RESUMEN
The importance of language to changing public behaviours is acknowledged in crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. A key means of achieving these changes is through the use of directive speech acts, yet this area is currently under-researched. This study investigates the use of directives in the 2020 COVID-19 briefings of four leaders of English-speaking nations, Jacinda Adern, Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, and Nicola Sturgeon. We developed a classification system including 13 directive types and used this to compare directive use across these four leaders, examining directness and forcefulness of directive use. The analysis finds Sturgeon to be the most prolific directive user and also to have the highest reliance on imperatives. Johnson, meanwhile, has a preference for directives involving modal verbs, particularly with first- and second-person pronouns. In contrast, Ardern and Morrison show a higher use of indirect directives, normally thought to be a less effective strategy. While Ardern often combines this strategy with judicious use of imperatives, this is not seen in Morrison's COVID-19 briefings. These findings tend to confirm earlier, more impressionistic evaluations of the communication styles of these leaders but also suggest other avenues for research on directive use. We conclude with implications for political crisis communication and analysis of directives in crisis communication.
RESUMEN
Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here, we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier's specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for "all," "none," "some," "some not," and "most" in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-y-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation.
