For each outside-reading entry on your report (30 of them)

A. Full bibliographic information
B. A paragraph summary of the main question (entry point) of the text and the answer the authors give to that question (i.e. the "thesis")
C. A paragraph summary of some specific examples cited in the text and how they are interpreted in support of the thesis.

A. Emile Benveniste.  “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign.”  Problems in General Linguistics.  43-48, 1971.
B. Question: Is the nature of the linguistic sign really arbitrary?
     Answer: Yes and no.  Looking from an outside perspective, yes, but looking internally, no, the relationship between signifier and signified is necessary.
C. An illustration is made between the signifier and signified in terms of the concept of an ox (boeuf) and the linguistic signifier (böf).  The fact that it is called “böf” in French and “ochs” in English shows that what the signifier is is arbitrary, but in the mind the relationship is concrete and necessary.

A. Janis Nuckolls.  “The Case for Sound Symbolism.”  Annual Review of Anthropology.  225-252, 1999.
B. Question:  Does sound symbolism exist, and, if so, what are its motivations?
     Answer:  Yes, there are many studies that have been done to show the existence of sound symbolism, especially magnitude sound symbolism.  There are biological motivations for its occurrence.
C. Study done by Sapir made word pairs with contrasting vowel sounds and subjects were asked to guess which meant the larger one.  When vowels were /a/ and /i/, the one with /a/ was 80% more likely to be judged larger.  Jespersen did a study of different languages and their relative words for “little” he found that high-frontal vowels prevailed in these words.  It is theorized that this association deals with the corresponding size of the vocal tract when articulating these sounds.  Onomatopoeia and ideophones are also a common form of sound symbolism in many languages.  A study done on African languages showed that ideophones are quite prominent and most often function as adverbs to demonstrate manner.

A. John Gumperz.  “Prosody of Conversation.”  Discourse Strategies.  100-129, 1982.
B. Question: How do conversationalists use prosody to initiate and sustain verbal encounters?
     Answer: Something must be known about the topic of conversation and the person being spoken to in order to understand the prosody of the discourse.  Once in conversation, prosody can signal questions, clauses, changes in attitude and opinion to help conversationalists know where to go next and what to expect in conversation.
C. One example given was of a commercial setting where the intonational shifts and message of the female speaker’s voice creates a double entendre of being informational and appealing to the sex drive of viewers.  The same words in the same sentences can mean two different things based on tone grouping and prosody, examples: My sister who lives in New York is very nice. Comparisons were made in the prosody in Western English and Indian English.  Western English has a more fluid falling tone, Indian English is broken and up and down in tone.  Sentences said with the same prosody would have different interpretations in the two cultures.

A. John Ohala.  “The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch.”  Sound Symbolism.  325-346, 1994.
B. Question: What are some evidences of sound symbolism that could reduce skepticism of its existence?
     Answer: There are links in sound symbolism in vowels, consonants, tones and intonation as well in humans as in other species’ communications.
C. In many languages words associated with smallness have a high tone, and words associated with largeness have a lower tone (ex: in Ewe small=kítsíkítsí, large=gbágbágbá).  Animals that feel threatened or are set for aggression try to make themselves look bigger, the sounds they make as well, higher pitched sounds for submissive behavior, lower toned sounds for aggressive behavior.  People were asked to hypothesize about the meanings of non-sense words and their meanings.  For example, two words meaning table “gil” and “gal.”  They were asked which one meant large table, which one meant small table.  The tendency was to assign gil to be the smaller table and gal to the larger.  Men’s vs. women’s vocal anatomy, men are made to be deeper and sound bigger and more commanding.

A. Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings, Steven G. McCafferty.  “Carnival in a Mainstream Kindergarten Classroom: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Second Language Learners’ Off-Task Behaviors.”  The Modern Language Journal.  31-44, March 2007.
B. Question: How can second language teachers help seemingly off-task students create meaning in L2 discourse?
     Answer: By channeling students imagination to transform activities or tasks, or the context of those activities.  Allowing and encouraging language play will help develop L2 just as it has been proven to be essential in L1 learning.
C.  Study was done of L2 English learners in an elementary school.  One pair of children who were set to do a story retelling activity, who were uncomfortable with the activity either for lack of ability or lack of interest, started utilizing other props in the vicinity and created meaningful discourse practicing L2.  Usually this would be seen as rebellious and “off-task” but if the students were truly being rebellious they would have reverted to their L1 to play with the other items.  The fact that they were sticking with L2 and created meaningful, cohesive discourse together showed that they were transforming the activity to something more meaningful to them.


A. Fernanda Ferreira* and Nikole D. Patson.  “The ‘Good Enough’ Approach to Language Comprehension.”  Language and Linguistics Compass.  71-83, Jan 2007.
B. Question: Do language comprehension systems create detailed, complete and accurate representations?
     Answer:  No, there is a ‘good enough’ approach which is often applied in language comprehension.
C. Typically in dialogue, those in conversation are not required to prove a detailed representation of what they understand.  There are often ambiguities in discourse with phrases such as ‘the singer saw the audience member with the binoculars.’  It can be unclear who had the binoculars, and it may not be important who actually had them.  Studies show that subjects look at smaller bits of language and interpret those rather than focusing constantly on gaining a global perspective of the meaning of an utterance, sometimes leading to misinterpretation.  For instance with the sentence ‘the coach smiled at the player tossed a Frisbee by the opposing team.’  Globally, the other team tossed the Frisbee, locally we see the phrase the player tossed a Frisbee, which could lead to a misunderstanding of what was said.  The studies focus on looking at how little language is actually looked at to gain a comprehension.

A. Charles Sanders Peirce, Justus Buchler.  “Logic as Semiotic: the Theory of Signs.”  The Philosophy of Peirce.  98-119, 1950.
B. Question: What really is the sign?
     Answer: A sign can either be an icon, an index or a symbol.  There are three trichotomies of signs which then give way to ten classes of signs.
C. The first trichotomy states that a sign may be labeled a qualisign, a sinsign, or a legisign, meaning referring to qualities, instances or rules.  The second trichotomy states that a sign is either an icon, an index or a symbol, meaning a representation of an object, a referent of an object, or the law regarding an object.  The third trichotomy states that a sign may be labeled a rheme, a dicent sign or an argument.  These three trichotomies are applied to arrive at ten possible classes of signs, which are organized into a tri-node diagram for analysis.

A. James A. Dixon, Virginia A. Marchman.  “Grammar and the Lexicon: Developmental Ordering in Language Acquisition.”  Child Development, January/February 2007, Volume 78, Number 1, Pages 190 – 212.
B. Question: What is the developmental ordering in language learners?
     Answer: Lexicon and Grammar are developed synchronously, but in a non-linear relationship. Lexicon heavier at the beginning.
C. Studies were done to map the number of words known by a subject compared to the level of grammatical complexity.  The subjects ranged from 16-30 months old.  The data showed a non-linear relationship between lexicon and grammar, however there was great concurrent development.  It was stated that the reason that there is great concurrency in the development of these two areas is that grammar is developed as children learn the semantic usage of vocabulary words.  As they develop a more diverse vocabulary the more profound and complex their understanding of grammar and usage.

A. Francesco Berto.  “Hegel’s Dialectics as a Semantic Theory: An Analytic Reading.”  European Journal of Philosophy.  19-39, April 2007.
B.  Question: What is Hegel’s dialectics and what does it mean to grasp a concept?
     Answer: When we “grasp” a concept it means that understand all the connections that are made in the parts that make up that concept.
C. We make connections with the immediate, and we understand concept relations in order to understand a concept.  Meaning and logic are formed by making a network of connections, between basic concepts until arranging more abstract concepts.  For example, when we look at the idea that man is mortal, to understand this idea, we make a connection between what we know to be mortal and what we understand man to be.


A. Helen H. Shen, Chuanren Ke.  “Radical Awareness and Word Acquisition Among Nonnative Learners of Chinese.”  The Modern Language Journal.  97-111, March 2007.
B. Questions: What are the developmental trends of non-native Chinese students in their development of knowledge about radicals?  How does development of radical knowledge relate to learning Chinese vocabulary?
     Answers: They first learn to recognize that Chinese characters are made up of radicals rather than random brush strokes, then they learn to recognize specific radicals and their corresponding sounds and then they are able to apply that knowledge to learn new symbols.  In all studies, those with the greater radical knowledge and ability were able to guess the meanings and characters of new words more frequently.
C.  Studies were done to compare radical learning among adult non-native Chinese speakers and native Chinese children.  The study showed that Chinese native children could begin to learn radicals in their third year of learning whereas adult learners could begin to learn about radicals and their function from the beginning of their first year.  The cognitive ability to analyze radicals and their function comes by learning to learn and analyze which adult learners have already done in other ways, thus they can learn and improve their ability to learn new characters at a more rapid rate.  A study tested college age students on radical awareness, radical knowledge application and vocabulary.  Application greatly increased during second and third years of study, recognition also increased greatly during those years but had a great boost within the first year.

A. Scott A. Crossley, Philip M. McCarthy, Max M. Louwerse, Danielle S. McNamara.  “A Linguistic Analysis of Simplified and Authentic Texts.”  The Modern Language Journal.  15-30, March 2007.
B. Question: Are authentic or simplified texts best for beginning and intermediate L2 learners?
     Answer: For beginning levels simplified texts are more accessible to the learner because of vocabulary.  More familiar words are used and less low frequency words are used.
C. The study was done for ESL instructional texts.  They looked at grammatical structures, word frequencies and complexities of syntax.  They also looked at polysemy values, which were predicted to be higher in simplified texts and therefore be a problem for beginning level learners, but found that there was not a significant difference.  One fall back of simplified texts is that syntactic structures may be too heavy for beginner learners due to exclusion of less familiar words.


A. Asta Cekaite.  “A Child’s Development of Interactional Competence in a Swedish L2 Classroom.”  The Modern Language Journal.  45-62, Mar 2007.
B. Question: Is there a unilinear development of single L2 learner identity?
     Answer: No, in tracking the learning of an L2 immersion student, it was found that the student went through three phases of participation.
C. The immersion classroom was highly focused on student participation and inter-student communications.  The three stages observed were the beginning stage of her first year in the immersion class where she was not seen or noticed by peers as much, the middle stage where she was sometimes inappropriate and aggressive, and the third stage where she was skillful in her interactions with others.  There is more of a skipping around in a Peircean model of student types than would be predicted by an L2 learner.

A. Robert Brown, Albert Gilman.  “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.”  Sebeok, 253-276, 1960.
B. Question: How have pronouns of address and their meanings evolved in different languages closely related to English?
     Answer: Starting in Latin, familiar “you” forms were used by everyone, because there was only the “tu” and the “vos” was used in regards to the emperor.  The “vos” then spread to others with power all the way down to normal children addressing their parents.  The polite forms were plural to show greatness of the one being addressed.
C. Differences arose in pronoun usage based on relationships of power and relationships of solidarity.  Persons may be equal and solidary, equal and not solidary, unequal and soidary and unequal and not solidary.  Solidarity arose to allow parents to be addressed informally, where traditionally they were addressed formally by their children because of power.  In modern language, “tu” forms are more common among reciprocal usage regardless of status, previously reciprocal usage between men of power was the “vos” form.  Breaking social norms in usage of “tu” and “vos” usually represents some form of haughtiness or anger.

A. Ferdinand de Saussure. “The object of linguistics.” Course in General Linguistics.  7-17, 1959.
B. Question: What is the difficulty defining the object of linguistics?
     Answer: The fact that linguistics as a science in not working with concrete material as with other sciences.
C. If you take a word like “nu” in French, in linguistics you could look at it in terms of is semantic meaning, phonetic meaning, a representation of other words, etc.  Language is composed of making, receiving and interpreting sound.  Sometimes we regard the sound a word makes without taking into account what it took to make that sound.

A. Ferdinand de Saussure.  “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign.” Course in General Linguistics.  65-70, 1959.
B. Question: What is a linguistic sign?
     Answer: It is the composite of a concept and a sound image.
C. “Arbor” is only a sign because it implies the concept of what a tree is.  If there was nothing to signify it could be a signifier.  The relationship between the sound symbol and the concept is arbitrary.  The sound image for a given concept could be anything, hence the differences in vocabulary between languages.  But that fact that the relationship exists between signifier and signified is essential.

A. Robin Lakoff.  “Why Can’t a Woman Be Less Like a Man?”  Talking Power.  198-214, 1990.
B. Question: What differences are there in men’s and women’s use of language?
     Answer: Men and women use the same language (vocabulary, sentence patterns) but mean different things with what they use.
C. Metacommunication is sometimes needed, but not realistic, for men and women to understand one another.  For example, a woman explains to her husband about a run in with her boss at work. The man may think she is asking for advice in how to deal with it, but the woman is just asking for sympathy.  Western culture is different than eastern, typically western woman are more round about in conversation and men are more direct, whereas in Malagasy culture for example the women are more direct and men more round about.    Women’s discourse is more intonational, uses more diminutives, uses more expressive forms, is more imprecise, is more collaborative than competitive.

A. Roumyana Slabakova.  “Is there a critical period for semantics?”  Second Language Research 22,3 (2006); pp. 1–37.
B. Question: Is there a critical period for the acquisition of compositional semantics?
     Answer: No there is not, semantics develops slowly but surely throughout learning.
C. Study was done to see the correlation between knowledge of morphology and knowledge of semantics.  They tested intermediate and advanced Spanish learners on the topic of preterite vs. imperfect tenses in Spanish.