My feedback to xxxx
1. Contet and Language integrated Feedback
In case you have decided to focus on the instances of what you call
‘xxx-at’ , xxx-at’, ‘xxx-at’ (sorry, due to -segmental- phonological constraints I didn’t get the right spelling), you define it as
“part of speech, that are there but could also not be there, because it would be the same”… which is not very clear.
Something similar which comes to my mind, yet in a more elaborated statement, actually ies the definition of ‘discourse markers’. Whcih might be a good thing to look at, as you will certainly have it in your data.
2. Methodological Feedback
i. The study on strategy that you want to do,.. well, the way you described it— is a cognitive one. For that, the set of data you collected is
partially incomplete as you don’t have Brain NeuroImage Scans for any of the participants.
ii. Your study on ‘strategy’ could become an interactional one (and you could use Conversation and Discourse Analsysi) if you find instances of
what I will hear informally call ‘participants discussing their choice of the card’…. In CA terms, this is called ‘orienting to’ …..the
selection of the card ….in talk-in-interaction.
iii. Another way to proceed would be to do retrospective interviews where you show the kids instances of their card
selection, and you ask them to explain you why they have done so. On this data set, you could use Discourse Analysis or
Conversation Analsysis as methodologies.
iv. In my humble opinion, in a study on a game, that is heavily based on and influenced by the images, symbols, and written text participants
can find on the cards; having no mention of ‘semiotics’ would be extremely risky and not easy to defend.
v. I seem to understand you are not very familiar with the discipline. I invite you to reflect that ‘semiotics’ resides at the very hearth of social
sciences., as well as at the core of ‘Philosophy of Epistemology’ (Albanese, forthcoming) Since philosophers in ancient Greece started
to discuss ‘ideas’ and reality (from thoughts that may seem stupid to you, like the unicorn for example)… nowadays we don’t still have
“an ecological theory of semiotics” (Albanese, forthcoming), nor a coherent theory that merges lexicon grammar and semiotics –againecologically.
Umberto Eco tried to do so In the book“Kant and the Platypus” (please google search an image for Platypus” if you don’t know what it
is”) Subtitle – Essays on Language and Cognition”. I strongly suggest you to read this book. Because ECO is one of the most refined
writers of (English and Italian ) prose I know. He managed to make a scientific book, out of a series of ideas around the platypus.
“The platypus accompanied me step by step even where I don’t mention it, and I took the trouble to supply it with philosophical
credentials by immediately finding it a relation with the unicorn, which like the backelors, can never be absent from any reflection on
language.” (Eco, Kant and the Platypus, 1997:6)
which brings me to the next point.
vi. As Eco managed to turn the Platypus to the most coherent theory on the interaction between lexicon, grammar and semiotics, that we have
at our disposal nowadays (after more than 2000 years of many great people’s thoughts on it)….. you should be able to talk about
strategy and provide the most coherent study in cicrculation…. Without saying “because the card says so”… because this would be
extremely reductionsit.
This is just my humble opinion of course! Humbly I sugget you to read about history of linguistics … and how disciplines like cognitive
linguistics evolved.
Claudia I owe much to Karamercan, O. (certainly a forthcoming) for sharing his insights on philologie with me 6 minutes ago
Claudia philologists are among the most decadent and romantic… of us all.. 3 minutes ago
Claudia I wish to be very clear .. when I talk about ecology, I mean it in what the Greeks must have meant when they used it. Nowadays we just use and abuse words, without fully understanding their meanings… it’s the oikos logos… that I am talking about… and not the way the word ecology is used nowadays… I am myself acting skeptical and ascribing connotations… Poor.. Words!” Claudia ALbanese 2 minutes ago
Claudia followed the research interest: Ecology 3 days ago
Claudia “For research to be successful, science must own the capital. And not viceversa.” Claudia Albanese 3 days ago
Claudia Q: “If you can speak of a teology of your whole description, can you say that semantics and sociosemantics is the key to the whole system?” A: “Well, yes. If I was forced to choose a key, it would be that.” M.A.K. Halliday (Language as social semiotics) 10 days ago
Claudia “no need to bring in the question of what the speaker knows (..) what he does (..) what he could do – a potential, which is objective, not a competence, which is actually subjective. Now, Hymes is taking the intra-organism ticket to what is actually an inter-organism desitination; he is doing ‘psyco-sociolinguistics’, if you like.There’s no reason why he shouldn’t; but I find it an unnecessary complication” Halliday 10 days ago
Claudia #umberto #eco is the best modern writer of prose (even in English) his fine rethorics is beyond! 28 days ago
Claudia Reading “restarts, pauses and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning’ By Charles Goodwin. V nice!!! about a month ago
Claudia “Unitl the publication of ‘steps’, Gregory must have given the impression, even to his strongest admirers, of taking up and then abandoning, a series of different disciplines, sometimes indeed, he must have felt he had failed in discipline after discipline” about a month ago
Claudia “This book is the record of an intellectual journey. Steps. One step at the time.” preface to Gregory Bateson (1972) about a month ago
Claudia lol just a couple of weeks ago I told someone “you’re too young to be a ‘philosopher of linguistics’ and today i called myself ‘philosopher of epistemology’.. i love all of my ‘ascribied’ and ‘achieved’ identities about a month ago
Claudia and by the way … very exicited ‘cos today ‘istitutio oratoria’ by Quintilian is gonna be on my desk  about a month ago
Claudia I am really enjoying the reading of Larsen-Freeman and Cameron ‘Complex systems and applied linguistics’… and writing my comments about. (i had already started wrting something about ‘something’ actually and then i found the book… our visions are very similar but our approaches radically different)..it’s gonna be fun! about a month ago
Claudia “Everyone wonders about the cognition of seashells and ends up relating it to fractal geometry ,right? ” CA, 2012 about a month ago
Claudia “I am pretty sure that if I zoom all the way in the black ‘regions’ of this marble, I am gonna see an infinite amount of fracals ” CA, 2012 in a convo with NF about a month ago
Claudia The discovery and understanding of the Mandelbrot set has been illuminating about a month ago
Claudia “Prosody in conversation” edited by Selting and Couper-Kuhlen is one of the best books I’ve read. about a month ago
delete
Claudia I will eventually fall in love with phonology 2 months ago
Claudia I am clearer about it now: ” #serendipity is the ‘result’ of the #electric #charges we Feed the #vacuum with.” (CA,2012) #Unifiedfields 2 months ago
Claudia I find it curious that #Univeristy of #Newcastle has an #MA programme which titles #Computer #Security and #Resilience 2 months ago
i feel very #fascinated and #inspired by the #Azande #ethnic group at the mo. i first read of it in #Sacks
2 months ago
Add Comment
I chose pragmatics over linguistics for tone analysis
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like Liked – undo
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
WOW! while reading “on prosody and syntax of turn continuation” by Auer (in Prosody in Conversation), I ve had an epiphania… realized how much our ‘grammars’ structure our ‘cultures’, communities and behaviours … beautiful!! How can I explain?!? … everything is connected!!
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like Liked – undo
1 person liked this
Add Comment
.. in my life… up to now.. i’ve never found anything more puzzling and wonderful… than the nature of 0 ‘zero’ ! (CA, 2012)
2 months ago
delete
Add Comment
one needs to go infinitly far from an electric charge not to be in the electric field of that charge… if you know what I mean
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like Liked – undo
Add Comment
The current economic model and political systems are “pushing us inexorably towards the limits of natural resources and planetary life support systems”. .We have to go back to our roots… when no politician nor bank could dispose of us, tell us what to do, what to think… We have to go back to being one with nature. and the universe. The frequencies in our brain are 7.8 hz.. exactly the same as those of the univers
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like
oh man . i can’t make it with phonology. it’s so frustrating. have to find a way to like it. -.-”
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like Liked – undo
delete
Claudia Albanese ogni cosa a suo tempo. (ad ognuno il suo diceva Pirandello) 2 months ago
Add Comment
“For several years I have been hopeful that systematic research would reveal a strict hierarchical development in which kines could be derived from articulations, kinemorphs form complexes of kines, and that kinemorphs would be assembled by a gramamr into what might be regarded as a kinesic sentence … I am forced to report that so far I have been unable to discover such a grammar.
2 months ago
delete
Comment | Like Liked – undo
1 person liked this
Claudia Albanese Neither have I been able to isolate the simple hierarchy which I sought (Birdwhistell in McQuown 1971, chap 3) 2 months ago
Claudia Albanese i guess it must have been quite frustrating poor Birdwhistell.. his intellectual honesty is impressive tho! 2 months ago
On interactional Modes, modalities and their transcription Part I
In my research on language development and interaction, I evidently happen to have to deal with interactional exchanges between people/learners. It seems clear to me (and a cospicuous bunch of reserachers in the field) that communication/interaction is ‘done’ on several levels and with different modalities which all co-exist in interaction. We (I) consider those modalities to unfold synchronically (-although synchronicity as such does not exist according to special relativity- ) and/or sequentially. My stand – my reserach statement if you wish- is not to treat these modes and modalities preferentially, but to consider them in their overall constituencies, that is to say, in their -sycnhronic- or sequentially relevant positions.. and not anywhere else – nor as detached or ancillary-in discourse.
When the verbal mode (speech) is accompained by non verbal modalities (gestures, gaze, etcetera) it becomes very hard to develop an artifact (i.e. transcription)that well captures the complexity of the ongoing interaction. The risk is to create a transcript that becomes unaccessble to the reader -due to its complexity-
A decision with respect to the transcription conventions is indeed to be made. GAT (Selting et al.) or Jefferson? – I am going to discuss pros and cons of the two in another post-
I am currently evealuating different systems to transcribe verbal and non verbal modalities. My primary aim is to transcribe ecologically and in a reader-friendly way.
I was reading McNeill, 2005 (Gesture and Thought) and I came across the following systems to transcribe verbal and non-verbal modalities.
The first example -more than the second- goes in the direction of what I want to do, in the sense that, verbal and non verbal are considered as being equally important in the overall economy of interaction. Verbal and non verbal are hereby not treated preferentially but sequentially -
In the second example instead, non verbal still comes with the verbal … but the horizontal disposition of lines, -somehow, to my understanding- implies that verbal is more important – which is what i want to avoid-.
Drawing on these systems, I need to develop another way to transcribe multimodal interaction… one that suits my research needs…
… to be continued…
I observed two multilingual speakers, one Russian L1 -late multilingual- and one Danish L1 -early multilingual- both ‘learners of ‘oral’ Italian (i.e. -they did not learn how to write) outside classroom contexts.
Both the multilingual L2 learners’ of italian experienced delay in the acquistion of phonemic vowels in final position.
This brought me to evaluate the hypothesis that the order of acquisition of phonemic morphemes is reversed on the vowel-consonant level, in L2 acquisition as compared to L1, as well as to further investigate phonological awareness in multilingual subjects (acoustics, phonotactics, phonology, phonetics, speech perception, psychoacoustics,)I am currently reviewing relevant literature in these fields…
Further developments in terms of methodological, theoretical and conceptual ‘advancements’ will follow…
stay tuned!!!!
Datacollection for multi-lingual learners of Italian in informal settings and outside classroom contexts goes on. Contact me for more info.
EPPUR SI MUOVE : “On wh-in situ and wh-movement languages”
Wh- cobstruals are A bit of a controversial issue in linguistics especially among Asian researchers. I must say I share Huang ‘s position on the topic. He says that whatever language/grammar we are dealing with, wh-construals always involve a movement; an explicit one and/or one at the level of Functional Logic.
I start by assuming that there is a movement -which I not only assume but believe-
But then, according to another line of research in linguistics, some languages are wh-in situ. So to say, no movement exists. Position shared by a bunch of scholars.
Now.. For a while, Let us step back from linguistics (which can be a dangerously exiting discipline at times).
If we do so, Another issue mAy unfortnately arise.
if we consider that a language is not only a set of rules, nice lexis and syntax… But that language is done -sometimes very creatively I’d say- by people in interaction…
And if we happen to be doing a study on language acquisition, we need to make a decision regarding the meaning of the word ‘Acquisition’
What is acquisition to me? What is acquisition in my study?
Example 1. Wh- question in German:
A. Wo bist du hietz?
B. Ich Bin …
Example 2 phone conversation:
A: wo bist du?
B: ich bin an der schacha
A:( was?) Du bist wo?
In a linguistic perspective the example one is correct because it ‘fulfills’ the norm of wh- construals in german language (I guess a supposedly wh-’in situ’ language)
Example two is not correct in a linguistic sense, but it is still acceptable interactionally speaking as a clarification question.
in this light … what is acquisition to me? What is Acquisition in my study on acquisition and language development? 
Is acquisition the correct display and performance of grammatical rules or is it rather an interactional competence….
Some conceptual thinking needs to be done in this respect…
( to be continued…)
One of the most thrilling things in the world ^-^ is database management. I have collected a series of experiences with database and ontologies.
In 2007 and 2008, I have worked at the Secretariat General of the European Parliament. I was a junior database manager for the inter-institutional terminology database IATE- Interactive Terminology for Europe. My main task was to introduce and harmonize entries in the 23 official languages of the union, check validity and reliability of the entries and link those to authoritative bibliographic references. Relatively linear. `.^
Later on, in 2009, I have worked for Synergiums http://www.synergiums.com/, a semantic technology developer company. At that time, I was not directly responsible of database management. My colleagues were software developers and computer scientists. As you might easily guess, I was the least experienced as far as database management and ITs were concerned. However, as I was working as a linguist- translator and cultural adaptor for Spanish and Italian, I did came into contact with database and web ontology. We had a multilingual database of ontologies divided by topic.
 For example as we were developing part of a Global Position System, most of our collection was centered around points of interests in the city. So together with the collection of these ontologies (lexis of the software), we had to set up a database with the phonemes (for text-to-speech purposes), a database with grammatical instruction, one with maps, one for languages, one for the scripts of the software, etc.. IT WAS an extremely interesting experience. I have learned a lot about database management.
At University of Luxembourg, I am currently managing -the server- and the database for our research unit DICA -Development, Interaction, Cognition and Activity- We use Transana http://www.transana.org/ (Developed by David Woods, University of Wisconsin http://www.wisc.edu/ ) to inputting, organizing, and harmonizying data for our research projects.
“Transana is software for professional researchers who want to analyze digital video or audio data. Transana lets you analyze and manage your data in very sophisticated ways. Transcribe it, identify analytically interesting clips, assign keywords to clips, arrange and rearrange clips, create complex collections of interrelated clips, explore relationships between applied keywords, and share your analysis with colleagues. The result is a new way to focus on your data, and a new way to manage large collections of video and audio files and clips.”
In my humble opinion, every qualitative/quantitative research shall start from a set of data that has been consistently collected, stored and analyzed. In such a perspective, by working with server and adatabase, it is possible to:
a) safely store data, b) have back ups run automatically, c) have overview of corpora of data to be used for planning and action taking.
At DICA, We are currently working on setting up a huge database of multilingual interactional data. The data were collected for different research purposes; in different settings, while different participants play different activities. We have kids, youngsters, teachers, students, professors, professionals attending seminars, webinars, language classes, people playing videogaming, doing shopping, travelling, eating dinner, and so on and so forth.
  Last week, we counted the number of files that we had input and safely stored on the server, but that are not accessible in the database yet. We could count some 2176 files for a total of 615 GB approximately (this representing a very small portion -5%- of the data we have ).
A well-organized database is a very precious resource for a team of researchers.
Datafiles have to be named consistently and sustainably. Its management has to be ecological.
We are currently counting, naming, working… like busy bees….
…to be continued….
PostScriptum:
TIP 1 for the series “I am Database’d – Steps towards an ecological management”
Be kind with the ITSupport team. Bring them cookies. They are a precious technical support. I myself am grateful to the SIU team of Campus Walferdange at University of Luxembourg.
I recently re-read “Conversation and Cognition” , a very nice book (Distinguished Book Award from the Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Section of the American Sociological Association 2007) edited by Hedwig te Molder (Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands) and Jonathan Potter (Loughborough University). http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1167951/?site_locale=en_GB
(because I am not a CA purist ) I actually ended up thinking and writing about: “what can CA tell us about cognition?”
This is an extract of what I wrote.. it basically (and fundamentally) summerises discourse analysts’ view of cognition.
“Conversation Analysis (CA), refrains from providing an account of individuals’ cognitive dimensions. Molter and Potter argue that the lack of an individual dimension of cognition in CA is due to the fact that “conversation analysts have mainly worked within sociology and have often found issues of cognition rather peripheral” and, although they considered ‘psychological reality’ as important and interesting, they though of it as “not necessarily the start point for much work” in conversation analysis (adapted from Molter & Potter: 2005:2).
A bunch of researchers in the field of conversation analysis, ethnometodology, discursive psychology, cognitive psychology and –situated- activity theory (Schegloff, 1991; Resnick et al, 1991; Markee, 2000;Prevignano & Thibault, 2003; Molter and Potter, 2005; Hutchby, 2008) have recently addressed the issue of cognition in conversation and interaction analysis. Conversation analysts sustained that cognition is socially distributed and/or socially shared, and/or embodied. The works of Shegloff, Sacks, Jefferson, Pomerantz, Heritage and Markee and Molter and Potter’s ‘Conversation and Cognition’ are enlightening in this sense.
Through the analysis of repair sequences, for example, Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks showed that the cognitive process of ‘repairing’ can be done interactionally (in first, second and even third turns). They also described other processes such as ‘mutual understanding’ and ‘shared knowledge’ as socially co-constructed interactional achievements. Their research underlined the social nature of cognition.
Similarly, in his work ‘Cognition in discourse”, Heritage showed that ‘cognitive processes’ can be ‘potrayed’ by speakers in co-construction of storytelling sequences. (published in Molter and Potter, 2005). Heritage’s analysis of ‘oh’ tokens showed that ‘oh’ can function as a ‘change of state’ tokens in individuals’ knowledge and orientation. He also described ‘cognitive processes as interactional events’ that are ‘embodied in talk-in-interaction’ (Heritage in Molter and Potter, 2005: 188).
A central role in the relation between cognition and conversation and interaction analysis is played by Markee. While discussing CA as a methodological tool for the study of learning processes that are central to second language acquisition, Markee (2000) argued that the point is not “whether language is best described in terms of cognition or behavior”, but rather, “whether cognition is understood exclusively as an individual or as both an individual and a socially distributed phenomenon that is observable in members’ conversational behaviors” (Markee, 2000: 25).
In questioning what the status of cognition is for participants in interaction and how it is invoked by speakers, Molter and Potter sustain that “the rules for turn taking do not just generate orderly speaker transition in a mechanical manner; rather their normative status means that departures can be highly inferential. Speakers can be shown to orient to these rules as they interact. This is a special kind of psychological reality –not one defined by in-the-head mental processes, but by the participants orienting practically in the course of ongoing interaction to the relevant features of the interaction” (Molter and Potter, 2005:21).
In this sense, cognition may be said to be ‘socially shared and distributed’ (Resnick et al, 1991); the result of entering into a system of shared beliefs with a group of like-minded others called a ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991). It should not (and it is not) seen as the “product of isolated individual maturation”, but as a process in interaction “in situations where culture, language and features of social settings themselves provide the scaffolding of individual thoughts (Rogoff and Lave,1984 in Conversation and Cognition, Molder and Potter, 2005:17). Similarly, Markee concludes that “the idea that cognition is not solely an individual but also a socially distributed phenomenon that is observable in members’ conversational behaviors.” (Markee, 2000:25).
As we can see the general line of discourse analysts is that cognition is socially shared and/or socially distributed.
Sanders has recently pledged for more attention to findings in cognitive sciences on the behalf of discourse analysts. He sustains that “although much of the time discourse researchers can safely ignore the findings of cognitive research, there are times that it is important to take such findings into account” (Sanders paraphrased by Molter and Potter, 2005:38). Sanders goes back to an extract analyzed by Schegloff in 1996. He sustains that there are analytical features of Conversation Analysis that have much to do with individual aspects of cognition. In sequences of storytelling for example, hesitations in speakers’ talk can be and are –in some cases- ultimately ascribed to a “speaker’s cognitive task such as ‘word search’ (Sanders in Molter and Potter, 2005: 38, 57-58).
…to be continued….
On 19/06/2011, We had the great chance to be invited by the European Commission in Bruxelles to contribute to the the 2011 Europe China Year of Youth Summit. ( http://www.2011euchinayouth.eu/ )
We conducted interviews with european and chinese young professionals and students and analyzed their perception of -language- learning through the use of social meedia and Web 2.0 resources. ( http://dica-lab.org/blog/2011/05/23/dica-collaborators-at-the-first-ever-eu-china-multilingualism-conference-may-19-2011-2/ )
The moderator of our working group was Iris Lutz ( Confucius Institut Nürnberg-Erlangen ).
Another contribution to the debate came from Ms Qi Wang, Ministry of Education in China.
The commission has recently published the outcomes of the Summit. ( http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/news/news4961_en.htm )
 
 
GREAT EXPERIENCE!!!! … stay tuned!
Claudia Albanese is a PhD student in Language Development and Interaction at University of Luxembourg. She owns a Master in Learning and Development in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts at University of Luxembourg.She received her first vocational training is in Translation and Interpretation, graduating from University of Lecce, Italy, writing a paper titled “A corpus-driven approach to the language of judicial trials” which provided a corpus linguistics, software-driven analysis and extraction of specialized terminology for foreign language learning.Claudia worked at the Secretariat General of the European Parliament, managing an inter-institutional online database for specialized terminology (IATE -Inter-active Terminology for Europe) in 23 languages. She collaborated with the Columbia University, New York realizing podcasts for english language learners. Claudia is a translator, and interpreter, a computational linguist, a social scientist. She defines herself a lifelong learner. Throughout her career she has developed a strong interest in integrating content and language in ESP learning with the help of ICT and web 2.0 applications. She is experienced in terminology etraction, web ontologies and natural language processing applied to Artificial Intelligence. She has worked for a semantic technology developer company, programming a -smart- global positioning system within the CARlink project funded by the European Commission.She is a multilingual speaker. Her first language is Italian. She masters English, French, and to some lesser extents Chinese and Spanish. She is interested in world writing system and has recently engaged in learning to read and write Korean and Japanese.
In her doctoral project, she intends to analyze non-configurational language speakers’ acquisition of germanophonic language structures in interaction. She aims to compile an audiovisual corpus of interactional data and analyze the role of verbal and non-verbal modalities in interaction at different stages of learner language development.
assumption : individuals’ phenomenological perception and semantic representations of seredipity in semiotics prior to the action/activity to be undertaken in relation to the sign being manifest, influences individuals’ behaviour -as well as their language production.- All rights reserved to Claudia Albanese, 2011
Then a friend of mine asks:
“abstract or concrete seredipity?”
..WEll:..
it ultimately depends on individuals’ phenomenological perception of serendipity. People believe in serendipity to greater or lesser extents. So… some might believe in abstract serendipity. Some may need concrete semiotic representations …(signs). -It goes without saying that people ‘assign’ -mmm not sure about this verb try passivizing the sentence and it makes sense– to each sign a certain semantics (based on socially distributed cognition, prosody, experience and many others). So my answer to you would be “it ultimately depends on individuals’ phenomenological perception of serendipit “. There is i believe a direct proportional relation between the degree of belief in serendipity and its influence on people behaviour and interaction. I am trying to show that believeing in a theory or in a certain construct influences Vision, interaction.
|
|
