The Linguistics Journal July 2017 Volume 11 Issue 1 Editors: Paul Robertson and Biljana Čubrović The Linguistics Journal July 2017 Volume 12, Number 1 Editors: Paul Robertson and Biljana Čubrović Published by the Linguistics Journal Press Linguistics Journal Press A Division of Time Taylor International Ltd Trustnet Chambers P.O. Box 3444 Road Town, Tortola British Virgin Islands http://www.linguistics-journal.com © Linguistics Journal Press 2017 This e-book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the Linguistics Journal Press. No unauthorized photocopying. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of The Linguistics Journal. [email protected] Editors: Dr. Paul Robertson and Dr. Biljana Čubrović Chief Editor: Dr. Biljana Čubrović Senior Advisor: Dr. John Adamson Journal Production Editor: Jennifer Rose Ament ISSN 1718-2301 Table of Contents: Foreword by Biljana Čubrović .................................................................................................................... 5 - 7 Research Articles 1. A Comparative Study of Appraisal in News Discourse in China and the United States: The Case of Reports on Educational Equity ................................................................................................................................... 8 - 31 Ming Wei 2. The Influence of Autogenic Training on Listening Comprehension in the English Classroom .............. 32 - 58 Danijela Ikonic and Thomas Hawes 3. The Tonal Constraints on Vietnamese Perception of English Stress ....................................................... 59 - 85 Anh-Thư T. Nguyễn 4. Psycholinguistic Analysis of Operational Communication (Part I): the Standard Usage of Communication in High Risk Industries .................................................................................................................................. 86 - 109 Philippe Fauquet-Alekhine 5. A Quantitative Study of the Japanese Particle GA .............................................................................. 110 - 138 Masako Hoye Research Notes 6. ‘Are You Black Hen?’- Wordplay Among Teenage Vietnamese Bilinguals ...................................... 139 - 150 Thuy Nga Nguyen 7. Gambits Across Genres: A Corpus Study ............................................................................................ 151 - 168 Amir Nikmehr and Massood Yazdanimoghaddam 8. The Treatment of Vowel-Initial Syllables in Somali Syllable Structure: A Constraint-Based Approach .......... ..................................................................................................................................................................169 - 188 Mufleh Alqahtani 9. Postpositions in Mazandarani: Evidence for Generalizing, Historical Harmony and Natural Serialization Principle ................................................................................................................................................... 189 - 204 Zahra Abolhassani Chimeh and Musa Nushi 10. A Corpus-Based Investigation of Dative Alternation in Use of the Verbs ‘Give’ and ‘Send’: A Sample of Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) ............................................................................. 205 - 221 Mustafa Yıldız 11. Low Back Merger in Native and Nonnative Speakers of American English……………………..…222 - 231 Biljana Čubrović Book Reviews 11. When What Sounds Interesting Becomes Fascinating: Review of Recent Publications by John C. Wells………………………………………………………………………………….………………....232 - 241 Ružica Ivanović Foreword The Linguistics Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles in all areas of the language science. Each paper is evaluated in a double-blind fashion, which secures the high quality of articles that are shortlisted and, eventually, recommended for publication. This year’s edition of the journal comprises twelve articles: five full Research Articles, six Research Notes, and a Book Review. Thanks are extended primarily to the authors who have contributed to this issue of The Linguistics Journal, the Associate Editors, reviewers, and the Production Team that took meticulous care of all the technical details. This past year has been unique for the journal in that that we acquired a new Associate Editor, William MacDonald, as well as Jennifer Rose Ament who stepped up as a new Head of Production of the journal. The number of submissions has been steadily increasing during the last several years, which improves the quality of The Linguistics Journal overall. The first paper, written by Ming Wei, looks into the newspaper reports with regard to the appraisal of educational equity in Chinese and American discourse in two representative daily papers. The author found distinct differences in the way educational equity was framed in the two sources and the analysis uncovered some cognitive and social processes lying behind the relevant discourse practices in the two language communities studied. This cross- cultural study is instrumental in shedding some new light on the discourse features of two different languages. The authors of the second research article, Danijela Ikonić and Thomas Hawes, attempt to examine the impact on the improvement of the listening comprehension skill that could be achieved by a popular relaxation technique known as autogenic training. The study shows that the weakest EFL students benefited from this teaching approach considerably, whereas better students have not profited much from autogenic training. The perception of English stress as judged by Vietnamese learners of English is 5 analyzed in the next paper written by Anh-Thư T. Nguyễn. The study indicates that Vietnamese learners of English transfer tonal features into their perception of English stress systematically. This is somewhat dependent on the dialect of Vietnamese spoken, as well as a syllable-type. The fourth contribution, by Philippe Fauquet-Alekhine, explores an interesting facet of communication that the author dubs operational communication, i.e. the communication of the workplace in a specific register that has its own features. This mode of communication is studied from a psycholinguistic perspective, also lingering on different language functions. The concluding Research Article by Masako Hoye is a study that explores the linguistic structure of the Japanese language in the domain of the notorious particle ga. A comprehensive quantitative analysis of its occurrence sheds some new light on the important issue of ga as a subject marker. The study proves that in contemporary conversational Japanese the function of ga as a subject marker is only minor. The first contribution in the Research Note section comes from Thuy Nga Nguyen, who examines the language contact between Vietnamese and English of young Vietnamese adults. The tokens for the analysis are extracted from teenage magazines in Vietnamese and the author finds that various types of worplay are evident in the use of bilinguals, predomnantly different types of calques. Amir Nikmehr and Massood Yazdanimoghaddam present the results of the use of gambits in a corpus of several recent movies with the aim of introducing them in an EFL classroom setting. The study shows that being familiar with modern gambits is vital in improving the linguistic competence of L2. The topic of the next Research Note written by Mufleh Alqahtani is the syllabic structure of the Somali language. The phonological components of the Somali syllable are studied in the Optimality Theory framework so as to illuminate some hot phonological issues that lie mainly in the area of the syllable onset and its importance in Somali. The authors of the next paper, Zahra Abolhassani Chimeh and Musa Nushi, look into the syntactic structure of the Mazandarani language, attempting to classify it according to the common typological knowledge. The analysis shows that Mazandarani is a language of SOV type and that it fully follows universal patterns. 6 In his article on the syntactic features of American English Mustafa Yıldız gives an insight into the usage of the verbs give and send in American English with relation to dative constructions. This corpus-based investigation explores various dative alternations employed in written academic English so as to establish their characteristics and frequency of use. The concluding article in the Research Note section by Biljana Čubrović brings the results of her research on a vowel merger that has taken place in American English. The phenomenon known as the low back merger is here studied in both native and nonnative speakers of American English. The analysis shows that both groups of particpants behave similarly when it comes to the loss of the vowel contrast in question. The Book Review section presents two recent titles written by J. C. Wells as reviewed by Ružica Ivanović. Biljana Čubrović, Ph.D. Chief Editor The Linguistics Journal 7 A Comparative Study of Appraisal in News Discourse in China and the United States: The Case of Reports on Educational Equity Ming Wei1 ARTICLE INFO Article History Received December 12, 2015 Revised March 1, 2016 Accepted March 18, 2016 Abstract This study is an appraisal analysis of the reports on equal opportunities for higher education in Chinese and American media, to obtain an ideological