. These units lack an independent phonetic counterpart and can be identified only through their systematic phonological effects. The analysis proposes that palatalizers and phonemes form a coherent, interactive system whose interrelations determine the surface outcomes of palatalization. The study first introduces a new typology of Czech palatalization patterns, then rejects the assimilatory interpretation and develops a model in which palatalizers are reconstructed as independent but deficient phonological objects. The analysis adopts the framework of Substance-Free Phonology, which allows phonological processes to be modelled without direct dependence on phonetic data. This approach is particularly suitable given that palatalization exhibits widely varying phonetic realizations across languages. Building on this, the paper specifies the internal structure of palatalizers and the representation of their deficiency, and proposes a computational mechanism that predicts the interaction between palatalizers and target consonants. The resulting model predicts which phonemic classes undergo palatalization and which resist it.

Understanding Secondary School Students’ Motivation to Learn Spanish

Katarzyna Roszkowska — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Taking into consideration the crucial role of motivation in learning foreign languages, the author of this text, who is also a high school Spanish teacher, decided to conduct a study whose aim was to discover which factors motivate high school students to learn this language and how students’ motivation changes depending on the time they have been learning the language.

The study involved two groups of high school students whose third language was Spanish (after Polish and English). The first group included first-year students aged approximately 15-16, and the second group included third-year students aged approximately 17-18. A total of 30 people took part in the study (15 in the first group and 15 in the second group). The research tool used in the study was a survey including several parts, which was inspired by the survey created by Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda in 2021, included in the book Teaching and Researching motivation. The students were asked to respond to sixteen statements based on a Likert scale, where each number from 1 to 5 represented a different level of agreement.

Having analysed the survey results, one could come to the conclusion that first-year students are much more motivated to learn Spanish than third-year students. The results from this part were as follows: Year I – 45.55% of students motivated; Year III – 31.68% of students motivated. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate demotivating factors and support situations that motivate students in order to teach Spanish to high school students as effectively as possible.

The Interconnection between Perspective-Taking Process and World-Creating Predicates in Language Use

Denis Shuvalov — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Perspective-taking (PT) is a fundamental cognitive faculty that enables individuals to understand and engage with others’ viewpoints. This paper focuses on overt linguistic items that directly signal perspectival shifts. Central to this investigation are world-creating predicates, such as verbs of cognition (e.g., think, believe) and utterance (e.g., say, tell), which contribute to the construction of perspectivity in language. Drawing on attributional semantics, this study argues that these predicates differ in their relation to PT: while predicates of utterance merely express another’s perspective, predicates of cognition more actively require the speaker to adopt that perspective. Through contextual analysis, the paper demonstrates how these predicates operate along a private-public domain continuum, with implications for identifying actual PT occurrences in discourse. Ultimately, it has been demonstrated that predicates establish perspectivity in two distinct ways, depending on their degree of egocentricity. For example, predicates of cognition (think, believe) belong to the private domain and lead to actual occurrences of PT, as they compel the speaker to adopt another’s perspective — to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes”. In contrast, predicates of utterance (say, tell) belong to the public domain and indicate merely the linguistic expression of a perspective without requiring the speaker to adopt it. In other words, these predicates simply attribute verbally expressed content to an “I” distinct from the speaker. Additionally, a five-level partial ordering has been proposed to capture gradations between the extremes of the private-public domain.

“Bloody + Emotions” – An Investigation into the Australian Exclamations and Expletives

Małgorzata Szymańska — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Australian variety of English is known as very informal, often associated and even synonymous with slang. Hunter (2004: 5) wrote that Australians tend to be informal in their speech and behaviour, and one aspect of this informality is the extensive usage of slang.

One of the most prominent indicators of this informality is the adjective bloody used as an element of an everyday speech as a component of various compounds to intensify the speaker’s message or in numerous exclamations.

The purpose of this paper is to present the partial results of a survey carried out among young Australian Speakers with a view to investigating the case of bloody used as an intensifier, expletive and a part of a compound as well as to present other expletives and exclamations in current use.

The study sheds light on the most typical compounds used in exclamations as well as on the current state of bloody in comparison with other expletives.

The CIPP-TRS Corpus: Corpus Construction and Preliminary Analyses

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Schizophrenia, a neurodevelopmental disorder, significantly affects cognitive and linguistic functions, often resulting in disorganized speech, reduced syntactic complexity, and impaired discourse cohesion. While previous corpora have explored linguistic disruptions in schizophrenia, no dataset has systematically distinguished between treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) and non-treatment-resistant (non-TRS) speech patterns. This study presents the CIPP-TRS Corpus, an annotated collection of transcribed speech from 20 individuals with schizophrenia (10 TRS, 10 non-TRS), alongside a control group of 10 neurotypical speakers. By analyzing peri-linguistic (e.g., interjections, pauses) and paralinguistic (e.g., breath patterns, output modalities) features, we investigate the linguistic manifestations of schizophrenia across these subgroups. Our preliminary findings suggest that TRS patients exhibit richer peri-linguistic markers, and increased hesitation phenomena, while non-TRS patients demonstrate greater lexical retrieval difficulties. Moreover, TRS individuals struggle more with temporal processing, particularly when recalling past events or engaging with past retellings, reinforcing theories on Theory of Mind (ToM) impairments and lived-time disturbances in schizophrenia. The CIPP-TRS Corpus represents a crucial step toward identifying linguistic biomarkers of schizophrenia and its treatment-resistant subtype. Future research will expand the dataset and incorporate prosodic, syntactic, and pragmatic analyses to refine our understanding of speech pathology in schizophrenia, with potential applications in clinical diagnostics and therapeutic interventions.

Girl Math or Nonsense? – (De)valuation and (In)visibility of Women in Social Media Slang

Angelika Żak — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The study aims at presenting the phenomenon of the devaluation of women and their invisibility in youth-oriented language. The main focus of this research is social media and comments found in apps such as TikTok or X, which are some of the most popular social media platforms among teenagers. Language, just like a living organism, constantly changes to fit the needs of society, and since nowadays women are no longer only mothers and wives, the speech should reflect this phenomenon. The data is juxtaposed with women’s stereotypes found in the most popular proverbs. Therefore, upon examining the data, one is able to discover both changes and similarities between these two. The question posed in the article is whether slang still highlights the greatness of men and the weakness of women, just like the language used to present. Consequently, the main principle of the study is to establish whether any changes are happening with regard to the inclusivity of younger generations’ everyday speech. In other words, the objective of the article is to illustrate how patriarchal society affects slang, along with teenagers’ beliefs, as well as to present how the young generation breaks the cycle of stereotypical and sexist speech.

Partitive and Counting Phrases in Polish: A Nanosyntactic Analysis of Syncretism

Lukáš Žoha — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper investigates syncretism in Polish pseudo-partitive and counting phrases, where different forms of the same noun appear in context as ‘a piece of apple’, ‘two apples’, and ‘five apples’. These contexts exhibit three distinct syncretism patterns: AAB, ABC, and ABA, depending on whether suffixes are repeated or differ across forms. The analysis focuses on how suffixes signal distinctions in number and countability, drawing on the nanosyntactic framework. By applying the Lexicalization Algorithm, the paper shows how noun structures grow incrementally and how suffixes compete for lexicalization. Special attention is paid to the ABA pattern in feminine nouns, where the same suffix appears in the genitive singular and genitive plural, but not in the nominative plural – a configuration rarely attested cross-linguistically. The findings provide evidence for fine-grained syntactic structure and illustrate how syncretism patterns reflect the underlying functional sequence.