1

Ioan-Lucian Popa

Editorial Foreword Revisited

This third issue of LiBRI (Linguistic and Literary Broad Research and Innovation) is the materialization of the on-going efforts of two academics, Ioan-Lucian Popa and Bogdan Patrut (“Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacau, Romania), of the scientific advisors, and of the former and the current standing editorial team. It is an online, scholarly, peer-reviewed, international journal for specialists in linguistics, literature, cultural studies, and related fields. The papers we expect from our contributors should be original unpublished papers, written in English or French. Initially, LiBRI was projected to be published twice a year in 2010 and three times a year as of 2011, with provision for one special edition; practice has shown that a more realistic objective will be two issues per year, one in June and one in December.

            Our goal is to explore or survey the existing worlds of ideas and to chart new territories. We aim at linking with centres of excellence all over the world with the objective of offering authoritative coverage and references in focused and specialist humanistic disciplines and domains. Our ambition is to encourage and support innovative thinking and also to become an important part of the landscape of academic publishing.       

            We also aspire to make LiBRI a venue that allows emerging as well as well established scholars to publish and compare their work and to establish collaboration relationships in the process. These are the words in the initial editorial foreword and to be consistent with them we have decided that in 2012 and 2013 the two regular bi-annual issues should each focus on a special topic. The topics for the coming years are the following:

· 2012 - vol. 3, issue 1 - Trends in Translation Studies;

· 2012 - vol. 3, issue 2 - ICT and Language Learning;

· 2013 - vol. 4, issue 1 - Breakthroughs in Bilingual Lexicography;

· 2013 - vol. 5, issue 2 - Englishes.

            As one of the critical objectives of LiBRI's mission statement is to provide highly relevant information. LiBRI have implemented a rigorous peer review process to ensure the high quality of its material. With regard to the policies and procedures, all scientific papers and communications published in LiBRI shall first be reviewed by a referee chosen by the the author of the article who will use the special form (see: www.edusoft.ro/libri/paper_evaluation_form.doc)

            The completed form will be sent in electronic format and then as a hard copy to the postal address of LiBRI (Romania, 600065 Bacau, 9 Mai, 82, C/13). Then, at least two referees who are competent and have experience in the area of the subject matter of the paper will perform the blind review. Referees are formal reviewers whose comments and opinions will form the basis upon which the Editor-in-Chief will decide whether to publish the paper, and with what changes. LiBRI requires that referees treat the contents of papers under review as privileged information, not to be disclosed to others before publication. The referees are protected from personal interactions with the author by withholding their names. The Editors' decision is always based on all the reviews received, but mixed reviews present the need for the implementation of editorial judgment. Thus, the final decision for acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor-in-Chief, at the advice of the Editorial Board.

            The review process shall ensure that all authors have equal opportunity for publication of their papers. For the time being, this journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Alongside our regular editions, LiBRI will publish special editions focusing on a particular theme relevant to one of the areas of interest mentioned above.

            We will also devote our efforts for the integration of LiBRI into journal directories with a view to enhance the exposure of our journal and consequently that of the scholars that contribute articles. By implementing our strict policy of quality assurance, we aim at increasing the international circulation of our journal.

            A turning point in our activity will be the moment when articles and authors of further issues of LiBRI are cited by authors around the world.

            We have also kept in mind one important aspect, that of standardization. In the Author Guidelines, we have assembled a series of requirements that are aligned to the practice of numerous other scholarly journals and that will ensure the quality of the presentation of the scientific content of the articles.

            We would like to reiterate our warmest thanks to the members of our Scientific Advisory Team for their support and dedication that has made LiBRI what it is today.

 

Ioan-Lucian Popa

2

Rasheed S. Al-Jarrah

This research paper advances the claim that extrametricality (Liberman & Prince 1977, McCarthy 1979b, Hayes 1982, 1995, Hammond 1999, Kiparsky 2003, Watson 2007, among others) can be constrained to syllable extrametricality, eliminating consonant, mora, and (presumably) foot extrametricality. This paper presents a basic analysis of parse (LICENSE-SEG) and antiparse (NONFINAL-SEG) constraints for dealing with stress placement (or lack thereof) on final syllables.  The main thrust of the argument is twofold: (1) both parse and antiparse constraints are parameterized relative to the weight of the constituent to which they apply, and (2) the constraints that require syllables to be incorporated into higher level prosodic structure (LICENSE-SEG) conflict with constraints that require final syllable to remain stray (NONFINAL-SEG). The antiparse constraint NONFINAL-SEG is factored out into NONFINAL(C), NONFINAL(V), NONFINAL(s), NONFINAL(F), and NONFINAL(PR). And, in order for extrametricality to be constrained just to syllable extrametricality, we advance the claim that NONFINAL(s), in particular, is mora-sensitive, and can be further parameterized into a family of subconstraints (NONFINAL-μ, NONFINAL-μμ, NONFINAL-μμμ) differing in the weight of the syllable to which they apply. Similarly, by adopting the Strict Layering requirement (for details see Nespor and Vogel 1986: 7), the parse constraint LICENSE-SEG is decomposed into LICENSE(C), LICENSE(V), LICENSE(s), LICENSE(F), and LICENSE(PR); in the meantime, LICENSE(s) is decomposed into LICENSE-μ, LICENSE-μμ, and LICENSE-μμμ. In principle, the interaction of the parameterized set of the parse constraint LICENSE-SEG with the parameterized set of the antiparse constraint NONFINAL(s), we argue, yields the correct stress patterns for all final syllables. A typological prediction of breaking NONFINALITY into a family of mora sensitive constraints avoids the need for parameterized extrametricality below the level of the foot. An explicit prediction is that mora extrametricality should not occur, i.e. no language should treat, for example, CVCC and CVV as heavy but treat CVC and CV as light, as we believe there are no compelling cases of mora extrametricality (for illuminating discussions, see Hayes 1995, Rosenthall & van der Hulst 1999).

Key words: Arabic; word stress, optimality theory, extrametricality; nonfinality.

3

Raluca Galita

Both linguistic stylistics and pragmatics have as a starting point the spoken language. Linguistic stylistics regards language from the perspective of the subjectivity that embellishes its use. Pragmatics is, in its turn, concerned with subjectivity in language; in this case, however, subjectivity is not reduced only to the mere expression of affectivity, but it also encloses all the elements in a spoken language used by people to meet their specific activities. That is why the research in the field of stylistics comprises all linguistic means of expression of subjectivity (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic means), while pragmatic research focuses on the speakers’ usage of language depending on their mood, on the time and place of the utterance and on any other matters that may influence the process of communication.

  Deixis is one of the pragmatic elements that help granting a meaning to the speakers’ utterances in a given context, indicating at the same time their position towards themselves, towards the message and the interlocutor, from whom they require a certain action/expect a certain reaction.

Keywords: deixis, stylistics, pragmatics, subjectivity, negotiation.

4

Sanaz Maleki

In order to address the issue of age differences in feedback reception, this study investigated the effect of recast in task-based grammar instruction on Iranian adolescent and adult EFL learners’ learning of conditionals and relatives. The data were collected from 114 adolescent (aged 15-18) and adult (aged 30-35) EFL learners. Of the two adolescent classes, one class was assigned as the experimental and the other as the control group and the same procedure was followed for the two adult classes. The two experimental groups were provided with recast. The analysis of the participants' performance on the posttest demonstrated that the experimental groups outperformed the control groups, and adults more than adolescents benefited from recast. As a result, the efficacy of recast in establishing new grammatical knowledge was proved. Further, the age of the learners did affect the degree of the utility of recasts in developing grammar knowledge.

Keywords: age, corrective feedback, recast, task, grammar instruction

5

Sasan Baleghizadeh , Elnaz Oladrostam

The present paper reports on a study that was carried out to compare the effectiveness of three instructional techniques, namely dialogues, focused tasks, and games on teaching grammar. The participants were 48 pre-intermediate EFL students that formed three experimental groups. A posttest consisting of 20 productive items was administered at the end of the treatment period which lasted for four sessions. The results revealed no statistically significant difference between the three groups. This suggests that the three instructional techniques had relatively the same effect on the accurate grammatical production of the learners.

Keywords: dialogue, focused task, game, grammar, role-play.

6

Asim Karim , Nasim Riaz Butt

Critical approaches to E. O’Neill address some of the important and recurrent questions that could be broadly referred as autobiography, psychological aspects, intellectual and literary kinship among other related subjects. From psychoanalytic perspectives, the studies carried on provide insight into his art and his creative process in the plays. There is a definite nexus of personal memories and the works of art that he shapes. Art, in fact, in his case, serves as a psychobiography that unravels his inner self specially related to mother and other family members in a sustained manner. However, this factor has also exposed him to diverse theoretical stances. Oedipal dynamism among others has variably been referred to as a peculiar component of his art and life. It is however, contended here that this factor involves complexity that no single theoretical position could adequately explain. The paper therefore adds Kleinian perspective on personality development and child-mother relation to highlight this complexity. It concludes that preoccupation with subjective experiences and peculiar nature of experiences explained in terms of both Freudian and Kleinian perspectives instruct O’Neill’s art with depressive and sadist outlook as well as create problems of representation for his art.

Key words: O’Neill’s plays autobiography, psychoanalysis, and representation

7

Ashkan Shobeiri , Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya

Many writers had already elaborated upon matters of truth and honesty, when Albert Camus characterized Meursault, the protagonist of his best selling novel The Outsider, as an honest man who ‘refuses to lie…for the sake of truth’. At that time, Camus had an international fame in the world of literature, and he explained the novel and his absurd hero, Meursault, in a preface to an English language edition of L’Etranger. Yet, some commentators and critics found Camus’s explanation strange and reacted against his commentaries. Chief among them is Conor Cruise O’Brien who believes that Meursault of the actual novel is not the same that Camus characterized in the explanation of the novel. O’Brien points out that Meursualt of the story lies, and he is indifferent to truth. This paper is a critical examination of O’Brien’s and other critics’ commentaries which stand for and against Camus’s own commentaries on his absurd character, Meursault, to lead us to the heart of the matter of Camus’s understanding of terms such as honesty and truth. In doing so, despite the fact that Camus is the creator of Meursault, his commentary on Meursault is analysed next to other critics’ commentaries, and not as a dominant one.

Keywords: truth, honesty, Meursault, Albert Camus, The Outsider

8

Parviz Maftoon , Parisa Daftarifard , Morvarid Lavasani

This paper investigated on the dual characteristics of good language learner in a foreign language (FL): autonomy, group cohesiveness and group norm. Data were collected by adopting methods of selecting good learners based on the achievement test and class participation, activity, and questionnaires. Fifty six learners took part in this study with more or less the same proficiency level. The results of the study showed that good language learners were more observant of the class norms rather than group cohesiveness. In addition, all of the good language learners were autonomous. The study had some certain implications regarding pedagogy in that teachers should assist poor language learners to increase their autonomy so that they may get closer to the ideal of being a good language learner.

Key Words:  Autonomy, group cohesiveness, good language learners.