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18265 papers
Priest Jožef Horvat (born 1880 in Velika Narda, died 1932 in Martjanci), a Croat from Burgenland, spent 27 years of his priesthood (1905–1932) in Prekmurje, then part of Hungary, where he learned Prekmurje due to his pastoral work. The article summarizes the most important biographical information and in the central part provides a linguistic analysis of Horvat's manuscript sermons. Two sermons are discussed – the earliest from 1905, written in Prekmurje with pronounced Croatian elements, and a later one, which shows a gradual adaptation to the Slovene literary language. Based on a comparative analysis of phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical characteristics and a comparison with the Central Slovene template (Žlogar, Duhovni pastir, 1909), the article reveals the development of Horvat's linguistic abilities and his conscious approximation to the Slovene literary norm. The language of his later sermons shows a balance between the Prekmurje and Central Slovenian traditions, which testifies to the priest's role as a mediator of Slovenianness in the Pannonian region. The article sheds light on the importance of Horvat's sermons as a source for studying interlingual contacts and the processes of unification of the Slovenian literary language in the first half of the 20th century.
The deployment of large language models (LLMs) across heterogeneous environments requires format-specific conversion, precision tuning, and consistent evaluation-tasks that are often fragmented across multiple tools. This work presents SOLO-Export, a unified command-line interface (CLI) framework for multi-format export and post-export benchmarking of causal LLMs. Having precision options for FP16 and INT8 where appropriate, the system supports the ONNX, TorchScript, Hugging Face, TensorFlow Lite, and TensorRT backends. Device-aware exports for both CPU and CUDA targets are made possible by a configuration-driven workflow that generates artifacts in a uniform directory structure. Each exported model is benchmarked using the Penn Treebank dataset by the integrated evaluation harness, which reports inference latency, token-level accuracy, and perplexity. According to experimental results, FP16 exports on GPU-oriented backends like TensorRT achieved up to 3.2 times lower latency than baseline FP32 models. On the top of that, with minimal impact on perplexity, storage size was reduced by more than 60% thanks to INT8 quantization. The combined approach reduces manual configuration overhead, speeds up deployment preparation, and ensures consistent performance insights across formats. This study demonstrates that a single, scalable pipeline can be effective.
We aim to predict real-life anxiety using laboratory measures of fear learning. Laboratory measures will include psychophysiological (skin conductance responses [SCR]), subjective (self-reported valence and arousal ratings), and neural (BOLD fMRI) measures of fear learning.
Abstract Grant proposal summaries are a high-stakes academic genre requiring significant marketing efforts to enhance accessibility for a diverse audience. However, research in this field remains scarce. This study addresses this gap by examining the readability and jargon use in lay summaries of Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) grant proposals administered by the University Grants Committee (UGC) in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2024. The findings reveal that, despite temporal fluctuations, these summaries generally align with senior-college to college-graduate reading levels. They also contain a high average jargon density of 8.0% per text, surpassing the recommended threshold for general readership. Notably, readability measures related to structural complexity show a significant upward trend, while lexical difficulty remains stable. Meanwhile, normed jargon use presents a non-significant but visually noticeable upward trend over time. These temporal patterns suggest that these lay summaries have become more challenging to read, mostly due to individually-varied but densely embedded specialised terms in longer and more complex sentences. The findings raise concerns about the accessibility of lay summaries for non-specialists, such as interdisciplinary researchers, science communicators, policymakers, and the general public. The study concludes with a discussion and suggestions on readability and jargon use in grant proposal summaries.
Pre-trained Language Models (PLM) have enabled a cost-effective approach to handling various downstream applications via Parameter-Efficient-Fine-Tuning (PEFT) techniques. In this context, service providers have introduced a popular fine-tuning-based product service known as Model-as-a-Service (MaaS). This service offers users access to extensive PLMs and training resources. With MaaS, users can fine-tune, deploy, and utilize their customized models seamlessly, leveraging a one-stop platform that allows them to work with their private datasets efficiently. However, this service paradigm has recently been exposed to the possibility of leaking user private data. To this end, we identify the data privacy leakage risks in MaaS-based PEFT and propose a Split-and-Privatize (SAP) framework, mitigating the privacy leakage by integrating split learning and differential privacy into MaaS PEFT. Furthermore, we propose Contributing-Token-Identification (CTI), a novel method to balance model utility degradation and privacy leakage. As a result, the proposed framework is comprehensively evaluated, demonstrating a 65% improvement in empirical privacy with only a 1% degradation in model performance on the Stanford Sentiment Treebank dataset, outperforming existing state-of-the-art baselines.
Stella Markantonatou, Vivian Stamou, Stavros Bompolas, Katerina Anastasopoulou, Irianna Linardaki Vasileiadi, Konstantinos Diamantopoulos, Yannis Kazos, Antonios Anastasopoulos. Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2025). 2025.
In the era of digital communication, intercultural miscommunication has become an increasingly salient issue, reflecting the intersection between linguistic behaviour and cultural norms. The study explores how language, context, and cultural expectations interact within online communication platforms to produce misunderstanding. Drawing upon theories of intercultural pragmatics, digital discourse analysis, and cultural linguistics, the paper identifies linguistic (lexical ambiguity, pragmatic failure, code-switching) and cultural (contextual expectations, politeness conventions, emoji interpretation) factors that contribute to miscommunication in digital settings. The research synthesis insights from international scholars (Hall, Hofstede, Thomas, Herring) as well as Russian and Uzbek academics (Karasik, Issers, Yuldasheva, Makhkamova) to provide a comparative view of how cultural variables shape online discourse. Examples from English, Russian, and Uzbek digital interactions demonstrate that the lack of shared background knowledge often results in pragmatic failure and distortion of intended meaning. The findings highlight the necessity for enhanced intercultural and digital literacy in modern language education and underscore the growing importance of context awareness in globalised digital spaces.
The launch of Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia developed by Elon Musk's xAI, was presented as a response to perceived ideological and structural biases in Wikipedia, aiming to produce "truthful" entries using the Grok large language model. Yet whether an AI-driven alternative can escape the biases and limitations of human-edited platforms remains unclear. This study conducts a large-scale computational comparison of 17,790 matched article pairs from the 20,000 most-edited English Wikipedia pages. Using metrics spanning lexical richness, readability, reference density, structural features, and semantic similarity, we assess how closely the two platforms align in form and substance. We find that Grokipedia articles are substantially longer and contain significantly fewer references per word. Moreover, Grokipedia's content divides into two distinct groups: one that remains semantically and stylistically aligned with Wikipedia, and another that diverges sharply. Among the dissimilar articles, we observe a systematic rightward shift in the political bias of frequently cited news media sources, concentrated primarily in entries related to history and religion, and literature and art. More broadly, the findings indicate that AI-generated encyclopedic content departs from established editorial norms, favoring narrative expansion over citation-based verification, raising questions about transparency, provenance, and the governance of knowledge in automated information systems.
The article is devoted to studying socially determined linguistic processes, which are traditionally associated with the broad problem of social variation of communication (discourse) and linguistic variability of the German language. It presents the results of a study conducted within the framework of cognitive sociolinguistics - the linguistics of social meanings. The author observes continuity in the development of scientific thought, explores the problem of linguistic variability in two modes - theoretical and applied. The subject of the research is the terminological apparatus and specific linguistic facts that are based on the cognitive, communicative and social functions of language, that is, to be the reality of the thought of individual and/or collective knowledge of representatives of a certain society and the means of their communication. The purpose of the article is to analyze theoretical propositions, linguistic terms and existing specific language forms that convey social meanings, marked by a social feature in their terminological interpretations with a focus on the linguistic picture of the Germany new lands. The novelty of the research lies in cognitive-semantic analysis, systematization and modeling this phenomenon in the social aspect. As a result, the author comes to her own conclusions, which lead to understanding and rethinking the old views on the problems of dialectology in the context of modern realities of the German language society and the data of modern linguistics. The methodology of the research and the description of its results are determined by the principle of interdependence of the three most important didactic and linguistic strata - the study of modern language from the standpoint of linguistic norms, the study of linguistic variability and the analysis of language change in the framework of its historical development. General scientific methods and special methods of cognitive linguistics are used to analyze theoretical material and linguistic facts, including explanatory description, interpretation, cognitive modeling, cognitive dominance, and focusing.
This paper explores the cultural, linguistic, and identity-related functions of phraseological units and proverbs in Albanian, viewing them as carriers of folk wisdom and linguistic structures with deep social roots. Phraseology serves not only as a lexical resource but also as a reflection of collective psychology, nature, and historical experience. Proverbs and idioms encode moral norms, ethical values, and practical judgments that have guided Albanian communities across generations. The study places special focus on nature and animal symbolism, examining figures such as mountain, forest, wolf, fox, hare, sheep, ram, and goat as semantic axes that convey complex ideas of masculinity, fear, cunning, gentleness, order, and authority. These expressions form a culturally embedded linguistic code that transmits social models and collective memory through metaphorical language. The research demonstrates how these linguistic elements shape identity while preserving tradition and offering emotionally resonant, easily assimilated messages to speakers. Through scholarly sources and detailed linguistic analysis, this study highlights phraseology as a vital component of Albanian cultural heritage and traditional reasoning. The findings reveal how these linguistic structures continue to influence contemporary Albanian discourse while maintaining their historical significance as repositories of cultural knowledge. Received: 14 May 2025 / Accepted: 27 August 2025 / Published: 05 September 2025
This article explores the critical engagement of two academics who confront lived experiences with the institutional and tangible dimensions of linguistic barriers and discrimination in the Portuguese district of Faro. Centred on the challenges posed at the border, the study fits into the wider framework of mobilities between North Africa and southern Europe, and attempts to demonstrate how language, as a form of social practice, impacts access to employment, education and society at large. Portuguese emerges as a dual entity: an institutional barrier, a form of socio-spatial control that reinforces exclusion, illustrating exclusionary processes within hierarchies and structural violence; a transnational bridge that fosters belonging and, simultaneously, a battleground where identity and self-determination face the constraints imposed by the economic, social, and political order that impact Moroccan migration to southern Portugal. The research highlights the imbrications of the undervaluation of migrants' cultural knowledge, the ambivalence of linguistic identity within a globalized world, exacerbating social exclusion, and systemic discrimination of non-privileged migrants in a polarized region shaped by social and economic asymmetries and increasingly representative nationalisms. From a systemic justice perspective, this devaluation reinforces structural inequalities, marginalizing those who do not conform to dominant linguistic norms. The national languages’ role as linguistic and cultural gatekeeper exemplifies the intersection of identity construction and socio-political hierarchies in the context of mobilities. This study, grounded in a collaborative project blending autobiography and biographical research, employs qualitative methods, including biographic interviews, ethnographic observation, and critical human rights studies.
Abstract Older adults consistently report higher emotional well-being despite some physical and mental declines with age. Some theorize this is due to differences in emotion regulation, however no conclusive evidence for age differences in emotion regulation strategies has emerged. Emotion regulation tactics, such as positive-approaching (enhancing the positivity of a situation) and negative-receding (reducing the negativity of a situation), hold promise for uncovering age differences. However, no studies to date have considered whether tactic vary in their physiological profiles. Thus, this study investigated 35 younger (M = 19.06 years, SD = 3.58; 17 women) and 42 older (M = 74.02 years, SD = 4.69; 23 women) participants who viewed emotionally-evocative videos and regulated emotions using positive-approaching and negative-receding techniques (with both regulation blocks compared to a neutral video block to control for baseline differences in psychophysiology). Multi-level linear models revealed significant Age x Sex x Tactic interactions, such that positive-approaching tactics (vs negative-receding) were associated with lower arousal ratings for younger women and older men (but not younger men or older women). While there was no tactic difference in self-reported arousal for older women, Respiratory Sinus Arrythmia (a measure of heart activity associated with calm parasympathetic states) was higher during positive-approaching for them. Interestingly, older men had higher RSA during negative-approaching tactics as compared to positive-approaching. These findings suggest emotion regulation tactics have age and sex differential impacts on self-reported and physiological arousal. Future work may disentangle physiological activation and self-reported behavior by also considering the role of interoceptive awareness.
Large Language Models (LLMs) employ deep learning algorithms to generalize patterns in data. Applying these LLMs to classification tasks can reduce the required labor and time. The research aims to fine-tune the LLM Llama 3.1 to correctly identify whether a chosen text message exhibits a positive or negative emotion. The goal of this procedure is to apply the fine-tuned LLM to large databases of text messages and locate users whose recent texts contain a large proportion of negative samples. This way, I can alert the users and direct them to help very early on. I chose the Stanford Sentiment Treebank v2 (SST-2) dataset. It mimics the emotional polarity of real texts with its even positive-negative sample distribution and its contextless format. I used the Unsloth framework and LoRa to significantly reduce the resources required during the fine-tuning process. I tested the model by taking SST-2’s train split and inputting them individually into the trained model. Using this method, I found the Llama model to be highly accurate, with an accuracy of 94.8%. Interestingly, it had a high average Binary Cross-Entropy (BCE) Loss of 0.782 but achieved high accuracy. The testing against other models shows that the BCE Loss for sentiment analysis is not correlated to the actual accuracy of the model. From the results, I determined Llama 3.1 was the most suitable LLM for the sentiment analysis of large text databases.
У статті здійснено детальний морфологічний аналіз пейоративної лексики, що використовується в романі «МУР» («Малий український роман») сучасного українського письменника Андрія Любки. Пейоративи, як емоційно забарвлені мовні одиниці, відіграють важливу роль у створенні саркастичного, іронічного або негативного забарвлення тексту. У дослідженні розглядається їхня функція в художньому дискурсі, що дозволяє підкреслити специфіку персонажів, їхні емоційні стани та соціокультурний контекст. Аналіз охоплює 340 лексичних одиниць, з яких 303 класифіковані як пейоративи, а 37 – як інвективи. Пейоративи розподілено на п’ять основних морфологічних категорій: іменники, дієслова, прикметники та прислівники та дієприкметники. Найбільшу кількість становлять іменники та дієслова, що використовуються для характеристики персонажів та опису дій. Наприклад, іменники («фіфа», «гуцулик», «хахаль») підкреслюють соціальну або ґендерну приналежність персонажів. Тоді як дієслова («нализатися», «видудлити», «потикатися») створюють динаміку комічних або іронічних ситуацій. Також наголошено, що у тексті роману є низка іменникових словосполучень на позначення персонажів твору чи опису й характеристики людей, персонажів та ситуацій. Дієслова й дієслівні словосполучення пейоративної лексики позначають процеси споживання, мовлення, переміщення у просторі, мислення, емоційного стану людини та негативно-оціночного значення певних дій, зокрема, інтимного характеру та фізіології людини. За частотою вживання найпоширенішими є дієслова й дієслівні словосполучення на позначення процесу споживання, процесу мовлення, процесу переміщення у просторі. Опрацьовано 113 дієслів й дієслівних словосполучень. Прикметники, прислівники та дієприкметники у романі позначають характеристику людини крізь призму тваринних ознак, зовнішнього вигляду людини та принизливо-оціночних норм поведінки. Дослідження підкреслює значення контексту для визначення функції пейоративів у тексті. Контекстуальний метод дозволяє врахувати залежність між словесними одиницями та їхнім емоційним забарвленням. Використання пейоративної та інвективної лексики додає тексту експресії, реалізму й сатиричного колориту. Окрему увагу приділено класифікації за морфологічними ознаками, що розширює уявлення про функціональність пейоративів у літературі. Актуальність дослідження визначається зростаючим інтересом до емоційно забарвленої лексики та її ролі у художньому дискурсі. Практична цінність роботи полягає у можливості використання результатів у лінгвістичних і літературознавчих дослідженнях, викладанні мовознавства. | The article provides a detailed morphological analysis of pejorative vocabulary used in the novel MUR (“A Small Ukrainian Novel”) by contemporary Ukrainian writer Andriy Lyubka. Pejoratives, as emotionally charged linguistic units, play an important role in creating a sarcastic, ironic, or negatively toned text. The study examines their function in artistic discourse, which helps to underscore the specificity of the characters, their emotional states, and the sociocultural context. The analysis covers 340 lexical units, of which 303 are classified as pejoratives and 37 as invectives. Pejoratives are divided into five main morphological categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and participles. The largest portion consists of nouns and verbs, which are used to characterize characters and describe actions. For instance, nouns “fifa”, “hutsul”, and “khakhal” (e.g., фіфа, гуцулик, хахаль) emphasize the social or gender affiliation of the characters, while verbs like “nalysiatysia” (to get drunk), “vydudlyty” (to drink up), and “potykatysia” (to poke around) (e.g., нализатися, видудлити, потикатися) create the dynamics of comedic or ironic situations. It is also noted that the novel’s text contains a number of noun phrases that denote characters or serve to describe and characterize people, characters, and situations. The verbs and verbal phrases of the pejorative lexicon denote processes of consumption, speech, spatial movement, thought, and the emotional state of a person, as well as the negatively evaluative connotation of certain actions – particularly those of an intimate nature and related to human physiology. In terms of frequency, the most common are the verbs and verbal phrases indicating processes of consumption, speech, and spatial movement; a total of 113 such verbs and verbal phrases have been analysed. Adjectives, adverbs, and participles in the novel characterize individuals through the prism of animal traits, physical appearance, and derogatory evaluative norms of behaviour. The study emphasizes the importance of context in determining the function of pejoratives in the text. A contextual approach allows for accounting the interdependence between linguistic units and their emotional connotations. The use of pejorative and invective lexicon adds expression, realism, and a satirical nuance to the text. Special attention is paid to classification by morphological features, thereby broadening the understanding of the functionality of pejoratives in literature. The relevance of this study is underscored by the growing interest in emotionally charged lexicon and its role in literary discourse. The practical value of the work lies in the potential application of its findings in linguistic and literary research, as well as in language instruction. | A tanulmány részletes morfológiai elemzést nyújt Andrij Ljubka kortárs ukrán író «МУР» [„Egy kis ukrán regény”] című művében előforduló pejoratív szókincs használatáról. A pejoratív kifejezések, mint érzelmileg telített nyelvi egységek, fontos szerepet játszanak az ironikus, szarkasztikus vagy negatív hangvételű szövegek létrehozásában. A kutatás e kifejezések funkcióját vizsgálja az irodalmi diskurzusban, amely segít kiemelni a szereplők egyediségét, érzelmi állapotát és a szociokulturális kontextust. Az elemzés 340 lexikai egységet ölel fel, amelyek közül 303 pejoratívként, 37 pedig invektívaként lett meghatározva. A pejoratívák öt fő morfológiai kategóriába sorolhatók: főnevek, igék, melléknevek, határozószók és melléknévi igenevek. A legnagyobb arányban a főnevek és igék fordulnak elő, amelyek a szereplők jellemzésére és a cselekvések leírására szolgálnak. Például a fifa, hucul és hahal (ukránul: фіфа, гуцулик, хахаль) típusú főnevek a szereplők társadalmi vagy nemi hovatartozását hangsúlyozzák, míg az olyan igék, mint a nalysiatysia („leissza magát”), vydudlyty („felhajtani az italt”), vagy potykatysia („lófrálni”, „ténferegni”) (ukránul: нализатися, видудлити, потикатися) ironikus vagy komikus helyzeteket teremtenek. A tanulmány azt is megállapítja, hogy a regény szövegében számos főnévi szókapcsolat található, amelyek szereplőket jelölnek vagy személyeket, helyzeteket írnak le. A pejoratív igék és igei szerkezetek az evés, a beszéd, a térbeli mozgás, a gondolkodás, az érzelmi állapotok, valamint egyes – különösen intim vagy fiziológiai jellegű – cselekvések negatív értékelését jelölik. Előfordulási gyakoriságuk alapján a leggyakoribbak az evés, a beszéd és a térbeli mozgás folyamatait kifejező igék és igei szerkezetek; ezekből összesen 113-at vizsgált a kutatás. A regényben előforduló melléknevek, határozószók és melléknévi igenevek az emberek jellemzését szolgálják állati tulajdonságokon, külső megjelenésen, illetve lealacsonyító viselkedési normákon keresztül. A tanulmány kiemeli a kontextus jelentőségét a pejoratív kifejezések szövegbeli funkciójának meghatározásában. A kontextuális megközelítés lehetővé teszi a nyelvi egységek és érzelmi töltetük közötti összefüggések figyelembevételét. A pejoratív és invektív szókincs használata kifejezőbbé, életszerűbbé és szatirikusabbá teszi a szöveget. Külön figyelmet kap a morfológiai jegyek szerinti osztályozás, amely bővíti a pejoratív szókincs irodalmi funkcióinak megértését. A kutatás aktualitását az érzelmileg telített szókincs iránti növekvő érdeklődés és annak irodalmi diskurzusbeli szerepe adja. A munka gyakorlati értéke abban rejlik, hogy eredményei felhasználhatók a nyelvészeti és irodalomtudományi kutatásokban, valamint a nyelvoktatásban.
Abstract Facial expressions provide rapid and informative cues about others’ emotional and mental states, playing a critical role in social interactions. However, whether distinct emotional expressions reflect discrete neural processes or arise from varying combinations of underlying affective dimensions such as arousal and valence remains a subject of investigation. Crucially, these accounts need not be mutually exclusive: different brain regions may encode emotional expressions along both categorical and dimensional axes to varying degrees. To test this hypothesis, we probed different brain systems involved in emotion recognition - the ventral attentional network and the cortical limbic system centered on the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) - to investigate the extent to which these networks and their subregions encode emotional facial expressions in terms of (1) perceived arousal, (2) arousal+valence, or (3) six discrete emotion categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pain, sadness). To this aim, we modelled the fMRI signal from perceiving movies of facial emotional expressions with ratings for either arousal, arousal+valence or emotion category using representational similarity analysis (RSA) - a method that aims at assessing which ratings model better represents how the perception of facial expressions is reflected by the fMRI parameter estimates across all the voxels within a brain region. This analysis showed that regions in the vmPFC network, including the subgenual cingulate and the medial OFC, are sensitive to ratings for distinct emotion category and for arousal+valence - significantly more so for the former - while they fail to show sensitivity for arousal ratings alone. In the ventral attentional network, the mid-posterior insula showed a similar profile, while the most posterior and ventral insular show evidence of encoding arousal+valence, but not for emotion category or arousal alone. Our findings support the idea that the vmPFC and the mid-posterior insula play a role in encoding emotion-specific and valence representations beyond general arousal processing. These results contribute to understanding how integrative brain regions support emotional empathy and social cognition.
Acumular objectes és un símptoma que pot estar present en múltiples patologies com el trastorn psicòtic, la depressió, el deteriorament cognitiu, el consum d’alcohol i el trastorn d’acumulació (TA), entre altres. Tot i ser un problema freqüent, l’acumulació d’objectes és una conducta amb poca representació en la literatura científica. A més, la majoria d’estudis provenen de mostres de voluntaris i són pocs els que provenen de la pràctica clínica habitual. La tesi consta de 2 estudis de pacients extrets de la pràctica clínica habitual. Per valorar la gravetat de l’acumulació s’ha utilitzat l’escala Clutter Image Rating (CIR). Es van incloure en els estudis aquells individus amb una puntuació de l’escala CIR >= 4, que és la que es considera que és clínicament significativa. El primer dels estudis va incloure 243 subjectes i descriu que la conducta d’acumulació sovint passa desapercebuda en les seves etapes inicials, amb un retard mitjà en la seva detecció d’uns 10 anys. Tots els subjectes inclosos en aquest estudi presentaven acumulació greu i múltiples complicacions per acumulació, fins i tot aquells que no complien els criteris diagnòstics per a TA. El TA va ser el diagnòstic més comú en el 48,1% dels pacients. Els pacients en els quals l’acumulació era deguda a patologies diferents del TA, sovint tenien trastorn per consum d’alcohol. El segon estudi consta de 214 individus amb acumulació clínicament significativa (CIR >=4) seguits durant 2 anys. En aquest estudi es van avaluar i comparar tres enfocaments diferents per a la gestió de l’acumulació en pacients no col·laboradors: (1) enfocament de gestió de casos amb personal a temps complet i parcial, (2) enfocament de gestió de casos basat en la col·laboració en xarxa interprofessional i (3) atenció rutinària de serveis socials sense gestió específica d’acumulació dirigida per un treballador social. Es va aconseguir la resolució en el 84,5%, 36,4% i 36,6% dels casos gestionats per les estratègies (1), (2) i (3), respectivament. L’estudi conclou que la gestió de casos amb un equip a temps complet va ser la més efectiva per resoldre l’acumulació severa en pacients no voluntaris, suggerint que centralitzar la gestió de casos en un equip de professionals especialitzats i autònoms podria ser la millor estratègia per resoldre l’acumulació clínicament significativa en pacients no col·laboradors.
Introduction Researchers working in the field of cognitive aging frequently encounter highly motivated yet nervous older participants during data collection in the laboratory. Such anecdotal experiences raise the question of whether the affective or physiological response of older participants to psychological laboratory experiments differs to that of young adults, who might be less motivated but also less nervous, as they may be more used to the environment and to learning and memory tests. Methods In the present study, we collected saliva samples and subjective affective ratings during an EEG experiment on memory, and at home, in young and older adults, while also taking into account sex effects. Results There was no significant interaction involving time point (laboratory vs. at home) and age group. However, across both time points older males showed significantly higher cortisol-levels than older females, while there was no difference for younger males and females. The trajectories in cortisol levels throughout the session, especially around the memory task, differed by age: While there was a decrease in cortisol levels for younger adults from before to after the memory task, we did not observe such a decrease in older participants. There were few age differences in alpha-amylase or negative affect. However, older adults showed higher ratings of positive affect than younger participants. Importantly, lower cortisol levels before the memory task were associated with higher associative memory performance for older adults. Discussion Affective reactions to psychological laboratory tasks may hence be an important factor to consider in psychological experiments in the field of cognitive aging.
International audience
Lexical Semantic Change (LSC) provides insight into cultural and social dynamics. Yet, the validity of methods for measuring different kinds of LSC remains unestablished due to the absence of historical benchmark datasets. To address this gap, we propose LSC-Eval, a novel three-stage general-purpose evaluation framework to: (1) develop a scalable methodology for generating synthetic datasets that simulate theory-driven LSC using In-Context Learning and a lexical database; (2) use these datasets to evaluate the sensitivity of computational methods to synthetic change; and (3) assess their suitability for detecting change in specific dimensions and domains. We apply LSC-Eval to simulate changes along the Sentiment, Intensity, and Breadth (SIB) dimensions, as defined in the SIBling framework, using examples from psychology. We then evaluate the ability of selected methods to detect these controlled interventions. Our findings validate the use of synthetic benchmarks, demonstrate that tailored methods effectively detect changes along SIB dimensions, and reveal that a state-of-the-art LSC model faces challenges in detecting affective dimensions of LSC. LSC-Eval offers a valuable tool for dimension- and domain-specific benchmarking of LSC methods, with particular relevance to the social sciences.
Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία περιγράφει την ανάπτυξη και επέκταση μίας διαδικτυακής γλωσσολογικής βάσης δεδομένων (EMU-SDMS/EMU-WebApp) ικανήςνα υποστηρίζει πολυεπίπεδες γλωσσικές επισημειώσεις και αναζητήσεις σε αρχεία ήχου(wav), βίντεο, εικόνων και PDF.Ο χρήστης μπορεί να εισάγει μεταδεδομένα και επισημειώσεις είτε σε υπάρχοντααρχεία που φιλοξενούνται στη βάση, είτε να ανεβάσει τα δικά του. Οι επισημειώσειςμπορεί να περιλαμβάνουν επίπεδα, ομιλητές, μορφολογικές–φωνητικές ετικέτες,σχολιασμό λέξεων/συμβόλων/κινήσεων, ορθογραφική μεταγραφή, κλπ. Όλες οιεπισημειώσεις αποθηκεύονται σε αρχεία _annot.json σε κατάλογο emuDBrepo, ενώ ταπρωτογενή δεδομένα και τα μεταδεδομένα, διαχειρίζονται από MongoDB (GridFS)μέσω Node.js/Express.Το σύστημα παρέχει πολλά επίπεδα εξουσιοδότησης (επιστημονικός υπεύθυνος,διαχειριστής, ερευνητής, απλός χρήστης). Υλοποιήθηκε σύνθετη μηχανή αναζήτησηςπου συνδυάζει φίλτρα μεταδεδομένων και επισημειώσεων, επιτρέποντας την εξαγωγήκαι ομαδοποίηση των σχετικών τμημάτων ήχου, κειμένου ή εικόνας. Η διεπαφή έχεισχεδιαστεί σε AngularJS, προσφέροντας ευέλικτες λειτουργίες συνεργασίας μεεργαλεία επεξεργασίας ομιλίας και φυσικής γλώσσας.
This study reviews the English language test of Singapore’s Primary School Leaving Examination, a high-stakes national assessment taken annually by nearly all primary six students for secondary school placement. Given the test’s importance in shaping students’ academic pathways and recent format changes, it is crucial to evaluate its validity, specifically its ability to provide accurate and fair assessments of students’ English language proficiency and academic readiness. The review outlines the test’s educational and policy context, followed by a description of the latest formats for both the English language and foundation English language versions. The analysis focuses on core dimensions of test validity, including content representativeness, construct validity, criterion-related validity (concurrent and predictive), and reliability (inter-rater reliability and internal consistency). Drawing on official documents and limited empirical studies, the review finds moderate improvements in content representativeness and construct validity. However, both longstanding and emerging concerns (e.g., the exclusion of local linguistic norms and genre scope) indicate that key limitations remain. While predictive validity, inter-rater reliability, and internal consistency appear supported, empirical research remains sparse across all reviewed test qualities, particularly in concurrent validity. The review integrates identified research gaps and proposes inquiry directions to inform future test development and policy adaptation. Strengthening the evidence base is essential for ensuring a valid, reliable, and equitable assessment system in Singapore’s primary education landscape.
Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is a fundamental task in Natural Language Processing (NLP), addressing the challenge of identifying correct word meanings in context. This task is particularly complex for morphologically rich and resource-limited languages like Hindi, which exhibit significant lexical ambiguity compounded by limited availability of annotated corpora. To address these challenges, we propose a supervised approach combining the multilingual BERT model (mBERT) with Hindi WordNet as a structured lexical resource. Using few-shot learning, we fine-tune mBERT on a dataset constructed from Hindi WordNet to disambiguate contextually ambiguous words across four parts of speech (POS): nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Experiments on standard Hindi WSD benchmarks demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms traditional rule-based and embedding-based approaches, achieving 96.48% accuracy—an approximate 3% improvement over the strongest baseline. These results validate the effectiveness of integrating contextualized embeddings from pre-trained language models with structured lexical databases, highlighting the promise of hybrid techniques for advancing WSD in low-resource languages and providing a framework applicable to other morphologically complex languages with similar resource constraints.
The article examines the lexical features of the translated Gospels of Matthew in the Udmurt language based on the vocabulary of fishing. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of research on the lexical features of early translations of biblical texts. During the selection process, we identified the following lexemes related to fishing: fisherman, boat, net, seine, and line. A detailed analysis of the original and translated texts revealed that each of these lexemes has its own specific features in terms of conveying semantic meanings. This is especially evident in cases of translation of the meanings of the words net (δίκτυον) and seine (σαγήνη) into Udmurt, due to the dialect affiliation of both translators and intended recipients, as well as the lack of a codified literary norm before the 1930s. The modern translation made by M.G. Atamanov is an optimal example of translating fishing vocabulary into the Udmurt language.
In the modern information space, announcements occupy a special place, as they represent one of the most immediate means of conveying socially significant information.Brevity, clarity, and imperativeness make this genre an effective tool for influencing public consciousness.At the same time, announcements belong to a marginal genre of the formal and publicistic styles of speech, which determines their specificity and increases the requirements for translation.When rendering such texts, translators face a number of difficulties: they need not only to preserve the content but also to adapt the message in accordance with the linguistic and cultural norms of the Ukrainian language.In the first warning announcement, the subject "we" was omitted, since in the Ukrainian official style the focus is placed primarily on the event itself rather than on the person who has experienced it.The verb "experience" was contextually substituted with the equivalent, which more adequately conveys the meaning within the given context.The negative construction in the fourth sentence was rendered through an impersonal verb form ending in -.In the last sentence, we selected the most appropriate equivalent for the word "instruction" from several possible options (,, ).In addition, the pronoun was added to clarify the addressee of the action.(1) ATTENTION!We have just experienced an earthquake.Stay away from perimeter windows.DO NOT USE ELEVATORS.Please remain calm, stay in place and wait for further instructions [2].-!...,,.In the first sentence of the second example, we rendered the construction "one cough, one sneeze" in a generalised way as by eliminating repetition.This option is more natural for Ukrainian discourse and does not distort the meaning.Moreover, an extra lexical component was introduced -the word, which is not explicitly present in the original (the pronoun "it" was used).Finally, we
The article deals with the issue of translating Ukrainian euphemisms and dysphemisms into Korean within the framework of film subtitling. The relevance of the study is driven by the growing need for effective intercultural communication and the increasing interest in Ukrainian culture and cinema among Korean audiences. Euphemisms and dysphemisms play a vital role in artistic discourse, as they carry emotional and cultural connotations. These linguistic units not only contribute to the character development but also reflect national identity, elements of folklore, taboos, and societal values. Translating such expressions presents particular challenges in the context of subtitling, where it is essential to convey not only the core meaning of the utterance but also its communicative purpose within a limited format that aligns with both timing and on-screen visuals.The material for analysis was the Ukrainian historical drama Dovbush (2023) and its Korean subtitles. Based on specific dialogue examples, the study explores various translation strategies, among which communicative translation with modulation, functional substitution, literal translation, and cultural adaptation proved to be the most productive. The article examines the effectiveness of each approach and identifies the difficulties that arise due to cultural differences, lexical taboos, religious norms, and the stylistic characteristics of the Korean language. The findings suggest that the most effective method for rendering Ukrainian euphemisms and dysphemisms into Korean is communicative translation with modulation. This strategy, grounded in cultural awareness of the target audience, enables the preservation of both the semantic content and the emotional-stylistic tone of the original expression.
This article explores the stylistic and linguistic peculiarities of gender-based proverbs in the Uzbek language, emphasizing their cultural, communicative, and aesthetic dimensions. Proverbs reflecting gender relationships have been an essential part of the national linguistic worldview, encoding social norms, values, and the perception of men and women in society. Through the lens of stylistics, this research investigates how lexical, metaphorical, and syntactic features convey gender meanings. The study draws upon comparative examples from English, Russian, and Turkic proverb traditions to highlight universal and culture-specific aspects. The findings reveal that gender-based proverbs function as both linguistic art and ideological instruments that reflect and reproduce gender identities across generations. Keywords: gender linguistics, stylistic features, proverbs, figurative language, national mentality, linguistic worldview, gender stereotypes, metaphor
The article discusses the reasons for the development of language and the trends in language changes that are characteristic of the modern world. Within the context of global social development, the discursive topic of feminizing professional activity is reflected, which is one of the main interests of this publication. The aim of the research is to determine the key driving forces influencing the process of language change, as well as to study feminized nouns as part of the lexicon that is only partially accepted by society today, while changes occurring in the world bring about a demand for incorporating more female professional terms into the language. The article formulates the main linguistic and communication trends characteristic of our time: the desire for brevity and information content, changing priorities in communication, altered expression of emotions, etc. Negative and positive aspects of the functioning of feminatives are considered, taking into account the identified realities. The relevance of the topic discussed in the article is beyond doubt, as the issue of feminized nouns remains one of the most discussed in linguistics. The results of the study lead to conclusions about the position of feminized nouns in modern linguistic reality, in particular, that the emergence of female professional terms is a natural consequence of the changes occurring in studied languages. Feminized nouns become a sought-after part of the language, fulfill important functions, respond to societal demands, and reflect the modern reality. Some of them have a long history, while others are in the stage of formation. For example, they exist in colloquial language in the form of stems with various feminizing suffixes. Discussions on the legitimacy of a particular colloquial form of feminative cannot be suppressed by imposing norms from competent organizations, as the formation, trajectory, and demand for these lexical units can vary significantly in different linguistic systems. The theoretical and practical significance of this work is determined by the growing interest in gender studies in language in recent times, where it can be beneficial to anyone interested in this article.
The linguistic features of the Uzbek language - complex agglutinative morphology, free word order, and limited resources - necessitate a specialized approach and thorough research in the application of morphological and syntactic methods. Within the framework of the study, morphological analysis methods and syntactic analysis methods are reviewed based on scientific sources. Each section presents the existing advantages and disadvantages, experience of their use in the Uzbek language, as well as a comparative analysis with foreign languages. Rule-based methods, statistical models (HMM, CRF, etc.), Neural network-based approaches (BiLSTM-CRF, seq2seq) of morphological analysis in the Uzbek language are discussed, and the results are given in examples and percentages. It is shown that syntactic parsing is implemented using dependency and constituency parsing analysis methods. The issue of building a UD treebank for the Uzbek language with SOV order is considered. The impact of complex morphological structure and free word order in sentences on the construction of parsers is highlighted. As a result of the studied approaches, the issue of building hybrid parsers, integrating them with morphological analysis and assigning grammatical categories of words to the parser is raised. Also, the development of neural constituency parsers based on neural networks and the effectiveness of the results obtained from them are analyzed.
Knowledge distillation (KD) is a widely adopted technique for compressing large models into smaller, more efficient student models that can be deployed on devices with limited computational resources. Among various KD methods, Relational Knowledge Distillation (RKD) improves student performance by aligning relational structures in the feature space, such as pairwise distances and angles. In this work, we propose Quantum Relational Knowledge Distillation (QRKD), which extends RKD by incorporating quantum relational information. Specifically, we map classical features into a Hilbert space, interpret them as quantum states, and compute quantum kernel values to capture richer inter-sample relationships. These quantum-informed relations are then used to guide the distillation process. We evaluate QRKD on both vision and language tasks, including CNNs on MNIST and CIFAR-10, and GPT-2 on WikiText-2, Penn Treebank, and IMDB. Across all benchmarks, QRKD consistently improves student model performance compared to classical RKD. Importantly, both teacher and student models remain classical and deployable on standard hardware, with quantum computation required only during training. This work presents the first demonstration of quantum-enhanced knowledge distillation in a fully classical deployment setting.
This paper examines how social media discourse affects the learning of the English language on the tertiary level in Lahore and how informal online communication influences the academic English of students in Lahore. The qualitative design was employed to gather data on the basis of semi-structured interviews with English language learners and teachers. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework was used to conduct thematic analysis on the transcribed data. The results indicate that though social media provides appropriate exposure to vocabulary, pronunciation, and language use in real life, the casualness of linguistic norms has a very strong impact on the students’ academic writing and their communicative accuracy. The participants claimed to use short forms, abbreviations, slang and mixed-language texting on a regular basis, and these transferred to essays and presentations. Other themes were distraction and a lack of studying discipline, the inability to stick to the formal register, and the misunderstanding of words acquired in unconfirmed online situations. Teachers also reported on the same lines, as they observed poor writing standards in academic writing and increased dependence on social-media-driven language patterns. Pedagogical mechanisms to counteract these effects were also determined in the study with the focus being on register awareness, purposeful digital task integration, and curriculum modernization. On the whole, the study has determined that the power of social media is twofold, both positive when moderated and negative when uncontrolled and recommends that informed teaching and learning methods are needed to help students balance between informal online communication and formal academic language.
This article examines how Instagram captions posted by Malaysian Muslim women’s fashion brands can serve as pedagogical resources in language education. It explores how code-switching between Malay and English reflects Malaysia’s sociolinguistic landscape and creates culturally grounded opportunities for student learning. Data is drawn from captions by four prominent brands, which are known for appealing to modern Muslim women through modest fashion in Malaysia. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the study focuses on lexical choices and how language constructs identity, normalises hybrid expression, and reinforces persuasive messaging. The analysis of captions and hashtags shows how digital discourse encodes Islamic values, projects femininity, and appeals to diverse audiences. Findings suggest that these captions mirror the everyday bilingual practices of many Malaysian students and represent a rich source of culturally meaningful communication. Instagram thus functions both as a branding platform and a discursive space that embraces hybrid language use, which can be integrated into classrooms to support critical literacy and awareness of local communicative norms. The article argues that students can learn to read, reflect on, and produce texts that affirm their multilingual identities while engaging with code-switching in purposeful and informed ways.
This repository contains data accompanying the publication "Auditory localization and subjective assessment of autonomous cleaning robot sounds: A VR experiment on speed, operating mode and alerting signals", submitted for review to the Acta Acustica. The dataset contains: Audio and video material Stimuli consisting of robot recordings under all evaluated conditions (0.3 m/s and 0.8 m/s speed, with and without cleaning, with and without noise AVAS or multi-tone AVAS, both with and without added amplitude modulation). All sounds were exported as 32-bit float wav files; i.e., reading the files into Matlab with audioread results in calibrated Pa values. The files uploaded here were used as source signals in the auralization, assuming a distance of 1 m. The final binaural stimuli were rendered by TASCAR and include an attenuation corresponding to the simulated 7 m distance. 30cms_cleaning_noAVAS.wav 30cms_noCleaning_multiTone.wav 30cms_noCleaning_multiToneAM.wav 30cms_noCleaning_noAVAS.wav 30cms_noCleaning_noise.wav 30cms_noCleaning_noiseAM.wav 80cms_cleaning_noAVAS.wav 80cms_noCleaning_multiTone.wav 80cms_noCleaning_multiToneAM.wav 80cms_noCleaning_noAVAS.wav 80cms_noCleaning_noise.wav 80cms_noCleaning_noiseAM.wav ambienceNoise.wav Excerpt of background noise played back during the experiment. localizationTaskDemo.mp4 Participant POV recording of localization task. This recording was done with a fixed head position, in the actual experiment participants were turning their heads freely. Experiment results and analysis localizationData.csv Table containing the mean and standard deviation of absolute localization error, aggregated for each participant and stimulus. subjectiveData.csv Table containing mean and z-scored annoyance, arousal, trust, and valence ratings for each participant and stimulus. stimuliAnalysis.csv Table containing results of level, loudness, sharpness, roughness, tonality, fluctuation strength, and impulsiveness analysis for all stimuli.
Multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable performance across various languages; however, they often include significantly less data for low-resource languages such as Urdu compared to high-resource languages like English. To assess the linguistic knowledge of LLMs in Urdu, we present the Urdu Benchmark of Linguistic Minimal Pairs (UrBLiMP) i.e. pairs of minimally different sentences that contrast in grammatical acceptability. UrBLiMP comprises 5,696 minimal pairs targeting ten core syntactic phenomena, carefully curated using the Urdu Treebank and diverse Urdu text corpora. A human evaluation of UrBLiMP annotations yielded a 96.10% inter-annotator agreement, confirming the reliability of the dataset. We evaluate twenty multilingual LLMs on UrBLiMP, revealing significant variation in performance across linguistic phenomena. While LLaMA-3-70B achieves the highest average accuracy (94.73%), its performance is statistically comparable to other top models such as Gemma-3-27B-PT. These findings highlight both the potential and the limitations of current multilingual LLMs in capturing fine-grained syntactic knowledge in low-resource languages.
In this exploratory study, we seek to identify the predictors of repetition or lexical variety in the translation of English reporting verbs into Russian. Using a sample of 20 literary novels from the InterCorp corpus (v.15), we fitted multiple negative binomial regression models with a random intercept. The goal was to assess how selected predictor variables—namely, the frequency of a source-text verb, its number of senses, semantic type, length in characters, date of translation, and translator—affect the response variable: the number of Russian target-text reporting verbs an English source-text (ST) reporting verb is translated into. The findings showed that the semantic category of a ST reporting verb, its frequency and translation date as well as the translator as a random intercept have the largest individual contributions to explaining the proportion of variation in the response variable. More precisely, the model allows us to explain 73% of the variation (per conditional r-squared) in the number of distinct target text (TT) reporting verb types a ST verb is translated into. Viewed in the context of prevailing stylistic norms in Russian, the findings offer an attempt at explanation for the translator’s choices in rendering recurring reporting verbs following dialogues, which play an important stylistic effect in literary texts.
Abstract This study investigates the ecopragmatic roles of insect lexicons in Penginyongan parikan, a traditional rhymed couplet from the Banyumas region of Central Java, Indonesia. Drawing on Capone’s concept of pragmeme and Wong’s triple articulation framework, parikan is examined as a culturally situated speech act where linguistic form, meaning, culture, and ecology intersect. Using qualitative participant observation across 16 rural villages, 128 speakers contributed examples of parikan containing insect references. Analysis integrates speech act theory, ecopragmatics, and ethnolinguistic perspectives. Findings reveal that insect lexicons serve ten illocutionary functions – including stating, asserting, lamenting, and flirting – while embedding ecological knowledge and social norms. Insects such as kinjeng (dragonfly), buli (cicada), ampal (beetle), and coro (cockroach) operate across three interconnected levels: ecological (species traits and environmental context), cultural-symbolic (moral values, social etiquette), and linguistic-aesthetic (rhyme, rhythm, mnemonic appeal). These eco-pragmemes enable indirect communication that preserves social harmony, aligns with Javanese tata krama (politeness), and sustains environmental literacy. The study shows how parikan transforms everyday ecological references into culturally intelligible metaphors, facilitating emotional expression, social negotiation, and moral instruction without direct confrontation. By preserving insect nomenclature in poetic discourse, Banyumas communities maintain an oral archive of ecological observation, despite environmental change and lexical attrition. This work contributes to pragmatics by expanding the typology of pragmemes to include environmental encoding, and to ecolinguistics by demonstrating how poetic tradition functions as a medium for ecological knowledge transmission and cultural resilience.
Social networks are a valuable object of investigation in historical sociolinguistics, as they can contribute both to the onset of change and to the maintenance of linguistic norms. However, their characteristics make them complex to analyse, as their intrinsic variability may hinder the identification of phenomena that span different networks across time and space. This chapter is focused on Late Modern English materials, to present new resources through which network contiguities can be studied; this is the case, for instance, with the exchanges of emigrants, political activists, scholars and business correspondents. After addressing a few methodological issues, the chapter presents an overview of the materials at hand and outlines how networks and coalitions have had an impact, not only on the usage of participants (as shown in recent studies) but also on how language has been perceived, described and codified.
В рамках современных лингвистических исследований особое внимание уделяется культурным и социолингвистическим аспектам изучения языка, что делает анализ лексико-фразеологических единиц в учебных материалах по русскому языку как иностранному весьма значимым. Исследование того, как языковые средства создают образ русскоязычного человека, способствует более глубокому пониманию взаимосвязи между языковыми структурами и культурными нормами. В данной статье рассматривается, каким образом используются лексико-фразеологические средства в учебниках русского языка как иностранного (РКИ) для создания образа русского человека. Материалом исследования послужили текстовые фрагменты учебных пособий, которые представляют эмпирическую базу для анализа. Для формирования эмпирической базы исследования применялся метод лексико-фразеологического анализа, позволяющего выявить, как различные языковые единицы участвуют в построении культурных и социокультурных концептов. В исследовании используется прием контент-анализа и семантического исследования, что позволяет систематизировать и интерпретировать фразеологические и лексические единицы, отражающие представления о русском человеке. В работе отмечены характерные для изучаемых текстов языковые средства, которые демонстрируют как стереотипные, так и многогранные образы. Характерно, что анализ единиц подтверждает теоретическую модель о влиянии фразеологизмов на восприятие культурных стереотипов. Ученые отмечают, что фразеологические конструкции в учебниках не только передают информацию о культурных и социокультурных особенностях, но и формируют у учащихся когнитивные схемы, которые могут как способствовать более глубокому пониманию культурных реалий, так и укреплять упрощенные или искаженные образы. В текстах учебников РКИ говорится о различных аспектах русской жизни, таких как традиции, быт и социальные нормы, что позволяет формировать у студентов более полное представление о носителях языка. Результаты исследования показывают, что лексико-фразеологические средства в учебниках РКИ служат не только для передачи языковой информации, но и для создания когнитивных и культурных конструкций, которые формируют представления о русском человеке у иностранных студентов. Следовательно, статья демонстрирует, как теоретические подходы к анализу языковых средств помогают раскрыть механизм формирования образа русского человека в учебниках РКИ, подчеркивая важность лексико-фразеологических конструкций в процессах культурной социализации и межкультурного понимания. Contemporary linguistic research highlights the significance of cultural and sociolinguistic aspects in language study, making the analysis of lexical-phraseological means in Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) textbooks particularly relevant. Examining how linguistic means shape the image of a Russian person allows for a deeper understanding of the interaction between linguistic structures and cultural representations. This article investigates how lexical-phraseological means are used in RFL textbooks to construct the image of a Russian person. The study uses text fragments from educational materials as the empirical basis for analysis. The empirical base was developed through lexical-phraseological analysis, which reveals how various linguistic units contribute to the construction of cultural and sociocultural concepts. The research employs content analysis and semantic study techniques to systematize and interpret phraseological and lexical units reflecting perceptions of a Russian person. The study identifies linguistic means characteristic of the examined texts, demonstrating both stereotypical and multifaceted images. Notably, the analysis supports the theoretical model concerning the influence of phraseological units on the perception of cultural stereotypes. Researchers note that phraseological constructions in textbooks not only convey information about cultural and sociocultural features but also shape cognitive schemas in learners, which can either promote a deeper understanding of cultural realities or reinforce simplified or distorted images. RFL textbooks address various aspects of Russian life, such as traditions, daily life, and social norms, allowing students to develop a more comprehensive understanding of native speakers. The results show that lexical-phraseological means in RFL textbooks serve not only to convey linguistic information but also to create cognitive and cultural constructs that shape foreign students’ perceptions of a Russian person. Therefore, the article demonstrates how theoretical approaches to analyzing linguistic means help reveal the mechanism of constructing the image of a Russian person in RFL textbooks, emphasizing the importance of lexical-phraseological constructions in cultural socialization and intercultural understanding.
This study investigates the process of vernacularization in the Gorontalo language translation of the Qur’an published by the Gorontalo Regional Government. Situated within the broader academic debate on postcolonial and decolonial Islamic hermeneutics, the research addresses how local languages and cultural frameworks participate in shaping religious meaning and resisting Arab-centric epistemic authority. Employing a qualitative methodology with a library research approach, the study utilizes descriptive analysis to examine textual elements in the translation. The findings reveal three major categories of local cultural integration: (1) lexical absorption—Arabic-derived terms adapted into Gorontalo, such as na'ale, aba/baaba, helidu, and sap; (2) linguistic politeness—refined expressions like waatia, yo'i, ti, and te that reflect local norms of respect; and (3) cultural expressions—idioms and metaphors such as Tabia, Ta ilahula, and Dulahu momooli, which encode Gorontalo cosmology and spiritual values. Theoretically, this research contributes to the discourse on vernacular Qur’anic interpretation by demonstrating that translation is a culturally embedded and ideologically charged act. It affirms the significance of local hermeneutics in constructing religious knowledge and challenges epistemic centralization by legitimizing vernacular voices within Islamic interpretive traditions.
Lexical semantic norms characterize each lexical concept in terms of a set of semantic features for the words of a language. They provide essential resources for behavioral, computational, and neuro-cognitive studies of language and human cognition. Recent research advocate for the need for cognitively motivated feature sets, arguing that semantic representations grounded in human cognition can facilitate cross-linguistic modeling and even enable the prediction of a word’s semantic features based on its translation in another language. In this study, we present a new dataset of brain-based, Binder-style semantic norms for Chinese. Using the corresponding English dataset and the representational power of multilingual language models, we conduct systematic experiments on semantic norm prediction both within and across languages. We evaluate monolingual and English-Chinese cross-lingual norm prediction using two different methods: embedding-based regression vs. prompting with large language models. Our results show that bidirectional models from the BERT family and GPT-4 achieve a good level of accuracy, with moderate-to-high correlations with human ratings. Notably, in the cross-lingual setting, the best and the worst predicted features align with the higher and lower end of levels of human agreement when comparing norms of words between translated words. Our results support a novel computational approach for supplementing and expanding cognitive semantic norms, highlighting the potential of language models to bridge cross-linguistic semantic representations.
This study explores the syntactic network characteristics of English e-commerce live-streaming discourse by employing a syntactic treebank and syntactic complex network analysis. The main findings are: (1) The syntactic network of English e-commerce live-streaming discourse exhibits small-world and scale-free properties, which are hallmark traits of complex networks. (2) The central nodes of the network are be, I, and the, with be serving as the most central node, while I and the act as local central nodes. (3) The central node be demonstrates both strong centrifugal and centripetal forces. Its centrifugal force is most frequently associated with subject relations and adjective complements, while its centripetal force is characterized by auxiliary and clausal complements. These findings indicate that the syntactic structure of English e-commerce live-streaming discourse is highly robust. This robustness underscores the discourse’s functional purpose: to convey information clearly while engaging users through personalization and specificity. Furthermore, the study highlights the critical role of be in attributive and descriptive constructions. Overall, this research provides insights into the syntactic organization of e-commerce discourse and demonstrates the effectiveness of complex network analysis in linguistic studies.
Emojis are widely used in digital communication to convey emotional cues alongside text, yet their impact on word-level reading within sentence contexts remains unclear. We conducted an eye-tracking experiment to examine how positive (e.g., 🤩) versus neutral (e.g., 🧑🦳) face emojis embedded mid-sentence in otherwise neutral sentences affect the processing of the preceding and following words (e.g., positive “Did you change your hair 🤩 something is different” vs. neutral “Did you change your hair 🧑🦳 something is different”). We observed robust parafoveal-on-foveal (PoF) effects on the n–1 word, with longer fixations in first-fixation, gaze duration, and single-fixation measures when the parafoveal emoji was positive rather than neutral. This valence effect persisted even after accounting for mislocated fixations, suggesting that positive emotional content genuinely modulates foveal word processing. In contrast, the n+1 word showed no valence-based facilitation, implying that the influence of a positive mid-sentence emoji does not extend to subsequent words in continuous reading. At the sentence level, positive emojis were associated with faster overall reading times and higher valence ratings, although dashed (no-emoji) sentences in the pre-test were rated more positively than emojified versions in the experiment. These findings reinforce models of eye movement control that allow parallel processing of foveal and parafoveal information, highlighting how affective face emojis can shape real-time reading dynamics.
Large language models (LLMs) have reignited debate about whether machines without minds or intentions can genuinely participate in linguistic practice. Critics portray them as ‘stochastic parrots’ that manipulate form without meaning, whereas defenders emphasize their impressive functional capacities. This paper argues that these disputes conflate distinct dimensions of meaning and agency. I extend Huw Price’s distinction between i-representation and e-representation (roughly, inferential versus environment-tracking types of representation) by differentiating physical e-representation—such as a fuel gauge, grounded in causal coupling—from symbolic e-representation, exemplified in language and mediated by agents. This refinement clarifies what is at issue: LLMs clearly display i-representational competence through their participation in inferentially structured discourse. Whether their outputs possess symbolic e-representational content, however, is contested and framework-relative. It depends on whether agent-mediated uptake is taken to suffice, or whether additional grounding conditions—such as intentions, causal connections, or proper functions—are required. I further distinguish norm-sensitivity—the capacity to track and adapt to linguistic norms, which grounds their i-representational competence—from norm-responsibility, the reflexive capacity to own commitments and bear accountability. Technical analysis of LLM architectures shows that they exhibit advanced norm-sensitivity through statistical learning but entirely lack norm-responsibility. LLMs thus occupy a distinctive position: they are genuine functional participants in linguistic practices, yet fall short of the reflexive agency characteristic of responsible speakers.
Press releases represent a business genre that is widely used by organisations to communicate externally with a range of stakeholders including journalists, investors and the general public. The multipurpose nature of press releases (Bremner 2014) has led to their characterisation as a complex hybrid genre (Catenaccio 2008) with informational, persuasive and promotional communicative purposes. Press releases are also marked by what Jacobs (2006: 201) calls “preformulation”, i.e. “a news style that requires little or no reworking on the part of the journalists who receive” them (e.g. third person self-reference, self-quotation). An examination of the treatment of press releases in a series of business communication textbooks and guidebooks (e.g. Thill & Bovée 2022, Chan 2020, Kennedy 2014) reveals that, while information and guidance about the move structure, format and layout of press releases are generally provided, the actual language typically used in these texts tends to be largely neglected. This paper explores the extent to which findings from corpus-driven research into the language of press releases could be used to inform learning/teaching business communication materials to raise the students’ awareness of some of the key linguistic features associated with press releases written in English. This exploration is based both on an analysis of recurrent sequences of words extracted from a one-million-word corpus of corporate press releases in English issued in by Fortune 500 companies (De Cock and Granger 2021) and on more recent phraseological research conducted within the framework of this paper. Recurrent sequences of words provide a useful starting point to access and identify the preferred ways of saying or of writing things in specific genres and the paper presents and discusses concrete examples of Data-Driven Learning (DDL) activities that could help business communication students develop their press release writing knowledge. References Bremner, S. (2014). ‘Genres and processes in the PR industry: Behind the scenes with an intern writer’. International Journal of Business Communication 51(3), 259-278. Catenaccio, P. (2008). ‘Press releases as a hybrid genre: Addressing the informational/promotional conundrum’. Pragmatics, 18(1), 9-31. Chan, M. (2020). English for Business Communication. Routledge. De Cock, S. & Granger, S. (2021). ‘Stance in press releases versus business news: a lexical bundle approach’. Text & Talk 41(5-6), 691-713. Jacobs, G. (2006). ‘The dos and don’ts of writing press releases (and how learners act upon them)’. In P. Gillaerts & P.Shaw (eds), The Map and the Landscape: Norms and Practices in Genre, 199-218. Bern: Peter Lang. Kennedy, M. (2014). Beginner’s Guide to Writing Powerful Press Releases: Secrets the Pros Use to Command Media Attention. eReleases. Thill, J. V. & Bovée, C. L. (2022). Excellence in Business Communication (13th ed.). Pearson Education Limited.
The nouns of our language refer to either concrete entities (like a table) or abstract concepts (like justice or love), and cognitive psychology has established that concreteness influences how words are processed. Accordingly, understanding how concreteness is represented in our mind and brain is a central question in psychology, neuroscience, and computational linguistics. While the advent of powerful language models has allowed for quantitative inquiries into the nature of semantic representations, it remains largely underexplored how they represent concreteness. Here, we used behavioral judgments to estimate semantic distances implicitly used by humans, for a set of carefully selected abstract and concrete nouns. Using Representational Similarity Analysis, we find that the implicit representational space of participants and the semantic representations of language models are significantly aligned. We also find that both representational spaces are implicitly aligned to an explicit representation of concreteness, which was obtained from our participants using an additional concreteness rating task. Importantly, using ablation experiments, we demonstrate that the human-to-model alignment is substantially driven by concreteness, but not by other important word characteristics established in psycholinguistics. These results indicate that humans and language models converge on the concreteness dimension, but not on other dimensions.
This article presents an analysis of the most frequent errors in Ukrainian political blogotexts, grounded in the posts of the political blogger, civic activist, and volunteer Serhii Sternenko across the social networks Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and X. Particular attention is devoted to fragments of his online texts that exhibit linguistic deviations and that yield linguo-pragmatic effects or have already become exemplars of precedent phenomena. The selection of a politically oriented blogger is justified by the increased popularity of political blogging in Ukraine since the onset of the full-scale invasion. Overall, the opinion leader demonstrates considerable linguistic competence in text production; nevertheless, his posts contain errors at various linguistic levels. These inaccuracies may result from the time constraints of composing posts, lack of familiarity with specific language norms, or deliberate use of non-standard lexis or constructions for particular communicative aims. The most prevalent are grammatical errors: incorrect noun declension in the genitive case when used with numerals two, three, and four; the use of comparative rather than superlative adjective forms; erroneous formation of the future tense; employment of active present participles; incorrect noun endings in the genitive case; reliance on constructions with passive‐voice verbs followed by nouns in the instrumental case; incorrect formation of toponymic adjectives; improper suffixation for professional designations; and neglect of the vocative case. Additionally, lexical errors occur, including paronym confusion and the use of Russicisms and calqued constructions. Orthographic errors include violations of the “rule of nine,” incorrect spelling of compound nouns and adjectives, and erroneous spelling of proper nouns. Punctuation errors manifest as omitted dashes between the subject and compound nominal predicate, missing commas around parenthetical words, and omitted commas between clauses in complex sentences. Failure to observe the principles of euphony in Ukrainian is also common in Sternenko’s publications. Given that his audience primarily consists of young people, it is important for this opinion leader to maintain high standards of public discourse and to encourage his followers to do the same.
In human life, the prevention of violence, the revival of principles of humane existence, and the creation of a just world for future generations require eliminating inequality between women and men. In this context, comprehensive scientific exploration of the topic becomes increasingly relevant. In contemporary research, the issue of new terms in languages always takes center stage, which is an undeniable fact. This article introduces, for the first time in the scientific community, the term “unisex names”. In the Kazakh language, there is no specific category dedicated solely to gender, and therefore, this topic is not addressed by language norms. Nevertheless, there are elements that consistently manifest in the form of personal names. In Kazakh society, when choosing a name for a child, their gender is taken into account, but there are names that can be given to both boys and girls. This article explores the reasons for studying unisex names in the Kazakh language, their impact on a child's psychology, and their role in the social adaptation of an individual in society. Research on unisex names in the Kazakh language has been systematized, and a comparison with similar forms in other cultures has been conducted. Special attention is given to the structure and creation of lexical-semantic meanings of unisex names in the Kazakh language, and factors influencing the sociocultural adaptation of the personality have been identified. To validate the findings, a survey was conducted using a specifically designed questionnaire.
Arengulist keelepuuet esineb võrdselt üks- ja kakskeelsete laste seas. Kakskeelsetel on aga suurem valediagnoosi risk, kuna kakskeelsete laste veatüübid mittedominantses keeles sarnanevad ükskeelsete keelepuudega laste veatüüpidele. See risk on aktuaalne paljude vene kodukeelega suktsessiivsete kakskeelsete laste jaoks, kes käivad eestikeelses lasteaias. Et toetada keelepuude diagnoosimist, on vaja kakskeelsel valimil normitud teste. Artiklis kirjeldame taolise eestikeelse sõnavaratesti koostamist 4–7-aastastele lastele. Test on välja töötatud rahvusvahelise LITMUS võrgustiku sõnavaratesti põhimõtete ja protokolli alusel. Materjali väljavalimiseks viisime läbi kolm eeluuringut täiskasvanud kõnelejatega ning kaks prooviuuringut lastega. Anname ülevaate ka 2024. aastal läbiviidud normimisuuringu I etapi tulemustest. Tulemuste põhjal võib järeldada, et test on jõukohane nii üks- kui kakskeelsetele lastele, eristab mõlemas rühmas keelepuudega lapsi eakohase arenguga lastest ning sobib koos teiste LITMUS testikomplekti testidega kasutamiseks keelepuude diagnoosimisel ja laste keeleliste oskuste kirjeldamisel. *** "Developing Estonian Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks for identifying DLD in bilingual children" *** Developmental language disorder (DLD) is as prevalent among bilingual as among monolingual children (Calder et al. 2022). However, bilinguals face a greater risk of misdiagnosis, as the error types of typically developing bilinguals in their non-dominant language often resemble those of monolingual children with DLD (Boerma, Blom 2017). With the transition to all-Estonian instruction in Estonian education scheduled for 2024–2030, many more successive Russian-Estonian bilinguals face this risk. Language tests developed for and normed on bilingual populations are necessary for more reliable diagnosis of DLD among bilinguals. In this paper, we describe developing such a vocabulary test for children aged 4–7: the Estonian Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (Haman et al. 2015). The test is designed according to cross-linguistic principles set out by the international working group. To select stimuli for the Estonian test, we conducted three preliminary studies with adult speakers: a picture naming task, subjective age of acquisition survey and a complexity evaluation. To test the material’s suitability for children, two pilot studies with mono- and bilingual children were conducted. Stimuli that contributed less to distinguishing DLD and typically developing children were changed (Labent 2023), and the revised test was then used in a norming study. First results of the norming study indicate the test is suitable for use both with monolingual and bilingual children and distinguishes DLD children from typically developing peers in both groups. A correlation analysis with results from the LITMUS Sentence Repetition Task reveals moderate to strong significant correlations between the two test scores, suggesting the tests complement each other well in describing bilingual children’s language skills and diagnosing DLD.
Importance. Spontaneous public speech has become a modern reality in just over a decade, which explains the insufficient study of this phenomenon and determines the novelty of this study at the current stage of linguistic development. The characteristic of the concept of “linguistic error” using the example of the French language, highlighting the significance of this work in the contemporary intercultural space is given. Research methods. This study describes and analyzes in detail examples of errors, selected using a continuous sampling method from the written public speech of French political figures. The material is based on online resources that provide access to the written public speeches of French politicians and studies conducted in this area by major French print media outlets such as Le Figaro, Le Monde, RTL, and others. Results and Discussion. The research discusses the definitions of linguistic norms, analyzes and identifies the main types of language errors in the written public speech of political figures of the modern French Republic, provides justifications from the point of view of linguistic (the main trends in the development of the language) and extralinguistic factors, which is necessary for understanding the vectors of development of the modern French language, its current normative status and the rules of communication. Conclusion. The appearance of spelling, grammatical and lexical errors in the written speech of politicians may indicate a tolerant attitude of modern French society towards such errors due to their frequency, which allows us to discuss the direction of development of the French language, which, under the influence of English, is beginning to show a tendency towards simplification.