In this paper, by bridging the gap between neuroscience and literary study, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine’s historical method, revitalized by neuroscientific studies, would be obtained to investigate Virginia Woolf’s style of writing. Specifically, Taine’s theory—it is through race, surroundings, epoch that the life of an author and his/her literary productions are shaped—would be conjoined with the neuroscientific notion of epigenetics inherent in the theory which asserts that the character of an individual is the result of the mixture of the individual's circumstances of birth and his/her sociocultural environment to illuminate the shaping powers beneath Woolf’s style of writing. As a result of Taine’s updated theory, Woolf’s worldview was shaped by, first, the race; the second, the surroundings, which investigates childhood condition, which acted upon Woolf’s predisposition to bipolar disorder to lead to her mental illness because of her experience as a sexually abused child. The epoch or sociocultural environment, the third force, affected Woolf’s worldview through the dominant ideas (of William James) and major events (such as two great wars as well as scientific and technologic progress). Thus, this study would seek a collaboration between neuroscience and Taine’s historical approach to literary productions with the aim of updating and invigorating this literary theory in order to scrutinize Woolf’s style of writing.

Keywords: Virginia Woolf, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Neuroscience, Antonio Damasio

Anthony Minghella’s production of Puccini’s acclaimed Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera in 2006 starred Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs in the titular role of a fifteen-year-old (in Act I) girl from Nagasaki who converts to Christianity to marry a westerner only to learn that it is no more than a marriage of convenience for him. Acclaimed for Academy-Award winning films such as The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley, Minghella also had several plays to his credit and was as much a master of stagecraft as he was of cinema.

The production was conducted by Sir Mark Elder, who has been the music director of the English National Opera (1979-1993) and the Hallé Orchestra (1999-present) as well as the President of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (2014-present). The following conversation, conducted shortly after Anthony Minghella’s death, contains Sir Mark’s reflections on working with Minghella and on the challenges associated with bringing Puccini’s masterpiece to the stage.

The present research aims to investigate changes in Chinese English-major students’ motivation and the correlation between their motivations and strategies. Through a questionnaire survey of 263 BA students in different academic years, it was found that out of seven different motivations, learning situation motivation shows the greatest difference; moreover, students’ motivation increases with the advancement of academic years. In addition, there are significant differences in strategy use by differently motivated students; cognitive strategy is positively and highly correlated with interest motivation while metacognitive strategy is negatively correlated with context motivation.

Keywords: Motivation change, Strategies use, Correlation

The stereotypical construction verb+noun or VO (verb-object) construction presents that the action encoded by the verb is carried out on the patient exhibited by the noun. A prototypical meaning for VO construction is affectedness on the part of patient for the patient is undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing some change in state (Saeed 2000: 140). However, in Chinese, there is a non-stereotypical verb+location noun construction which goes against the conventional semantic explanation of the VO structure. The location noun in this structure does not function as the patient of the verb from the point of view of semantics. The present paper explores the cognitive motivation of non-stereotypical construction verb+location noun. The study shows that the location noun in the construction has three distinct meanings, and its generative mechanism is attributed to three kinds of grammatical metonymy: container for content and location for patient in Vt.+location noun construction and activity for state in Vi.+location noun construction.

Keywords: grammatical metonymy; verb+location noun; context

Learning a new language, especially the English language, can be very problematic for us, and since knowledge of a foreign language is a great achievement in our lives, paving the path of language learning and making the whole process easier for language learners would be a great help from teachers and researchers. The researcher of the present study tried to focus on errors Iranian EFL learners make in their writing tasks and to find out what their perceptions are regarding the errors they probably make in their writings even before starting a writing task. The researcher finally concluded that students' most frequently occurred error was in using Articles, and the least common one was in using Present Perfect tense. Having done other statistical calculations, the researcher concluded that the students believed they would display an average level of performance in using grammatical lessons they had been taught, and finally the students’ perceptions about errors before doing the writing tasks only matched errors in using future tense, possessive, simple past, order in a sentence, present perfect, countable and non-countable nouns.

Keywords: Language Learning, Error, Second Language Acquisition, EFL Learner, Essay

Abstract The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the difficulty of learners of Portuguese to deal with the verbs SER and ESTAR (‘To Be’), as far as each of them is used to express different and specific situations. It also aims to help the teachers solving this problem. After an overview of what the most important grammars of Portuguese say about this subject, the corpus is presented and the data (around 60 examples) are analysed taking account of the origin of the learners and also dividing the various examples according to different levels of language proficiency. When the various types of language mistakes are identified, the results are explained and the conclusions lead to the need of teaching SER and ESTAR in a way provides the non natives of Portuguese to actually understand the normal use of each of these verbs. This intends to avoid students of Portuguese to go on repeating the same errors which will get them to a future linguistic fossilization.

Keywords: Portuguese; verbs SER and ESTAR; learning and teaching of Portuguese; non native learners; analysis of corpus.

Résumé L'objectif principal de cet article est d'analyser la difficulté des apprenants du portugais à traiter les verbes SER et ESTAR («Être»), dans la mesure où chacun d'entre eux est utilisé pour exprimer des situations différentes et spécifiques. Il vise également à aider les enseignants à résoudre ce problème. Après un aperçu de ce que les grammaires les plus importantes du portugais disent a propos de ce sujet, le corpus est présenté et les données (environ 60 exemples) sont analysées en tenant compte de l'origine des apprenants et en divisant les différents exemples selon différents niveaux d’apprentissage. Lorsque les différents types d'erreurs de langage sont identifiés, les résultats sont expliqués et les conclusions conduisent à la nécessité d'enseigner SER et ESTAR de manière à ce que les apprenants de portugais comprennent l'usage normal de chacun de ces verbes. Ceci a pour but d'éviter que les étudiants répètent les mêmes erreurs et les empêchant ainsi de subir, dans le futur, une fossilisation linguistique.

Mots-clés: portugais; les verbes SER et ESTAR; apprentissage et enseignement du portugais; apprenants non autochtones ; analyse de corpus.

According to Batibo (2005:51), more than 81% of the African languages are minority languages in that they are used only within their local confines. Apart from their relatively small number of speakers, they neither have official status nor national public functions in the countries where they are spoken. However, one may recognize two types of minority languages, namely the ones which are conspicuously vibrant in their community use and the ones which are in danger of extinction, as their speakers are progressively shifting to other languages. This article examines the case of Ikalanga, a Bantu language spoken in the north eastern part of Botswana (in southern Africa), which, although a marginalized minority language in view of its being confined to family and community use, has maintained its vitality. The study investigates the factors which have favoured this state of language vitality. It discusses extensively the role of each of these factors. The main argument of the study is that language vitality does not occur alone, but involves also other elements, such as cultural, autonymic and ethnonymic identities. The Lamy-Pool Identity Loss Model is invoked, so as to determine the extent to which Ikalanga has maintained all its identity features. The study is based on findings from a set of data collected from north-eastern Botswana. The study important, as demonstrates how a minority language can resist language marginalization, endangerment or shift, when certain factors are present.

Keywords: language vitality, language marginalization, multilingualism, language attitudes, identity features

The paper is part of a study about translating the Proustian idiolect into Romanian. We extract and enumerate some of its characteristics, as this part of the research assumes the notion is linguistically relevant to underline them. Supported by previous writings on language and characters’ speech advanced by French and American scientists, we look into what stands out in the saying of a person (marks) that help define the concept. We underline the differences (variables) from one idiolect to another as a key method to delimit a personalized language, we extract the variables that influence on language (age, gender, social status, place, interlocutor) and situate a character. Given Labov and Houdebine researches and knowing about Proust’s keen observation on his society, we focus on the fact that the idiolect is a linguistic but very much a social concept. Proust’s characters of ‘In search of lost time’ prove it by grouping characters/idiolects according to social class. His characters’ language is influenced by the environment they live and interact in. There are popular idiolects (Francoise, Jupien), bourgeois idiolects (Swann, Albertine, the parents) and aristocratic idiolects mostly grouped around the Guermantes (Oriane, the Duke, Robert de Saint-Loup, Charlus). Apart from the social status, the Proustian idiolects illustrate certain language characteristics such as argot, proverbs, verbal habits, linguistic faults, etc. The paper insists on the idea that idiolects stand out through ‘repetition’ and ‘recognition’ of certain traits.

Keywords: idiolect, social, repetition, individual, recognition

L’article fait partie d’une recherche sur la traduction des idiolectes proustiens en roumain. On en identifie et énumère quelques caractéristiques, puisque cette partie de l’étude suppose que la notion est pertinente linguistiquement pour pouvoir en parler. Prenant comme appui des ouvrages sur la langue et les parlers des personnages écrits par des savants français et américains, nous analysons la spécificité du parler d’une personne (les marqueurs) qui aiderait à definir le concept. Nous relevons les différences (variables) d’un idiolecte à l’autre comme méthode principale pour délimiter le language personnalisé, nous identifions les varibles qui influencent la langue (âge, sexe, statut social, lieu, interlocuteur) et situent un personnage. En partant des recherches faites par Labov et Houdebine, et connaissant Proust comme un fin observateur de sa société, nous insistons sur le fait que l’idiolecte est une notion linguistique, mais aussi sociale. Les personnages de ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ le démontrent en se groupant selon la classe sociale. Leurs parlers sont influencés par l’environnement où ils vivent et interagissent. Il y a des idiolectes populaires (Françoise, Jupien), bourgeois (Swann, Albertine, les parents) et aristocrates, groupés autour des Guermantes (Oriane, le duc, Robert de Saint-Loup, Charlus). Outre le statut social, les idiolectes proustiens illustrent certaines caractéristiques langagières comme l’argot, les tics verbaux, les proverbes, les cuirs, etc. L’article souligne que les idiolectes ressortent par ‘la répétition’ et la ‘reconnaissance’ de certains traits.

Mots-clés: idiolecte, social, répétition, individuel, reconnaissance