A joint presentation at ICHLL9

Next June 20-22, Professor Cristiano Broccias and I will be jointly presenting a paper at the 9th International Conference on Historical Lexicology and Lexicography (ICHLL9), which will take place in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy. Our presentation will be entitled ‘On the relationship between V and Ving in the English VVingPP pattern: A historical perspective.’ Stay tuned for more news!

Good and bad (use of the) resources

In a passage of his book ‘Fluid concepts and creative analogies,’ the famous A.I. scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter ridiculed small, pocket bilingual dictionaries while praising thick multilingual thesauri. Although I see his point, I do not share his views on this matter (to be sure, the book is fantastic). Indeed, it would be unreasonable to pick up a pocket dictionary of, say, English and expect to find a comprehensive coverage of the English lexicon, let alone an introduction to the language. However, dismissing pocket dictionaries altogether does not seem reasonable. As with any other resources, I believe it depends on the use one makes of them.

It is just wrong to assume that every person who buys a dictionary aims to become a fluent speaker of the language. In my experience as a private language tutor, there are many reasons why people may want to become familiar with a language. Some prospective learners may have a family in a country where the language is official. Others may enjoy going there on holiday. Others still may have a passion associated with that country (e.g., in the case of the United Kingdom, it is often pop and rock music). In all these cases, they have no ambition to attain a high proficiency level; consequently, they will not spend tons of money on thick dictionaries, grammar books, or compelling and expensive courses.  Therefore, as a private tutor, I must tailor my classes to the individual needs of every single student. The choice of the resources to be used must be maximally functional to reach the goals set at the beginning of the course. Sometimes, these are very ambitious (as in the case of an absolute beginner planning to move abroad within six months) but are often more humble (as in the case of a learner who enjoys visiting a country for a couple of weeks a year).

Of course, a professional linguist or language teacher will need many advanced resources. Indeed, we often spend a long time in libraries scrutinizing dictionaries, grammar books, textbooks, exercise books, collocation dictionaries, idiom dictionaries, urban dictionaries, and lists of common mistakes. We do it out of genuine interest. Alas, the linguist’s passion is often not the language learner’s. The vast majority of learners will content themselves with carrying out relatively down-to-earth conversations with native and non-native speakers of the language. Each case will require a careful selection of appropriate tools, possibly a combination of paper and electronic resources. The only wrong resources are those containing factually incorrect information (or are poorly written and organized). As for the rest, it depends on the use teacher and learner together make of them.

My AMLaP 2017 poster

Download the poster I presented at the AMLaP 2017 conference, along with the abstract! Although my presentation was much more theoretically-oriented than the vast majority of the other contributions, some colleagues showed interest in my work. It was stimulating to exchange ideas with more empirically-minded scholars on our respective research topics (special thanks to Dr. Hiroshi Nakanishi for also taking the picture).

AMLaP 2017 final programme

posterThe 23rd AMLaP Conference – Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing is kicking off at Lancaster University on Thursday, September 7, 2017. Download the conference program on the AMLaP2017 website. On Saturday 9, I will present a poster entitled ‘Concerning the notion of constructional polysemy.’ I will upload both the abstract and the poster shortly after the conference. Stay tuned! 😉

Reviewing a new book on analogy

I have been selected to review Elisa Mattiello’s new book ‘Analogy in word-formation: A study of English neologisms and occasionalisms’ for The LINGUIST List. Since I am currently working on the role of analogy in languages (with particular reference to English), I am looking forward to carrying out this ‘task.’ I will post the review in the next few months, as soon as it is published. Stay tuned!

Presenting at AMLaP 2017

This is the post excerpt.

I will present a poster at the 23rd AMLaP Conference – Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing, which this year will take place at Lancaster University on September 7-9. My contribution will be entitled ‘Concerning the notion of constructional polysemy.’ I will upload both the abstract and the poster shortly after the conference. Stay tuned!