Papers reviewed and determined not to be word norm studies. Use the flag icon to report errors or suggest re-inclusion.
16504 papers
Our knowledge of objects reflects the statistics of the visual environment. From our experiences in the world, we store information about categories of objects and the features that define them. One important statistical property of objects is the co-occurrence of their constituent features. For example, the round shape of an apple co-occurs frequently with the color red, but not the color blue. Here we examine the neural mechanisms that encode such feature co-occurrence statistics at the interface of perception and memory. In an fMRI experiment, subjects viewed images of colored objects while performing an unrelated scrambled-object detection task. The stimuli included exemplars from three different categories: apples, leaves, and roses. To create stimuli that sampled a range of co-occurrence statistics, each exemplar image had its color systematically manipulated to be red, pink, yellow, green, or blue (Fig.1A). We quantified co-occurrence frequencies of color-object combinations (e.g., “yellow apple”) in a large lexical corpus. A separate norming study demonstrated that this metric was strongly correlated with subjective ratings of color-object typicality. Importantly, the co-occurrence of object and color information is independent of the frequencies of each feature alone. We tested the hypothesis that feature co-occurrence information is encoded in semantic memory regions and automatically retrieved during object perception. Using representational similarity analysis, we identified regions where response patterns were similar for category exemplars with similar co-occurrence statistics (Fig.2B). We expected that the angular gyrus would encode combinatorial information given its proposed role in semantic integration. Indeed, we found that this region and the anterior fusiform cortex encode high-level feature co-occurrence statistics, while early visual cortex, lateral-occipital complex, and inferior-temporal cortex did not. These results suggest that regions at the interface of vision and semantic memory encode combinatorial information that underlies real-world knowledge of objects and is independent of coding for individual features. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015
Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le cadre général de la linguistique descriptive et s’intéresse à l’espagnol familier d’usage au Chili, à travers les affects exprimés par les locuteurs chiliens. Notre hypothèse consiste dans le fait que l’espagnol du Chili est défini sur la base des affects, et que l’expression de ceux-ci, au niveau linguistique, est observable dans les phénomènes les plus divers, pouvant aller d’un simple morphème à une structure syntagmatique complexe. Afin de concevoir l’expression linguistique des affects d’un point de vue plus large, cette recherche vise l’étude de quatre phénomènes clairement différenciés: le suffixe –it dans le cadre de la communauté linguistique chilienne, la « paronomase orientée », le défigement phraséologique dans le domaine des locutions verbales et adverbiales et la particule illocutoire poh. Notre méthodologie consiste en l’extraction d’un nombre d’exemples conséquents pour illustrer les phénomènes choisis à partir de 103 numéros du journal chilien La Cuarta de 2010 et 2011. Parallèlement nous considérons un nombre significatif d’exemples issus de l’enregistrement de conversations menées auprès de 58 locuteurs chiliens pendant 9 heures 11 minutes et 33 secondes.Les quatre phénomènes de langue visés ont été étudiés sous le concept d’affectivité proposé par Bally (1965 [1913]), qui distingue les principes d’intensité et de valeur (1951 [1909]).L’étude de l’affectivité du suffixe –it dans le contexte chilien a révélé que l’affectivité est une propriété qui opère sur deux dimensions. Elle est, d’un côté, intrinsèque à un signe linguistique – base lexicale, suffixe –it et tout autre élément linguistique convergeant dans le discours – et, d’un autre côté, extrinsèque, car relatée à des éléments culturels ou idéologiques, et plus généralement à tout ce qui est extralinguistique. Dans les deux dimensions, l’affectivité du locuteur fonctionne comme élément de fusion et donne son vrai sens au signe linguistique. Concernant la « paronomase orientée » (terme que nous avons proposé), nous avons constaté que l’affectivité constitue la caractéristique principale de ce type de paronomase, et que son usage repose notamment sur la figure de la plaisanterie, cela étant dû à des caractéristiques communes qui se sont révélées être: la fonction ludique, l’intentionnalité comique et l’effet de surprise.La paronomase orientée, qui s’investit sur les plans phonétique, morphologique, lexical et sémantique, constitue pour nous une opération linguistique dérivative, où deux lexies simples ou complexes, qui se substituent l’une à l’autre au sein d’un énoncé, partagent des propriétés phonétiques, alors que leur contenu sémantique diverge.En liaison avec le défigement des locutions verbales et adverbiales, il s’avère que le défigement phraséologique est une activité linguistique naturelle faisant appel à la relation figurative constante entre les mots, qui permet de créer d’autres manières d’exprimer et d’actualiser les usages de termes déjà existants.L’évolution des phrases figées passe par un processus de transformation souhaité par les locuteurs au détriment des normes phraséologiques ou syntaxiques données. Cependant, l’intérêt de la création néologique intervient quand le locuteur a la possibilité de créer et de recréer des structures linguistiques nouvelles.Quant à la particule illocutoire poh, particule notamment orale qui provient du connecteur pues (Oroz: 1966), nous avons réussi à montrer que poh aide à la progression de la communication, favorisant la cohérence et la cohésion entre l'énoncé et le texte. De plus, par le truchement de poh, un accord consensuel entre le locuteur et l’interlocuteur s’établit et, à partir de cet accord, des fonctions pragmatico-affectives nouvelles surgissent.
Introduction The English language is the most widely spoken language in the world. It is a language used in about 673 countries globally, (Graddol, 1997, cited from Akere, 2009). In Nigerian social and cultural contexts, English has become a language employed in different domains of usage such as education, politics, religion, administration, foreign diplomacy, commerce, science and technology. According to Kachru (1985), users of English around the world can be classified into norm-producing inner circle which made up of native speakers of the language; norm developing outer circle, made up of second language users of English; and the norm dependent expanding circle comprising speakers of English as a foreign language. Since English has come in contact with people of different social and cultural backgrounds, new hybrids or variants of the language has 'sprouted'; such as American, British, Canadian and Nigerian Englishes. Different tongues of the language are employed in countries like South-Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Lesotho, Nigeria, Cuba, Philippines. Tanzania, Malaysia, Pakistan, Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Gambia etc. Also, the contact of the English language with numerous mother tongues in Nigeria has led to the phonological, syntactic and lexico-semantic variations of the language in the country. As a result, several linguistic studies have been carried out on the lexico-semantic as well as the phonological variations of Nigerian English (NE). Among them are Brosnahan (1958), Banjo (1971, 1995), Bamgbose (1983), Adesanoye (1973), Jubril (1982), Odumuh (1984, 1987), Adegbija (1989, 1998), Udofot (1977, 2003), Kujore (1985), Jowitt (1991), and Bamiro (1994). According to Brosnahan (1958), variation of Nigerian English can be distinguished through the degree of deviation which the variety has from the exoglossic standard norm. Brosnahan's variety 1 of Nigerian English is Nigerian pidgin which is mostly used by non-literate Nigerians. His variety 2 is the English of the primary school leavers. The variety 3 of Nigerian English, according to Brosnahan's (ibid) is the English language employed by the secondary school leavers, while the variety 4 is the English of the university graduate. According to Banjo (1971), there are four varieties of Nigerian English. Banjo's (1971) variety 1 of NE is characterized by the wholesale transfer of [L.sub.1] to [L.sub.2] (English); variety 2 resembles the standard variety (i.e. native speakers'), variety 3 resembles Standard British English (SBE) both in syntax and semantics but different in phonological features; and Banjo's (1971) variety of NE is identical with the British English in syntax, semantics and lexical features, but it is mutually unacceptable among Nigerians. For a variety of Nigerian English to be accepted as a standard variety in the country, Adegbija (1998) states that such a variety must be internationally intelligible, mutually acceptable among Nigerians and devoid of ethnic or social stigmatization. In his own view, Odumuh (1984) states that the following are the varieties of Nigerian English: (i) local colour variety, (ii) incipient bilingual variety, and (iii) near native speaker's variety. Adegbija (1989. 1998), equally examines the characteristics of the lexical and semantic variations of Nigerian English. According to him, lexico-semantics variations of Nigerian English are caused by six factors thus: (i) Socio-cultural differences between the native speakers and second language users of English in Nigeria; (ii) dynamics of the pragmatics of a multilingual context; (iii) the exigencies of the varied discourse constraints and modes in English and in the indigenous languages; (iv) the pervasive influence of the press; (v) the standardization of idiosyncrasies and errors; and (vi) the predominantly formal medium of the acquisition of English. According to Adegbija (1998), Nigerian English is characterized by analogy, language, transfer, acronyms, semantic shifts and neologisms. …
There is, today, a powerful social norm against the expression of prejudice. Hence, as shown in many discursive studies, speakers treat prejudice as an accountable matter and use various strategies (e.g., disclaimers, mitigation, denials, and reformulations) to avoid being seen as personally prejudiced. Analysts have identified this practice as a “new” form of discriminatory discourse, which allows expression of prejudice without negative identity repercussions. Relevant studies are generally undertaken from a critical perspective and focus on structural inequalities (particularly race and gender). However, speakers may also demonstrate sensitivity around unexpected issues which lack overt prejudice connotations. This article examines one such example of unexpected sensitivity to the anti-prejudice norm. It analyses how five young female academics problematise and resolve their preference for an “intelligent” romantic partner. Their preference is uncontroversial in relationship terms, but here, in the academic context, it is clearly treated as accountable and as possibly inviting negative attributions. The data show functional and lexical features of “new” discriminatory discourse. The speakers orient towards attributions of intellectual elitism and use various means to deflect these, while ultimately upholding their stated preference for an intelligent partner. The analysis demonstrates how the anti-prejudice norm extends across settings/topics and how accountability is occasioned and context specific. This has implications for how prejudice itself, as a discursive construct, may be identified and evidenced. Specifically, it might be argued that analysts only have empirical access to accountability (occasioned in specific contexts), rather than to exclusionary or prejudiced ideologies per se.
The article studies such phenomenon of mass communication as the language of advertisement. The author gives definitions to such concepts as the “language of advertisement”, “text of advertisement”, and makes an attempt to differentiate between these concepts. The article presents a review of Russian and translated foreign literature researching this issue, outlines scientific areas which study advertising. The article describes basic characteristics peculiar for advertisement texts: both linguistic and extra-linguistic. It considers functional characteristics of advertisement text, goals for its creation, and the mission it has – to influence a consumer using various psychological, linguistic, visual (graphic) and other means. The language of advertisement is considered as a specific linguistic structure that develops according to its on laws, breaking sometimes standard norms to emphasize influence on the addressee because it pursues its own non-linguistic objectives. The main communicative aim of an advertisement is to force the consumer to choose the products, goods or services advertised. The article tells about specifics of advertising texts which consists of using both verbal and non-verbal elements regardless of the type of advertisement. Linguistic peculiarities of advertisement texts are studied in the article. The author distinguishes a number of linguistic means used in creation of an advertisement that are grouped as phonetic, lexical, syntactic, morphological, stylistic and the other. The main consideration is given to the use of stylistic and lexical linguistic means. In particular, the paper gives examples of using such linguistic means in advertisements as metaphor, hyperbola, personification, repetition, idiomatic expressions, neologism, jargon, etc.
Undoubtedly the difficulty of translating culture-bound elements will be be much more challenging when the audience are children who do not have any perspective on cultural diversity of different nations. The culture-bound elements can be consists of a wide range of elements, i.e. proper names, religion terms, food and drink items and so on. Dealing with each of these items will be a real challenge when translators have this perception that most probably their audiences do not have any idea about the in hand culturebound element, and it will be their choice to present the new items to the child reader or replace it with a familiar one. With this perspective, the present textual analysis study, aims to explore the lexical choices that translator's of children's literature in Iran made, facing such elements. The present effort restricts itself to the "food and drink" items and illustrates the way that Persian translators approach these culturebound elements in a 70 years period and discusses their lexical choices following the socio-cultural norms of the time.
Studies across multiple languages show that overt morphological priming leads to a speed-up only for transparent derivations but not for opaque derivations. However, in a recent experiment for German, Smolka et al. (2014) show comparable speed-ups for transparent and opaque derivations, and conclude that German behaves unlike other Indo-European languages and organizes its mental lexicon by morphemes rather than lemmas. In this paper we present a computational analysis of the German results. A distributional similarity model, extended with knowledge about morphological families and without any notion of morphemes, is able to account for all main findings of Smolka et al. We believe that this puts into question the call for German-specific mechanisms. Instead, our model suggests that cross-lingual differences between morphological systems underlie the experimentally observed differences. 1 Semantic and Morphological Priming Priming is a general property of human language processing: it refers to the speed-up effect that a stimulus can have on subsequent processing (Meyer and Schvaneveldt, 1971). This effect is assumed to result from an activation (in a broad sense) of mental representations, and priming is a popular method to investigate properties of the mental lexicon. The original study by Meyer and Schvaneveldt established lexical priming (nurse → doctor), but priming effects have also been identified on other linguistic levels, such as syntactic priming (Bock, 1986) and morphological priming (Kempley and Morton, 1982). A recent study by Smolka et al. (2014) investigated overt morphological priming on prefix verbs in German, where the base verb and derived verb can be semantically related (transparent derivation: schliesen – abschliesen (close – lock)) or not (opaque derivation: fuhren – verfuhren (lead – seduce)). Experiment 1, an overt visual priming experiment (300 ms SOA) involved 40 six-tuples that paired up a base verb with five prefix verbs of five prime types (see Figure 1). The verbs were normed carefully, e.g., for association, to exclude confounding factors. The authors reported three main findings: (a), no priming for Form and Unrelated; (b), no priming for Synonymy; (c), significant priming of the same strength for both Transparent and Opaque Derivation. These findings suggest that morphological priming on German prefix verbs use a mechanism that is different from lexical priming, which assumes that the strength of the semantic relatedness is the main determinant of priming – i.e., lexical priming would predict finding (a), but neither (b) nor (c). The findings by Smolka et al. are also at odds with overt priming patterns found in similar experimental setups for other languages such as French (Meunier and Longtin, 2007) and Dutch (Schriefers et al., 1991), where patterns were found to be indeed consistent with lexical priming. Smolka et al. (2014) interpret this divergence as evidence for a German Sonderweg: the typological properties of German (separable prefixes, morphological richness, many opaque derivations) are taken to suggest a morpheme-based organization of the mental lexicon more similar to Semitic languages like Hebrew or Arabic than to other Indo-European languages. Our paper investigates this claim on the computational level. We present a simple model of corpusbased word similarity, extended with a database of morphological families, that is able to predict the three main findings by Smolka et al. outlined above. The ability of the model to do so, even though it operates completely at the word level without any notion of morphemes, may put into question Smolka Copyright c © by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. In Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi, Marcello Ferro (eds.): Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org
The media plays a pivotal role in the Patriarchal ideologies gender roles and norms continue to be propagated through images presented in the mass media in both overt and subtle ways despite efforts being made towards fighting gender discrimination and stereotyping. The study sought to establish how masculinity is constructed in talk show discourse by analysing the language used by participants in the show and the underlying ideology that influences lexical choice. Critical Discourse Analysis was used both as theory and as a tool for the analysis of discourse. This study revealed ways in which what seems as normal every day language.
Predmet razprave so teoretsko-metodološka načela, ki so se razvijala v krogih t. i. novofirthijancev, kjer se od vsega začetka opredeljujejo za korpusno analizo, čim manj obremenjeno s predhodnimi jezikoslovnimi teorijami. V prispevku najprej pregledamo dela teh avtorjev, iz katerih izhajajo med drugim slovnica vzorcev (angl. pattern grammar), teorija leksikalnega proženja (angl. lexical priming), teorija konvencij in invencij (angl. theory of norms and exploitations) ter teorija kontekstne prozodije (angl. contextual prosodic theory). Nato povzamemo njihove zaledne predpostavke in stališča o jeziku kot rezultatih raziskovanja. Tako definiramo šest skupnih načel: predmet raziskovanja je jezikovna raba, tj. jezik v »kontekstu situacije«, raziskovalni fokus se obrne k temu, kar je običajno, raziskovalčeva intuicija je v vlogi evalvacije avtentičnih jezikovnih rab, jezikovne ravni (slovnica in slovar) so razumljene kot prepletene, na jezikovni sistem se gleda kot visoko dinamičen, v teoretskih temeljih pa zavzame eno osrednjih mest jezikovni vzorec. Nazadnje opozorimo tudi na nekatere omejitve, s katerimi se soočamo pri korpusnem pristopu.
The object of considerations focuses on problems related with the translation of semantic innovations of idioms. The first part of the article introduces the concepts of idioms, idiomatic standards and phraseological innovations. Phraseological connections or idioms are multi-word units that have a relatively stable form and meaning. This meaning is not a combination of the meanings of separate words that form the unit. A norm is accepted by a community and defined as a standard set of rules pertaining to the use and occurrence of idioms. The most common phraseological innovations are demetaphorisation, semantic contamination, desemantisation and idiom accumulation in the text. The effect of innovations is the fusion of the above mentioned factors with a text making it unique and one of its kind. Innovations expand and determine utterances. What is more, they are added value expressed by a pun. Translation of idioms may cause many problems, especially when they appear in the form and meaning different from the standard one. The main strategies in the translation of innovations are literal translation, using a different idiom that reflects the meaning of the original text, paraphrasing or creating new lexical units. Examples of semantic innovations and their translation strategies have been derived from the novel by Gunter Grass and its Polish translation.
En):The paper, a case study in modern French usage and style, deals with the question of the linguistic norm in Muriel Barbery's novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006).The point is to show how the self-educated main character, Renée Michel, concierge in an elegant Parisian block of flats, refutes the stereotyped image of her social position through her immense culture and her refined usage of French.The study gives a detailed survey of lexical and grammatical forms of usage in various registers of speech in Renée's linguistic performance and concludes with the idea that Renée's deep respect for the norms of standard French is a special form of revolt against the intellectual negligence characterizing the rich inhabitants always ready to show their superiority over her.
У статті розглядається проблема визначення поняття «семи» як компонента значення слів, подано їхню типологію в сучасній лінгвістичній літературі. Досліджено особливості семного складу лексичних одиниць на позначення добра в англійській мові та з’ясовано його характер. (The article deals with the problem of definition of «seme» as a word meanings’ component and their typology in modern linguistic literature. The peculiarities of the seme stock of lexical units denoting good in English as well as its character are analyzed together with the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of semes. The study shows that the seme stock of the nouns denoting good in Modern English can be divided into 6 subsets, reflecting diverse shades of their meanings. The order and organization of semes in the seme stock under study is hierarchical. The obtained matrix gives an opportunity to investigate the seme stock as the unity of semantic features that possesses a definite structure. In the course of our analysis the semes which make up the meanings of the lexical units have been divided into polyfunctional and monofunctional according to frequency of their appearance in the lexical meanings of the nouns denoting good. Lexical units denoting good occupy an important place within the lexical system of any language because this notion belongs to the moral values, indicating moral norms, assessment, ideal, valuable orientation and moral qualities of the personality. Present understanding of good is inseparably connected with processes taking place in the social and political spheres of life, and leading to changes in the consciousness and mental perception of an individual. Thus, good is considered to be anthropocentric and socio-pragmatic notion referring to a person and serving to satisfy his/her social and everyday needs.)
he article deals with the specific features of the German language on the Bavarian dialect lexical level. The dialect is remarkable for its innovations and variety of linguistic forms on all levels of its system. The notion “Bavarian dialect” and its correlation with literary Ger-man language is being researched. The comparative analysis reveals the facts of deviation from the standards of the literary German language, especially in vocabulary and semantics.The Bavarian dialect system is constantly changing, as any language system. We can an-alyze it from the point of view of two states: synchronic and diachronic. The first state is relatively more stable and functioning of the language units is rather regular. But this system condition is balanced only to some extent. At every step of its development, the system col-lects innovations at all levels of its structure: from phonological up to discursive. When their number starts to grow, the language system may change making all the new language units a new norm. A new step of its evolution begins. The aim of the article is to show the inner process of the language system self-development.
ABSTRACT This skripsiwas made as a requirement to obtain bachelor Degree in English in Sam Ratulangi University. This research is entitled “Discourse analysis of King George VI Speech”With God’s Help, We shall Prevail”(First Radio Address, Britania. September 3, 1939)”. It is an attempt to analyze and explain the discourse analysis norms in King George VI speech. There are three steps to finish this research. First step is preparation,the writer reads some books about language, linguistics, and discourse analysis to find out the relevant theories.Second step is data collection, the writer finds King George VI speech and reads it for several times to have a deep understanding. Third step is data analysis,The data arecollected, identified, classified and analyzed. The method used in this research is taken from Alba-Juez (2008:20) and supported the theory by De Beaugrande and Dressler (1986:8) and Aarts and Aarts (1982: 4). The theory consists of seven norms, they are: Cohesion: pronoun, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical, Coherence: mark coherence, and unmark coherence, Intentionality, Acceptability, Informatifity, Situationality, and Intertextuality. The result of this research shows that in cohesion there are 50 pronouns, 7 subtitusion, no elipsis, 34 conjuction, 10 lexical. In this speech, there are 21 mark coherence and there is no unmark coherence. There are also the norms like intentionality is focused on user or producer by expressing a disappointment and sadness. Acceptabilityhas a generally acceptable meaning, according to the history of the text of this speech is received, the king get a warm welcome from the people and members of the royal. Informatifity is can provide full information,can be known through historical conditions occurred. Situationalityhas a relationship with the surrounding circumstances, refers to the situation of war. And intertextualityrefer to the agreement as a protector of the independence of Poland. Keywords: discourse analysis, speech, seven norms, King George VI
The translation of corporate publicity material,(TCPM for short), as a pragmatic text, calls for guidance of relevant theo-ry since someword-for-wordtranslation is far from adequate to achieve its purpose. International exchange and communicationin the Southern areas of Jiangsu Province are developing fast and of important value. Therefore, the present study attempts to con-duct the research on in the lights ofFunctional EquivalenceandSkopos Theory. In the proposed translation strategy, the studygives due attention to the TCPM's unique aspect, which has both vocative and informative function. Thus the translator shall taketarget language and its culture norms into consideration so as to make the translated text readable. To achieve the desired effect ofthe translated text, the translator shall free themselves from theFormal Equivalenceand rigid translation, and take efforts toadapt to target reader's cultural background and language norm, thus improving translsted texts at lexical, syntactic, and textuallevels.
The aim of this study was to analyse the psycholinguistic variables of the attributes and concepts involved in the recall of a concept. One hundred and twenty adults (18–40 years old) participated. A lexical recall task was administered by presenting a successive list of defining attributes. Forty concepts from different semantic categories were used. The attributes were obtained empirically from local Semantic Features Production Norms. The influence of the characteristics and attributes of the concepts on the number of participants who accessed the name of the concept and the correct guess trend was analysed. Significant values for Age of Acquisition, Presence of Distinctive Attributes and Presence of Taxonomic Attributes were observed. Results show that concepts which are acquired earliest are more easily recalled; presenting taxonomic categories narrows the search and the presence of distinctive attributes allow differentiating between such concepts within a category.
Studies of language of contemporary advertising prove the validity of assertions about the ability of advertising to form the taste of the language community. Sometimes ads are ahead of already existing norms of language, creating new images and models of verbal communication in the search for maximum efficiency of impact. The analysis of the most striking and noticeable trends of morphological level in the language of advertising is concentrated in the area of lexico-grammatical status of the nominal parts of speech: the development of the quantitative category in abstract noun word forms and making relative adjectives to be qualitative ones. Besides, in the area of the verbal lexical units one can observe expanding of verbal paradigms owing to new mandatory forms. The manifestation and activation of grammatical processes in the advertising text reflects not only the expansion of the arsenal of means of expression, but also the serious grammatical shifts that can be regarded as a means forming the stylistic unity of the advertising text. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s2p204
The article deals with the issues of genesis, content, and peculiarities of existence in the Russian manuscript tradition of the passionary compiled work “The Passion of Jesus Christ” devoted to the description of the last days of the Saviour’s life on Earth. The author characterizes some structural peculiarities of the work. The first feature is the presence of thirty two chapters in the full version; at this, more than half of them originate from apocryphal legends, in particular from the so called “Gospel of Nikodim” dating back to the 2 n d century AD. The second feature consists in a wide variation of repertory of the initial and finishing chapters within the work’s numerous lists while the pivot (the events described in chapters 26-27 of the “Gospel of Mathew”) remains stable. The authors also introduce and describe a new manuscript of the 17 t h century preserved in Mordovia museum of local history. The main part of this manuscript is represented by the Apocrypha “The Passion of Jesus Christ”. The authors of the present article highlight the highest artistic value and historical importance of the manuscript containing ninety magnificent illustrations and including thirty one miniatures accompanying the whole passionary cycle. The analyses of graphic and orthographical features of the manuscript showed a tendency to breaking the norms while choosing one of the members of the doublet pair. The lexical system of Apocrypha consists of five main theme groups, including the lexemes connected with the concepts “man”, “religion”, “material culture”, “time”, “natural world” as well as with the inner world of a man, his appearance, and social status. The language of the work consists mainly of the low norms of the 17 th-century Old Church Slavonic language with some dialectic features (okanye using “o”, chokanye using “ch”).
Стаття присвячена основним аспектам перекладу медичної термінології на українську мову. Розглядаються домінантні шляхи утворення медичних термінів та особливості їх відтворення українською мовою. Наведено приклади та проаналізовано найуживаніші способи перекладу лексики наукового медичного дискурсу. (The article is dedicated to the basic aspects of medical terminology translation into Ukrainian. In the research paper the main aspects of such language concepts as «discourse», «academic discourse» and «medical terminology» are analyzed and identified; the structural and semantic aspects of borrowed medical terminology are determined; dominant ways of medical terms formation and peculiarities of their rendering into Ukrainian are examined; the examples and the most common ways of scientific vocabulary of medical discourse translation are illustrated. It is stated, that in the process of medical terms translation it is important to find out the interconnection between term and context, which is the only way to render lexical meaning. In the article great attention is paid to the compound medical terms rendering that is one of the most controversial sides of medical English-Ukrainian translation. It is defined that according to the translation situation and/or to the textual genre, it is necessary to take into account the different register levels and possible changes in vocabulary. It is important to remember that translation of borrowed medical terms demands from translator sufficient level of knowledge in this sphere and also following the strict norms of Ukrainian language. According to the investigation done, meaning of borrowed suffixes and prefixes in medical discourse coincide in both languages. Hence the main techniques of their translation into Ukrainian are either transliteration, or finding functional equivalent.)
We examine the nature of phonological and semantic similarity\nin early language learning. We consider how the use of this\ninformation might change over the course of development. To\nthis end, we represent the lexicon as either a phonological or\nsemantic network and model the growth of this network. Constructing\nnormative vocabularies from the Communicative Development\nInventory norms, we utilize a preferential attachment\ngrowth algorithm. We predict and quantify the words\nwhich will be learned next, comparing the two network representations.\nWe consider the effect of age, total vocabulary size\nand language ability as measured through CDI percentile. Our\nfindings suggest that the semantic representation does not outperform\nthe baseline bag-of-words model, whereas the phonological\nrepresentation conditionally does. More generally, we\nshow that the network representation influences the ability of\na model to capture vocabulary growth. We further offer a\nmethod of analysis for testing representational assumptions in\nnetwork models.
How does a child's vocabulary production change over time? Past research has often focused on characterizing population statistics of vocabulary growth. In this work, we develop models that attempt to predict when a specific word will be learned by a particular child. The models are based on two qualitatively different sources of information: a representation describing the child (age, sex, and quantifiers of vocabulary skill) and a representation describing the specific words a child knows. Using longitudinal data from children aged 15-36 months collected at the University of Colorado, we constructed logistic regression models to predict each month whether a word would be learned in the coming month. Models based on either the child representation or the word representation outperform a baseline model that utilizes population acquisition norms. Although the child- and word-representation models perform comparably, an ensemble that averages the predictions of the two separate models obtains significantly higher accuracy, indicating that the two sources of information are complementary. Through the exploration of such models, we gain an understanding of the factors that influence language learning, and this understanding should inform cognitive theories of development. On a practical level, these models may support the development of interventions to boost language acquisition.
Facing the Daunting Task of Assessing (Deaf) Bilinguals Wolfgang Mann (bio) and Tobias Haug (bio) Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole (Ed.). Multilingual Matters, 2013. 256pp. $49.95 (papercover). Over the last two decades, there has been increasing movement in the area of signed language assessment for different groups of learners. This is a promising trend, as it has made signed language tests more available to researchers and practitioners in different countries. However, it has also brought new challenges, including the question of whom these instruments should be normed on—for example, deaf children with deaf parents, who have early access to signed language, or deaf children with hearing parents, who represent the majority of the deaf population (i.e., children with hearing losses ranging from slight to profound). It is well known that the (signing) deaf population is heterogeneous, not only with regard to degree of hearing loss, onset of language, and type of amplification, but also in relation to home language and culture and the existence of any additional needs. This heterogeneity, along with the small size of the population (particularly in countries other than the United States or the larger European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany), poses a number of limitations for test developers when it comes to applying common statistical procedures to establish psychometric properties of a test to assure its reliability and validity. In addition, the state of research on most signed languages is still underdeveloped, a situation that has resulted in limited availability of resources to researchers, practitioners, and others interested in signed language acquisition and assessment. In light of the paucity of available literature on signed language assessment or access to standardized and commercially available signed language tests, it seems necessary to cast a wider net in the search for information. In this context, Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals makes an excellent choice for anyone interested in language assessment of members of minority groups. The first of a set of two volumes edited by Virginia Mueller Gathercole (the second is Solutions for the Assessment of Bilinguals, also published in 2013 by Multilingual Matters), it offers a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in assessing bilingual children or adults, including one of many important messages, that assessments should be normed “against similar populations with similar experience with the languages(s) in question” (Mueller Gathercole, p. 232). Mueller Gathercole, who is no stranger to bilingual matters, due to her own work with monolingual and bilingual populations at Florida International University and Bangor University (Wales), brings as editor a unique combination of internationally renowned experts in the field, along with new researchers and practitioners, all of whom contribute to the success of this book. Organization of the Book The presented research includes consideration of a variety of bilingual populations from around the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a number of common themes across countries, which render the issues discussed applicable to bilingual populations anywhere, including deaf populations. For instance, one main area focuses on the realistic expectations used to evaluate performance of children who grow up as bilinguals. [End Page 484] Within its 256 pages, Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals covers several important aspects of the assessment of different bilingual populations. These aspects, the driving forces behind the need for improvement in many existing assessments, include the identification of language impairment, ways to monitor children’s progress in language or education, and ways to measure second-language (L2) learners’ abilities in childhood or adulthood. They highlight the multifaceted issues related to obtaining information on the bilingual abilities of children and adults and determining the best way of assessing these abilities. Important Aspects Related to Assessment The edited volume comprises 10 chapters covering a wide breadth of topics, ranging from measuring bilinguals’ reaction time on lexical tasks and assessing writing skills to a retrospective on the policies under the No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States. Apart from the first couple of chapters, which provide excellent introductions to the subject and to the importance of language exposure to language assessment, the rest of the volume can be read in any given order. While some chapters may...
We report on a study that aimed to improve an existing tone label prediction algorithm for Sesotho, an official language of South Africa. Tone is an important prosodic feature of Sesotho, since speakers use tone to distinguish meaning. In order to implement tone in a Text-to-Speech system for Sesotho, a tone modeling algorithm must receive as input the tone labels of the syllables of each word. Then it can predict the appropriate intonation of the word. Since Sesotho does not mark tone labels in orthography, the labels have to be predicted according to the tonal rules of the language. The existing tone label prediction algorithm has two drawbacks, namely it implements three tonal rules only and is restricted to the clitic phrase domain. In our study, we developed an algorithm that implements four additional tonal rules and addresses all parts of speech. The results show that the latter algorithm significantly improves the existing one by increasing the number of matched tone labels.
The present research investigates semantic priming with an adapted version of the word fragment completion task. In this task, which we refer to as the speeded word fragment completion task, participants need to complete words such as lett_ce (lettuce), from which one letter was omitted, as quickly as possible. This paradigm has some interesting qualities in comparison with the traditionally used lexical decision task. That is, it requires no pseudowords, it is more engaging for participants, and most importantly, it allows for a more fine-grained investigation of semantic activation. In two studies, we found that words were completed faster when the preceding trial comprised a semantically related fragment such as tom_to (tomato) than when it comprised an unrelated fragment such as guit_r (guitar). A third experiment involved a lexical decision task, to compare both paradigms. The results showed that the magnitude of the priming effect was similar, but item-level priming effects were inconsistent over tasks. Crucially, the speeded word fragment completion task obtained strong priming effects for highly frequent, central words, such as work, money, and warm, whereas the lexical decision task did not. In a final experiment featuring only short, highly frequent words, the lexical decision task failed to find a priming effect, whereas the fragment completion task did obtain a robust effect. Taken together, these results suggest that the speeded word fragment completion task may prove a viable alternative for examining semantic priming.
Rhythms, or patterns in time, play a vital role in both speech and music. Proficiency in a number of rhythm skills has been linked to language ability, suggesting that certain rhythmic processes in music and language rely on overlapping resources. However, a lack of understanding about how rhythm skills relate to each other has impeded progress in understanding how language relies on rhythm processing. In particular, it is unknown whether all rhythm skills are linked together, forming a single broad rhythmic competence, or whether there are multiple dissociable rhythm skills. We hypothesized that beat tapping and rhythm memory/sequencing form two separate clusters of rhythm skills. This hypothesis was tested with a battery of two beat tapping and two rhythm memory tests. Here we show that tapping to a metronome and the ability to adjust to a changing tempo while tapping to a metronome are related skills. The ability to remember rhythms and to drum along to repeating rhythmic sequences)
In surveys, individuals tend to misreport behaviors that are in contrast to prevalent social norms or regulations. Several design features of the survey procedure have been suggested to counteract this problem; particularly, computerized surveys are supposed to elicit more truthful responding. This assumption was tested in a meta-analysis of survey experiments reporting 460 effect sizes (total N =125,672). Self-reported prevalence rates of several sensitive behaviors for which motivated misreporting has been frequently observed were compared across self-administered paper-and-pencil versus computerized surveys. The results revealed that computerized surveys led to significantly more reporting of socially undesirable behaviors than comparable surveys administered on paper. This effect was strongest for highly sensitive behaviors and surveys administered individually to respondents. Moderator analyses did not identify interviewer effects or benefits of audio-enhanced computer surveys. The meta-analysis highlighted the advantages of computerized survey modes for the assessment of sensitive topics.
People greatly differ in the size of their social circle. In general, interacting with more people should lead one to receive more variable linguistic input. Variability has been shown to facilitate learning of new phonological categori es (e.g., Bradlow & Bent, 2009). Variability, however, might also be beneficial at other linguistic levels. Additionally, it may boost performance even in one's native language. We ex amined whether having a larger social circle improves individuals' lexical and sema ntic skills in their native language. In Study 1, we tested whether individuals' social circle size influences their linguistic skills at the lexical and semantic levels. In Study 2 we replicated the results of Study 1 using an experimental manipulation of social circle si ze, thus showing the causality of this effect. Study 1 tested the influence of social circle size on lexical and semantic skills using a lexical prediction task. We recruited 226 part icipants and asked them with how many people they interact in a typical week. We then pr esented them with a forced choice sentence completion task, and asked them to select the most common way that others would complete the sentence. The response choices were based on common responses in norms for these sentences (Lahar, Tun & Wingfield, 2004) and then further normed in a multiple choice format (N=70) to verify the dominant response. There were two types of items: (1) Lexical items, in which responses are synonymous in the context, e.g., She calls her husband at his ____ (a) job (b) office (c) work (d) workplace, and (2) semantic items, in which responses differ in meaning, e.g., Few nations are now ruled by a ____ (a) dictator (b) ki ng (c) president (d) woman. Results revealed an interaction between so cial circle size and linguistic level, such that larger social circle size predicted higher accuracy on the semantic items, but not on the lexical items. Study 2 used an experimental ma nipulation of social circle size. First, we elicited short reviews of chairs from 8 speakers. We then replaced the words horrible, bad, ok, good, and great in these reviews with 5 novel words (e.g., noral ). In total, we had a set of 160 reviews (4 reviews x speaker x rating level). We manipulated social circles size by assigning each participant (N=76) to one of two sampling conditions: receiving all the reviews from 2 randomly selected reviewers, or receiving 5 randomly selected reviews from each of the 8 reviewers (1 per rating level). In both cases, participants we re exposed to 40 reviews in total. Each review had an equal probability of appearing in each sampling condition. Reviews appeared with a cartoon that represented the reviewer, so participants could track the reviewer's identity. After this exposure stage, we tested participants on their semantic comprehension of new reviews with these novel words, and on their lexical choi ce prediction for these words (when meaning is held constant). Both tests used new reviews from new reviewers. Results replicated Study 1, showing that those in the large social circle condition (8 reviewers) did better than those in the small circle condition (2 review ers) on the semantic task, but worse on the lexical task. These studies show that individuals' social circle size influences their linguistic skills. Specifically, having a larger social circle improves semantic, but not lexical, skills. We hypothesize that the differential effect of social ci rcle size is due to properties of the linguistic level, such as the number of competitors and the ratio of intra- to inter-individual variability
ELF used in immigration domains typically reflects the different cognitive and communicative processes as well as the power/status asymmetries involved in cross-cultural situations of unequal encounters between non-western supplicants (i.e., African immigrants and asylum seekers) and western (Italian) experts in authority. Such situations will be here explored with reference to institutional contexts where the conditions for achieving successful communication through the use of ELF variations are biased against the participants' different native linguacultural backgrounds from which they appropriate English without conforming to native speaker norms of usage. A number of case studies will illustrate the extent to which features of ELF usages may be perceived as formally deviating and socio-pragmatically inappropriate in intercultural communication-this being due to the participants' lack of acknowledgement of each other's ELF variations thus giving rise to misunderstandings that often raise social and ethical issues about inequality and social justice. More specifically, the case studies will enquire, on the one hand, into the processes by which ELF users transfer typological, textual, lexical and logical features of their native languages and cultures to the domain-specific communication they are involved in, thus affecting their pragmalinguistic behaviours and interpretative strategies, leading ultimately to communication failure. On the other hand, some case studies will enquire into possible 'hybridization strategies' of written reformulation aimed at making ELF discourse conceptually accessible and socio-pragmatically acceptable to immigrants and refugees involved in the interaction, by making it conform to their different native linguacultural backgrounds, with the ultimate purpose of achieving a 'mutual accommodation' of ELF variations in order to promote the social inclusion of marginalized immigrants as well as raise awareness among intercultural mediators operating in such situations of power asymmetry of the possible discourse strategies that can improve mutual intelligibility through ELF.
Evidence that children maintain some memories of labels that are unlikely to be shared by the broader linguistic community suggests that children’s selective learning is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Across three experiments, we examine the contexts in which 24-month-olds show selective learning and whether they adjust their selective learning if provided with cues of in-context relevance. In each experiment, toddlers were first familiarized with a source who acted on familiar objects in either typical or atypical ways (e.g., used a car to mimic driving or hop like a rabbit) or labeled familiar objects incorrectly (e.g., called a spoon a “brush”). The source then labeled unfamiliar objects using either a novel word (e.g., fep; Experiment 1) or sound (e.g., ring; Experiments 2 and 3). Results indicated that toddlers learnt words from the typical source but not from the atypical or inaccurate source. In contrast, toddlers extended sound labels only when a source who had previously acte)
Recent South Americans have been described as presenting high regional cranial morphological diversity when compared to other regions of the world. This high diversity is in accordance with linguistic and some of the molecular data currently available for the continent, but the origin of this diversity has not been satisfactorily explained yet. Here we explore if this high morphological variation was already present among early groups in South America, in order to refine our knowledge about the timing and origins of the modern morphological diversity. Between-group (Fst estimates) and within-group variances (trace of within-group covariance matrix) of the only two early American population samples available to date (Lagoa Santa and Sabana de Bogotá) were estimated based on linear craniometric measurements and compared to modern human cranial series representing six regions of the world, including the Americas. The results show that early Americans present moderate within-group diversi)
A learner’s linguistic input is more variable if it comes from a greater number of speakers. Higher speaker input variability has been shown to facilitate the acquisition of phonemic boundaries, since data drawn from multiple speakers provides more information about the distribution of phonemes in a speech community. It has also been proposed that speaker input variability may have a systematic influence on individual-level learning of morphology, which can in turn influence the group-level characteristics of a language. Languages spoken by larger groups of people have less complex morphology than those spoken in smaller communities. While a mechanism by which the number of speakers could have such an effect is yet to be convincingly identified, differences in speaker input variability, which is thought to be larger in larger groups, may provide an explanation. By hindering the acquisition, and hence faithful cross-generational transfer, of complex morphology, higher speaker input var)
Abstract This study explores the extent to which first language (L1) versus second language (L2) use and attachments to native versus majority language and culture influence the proficiency in the L2 Dutch among the Turkish-Dutch bilinguals. The community under investigation is of particular significance because it represents the largest non-Western ethnic group in the Netherlands and it has often been discussed in the context of the group members’ ethnic and linguistic attachments as opposed to their perceived unwillingness to adopt the cultural norms of the Dutch society. What makes this immigration setting interesting is that the shift from tolerance to startling levels of restrictiveness in policies of cultural and linguistic integration has nowhere been as fast as in the Netherlands. Data are collected from the first generation Turkish immigrants (n = 45) who migrated to the Netherlands after the age of 15 and lived there for 10 years or longer and native Dutch speakers (n = 39) via an elicited speech task, a lexical naming/recognition task and a sociolinguistic background questionnaire. The first set of analyses reveals several links between the individual variables (i.e., L1 use in the family and with friends, L2 use at work, level of education, length of residence and cultural preference) and different aspects of L2 proficiency. However, the effect sizes of these correlations are weak to moderate. The second set of analyses applies a discriminant analysis where proficiency in the L2 has been established as one integrated score. In this analysis, only preferred language emerges as the best predictor of language development.
We demonstrate a substantial evidence that the word length can be an essential lexical structural feature for word evolution in written Chinese. The data used in this study are diachronic Chinese short narrative texts with a time span of over 2000-years. We show that the increase of word length is an essential regularity in word evolution. On the one hand, word frequency is found to depend on word length, and their relation is in line with the Power law function y = ax-b. On the other hand, our deeper analyses show that the increase of word length results in the simplification in characters for balance in written Chinese. Moreover, the correspondence between written and spoken Chinese is discussed. We conclude that the disyllabic trend may account for the increase of word length, and its impacts can be explained in "the principle of least effort". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR], Copyright of PLoS ONE is the property of Public Library of Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to )
In a cancellation task, a participant is required to search for and cross out (“cancel”) targets, which are usually embedded among distractor stimuli. The number of cancelled targets and their location can be used to diagnose the neglect syndrome after stroke. In addition, the organization of search provides a potentially useful way to measure executive control over multitarget search. Although many useful cancellation measures have been introduced, most fail to make their way into research studies and clinical practice due to the practical difficulty of acquiring such parameters from traditional pen-and-paper measures. Here we present new, open-source software that is freely available to all. It allows researchers and clinicians to flexibly administer computerized cancellation tasks using stimuli of their choice, and to directly analyze the data in a convenient manner. The automated analysis suite provides output that includes almost all of the currently existing measures, as well as several new ones introduced here. All tasks can be performed using either a computer mouse or a touchscreen as an input device, and an online version of the task runtime is available for tablet devices. A summary of the results is produced in a single A4-sized PDF document, including high quality data visualizations. For research purposes, batch analysis of large datasets is possible. In sum, CancellationTools allows users to employ a flexible, computerized cancellation task, which provides extensive benefits and ease of use.
Abstract This article is devoted to the functioning of Russian language in the modern world and raises a few issues: What are the regions of Russian diasporas nowadays? Under what conditions can Russian language survive in the foreign countries? How does Russian language change in its mother country and outside? It is also under discussion how language norms transform in modern Russian. It is stated that liberalization in lexical and register choice is opposed to the requirements of grammatical accuracy. Grammar is still considered as a marker of good education and culture of a person.
In the domain of cognition, an increasing number of researchers are interested in the role of objects’ motor affordances in cognitive processing. However, outside of the existing norms on the objects’ levels of manipulability (e.g., Magnié, Besson, Poncet, & Dolisi, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 25:521–560,2003), relatively few norms exist that would allow researchers to have good control over objects’ motor dimensions. In the present study, we have provided norms on the extent to which participants agreed about the movements typically performed for using specific objects—what we will call manipulability agreement. We showed that manipulability agreement was a good predictor of the times needed to initiate the action associated with the object. This study provides ratings on a new dimension of objects’ motor affordances that could be useful to researchers in the domain of visual cognition.
Signed languages exhibit iconicity (resemblance between form and meaning) across their vocabulary, and many non-Indo-European spoken languages feature sizable classes of iconic words known as ideophones. In comparison, Indo-European languages like English and Spanish are believed to be arbitrary outside of a small number of onomatopoeic words. In three experiments with English and two with Spanish, we asked native speakers to rate the iconicity of ~600 words from the English and Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories. We found that iconicity in the words of both languages varied in a theoretically meaningful way with lexical category. In both languages, adjectives were rated as more iconic than nouns and function words, and corresponding to typological differences between English and Spanish in verb semantics, English verbs were rated as relatively iconic compared to Spanish verbs. We also found that both languages exhibited a negative relationship between ico)
It has previously been shown that language production, performed simultaneously with a nonlinguistic task, involves sustained attention. Sustained attention concerns the ability to maintain alertness over time. Here, we aimed to replicate the previous finding by showing that individuals call upon sustained attention when they plan single noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot") and perform a manual arrow categorization task. In addition, we investigated whether speakers also recruit sustained attention when they produce conjoined noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot and the bucket") describing two pictures, that is, when both the first and second task are linguistic. We found that sustained attention correlated with the proportion of abnormally slow phrase-production responses. Individuals with poor sustained attention displayed a greater number of very slow responses than individuals with better sustained attention. Importantly, this relationship was obtained both for the production of single ph)
Corpus-based semantic space models, which primarily rely on lexical co-occurrence statistics, have proven effective in modeling and predicting human behavior in a number of experimental paradigms that explore semantic memory representation. The most widely studied extant models, however, are strongly influenced by orthographic word frequency (e.g., Shaoul & Westbury, Behavior Research Methods, 38, 190–195, 2006). This has the implication that high-frequency closed-class words can potentially bias co-occurrence statistics. Because these closed-class words are purported to carry primarily syntactic, rather than semantic, information, the performance of corpus-based semantic space models may be improved by excluding closed-class words (using stop lists) from co-occurrence statistics, while retaining their syntactic information through other means (e.g., part-of-speech tagging and/or affixes from inflected word forms). Additionally, very little work has been done to explore the effect of employing morphological decomposition on the inflected forms of words in corpora prior to compiling co-occurrence statistics, despite (controversial) evidence that humans perform early morphological decomposition in semantic processing. In this study, we explored the impact of these factors on corpus-based semantic space models. From this study, morphological decomposition appears to significantly improve performance in word–word co-occurrence semantic space models, providing some support for the claim that sublexical information—specifically, word morphology—plays a role in lexical semantic processing. An overall decrease in performance was observed in models employing stop lists (e.g., excluding closed-class words). Furthermore, we found some evidence that weakens the claim that closed-class words supply primarily syntactic information in word–word co-occurrence semantic space models.
A number of studies on network analysis have focused on language networks based on free word association, which reflects human lexical knowledge, and have demonstrated the small-world and scale-free properties in the word association network. Nevertheless, there have been very few attempts at applying network analysis to distributional semantic models, despite the fact that these models have been studied extensively as computational or cognitive models of human lexical knowledge. In this paper, we analyze three network properties, namely, small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical properties, of semantic networks created by distributional semantic models. We demonstrate that the created networks generally exhibit the same properties as word association networks. In particular, we show that the distribution of the number of connections in these networks follows the truncated power law, which is also observed in an association network. This indicates that distributional semantic models c)
This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English monolingual adults. All three groups were asked to discriminate pairs of syllables that minimally differed in either Cantonese tone or in English stress. Bilingual children’s performance on tone perception was comparable to their performance on stress perception. By contrast, bilingual adults’ performance on tone perception was lower than their performance on stress perception, and there was a similar pattern in English monolingual adults. Bilingual adults tended to perform better than English monolingual adults on both the tone and stress perception tests. A significant correlation between tone perception and stress perception performance was found in bilingual children but not in bilingual adults. All three groups showed lower accuracy in the high rising-low rising contrast than any of the other 14 Cantones)
The goal of the current paper is to describe the TLGbank, a treebank of type-logical proof semi-automatically extracted from the French Treebank. Though the framework chosen for the treebank are multimodal type-logical grammars, we have ensured that the analysis is compatible with other mondern type-logical grammars, such the displacement calculus and first-order linear logic. We describe the extraction procedure, analyse first results and compare the treebank to the CCGbank.
To judge how much a pair of words (or texts) are semantically related is acognitive process. However, previous algorithms for computing semanticrelatedness are largely based on co-occurrences within textualwindows, and do not actively leverage cognitive human perceptions ofrelatedness. To bridge this perceptional gap, we propose to utilizefree association as signals to capture such human perceptions.However, free association, being manually evaluated,has limited lexical coverage and is inherently sparse. We propose to expand lexical coverage and overcome sparseness by constructing an association network of terms and concepts that combines signals from free association norms and five types of co-occurrences extracted from therich structures of Wikipedia. Our evaluation results validate thatsimple algorithms on this network give competitive results incomputing semantic relatedness between words and between shorttexts.
Lexical norms, normative and usually numeric, ratings of word meaning are popular tools in research domains relating to human expression and perception of language, especially with regards to emotion. In this paper we are proposing an algorithm of psycholinguistic norm expansion capable of generating high quality norms representing aspects of language beyond emotion, including language concreteness and indicators of age and gender association. Starting from small manually annotated norm lexica, continuous norms for new words are estimated using semantic similarity and a simple linear model along eleven expression-related dimensions. The model is shown to achieve state of the art level performance of word norm estimation. To investigate the potential of these norms as analysis tools of more complex phenomena we use them to investigate the differences in therapist speech in sessions conducted by practitioners adhering to the psychoanalytic and client-centered schools of therapy.
The aim of the study is to identify the relationship between notions of derivational deductibility and lexical usage of derived words in the linguistic consciousness and their actual functioning in speech. Suffixed nouns with the meaning “person” formed by productive word-formation models of quality adjectives served as language material. The study was performed on the basis of the derivatives obtained by the linguistic experiment with Russian native speakers. We also controlled the frequency of use of these words in the speech, which was obtained with the help of Google search engine. As a result of the research we have identified several patterns. Firstly, the data about the functioning of such words obtained in different experimental conditions correlated. Secondly, the nouns with the meaning of “person” significantly exceed the lexical norm for the diversity of their use in speech (in quantitative and qualitative indicators), which was reflected in codified dictionaries.
Although previous research has studied power in mediation models, the extent to which the inclusion of a mediator will increase power has not been investigated. To address this deficit, in a first study we compared the analytical power values of the mediated effect and the total effect in a single-mediator model, to identify the situations in which the inclusion of one mediator increased statistical power. The results from this first study indicated that including a mediator increased statistical power in small samples with large coefficients and in large samples with small coefficients, and when coefficients were nonzero and equal across models. Next, we identified conditions under which power was greater for the test of the total mediated effect than for the test of the total effect in the parallel two-mediator model. These results indicated that including two mediators increased power in small samples with large coefficients and in large samples with small coefficients, the same pattern of results that had been found in the first study. Finally, we assessed the analytical power for a sequential (three-path) two-mediator model and compared the power to detect the three-path mediated effect to the power to detect both the test of the total effect and the test of the mediated effect for the single-mediator model. The results indicated that the three-path mediated effect had more power than the mediated effect from the single-mediator model and the test of the total effect. Practical implications of these results for researchers are then discussed.