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Disourse, Prosody and Information Structure by Olga T. Yokoyama
Slavistika 35, 2019
If morphemes are language units that explicitly encode meanings, then the same meanings are not t... more If morphemes are language units that explicitly encode meanings, then the same meanings are not treated by all languages equally. It is well known that some complex meanings, depending on the language, may be one morpheme (Ch 1 姑), two morphemes (J shuuto-me, R svekr-ov'), or three morphemes (E mother-in-law). In a language where morphologization of a certain complex meaning is absent, it may take a clause or a sentence to convey it. It is also well known that some meanings may have no designated morpheme in some languages, while in other languages the corresponding morpheme exists and is, moreover obligatory. Consider the distinctions in (1): (1) Plurality J-tachi (in humans, anim.) R-i/a E-s Animacy J none R-a (in m. acc. sg.) E none Referential gender J ? R f.-k- ,-in'- ,-š-E-ess? Assertion strength 2 J ? R ved'/že E tags? This is by far not a definitive list, as can be seen from the question marks and parenthesized information alone. The list is also subject to historical change, as every Slavist knows e.g. from the demorphologization of the dual number. Any existing variation is potentially a change in progress: the usage of-tachi in Japanese has been noticeably increasing to include nonhuman animate nouns (tori-tachi 'birds') and even some inanimates (hana-tachi 'flowers'). The feminizing morphemes in English and 1 The abbreviations that appear before the examples refer to the following languages: Ch = Chinese, E = English, J = Japanese, R = Russian. 2 This is a working label in the interest of concision.
Vina Diem Celebrent, 2018
Papers by Olga T. Yokoyama
Neuropsychologia, 2023
this paper, the concepts of Linguistic Empathy and Psychological Empathy are written in full, and... more this paper, the concepts of Linguistic Empathy and Psychological Empathy are written in full, and the behavioral and electrophysiological measures of these concepts are written as abbreviations (LE and PE).
PAVLOV ON THE CONDITIONAL REFLEX: PAPERS, 1903-1936. IVAN PETROVICH PAVLOV. Translation by Olga T. Yokoyama. With introductions by Olga T. Yokoyama, Michael S Fanselow, & Daniel P. Todes. 2022. Oxford University Press. , 2022
Slavistika, 2017
It is not clear whether the already rich Jakobson mythology needs more contributions. But having ... more It is not clear whether the already rich Jakobson mythology needs more contributions. But having been invited to share what I know, perhaps a few direct encounters with the legend, as recounted by a member of one of the last generations of
Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely diffe... more Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely different perspectives: historical, sociological, philosophical, ethical, logical, and pragmatic. In this paper, these notions are reexamined in the framework of a Transactional Discourse Model which operates in terms of the location and relocation of various knowledge items within two sets of knowledge, A and B, representing two interlocutors A and B, and two of their subsets Ca and Cb, which constitute the sets of the matters of A's and B's current concern. This approach reveals certain formal features shared by lies, disbelief, and manipulations that indicate that these three types of discourse behavior constitute a deviation from successful interpersonal communication as defined in the proposed model. The model, moreover, enables us to explicitly capture both the similarities and the differences of lies and manipulations with other pragmatic phenomena, such as jokes, impersonating, role-acting, memory failure, politeness expressions, and tact; the comparison suggests that certain modifications of Gricean conversational maxims may be in order.
This paper is a study of the contemporary Russian lexicon based on statistical data provided by t... more This paper is a study of the contemporary Russian lexicon based on statistical data provided by the Castotnyj slovar'russkogo jazyka (ed. LN Zasorina, henceforth QSRJ). It considers three aspects of the lexicon:(1) the distribution of parts of speech and other lexical classes ...
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2000
This is an exercise in approaching Bara (2010) from within: reading him closely, pointing out inc... more This is an exercise in approaching Bara (2010) from within: reading him closely, pointing out inconsistencies, and thinking through some of the key issues with him (and sometimes for him). 1 My goal here is to scrutinize the main concepts of the book that pertain to discourse pragmatics, rather than to examine its position vis-à-vis philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, or other disciplines it touches upon (see, e.g., Cummings 2012 and Jaszczolt 2012). I must mention but will not pursue numerous inaccuracies of varying degrees of importance, 2 the book's considerable reader-unfriendliness, 3 and the imbalance between a multitude of "fun" examples, 4 and the relatively scant attention devoted to important points that would have benefitted from more detailed and careful wording and reasoning. In Section 1, I will discuss several rather serious problems with certain key concepts, demonstrating inconsistencies and contradictions in Bara's treatment of them. In Section 2, I will show how the phenomena Bara attempted to formulate can be (and have been) captured with greater consistency and explanatory power in a tight and explicit cognitive discourse model, which also accounts for some significant differences in the form of the linguistic output, which Bara generally ignores.
Slavistika 35, 2019
If morphemes are language units that explicitly encode meanings, then the same meanings are not t... more If morphemes are language units that explicitly encode meanings, then the same meanings are not treated by all languages equally. It is well known that some complex meanings, depending on the language, may be one morpheme (Ch 1 姑), two morphemes (J shuuto-me, R svekr-ov'), or three morphemes (E mother-in-law). In a language where morphologization of a certain complex meaning is absent, it may take a clause or a sentence to convey it. It is also well known that some meanings may have no designated morpheme in some languages, while in other languages the corresponding morpheme exists and is, moreover obligatory. Consider the distinctions in (1): (1) Plurality J-tachi (in humans, anim.) R-i/a E-s Animacy J none R-a (in m. acc. sg.) E none Referential gender J ? R f.-k- ,-in'- ,-š-E-ess? Assertion strength 2 J ? R ved'/že E tags? This is by far not a definitive list, as can be seen from the question marks and parenthesized information alone. The list is also subject to historical change, as every Slavist knows e.g. from the demorphologization of the dual number. Any existing variation is potentially a change in progress: the usage of-tachi in Japanese has been noticeably increasing to include nonhuman animate nouns (tori-tachi 'birds') and even some inanimates (hana-tachi 'flowers'). The feminizing morphemes in English and 1 The abbreviations that appear before the examples refer to the following languages: Ch = Chinese, E = English, J = Japanese, R = Russian. 2 This is a working label in the interest of concision.
Vina Diem Celebrent, 2018
Neuropsychologia, 2023
this paper, the concepts of Linguistic Empathy and Psychological Empathy are written in full, and... more this paper, the concepts of Linguistic Empathy and Psychological Empathy are written in full, and the behavioral and electrophysiological measures of these concepts are written as abbreviations (LE and PE).
PAVLOV ON THE CONDITIONAL REFLEX: PAPERS, 1903-1936. IVAN PETROVICH PAVLOV. Translation by Olga T. Yokoyama. With introductions by Olga T. Yokoyama, Michael S Fanselow, & Daniel P. Todes. 2022. Oxford University Press. , 2022
Slavistika, 2017
It is not clear whether the already rich Jakobson mythology needs more contributions. But having ... more It is not clear whether the already rich Jakobson mythology needs more contributions. But having been invited to share what I know, perhaps a few direct encounters with the legend, as recounted by a member of one of the last generations of
Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely diffe... more Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely different perspectives: historical, sociological, philosophical, ethical, logical, and pragmatic. In this paper, these notions are reexamined in the framework of a Transactional Discourse Model which operates in terms of the location and relocation of various knowledge items within two sets of knowledge, A and B, representing two interlocutors A and B, and two of their subsets Ca and Cb, which constitute the sets of the matters of A's and B's current concern. This approach reveals certain formal features shared by lies, disbelief, and manipulations that indicate that these three types of discourse behavior constitute a deviation from successful interpersonal communication as defined in the proposed model. The model, moreover, enables us to explicitly capture both the similarities and the differences of lies and manipulations with other pragmatic phenomena, such as jokes, impersonating, role-acting, memory failure, politeness expressions, and tact; the comparison suggests that certain modifications of Gricean conversational maxims may be in order.
This paper is a study of the contemporary Russian lexicon based on statistical data provided by t... more This paper is a study of the contemporary Russian lexicon based on statistical data provided by the Castotnyj slovar'russkogo jazyka (ed. LN Zasorina, henceforth QSRJ). It considers three aspects of the lexicon:(1) the distribution of parts of speech and other lexical classes ...
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2000
This is an exercise in approaching Bara (2010) from within: reading him closely, pointing out inc... more This is an exercise in approaching Bara (2010) from within: reading him closely, pointing out inconsistencies, and thinking through some of the key issues with him (and sometimes for him). 1 My goal here is to scrutinize the main concepts of the book that pertain to discourse pragmatics, rather than to examine its position vis-à-vis philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, or other disciplines it touches upon (see, e.g., Cummings 2012 and Jaszczolt 2012). I must mention but will not pursue numerous inaccuracies of varying degrees of importance, 2 the book's considerable reader-unfriendliness, 3 and the imbalance between a multitude of "fun" examples, 4 and the relatively scant attention devoted to important points that would have benefitted from more detailed and careful wording and reasoning. In Section 1, I will discuss several rather serious problems with certain key concepts, demonstrating inconsistencies and contradictions in Bara's treatment of them. In Section 2, I will show how the phenomena Bara attempted to formulate can be (and have been) captured with greater consistency and explanatory power in a tight and explicit cognitive discourse model, which also accounts for some significant differences in the form of the linguistic output, which Bara generally ignores.
The first goal of this article is to present a description of the linguistic features that disti... more The first goal of this article is to present a description of the linguistic features that distinguish the genderlects of Russian. Although there exist some data on interruptions and other kinds of gender-specific discourse behavior in Russian, they are not discussed here, because the variables that govern gender differences in linguistic behavior are too numerous and
inconclusive, and Russian data that bear on such behavior remain at this point too meager. Rather, what is discussed here are the structural features of Russian genderlects. This focus leads to a second goal, a theoretical one: to explore how genderlect phenomena can be explained in the Transactional Discourse Model (TDM), a broadly generative, pragmatically based discourse model that is sensitive to the factors that control the occurrence of gender-specific features in speech.
The analysis of Russian children's literature at the nursery and pre-school levels demonstrates t... more The analysis of Russian children's literature at the nursery and pre-school levels demonstrates the pervasiveness of gender-specific and cognitive models. Particularly clear is the association of certain diminutives with female language. among other gendered features are: patterns of interaction with the world, concerns, values, and degrees of individuation. insufficiently masculine language is associated with artistic, negatively portrayed and/or immature males. Commands and requests exhibit an interesting complex pattern as well.
Thirteen papers by different authors on Slavic linguistics, philology and poetics, ed. by O. T. Y... more Thirteen papers by different authors on Slavic linguistics, philology and poetics, ed. by O. T. Yokoyama
Eleven papers by different authors in Slavic linguistics, pedagogy, philology and poetics, ed. by... more Eleven papers by different authors in Slavic linguistics, pedagogy, philology and poetics, ed. by O.T. Yokoyama
Eighteen papers by different authors in Slavic linguistics, pedagogy, philology, and poetics .
Jazyk i metod, vol. 6, 111-124, 2019
Allocentric phenomena in Polish and Russian are examined. It is argued that they exhibit a differ... more Allocentric phenomena in Polish and Russian are examined. It is argued that they exhibit a difference between the speaker’s assuming his/her own vs. another’s point of view. It is suggested that the allocentric language structures are essentially homorganic to the allocentric point of view demonstrated by the behavior of mirror neurons. Following a brief report on a neuropsychological study of certain English Empathy expressions that show a correlation between linguistic empathy violations and low Empathy Quotient, the importance of exploring new methods of linguistic analysis is suggested.
Issues in Applied Linguistics 18.2: 215-222, 2011
This paper recapitulates the address given on the last day of the conference as a representative... more This paper recapitulates the address given on the last day of the conference as a representative of the hosting department. It is based on my personal experience as a lifelong learner of English and university professor, rather than on expert research on the subject. I recall the most embarrassing English errors I made during my teaching career, present evidence of the power of preconceived notions in judging language performance from my childhood and from my son's youth, and provide examples of varying language use by English native speakers that present problems for the concept of linguistic "correctness." I conclude by stressing the value of linguistic diversity found in the U.S. and the wisdom of nurturing the richness of linguistic heritages this country possesses.