The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the following question that falls in the intersection of philosophy of language and epistemology: is there any distinctive kind of knowledge that one might possess, merely in virtue of being a native, competent speaker of a certain natural language? When this is expressed as a question specifically…

Numeral classifiers have been studied by both linguists who consider them to be function morphemes with no semantic significance and those who contend that they are semantically loaded. While considering both views not to be incorrect, this study, leaning toward the latter view, demonstrates that speakers use classifiers to achieve their intended…

This study aims to examine nominal tautology functioned as human nature based on the assumptions by Wierzbicka (1987). It compares English and Arabic tautology on construction like "Boys are boys." This study integrates Miki's evocation function with two other core concepts namely a "macro-frame" and a "micro-frame."…

The present study aims to reveal the use of high-frequency verbs "make" and "do" when they occur in a verb+noun combination in the argumentative essays of Turkish learners of English. In this context, the present study investigated the grammatical and semantic patterns and erroneous productions in the learner corpus. The…

In seeking to investigate the use of "sorry" in interlanguage refusal by Thai EFL users in an intercultural communication context, the present study collected data from Thai flight attendants who served passengers on international flights for a Thai airline, so as to examine how "sorry" is adopted in refusals in the context of…

The study aims at investigating the discourse marker "hasa" 'now' in Jordanian Arabic using relevance theory. The study also examined the grammaticalization of "hasa" and how it developed to be a discourse marker. The study also explored the functions of "hasa" in Jordanian Arabic. The data, which consisted of 500…

This study investigates the role of emotional linguistic input in learning novel words with abstract and concrete denotations. It is widely accepted that concrete words are processed more easily than abstract ones. Several theories of vocabulary acquisition additionally propose a critical role of sensorimotor and emotional information during novel…

This study describes the quantitative aspects of metaphor in academic publications. In particular, we analyze the frequency of metaphor types and source domains in medical papers written by native and non-native speakers of English. The data have been collected from selected published articles on cancer and tissue engineering. The method combines…

This study aims to investigate the differences in the realization of request speech act between the IEL (Indonesian English Learners) and the AES (Australian English-Native Speakers), as well as explain the factors influencing these distinctions. The descriptive-qualitative method and discourse completion task (DCT) were used to obtain data in…

Collocations make it possible to use and understand the language in an effective way. In this context, understanding collocation issues is important for both native speakers and language learners. This study aims at revealing certain determinations and problems with regard to the classification of word combinations in Turkish. For this purpose,…

We often use pronouns like it or they without explicitly mentioned antecedents. We asked whether the human processing system that resolves such indirect pronouns uses the immediate visual-sensory context in multimodal discourse. Our results showed that people had no difficulty understanding conceptually central referents, whether explicitly…

This study demonstrates how native and learner corpora can enhance modal verb treatment in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks used in mainland China. Data analysis compares modal verbs in the textbook and native corpus by referring to distributional features, semantic functions and co-occurring constructions; and the analysis of the…

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech (co-speech gesture), not without speech (silent gesture). We ask whether the…

Refusing is a common speech act; nonetheless people from different cultural backgrounds employ different refusal strategies. The present study compares refusal strategies used between native speakers of Javanese in Indonesia and native speakers of British English in the United Kingdom. Empirical data were elicited by means of discourse completion…

Cognitive factors have been recognised as important in the interpreting process, but whether they could serve as valid components of interpreting aptitude still awaits further investigation. This study explores the predictive value of cognitive fluency in the simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency…