Earticle

This study investiages the syntactic properties of English infinitival relative clauses, with particular attention to the presence or absence of wh-operators and the conditions under which prepositions may be omitted in such clauses. Infinitival relatives are divided into wh-infinitival and non-wh-infinitival clauses based on the overt realization of the wh-operator. In wh-infinitival relatives, the wh-operator must serve as the complement of a preposition and undergo pied-piping to satisfy grammatical constraints (e.g., I have no place to which to go vs. I have no place which to go to). In contrast, non-wh relatives may also involve a prepositional phrase that includes a null operator, in which case the possibility of omitting the preposition depends on whether the prepositional phrase functions as an adjunct or a complement. Through structural analysis within the X-bar theoretical framework, this study seeks to clarify the syntactic nature of infinitival relatives and enhance theoretical understanding of wh-operator distribution and preposition usage, especially for learners of English as a foreign language.

Nominal tautological constructions (NTCs), as a special kind of syntactic and semantic structure, have aroused considerable interests among linguists from different perspectives. By analyzing the data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU (CCL), this paper conducts a contrastive study of NTCs in English and Chinese, aiming to find out the similarities and differences on the one hand, and the cognitive interpretation on the other hand. The analysis of data from the COCA and CCL corpora shows that NTCs in English and Chinese exhibit different distributional features, providing a basis for further analysis. It is found that similarities of English and Chinese NTCs are often embodied in similar basic repetitive structures and similar semantic representation such as ‘acceptance, tolerance, or distinction’. The differences between English and Chinese NTCs lie in either the language-specific or culture-specific interpretation of some types of NTCs in each language. Finally, this paper tries to expound the cognitive interpretation of NTCs from the perspective of categorization and decategorization theory.

This systematic review synthesizes research on Learner Response Systems (LRS) in Korean university English classes to analyze their purposes, methodologies, and key findings. The findings reveal a critical asymmetry: evidence for LRS improving the affective domain is overwhelmingly strong, largely attributed to the feature of anonymity. Conversely, evidence for LRS enhancing complex academic skills is weak or inconclusive. This review concludes that in the high-anxiety Korean EFL context, LRS’s primary, proven value is not as a direct cognitive tool, but as a socio-affective intervention that creates the prerequisite low-anxiety conditions for learning and interaction to occur.

In this paper, we examined how sociocultural meanings are extracted from the actual usage of the common time noun SAKKON and what views (how Japanese society views a particular time or period) are reflected in the sociocultural meaning of SAKKON. 1.SAKKON has the conceptual meaning of <a very recent past, including the present> mainly used to explain social trends and trends in media such as newspapers, television and the Internet, and to show historical background in literary works. 2.Sociocultural meaning can be extracted in three stages: discourse meaning (meaning as a personal argument or opinion expressed by the speaker about the object of the word) → discourse meaning tendency (tendency of discourse meaning that plays a role in creating society's perception and perspective) → sociocultural meaning (an implied meaning (connotation) behind the creation of a discourse meaning tendency). 3.The discourse meaning tendency of SAKKON reflects the reality of the negative Japanese who have lost their original happy way of life, such as <the declining birthrate is deepening><losing connections> <global warming is screaming><loving the easy way of doing things>, and the socio-cultural meaning of <now people who have lost their original form> can be assumed behind this. It has been confirmed that the sociocultural meaning of SAKKON taken out of the corpus shows the view of the Japanese who view the present age as an inhuman world in which people who have lost their original form live.

This study investigates the use and mobilization of the Jeju language in various tourism settings on Jeju Island, often described as the largest tourist destination in South Korea. By analyzing how multiple actors engage in language management, the study aims to explore the potential for the Jeju language to be valorized as a tourism resource. Specifically, it examines both macro-level language management, grounded in administrative and institutional initiatives, and micro-level language management practiced by tourism workers and visitors. Through this dual focus, the study seeks to clarify how regional languages are positioned, managed, adjusted, and reconstructed within tourism as a social practice. In doing so, it considers the possibilities for the Jeju language to be revalued and recognized as a meaningful tourism resource.

As the cognitive subject of translation, the translator reconstructs the source text through translational activity to serve target-language readers. Translator‘s subjectivity requires mediating the relationship between the source author and the target readers, with paratexts as a primary medium. Owing to differences in the cultural backgrounds of the target readership, Park Myeong-ae, the translator of the Korean version of The Republic of Wine, adopts a strategy of “visibility,” exerting translator’s subjectivity by adding paratexts. In contrast, Li Yuanzhe, the translator of the Minwen version, opts for “invisibility,” allowing readers greater imaginative space. The deployment of translator subjectivity through paratexts contributes positively to the transmission of source-culture elements, the construction of character images, and the coherence of contextual logic, while also giving rise to issues such as directional deviation of subjectivity, excessive visibility, insufficient identification of the author’s creative features, and inadequate understanding of the source culture.