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18265 papers
The intricate interplay between visual perception and emotion determines how waking experience influences mentation through a 'day residue' at once conspicuous yet hard to predict. Here we set out to map the neural sources associated with the visuo-affective processing of the 'day residue' during hypnagogic sleep. To this end, we assessed 28 healthy participants on a combined nap protocol with serial awakenings, pre-sleep stimulation with affective visual images, yoked measures of the semantic similarity between image and imagery reports, affect ratings, estimation of 64-channel EEG sources, and functional connectivity analysis. Overall, low-frequency EEG power was associated with weaker residues, and high-frequency EEG power was associated with stronger residues. The source networks most significantly correlated with imagetic and affective residues were markedly different across wake-sleep states, partially overlapping with the default mode network during N1 for up to 50% and 61%, respectively. The results allowed us to identify neural correlates of the visuo-affective processing of the day's residue, showing that the hypnagogic processing of the waking experience involves complex, dynamic and sequential bi-hemispheric interactions among multiple cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar structures with visual, limbic, optokinetic, and cognitive functions.
Do images in corporate disclosures convey genuine information or merely embellishment?&nbsp; We advance the visual informativeness literature by introducing a framework delineating how images reinforce text and what properties of such reinforcement matter. Our methods apply wherever images and text coexist. We classify reinforcement as substantive or hype — operational or merely evocative. Testing in an image-dense setting (a large sample of U.S. sustainability reports), we find that reinforcing image pages predict expert ratings more strongly than non-reinforcing ones, with the effects amplified by proximity, potency, and sentence importance. Sophisticated raters respond more strongly to substantive than hype reinforcement. PCA-based composite indices provide robust validation, and the vehicle for causal identification within a quasi-experimental setting: TruValue ratings — machine-driven and blind to company-issued images, unlike Refinitiv ratings — reveal no association with images, suggesting that images affect ratings through a human processing channel, not through a machine algorithm that lacks the human-image interaction. <br> <br> This paper was previously circulated under the title: <b>"Going the Distance:" Images in Corporate ESG Reports</b>
BACKGROUND: Lamotrigine has been shown to be effective in the long-term treatment and relapse prevention of depression in bipolar disorder. However, the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying these effects are unclear. We investigated the effects of lamotrigine on a battery of emotional processing tasks in healthy volunteers, previously shown to be sensitive to antidepressant drug action in similar experimental designs. METHODS: Healthy volunteers (n = 36) were randomized in a double-blind design to receive a single dose of placebo or 300 mg lamotrigine. Mood and subjective effects were monitored throughout the study period, and emotional processing was assessed using the Oxford Emotional Test Battery (ETB) 3 hours post-administration. RESULTS: Participants receiving lamotrigine showed increased accurate recall of positive versus negative self-descriptors, compared to those in the placebo group. There were no other significant effects on emotional processing in the ETB, and lamotrigine did not affect ratings of mood or subjective experience. CONCLUSIONS: Lamotrigine did not induce widespread changes in emotional processing. However, there was increased positive bias in emotional memory, similar to the effects of antidepressants reported in previous studies. Further work is needed to assess whether similar effects are seen in the clinical treatment of patients with bipolar disorder and the extent to which this is associated with its clinical action in relapse prevention.
Without social communication, people's daily lives and any of their activities are entirely unimaginable. A specific form of social communication is verbal interaction, despite modern psychological data indicating that 65% of information in communication is conveyed through nonverbal means. Every specific act of verbal communication carries a pragmatic orientation toward the partner involved in the interaction. Verbal communication inherently involves the execution of speech acts, which also includes the use of speech etiquette. In reality, it is a valuable component of any human behavior, significantly influencing the effectiveness of its completion. People need shared knowledge of etiquette, including speech etiquette norms, in the communication process to successfully establish effective communication. Etiquette is primarily a social phenomenon, but it is also a cultural, historical, and psychological one. It inevitably has a linguistic aspect—more specifically, linguistic etiquette, which refers to the set of linguistic norms characteristic of communication in various situations. In specialized literature, there is an opinion that insufficient attention is given to the psychological nature of speech as a specific type of activity. However, it has long been a subject of special study in psycholinguistics (e.g., Austin's theory of speech acts, 1955). According to D. Uznadze’s model of set structure, known as the static model, speech activity is considered an independent behavior, defined by its own autonomous set. It does not matter whether it arises from a necessity within another ongoing behavior or is directly driven by the need for verbal communication. In contrast, the dynamic model of speech activity and, consequently, speech etiquette, allows us to view it as an activity shaped by the need for linguistic communication, i.e., linguistic set. This activity constitutes a significant component of behavior, adapting dynamically to the primary attitude of that behavior. In this model, the tendency for permanent modification is embedded from the outset, eliminating the need for the destruction or reconstruction of sets. It considers both practical and theoretical activities directed toward a common goal as actions integrated into the same behavior, operating based on its fundamental set.
Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) plays a pivotal role in understanding human communication, enabling emotionally intelligent systems, and serving as a fundamental component in the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). However, deploying SER in real-world, spontaneous, and low-resource scenarios remains a significant challenge due to the complexity of emotional expression and the limitations of current speech and language technologies. This thesis investigates the integration of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) into SER, with the goal of enhancing the robustness, scalability, and practical applicability of emotion recognition from spoken language. As a starting point, we explore the interplay between ASR and SER by conducting an in-depth analysis of speech foundation models on emotionally expressive speech, from both acoustic and linguistic perspectives. Our findings uncover inherent limitations of these models: while they achieve strong performance in ASR, they often fail to capture paralinguistic cues essential for emotion recognition, and exhibit emotion-dependent biases. Additionally, we examine how linguistic properties, such as part-of-speech distributions, affective word ratings, and utterance length, interact with ASR performance across different emotion categories. Extensive experiments reveal that ASR errors are not random but follow systematic patterns associated with specific word types and emotional expressions across diverse speaking conditions. To overcome paralinguistic limitations while utilizing the hierarchical encoding capabilities of speech foundation models, we propose a joint training framework that integrates ASR hidden representations and lexical outputs in a hierarchical manner for SER. To mitigate transcription quality issues, we introduce two complementary ASR error correction strategies that require only a small amount of emotional speech data: a Large Language Model (LLM)-based method that refines N-best hypotheses using emotion-specific prompts, and a Sequence-to- Sequence (S2S) model that leverages discrete acoustic units to correct 1-best hypothesis. Both approaches substantially improve the emotional accuracy of ASR transcriptions with low-resource speech data and enhance downstream SER performance. Beyond transcription correction, this thesis introduces robust acoustic-lexical fusion frameworks to handle emotion mismatch across modalities and reduce ASR error propagation. We conduct a comprehensive investigation into cross-modal incongruity and propose incongruityaware fusion strategies that dynamically adapt to modality conflicts, extending solutions beyond SER to include sarcasm and humor detection. Building on this, we develop an ASRii aware, modality-gated fusion mechanism that integrates ASR error correction with dynamic modality selection in a sequential manner. These fusion strategies achieve strong performance on both controlled and real-world datasets, even under partially erroneous conditions (i.e. ASR transcriptions). Finally, to reduce reliance on costly labeled emotion data, we present a novel semi-supervised learning framework based on multi-view pseudo-labeling. By leveraging both acoustic similarity metrics and LLM-based confidence estimation, this approach selects high-quality unlabeled samples to augment training. The proposed framework not only outperforms traditional pseudo-labeling methods for SER but also demonstrates generalizability to speechbased Alzheimer’s dementia detection.
Walking is known to be good for mental and physical health. However, its effects on neural activity remain unclear. To investigate the neural effects of walking, we utilized whole-brain fMRI-based predictive models (“emotion decoders”) for valence and arousal, trained with multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA). Decoder development comprised a discovery phase (model training and internal validation) and a validation phase (external cohort and confirmatory tests). Data collection for the discovery phase is complete; this preregistration specifies the validation-phase acquisition and analyses. In 2024, we completed the fMRI data collection for 32 healthy participants, forming the discovery cohort. In the discovery-phase experiment, participants completed two tasks: an emotional rating task and a one-back task. In the rating task, fMRI data were collected during picture viewing and the emotional rating process. The picture-viewing data period was used to train each valence and arousal neural decoder. Specifically, participants underwent an fMRI paradigm in which they were presented with four types of emotional pictures (pleasant-high arousal; pleasant-calm; unpleasant-high arousal; unpleasant-calm). Following each picture, participants were asked to rate the level of each valence and arousal on a continuous scale of 1 to 100 (from unpleasant [-50] to pleasant [50], and from calm [-50] to arousal [50]). For the brain data analysis, we performed pre-processing of the fMRI data using the SPM default pipeline. Specifically, functional images were realigned to the mean image of the series, slice-time corrected, motion corrected, co-registered to the structural image, normalized to MNI space, and spatially smoothed with a 6-mm FWHM Gaussian kernel. In addition, potential outlier scans were identified from the resulting subject-motion estimates and from BOLD signal indicators using default thresholds in the CONN toolbox preprocessing pipeline (5 standard deviations above the mean in the global BOLD signal change, or framewise displacement values above 0.9 mm). Then, the single-trial first-level fMRI analysis was performed to obtain beta images for each picture rating per participant. We used GLMsingle (Prince et al., 2022) to estimate single-trial beta maps per picture at the individual-subject level. After that, we applied whole-brain MVPA to obtain patterns that predict participants’ valence and arousal ratings from single-trial beta maps for each picture. The brain mask was restricted to the gray matter. For the decoding method, we employed the LASSO-PCR algorithm (Wager et al., 2013), based on individual beta maps for each picture, as features to predict participants’ emotional experience. We used a 10-fold participant cross-validation procedure to evaluate the decoder's performance. In the discovery cohort (N=32), the neural valence and arousal decoders predicted participants’ ratings with mean within-subject trial-wise Pearson correlations exceeding r = 0.45 for valence and r = 0.35 for arousal. Next, participants performed a one-back task on emotional pictures in the fMRI scanner after either walking or reading. We applied the valence and arousal decoders to fMRI data time-locked to picture viewing to obtain decoder-derived neural emotion scores. We then compared these neural emotion scores between the walking and the reading control conditions in a within-subject design. In the walk condition, participants walked on a treadmill at a self-selected comfortable pace. Whereas in the reading control condition, participants read a book while seated. After 20 minutes of walking or reading, participants entered the fMRI scanner. The order of conditions was counterbalanced across participants. During the one-back task, participants viewed a picture at a time and pressed a button when they identified a repetition of an image presented in a previous trial. The procedure ensures that their attention is sustained. To demonstrate the neural effects of walking, we fitted the neural emotion decoder on the fMRI data collected during the picture-viewing period. We obtained and compared the neural emotion score for each walking and reading condition. As a result, we found that decoder-derived neural valence scores for pleasant-high arousal pictures were higher after walking than after reading. A crucial next validation phase for pre-registration will (i) externally evaluate decoder performance and (ii) replicate and extend the findings that walking increases decoder-derived neural valence score relative to reading for pleasant-high arousal pictures. We will acquire fMRI and behavioral data from an independent validation cohort (planned N=30) under a similar experimental paradigm. The validation phase includes a one-back task and a picture-rating task identical to those in the discovery phase. In this phase, the one-back task will be performed initially. The rating task will be used to assess decoder generalization both after walking and after reading conditions (within-subject, counterbalanced). In the discovery cohort, we did not investigate whether subjective evaluations differed between walking and reading conditions, so in the validation cohort, we plan to have participants evaluate under both conditions. Furthermore, we will investigate whether the decoder's predictions hold up even when the same emotional images are shown multiple times. All preprocessing and first-level modeling will follow the analysis pipeline in the discovery phase, yielding single-trial beta maps. The valence and arousal decoders trained by the discovery dataset will be applied to the validation data. We expect that, if the neural emotion decoders in the discovery phase can be generalized to out-of-sample participants, statistically significant prediction-outcome correlations will be observed in the validation phase for individuals in the cohort. Moreover, decoder-derived neural valence scores will be compared between walking and reading conditions, with a focus on pleasant and high-arousal pictures. We expect higher neural pleasure scores and subjective pleasure ratings after walking than after reading, providing robust evidence for a neural effect of walking.
У статті зазначено, що в сучасному глобалізованому світі, де міжкультурна комунікація набуває особливої актуальності, проблема адекватного перекладу ділових паперів постає як одна з ключових у сфері професійного перекладознавства. Зокрема, особливої уваги заслуговують процеси запозичення та калькування в міжмовному трансфері між українською та англійською мовами, оскільки вони суттєво впливають на якість і точність передачі офіційної, юридичної та комерційної інформації. Доведено, що ділова документація є складним і водночас чутливим жанром текстів, що вимагає від перекладача не лише високого рівня володіння мовами, а й глибокого розуміння правових, культурних і лінгвістичних норм обох країн. У цьому контексті особливої ваги набуває питання про доцільність використання запозичень та кальок як перекладацьких стратегій. Наголошено, що запозичення – це процес включення іншомовних елементів у текст без істотної зміни їхньої форми, який часто використовується для збереження термінологічної точності або коли у мові перекладу відсутній адекватний відповідник. Проте не завжди запозичення є виправданими. Іноді їхнє некритичне використання може призводити до плутанини, втрати змісту або стилістичних відхилень, особливо якщо існує усталений український еквівалент. Калькування, у свою чергу, передбачає буквальний або частковий переклад іншомовного вислову з збереженням структури або окремих його компонентів. У діловому перекладі кальки можуть виникати як результат прагнення зберегти формальну відповідність, однак часто вони порушують норми цільової мови. Крім того, перекладач повинен брати до уваги культурно-національні особливості: англомовний юридичний дискурс відзначається своїми лексико-синтаксичними моделями, які часто не мають прямого відповідника в українській мові, і навпаки. Саме тому іноді запозичення або калькування – це не просто перекладацький вибір, а необхідність, продиктована функціональною еквівалентністю. У підсумку вказано, що раціональне використання цих стратегій уможливлює створення точного, зрозумілого й правомірного перекладу, який відповідатиме як формальним вимогам, так і очікуванням реципієнта. The article notes that in today’s globalized world, where intercultural communication is becoming particularly relevant, the problem of adequate translation of business documents is one of the key issues in the fild of professional translation studies. In particular, the processes of borrowing and calquing in interlingual translation between Ukrainian and English deserve special attention, as they signifiantly affct the quality and accuracy of offial, legal and commercial information. It is proved that business documentation is a complex and at the same time sensitive genre of texts that requires not only a high level of language profiiency but also a deep understanding of the legal, cultural and linguistic norms of both countries. In this context, the question of the appropriateness of using borrowings and calques as translation strategies is of particular importance. It is emphasized that borrowing is the process of including foreign language elements into a text without signifiantly changing their form, which is often used to preserve terminological accuracy or when there is no adequate equivalent in the target language. However, borrowings are not always justifid. Sometimes their uncritical use can lead to confusion, loss of meaning, or stylistic deviations, especially if there is an established Ukrainian equivalent. Calculation, in turn, implies a literal or partial translation of a foreign language expression while preserving the structure or its individual components. In business translation, calques may arise as a result of the desire to maintain formal conformity, but they often violate the norms of the target language. In addition, the translator must take into account cultural and national peculiarities: Englishlanguage legal discourse is characterized by its lexical and syntactic models, which often have no direct equivalent in Ukrainian, and vice versa. That is why sometimes borrowing or calquing is not just a translation choice, but a necessity dictated by functional equivalence. The author concludes that the rational use of these strategies makes it possible to create an accurate, understandable and legitimate translation that meets both formal requirements and the expectations of the recipient.
The aim of teaching any foreign language is to ensure that learners are able to communicate freely in that language.The position of English as a means of international communication is strengthening year by year.Creating interest and enthusiasm for learning this language from secondary school onwards can provide strong impetus for students' future academic activities as well as for their integration into the information society.The primary goal in foreign language instruction should be the acquisition of communicative competence.H. Douglas Brown emphasizes this issue as follows: "One of the most important aspects of language learning is not merely the acquisition of its grammatical and lexical forms, but the ability to use these forms to fulfill the communicative function of language.If the mastery of vocabulary and structures does not allow the learner to convey thoughts, express ideas and feelings, or comprehend what is expressed in that language, then the knowledge of language acquired does not fulfill its communicative function".[7, p.189] Vocabulary forms the foundation of a language.It occupies a central position because meaning in communication is conveyed precisely through words.To listen and understand, to read and comprehend, and to communicate both orally and in writing in a foreign language, one must possess an adequate vocabulary stock.Vocabulary plays an essential role in the realization of both receptive skills-reading and listening-and productive skills-speaking and writing.For productive speech activities such as speaking and writing, it is necessary to possess lexical-thematic associations, to combine newly learned words with previously acquired lexical units in order to form correct sentences, to select appropriate words from synonymic and antonymic groups, and to use words in accordance with linguistic norms and the conditions of communication.In receptive activities such as listening and reading, learners must be able to associate the sound and written form of a word with its semantic meaning, to distinguish homonymy, synonymy, and antonymy, to differentiate phonetically or orthographically similar words based on meaning, and to determine meaning through context.[6] In addition to these, learners should also acquire socio-cultural knowledge in the field of vocabulary.This includes the ability to communicate based on speech forms existing in the country of the target language.Moreover, learners should know Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası M. Füzuli adına Əlyazmalar İnstitutu,
In the modern Ukrainian communicative space, speech culture and rhetoric appear as interconnected components that determine the quality, effectiveness, and ethicality of public expression.The rhetorical tradition, integrated with the norms of speech culture, is a powerful tool for influencing the audience's consciousness and emotions, contributing to the effective achievement of communicative goals in various spheres of social life.The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive examination of the relationship between speech culture and rhetorical practice, to define their common and distinctive features, to analyze the rhetorical aspects of speech culture, and to outline the problems and prospects for the development of rhetorical culture in contemporary Ukraine.An interdisciplinary approach combining descriptive, comparative, linguostylistic, and discourse-analytical methods was employed.The study established that speech culture forms the foundation of rhetoric, ensuring adherence to linguistic norms, logicality, structure, expressiveness, and communicative appropriateness of utterances.It was revealed that the rhetorical aspects of speech culture -harmonious combination of form and content, adaptation to the addressee and situation, and the ability to persuade through linguistic means -are key factors in communication effectiveness.The spheres of speech culture implementation were outlined: education, political discourse, journalism, blogging, social networks, legal, pedagogical, and business communication.Attention was drawn to the phenomena of simplification, democratization, and hybridization of styles in modern public speech.A number of problems were identified: the spread of surzhyk (mixed Ukrainian-Russian speech), vulgarization of language, communication standardization, and the decline of ethical standards in public discourse.The conclusions emphasize that the effective development of rhetorical culture in Ukraine is possible through the combination of systematic language education, preservation and adaptation of rhetorical tradition, cultivation of critical thinking, and enhancement of communication ethics.Speech culture, as a component of rhetoric, should be regarded not only as linguistic competence but also as a sociocultural tool influencing the democratization of society, national identity, and the quality of public discourse.
Emotional states are fundamentally embodied, emerging from the dynamic interplay between central neural processing and peripheral physiological adjustments orchestrated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). While ANS outputs like heart rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA) reflect emotional arousal and valence, understanding the precise temporal coordination between brain activity and these peripheral signals is crucial for elucidating brain-body interactions. This study investigates neural-autonomic phase synchrony during the conscious processing of distinct emotional states (positive, negative, neutral) by quantifying the temporal alignment between cortical and physiological rhythms. We employ a multimodal approach, simultaneously recording high-temporal-resolution electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG) for HRV analysis (specifically Root Mean Square of Successive Differences, RMSSD), EDA, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while participants view validated emotional video clips. Our primary analysis quantifies the Phase Locking Value (PLV) between frontal EEG oscillations (Alpha, Beta bands) and continuous signals derived from HRV (reflecting parasympathetic influence) and phasic EDA (reflecting sympathetic influence). EEG channel selection for PLV analysis was informed by task-related hemodynamic activity measured via fNIRS to focus on functionally relevant cortical areas. We hypothesize that PLV, indicating brain-body temporal integration, will be significantly modulated by emotional content compared to neutral conditions. We further expect synchrony strength to correlate with subjective arousal ratings. By examining the phase synchrony between brain signals and ANS-mediated physiological outputs, this research provides novel insights into the dynamic, embodied mechanisms underlying emotional experience. Understanding this temporal binding is critical for models of psychophysiological function and may inform assessments of cognitive load or stress regulation capacity, potentially impacting performance monitoring and optimization in demanding operational environments.
Concreteness and valence ratings are frequently controlled for in psycholinguistic experiments. Associated valence and concreteness effects appear to be well-established phenomena within psycholinguistic research. However, recent studies indicated replication difficulties (e.g., Kousta et al., 2009; Yap & Seow, 2014; Brysbaert et al., 2016; Kousta et al., 2011). Considering that some approaches to valence and concreteness effects such as the Dual Coding Theory or the Affective Priming Approach would suggest that additional embodied information could be responsible for the processing advantage associated with concrete and positive lexical items, individual differences could partially explain why these effects could be found in some studies but not others: For instance, the temperament trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity has been associated with a deeper and more detailed processing of sensory and affective information and could therefore influence how likely the effects could be found in a particular study considering the respective participant sample. Specifically, certain explanations at the lexico-semantic level such as the Dual Coding Theory, the LASS account, and the Affective Priming Approach would suggest stronger valence and concreteness effects in individuals with high Sensory Processing Sensitivity. Other lexico-semantic approaches that explain these effects in a disembodied manner, would predict no differences between sensitivity groups. Finally, the automatic vigilance approach as well as a general tendency to pause and check before engaging in a response would predict reduced concreteness and valence effects for individuals with high SPS. These predictions will be tested in a lexical decision task on four lists of 12 words each that differ in terms of their valence and concreteness (2 x 2) but are matched for number of syllables, number of letters, frequency, and arousal. In addition, distractor items and an equal number of nonwords will be included. After the lexical decision task, participants will complete the SPS measure.
The article describes intra- and extra-linguistic factors that influence the stability of the onymic space of the Ukrainian language. Intra-linguistic factors are the creation of a certain proper name according to its inherent derivational model; the correspondence of a particular onymic to the formed linguistic norm. Extra-linguistic factors are the level of linguistic, spiritual and political culture of society and its national consciousness. This influence is most pronounced on two classes of onymic vocabulary — anthroponyms and toponyms, as well as on toponymic derivatives — the names of the inhabitants of the corresponding settlement (katoikonyms) and derived adjectives (adjectonyms). It is specially noted of the three-component anthroponymic formula (first name, patronymic, surname) in modern Ukrainian official speech; the elimination of variation in the declension of Ukrainian surnames of the masculine gender with the possessive suffix -iB. It is shown that main means of creating katoikonyms in the Ukrainian language are the suffixes -u-i (plural), -eub, -K-a (singular). Possible functioning of parallel catoikonymic forms with suffixes -a-i (-eab, -K-a) h -aH-H / -hh-h (-aH-HH, -aH-K-a / -hh-hh, -HH-K-a). The paper deals with problem of establishing derivational models of adjectonyms and their normalization. The author considers that it is necessary to carefully study the historical patterns of the creation and use of adjectonyms in the Ukrainian language, as well as to take into account local traditions. The destructive impact on the Ukrainian oikonymic space of numerous unmotivated ideological renamings of the Soviet era and artificial formations with a Russian-language structure is analyzed. The author shows that it is necessary to cleanse the Ukrainian oikonomika and urbanonymika of such names.
In the article, the issue of rhetoric as a factor in shaping the linguistic culture of Ukrainian society under conditions of globalization transformations is revealed.The theoretical foundations for interpreting language culture as a conscious aspiration for normativity, accuracy, and stylistic appropriateness of linguistic expression in various sociocultural contexts are highlighted.It is clarified that rhetoric occupies an integrative position between linguistics, logic, cultural studies, and pedagogy, ensuring the development of the ability to use linguistic resources persuasively, argumentatively, and ethically.It is emphasized that rhetorical competence serves as the foundation for the development of critical thinking, civic engagement, and linguistic subjectivity of an individual.It is underlined that rhetorical practice facilitates the transition from passive mastery of linguistic norms to their active application as an instrument of social interaction, influence, and communicative responsibility.It is stated that rhetoric ensures the conceptual integrity of an utterance, which relies on the logical consistency of thinking, argumentation, and the organization of the semantic structure of speech.It is outlined that the ability to logically structure, formulate, and justify the speaker's position is essential for shaping collective opinion, developing public argumentation, and preserving cultural heritage.It is specified that rhetorical expressions serve as a means of representing national identity, cultural memory, and historical-semantic values.It is established that rhetoric currently demonstrates an insufficient level of integration in the educational process, which limits the development of skills in argumentation, persuasion, and effective public communication.It is noted that the application of rhetorical methods in education activates the cognitive, cultural, and communicative potential of society.It is outlined that the combination of rhetorical, ethical, and logical-cultural components ensures the formation of high linguistic culture as an indicator of the nation's spiritual maturity.
The article aims to focus on the impact of digital technologies on language, paying particular attention to digital English discourse and its linguistic features in online platforms, reflecting current Internet communication trends.The role of digital platforms (social networks, messengers, forums) in forming new language models, lexical innovations, syntactic simplifications and multimodal communication is considered.The paper examines how IT technologies have transformed communication, language use and reshaped linguistic norms and social engagement.Typical lexical items, stylistic features and pragmatic functions of digital discourse are analysed.The author highlights the contributions of linguists in investigating key features of digital discourse such as informality, multimodality, immediacy and interactivity.A rapid development of new linguistic forms such as emojis, emoticons, abbreviations, shortenings, hashtags, and innovative lexical items is observed, reflecting both the expressiveness and efficiency demands of digital communication.The research emphasises the process of human-machine interactions with the role of chatbots and their ability to simulate empathy and involvement in informal, dynamic conversation.Ongoing transformation of human communication due to digital technologies, particularly the dynamic nature of digital discourse and its multimodal features, suggests the prospects for further research.Linguists must investigate the influence of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality on language use and linguistic norms.The research material aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the English language in digital contexts and the notion of digital discourse.
This thesis aims to examine the impact of mind wandering on statistical language learning, a form of implicit learning that allows the detection of patterns and regularities from external input. Mind wandering refers to the shift of attention away from an external task toward internal thoughts, often occurring involuntarily. While mind wandering is traditionally associated with impaired performance in attention-demanding tasks such as learning, emerging research suggests that mind wandering may have a beneficial effect on certain instinctual cognitive processes, such as statistical learning and implicit learning (Vékony et al., 2025). Two experiments are conducted to investigate whether mind wandering influences performance and metacognitive confidence in artificial language learning tasks. In Experiment 1, participants listen to a continuous stream of trisyllabic pseudowords and complete a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task, providing confidence ratings for each decision. In Experiment 2, participants complete familiarity rating tasks after exposure to both paused and continuous speech streams with either front-vowels or back-vowels. In both experiments, mind wandering is assessed through a self-report questionnaire administered after each exposure. Results indicate no significant relationship between mind wandering and statistical language learning performance. However, no participants reported fully disengaging from the tasks, which likely affected the results. Due to the limited variability in mind wandering, as indicated by the mind wandering questionnaire scores that do not indicate high mind wandering, further research is needed. Future studies should explore whether more substantial or sustained mind wandering might enhance statistical language learning, as reported in emerging research. In addition, the study design could be applied to other cognitive domains.
This randomized controlled study at University of Graz examines the impact of regular practice of an individual self-regulation training on psychophysiological well-being. Participants are randomly assigned to either intervention or control group. Individual self-regulation training is based on a self-regulation method used in NeuroDeescalation®. It combines elements of body movement or touch, breathing and self- encouragement. Participants in the intervention group get videos which support the acquisition of the individual self-regulation training, which should be practiced three times a day over a period of two weeks. In both groups HRV independent of metabolic demands (lmdHRV) is assessed the successive three days before and after intervention period. Furthermore, psychological variables are measured using items of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale – State (MAAS – State). We expect that regular practice of an individual self-regulation training leads to higher increases in HRV independent of metabolic demands (lmdHRV), as well as higher increases in positive affect ratings, lower increases in negative affect ratings, and higher increases in state mindfulness from pre- to post- intervention compared to the control group. Statistical analyses will be conducted using mixed Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to account for between-subjects factor (group) and within-subjects factor (measurement period).
Sanskrit is traditionally described as a free-word-order language, and the indigenous grammatical tradition explains what constrains word combination through three notions: ākāṅkṣā (syntactic expectancy), yogyatā (semantic compatibility), and sannidhi (proximity or contiguity). This study asks whether sannidhi, read as a locality constraint, is empirically supported, and how it relates to the cross-linguistic principle of dependency-length minimization (DLM). Using the Universal Dependencies Treebank of Vedic Sanskrit (27,182 sentences; 206,440 tokens), I compared observed dependency lengths against a random-projective baseline and a minimal-arrangement heuristic, partitioned arcs by grammatical relation, quantified non-projectivity, and traced variation across the corpus's chronological layers. At the whole-sentence level, Vedic showed no dependency-length minimization beyond the projectivity constraint: observed mean length (1.996) was statistically indistinguishable from the random-projective baseline (2.002) and far above the minimal arrangement (1.512). This near-parity, however, masked a systematic relation-specific split. Core verb-argument relations—the kāraka-type expectancy relations—were placed reliably closer than their own random baseline (mean deviation −0.36 tokens, 95% CI [−0.38, −0.34]), whereas coordinate, appositional, and modifier relations were placed at or beyond chance distance (+0.16 tokens, 95% CI [+0.13, +0.18]). Non-projectivity was common (19.4% of sentences) but overwhelmingly mild and well-nested, and it declined sharply from the Ṛgvedic layer (35.9%) to the Sūtra layer (11.0%). An independent classical treebank reproduced both the aggregate parity and the non-projectivity rate. I argue that sannidhi is best understood not as global length optimization but as a selective, expectancy-scoped locality operating over ākāṅkṣā-linked pairs, and that Vedic word order becomes measurably more projective over time.
This paper introduces new models designed to improve the morpho-syntactic parsing of the five largest Latin treebanks in the Universal Dependencies (UD) framework. First, using two state-of-the-art parsers, Trankit and Stanza, along with our custom UD tagger, we train new models on the five treebanks both individually and by combining them into novel merged datasets. We also test the models on the CIRCSE test set. In an additional experiment, we evaluate whether this set can be accurately tagged using the novel LASLA corpus (https://github.com/CIRCSE/LASLA). Second, we aim to improve the results by combining the predictions of different models through an atomic morphological feature voting system. The results of our two main experiments demonstrate significant improvements, particularly for the smaller treebanks, with LAS scores increasing by 16.10 and 11.85%-points for UDante and Perseus, respectively (Gamba and Zeman, 2023a). Additionally, the voting system for morphological features (FEATS) brings improvements, especially for the smaller Latin treebanks: Perseus 3.15% and CIRCSE 2.47%-points. Tagging the CIRCSE set with our custom model using the LASLA model improves POS 6.71 and FEATS 11.04%-points respectively, compared to our best-performing UD PROIEL model. Our results show that larger datasets and ensemble predictions can significantly improve performance.
Our study examines the integration of large language models (LLMs) on psycholinguistic research by prompting several LLMs to rate figurative expressions on familiarity, aptness, concreteness, metaphoricity, and constituency, with two manipulations: (1) stimuli presentation (in context versus in isolation) to examine whether LLMs benefit from the presence of context when rating familiarity—but not aptness—as observed in a recent study (Pissani and de Almeida, in press.) and (2) type of instructions (graded ratings versus categories) to examine whether LLMs perform better when assigning categories rather than numerical ratings, as observed in a recent study (Bavaresco et al., 2025). In addition, we will substitute LLM-produced ratings into existing studies of metaphor comprehension to determine whether they can predict the same effects observed with human ratings. Our study serves three purposes. First, we aim to examine whether LLM outputs replicate humans in rating tasks involving figurative language and whether they can serve for data augmentation when human ratings are unavailable. Second, we aim to understand whether LLMs process these ratings in the same way as humans (e.g., familiarity ratings may reflect both frequency of use and ease of understanding, while aptness ratings may reflect the quality of the metaphorical mapping, regardless of context). Third, we aim to provide best practices for obtaining reliable ratings from LLMs, whether using graded scales or categorical outcomes.
In this 2-session functional MRI study, we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms of counterconditioning (CC). We observed ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activation during regular extinction, but vmPFC deactivation and nucleus accumbens activation during CC (MRI). Physiological threat responses returned in the regular extinction but not the CC group (Pupil). Furthermore, threat-associated memories from the learning and CC phase were enhanced (Behavior). This collection contains the raw, pseudonomized data of all tasks. Processed data, the SPSS mask to replicate all but the fMRI analyses (Analyses.sav), and scripts to replicate the publication figures are available at https://osf.io/mvsq6. For all tasks, fMRI, skin conductance (SCR) and pupil dilation (Pupil) data are available. For the item memory test, behavioral data (Behavior) are available. In addition, valence and arousal rating data using self-assessment manikin scales are available.
In this paper, we present a novel lemmatization method based on a sequence-to-sequence neural network architecture and morphosyntactic context representation. In the proposed method, our context-sensitive lemmatizer generates the lemma one character at a time based on the surface form characters and its morphosyntactic features obtained from a morphological tagger. We argue that a sliding window context representation suffers from sparseness, while in majority of cases the morphosyntactic features of a word bring enough information to resolve lemma ambiguities while keeping the context representation dense and more practical for machine learning systems. Additionally, we study two different data augmentation methods utilizing autoencoder training and morphological transducers especially beneficial for low-resource languages. We evaluate our lemmatizer on 52 different languages and 76 different treebanks, showing that our system outperforms all latest baseline systems. Compared to the best overall baseline, UDPipe Future, our system outperforms it on 62 out of 76 treebanks reducing errors on average by 19% relative. The lemmatizer together with all trained models is made available as a part of the Turku-neural-parsing-pipeline under the Apache 2.0 license.
[... waveform poisoning initiated... ] This archive is the missing addendum to the manuscript "The Atlas Code: A Hitchhiker's Guide to No Man's Sky." It contains the complete Glyph Rosetta Dataset — a linguistic database of 4,820 words and their associated glyphs across the five languages of No Man's Sky: Atlas, Gek, Korvax, Vy'keen, and Autophage. This version (v1.1) has been rebuilt from the ground up and version locked to No Man's Sky Update 6.33 (April 15, 2026). It supersedes v1.0, which should no longer be cited. The rebuild accounts for new words added by Hello Games in Updates 5.6 and 6.33, corrections to internal string errors, and clerical errors identified during three independent manual verification passes of the complete dataset. The completed rebuild reduced the total dataset size by 150mb. The archive includes all in-game menu screenshots catalogued with a three-part inventory system for rapid cross-referencing, the complete dataset in both CSV and Excel formats, a First Pass Analysis worksheet documenting shared words, bigram assignments, and cross-language vocabulary overlaps, and a full Table of Contents for the original manuscript. This data is provided for the sole purpose of allowing the community to verify the findings of the original manuscript.
Understanding and expressing emotions is subjective, leading to varying levels of ambiguity in how emotions are perceived. Humans naturally handle this ambiguity, and it's crucial for machines to do the same for natural human-machine interaction. Efforts are being made to develop emotion recognition systems that can handle ambiguity by modelling emotions as distributions of arousal/valence labels. However, existing approaches often assume that an underlying distribution can be inferred from ground truth ratings. Yet, the underlying distribution is never observed and the inferred distribution from the ratings can accurately represent the true distribution only when enough raters are involved. Our study investigates how the number of raters impacts the uncertainty in inferring distributions from ground truth ratings in the context of modelling emotion ambiguity. We then explore how many raters may be sufficient to effectively approximate the ambiguity present in the emotion annotations. Using the Belief Mismatch Coefficient (BMC) for analysis, we compare distributions to different numbers of ground truth ratings leading to quantitative and interpretable inferences. Experimental analysis was conducted using both simulated ratings and the real emotion (both arousal and valence) ratings collected from MSP-Conversation dataset. Our results suggest that using 5 raters may be sufficient to approximate a stable distribution representing the underlying emotional ambiguity when time continuous emotion ratings are captured and annotated from speech. Our study provides insights and practical advice for collecting emotion labels. Additionally, the analyses methods presented in this paper are expected to be relevant in any field of study dealing with labelling of subjective quantities that can vary from person to person.
Theory of Mind (ToM)—the ability to infer others’ mental states—is fundamental to social cognition. Social categorization, the grouping of individuals into in-group or out-group categories, shapes these inferences. These processes co-occur during facial perception, with recent research suggesting both shared neurocognitive mechanisms and modulation of ToM by social category cues. However, existing tools for studying the impact of racial diversity on social cognition are limited: some databases prioritize racial representation but restrict stimuli to the six basic emotions, while others broaden mental state diversity but lack diversity in social appearance.Here we introduce the McGill Diverse Face Database, a validated set of 1,286 images of 14 actors from socially perceived racial categories portraying 92 complex mental states. Validation included three experiments: (1) a four-alternative forced-choice task assessing recognition accuracy, (2) a “point-and-click” task rating valence and arousal in a two-dimensional affective space, and (3) a trait-rating task evaluating perceived actor characteristics. Participants accurately identified mental states across categories (77 % of stimuli). Mean valence–arousal ratings revealed a non-linear one-dimensional manifold structure that correlated with behavioral measures. An interactive online visualization allows users to explore this “Theory of Mind manifold” (https://hctor99.github.io/TheoryofMindManifold/). By integrating social-category diversity with complex emotional expression, this database provides a new resource for studying how socially perceived group membership shapes the perception and inference of mental states.
Large language models (LLMs) have materially changed natural language processing (NLP).While LLMs have shifted focus from traditional semantic-based resources, structured linguistic databases such as WordNet remain essential for precise knowledge retrieval, decision making and aiding LLM development.WordNet organizes concepts through synonym sets (synsets) and semantic links but suffers from inconsistencies, including redundant or erroneous relations.This paper investigates an approach using LLMs to aid the refinement of structured language resources, specifically WordNet, by an automation for multiple hypernymy resolution, leveraging the LLMs semantic knowledge to produce tools for aiding and evaluating manual resource improvement.
The article deals with the language description transfer from the encyclopaedic edition «Languages of the World» to the «Languages of the World» database web version. The feature base structure and dependencies within different sections are analysed, along with the possible ways of terminology unification. The article may be of interest to specialists in linguistic typology, data formalisation and development of linguistic databases.
The gambling landscape is constantly evolving. Digital technologies feature several emerging forms of gambling-like activities (‘gamblification’) including free-to-play social casino games and video game loot boxes, as well as the opportunity to spectate gambling on streaming platforms such as Twitch, Kick and YouTube (Macey & Hamari, 2024). Recent research has begun to characterize links between these activities and real-money gambling. For example, young adults who purchase loot boxes show an increased likelihood of initiating gambling over the next 6 months (Brooks & Clark, 2023). We do not yet understand how early exposure to randomized rewards in these settings draws people to gambling, and the factors associated with risk and resilience to gambling harm. This study will focus on gambling streams, as a popular medium through which young people are exposed to gambling content. Watching a gambling stream does not involve betting or winning money, but the viewer observes authentic gambling, often in a highly stimulating context (e.g. high stakes bets). Streaming content is often broadcast as highlight ‘clips’: short, edited videos that can be viewed on the channel homepage and also shared across social media platforms. For gambling streams, these clips often display the outcomes of single bets showing large 'jackpot' wins, accompanied by the streamer’s intense emotional reaction to winning. It is well recognized that experiencing early big wins in the context of (firsthand) real-money gambling is associated with future gambling problems (Turner et al., 2006), and we propose that the ‘vicarious’ observation of winning may also shift gambling attitudes and intentions. The present study is an online experimental design that will present pre-selected gambling stream clips to participants assigned to two conditions. The experimental group will view a sequence of clips featuring gambling jackpot wins. The control group will view clips with realistic gambling outcomes, i.e. mostly small losses. We will develop these stimuli from a combination of authentic clips and edited Kick footage from longer streams, both as publicly accessible content. The primary dependent variables are (1) attitudes towards gambling, (2) intention to gamble on slot machines, (3) winning probability judgement. We will also measure participants’ affect ratings of the clips as a manipulation check. Trait-level scores on the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS) will be recorded as a possible moderator.
Colors serve as an important embodied source of perceptual experiences for conceptualizing emotional concepts. This study offers an image-based visual corpus analysis on perceptual (dis)similarities among six basic color terms (black, white, red, green, yellow, blue) and 63 emotion-label words in English. The investigation focuses on two primary questions: (i) whether the six colors are significantly different regarding their contributions in conceptualizing emotional concepts, and (ii) how color-emotion association patterns are shaped by valence and arousal. Empirical analyses were conducted and discussed using the degree of perceptual (dis)similarities between the target color terms and emotion words as an indicator of the strength of color-emotion associations, based on a dataset of 69*100 images collected from Google Image, comprising 63 emotion words and 6 color terms, with 100 images retrieved for each term. The results reveal that (i) significant differences exist among the six colors in their effectiveness at capturing affective (dis)similarities among various emotional concepts, as well as in their association strength with the affective domain, and (ii) the valence and arousal ratings of emotion words are significantly correlated to the strength of their associations with five of the six color terms, with the exception of blue. This study provides an image-based empirical exploration of the cognitive mechanisms responsible for color-emotion mappings, highlighting the essential and distinctive roles of colors in understanding emotional concepts.
Abstract This study examines the usage, semantics, and affective valence of olfactory metaphors in English, addressing a gap in sensory language and metaphor research. We analyze eight basic smell lexemes ( smell, aroma, scent, odor, stench, stink, reek, fragrance ) in the iWeb corpus, tracing their abstract noun collocates through frequency counts, WordNet hypernym paths, intersection analysis, and affective valence ratings. Our results reveal that English olfactory metaphors are highly productive, mapping smell perception onto a broad array of abstract experiences, especially socioemotional and moral domains. The eight patterns exhibit pronounced affective polarization: while some (e.g., fragrance, aroma ) skew positive, most (e.g., stink, stench, reek, odor ) skew negative, reflecting both olfactory hedonics and a cognitive negativity bias. These findings deepen our understanding of how sensory language structures abstract thought and affirm the rich figurative potential of smell in English, with implications for theories of sensory language, conceptual metaphor, and embodied cognition.
This study adapts the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) dataset for Mexican Spanish, validating emotional dimensions in culturally relevant contexts. A total of 753 participants rated 1,028 translated words on valence, arousal, and dominance using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale. The adaptation ensured linguistic equivalence through iterative translation and consensus processes, selecting region-specific terms verified with the Corpus XXI of the Royal Spanish Academy. Split-half correlations confirmed high internal consistency across dimensions, demonstrating stable and reliable ratings within the Mexican sample. Cross-linguistic analyses revealed strong correlations between Mexican Spanish and norms for European Portuguese and Spanish, with moderate correlations to English norms, highlighting cultural and linguistic influences on emotional word ratings. Gender differences further provided insights into demographic factors affecting emotional word processing. These findings underscore the need for culturally specific adaptations in research, ensuring that affective norms align with regional language use and emotional perception. This study offers a methodological framework applicable to other linguistic and cultural contexts, enhancing the precision of cross-cultural research in affective science.
Recent advancements in thermal device technology present new possibilities for conveying sensations and emotions in diverse applications. Yet, systematic investigations into the design parameters of thermal feedback and their effects on elicited sensations and emotions remain underexplored. To address this gap, we created 36 thermal feedback patterns by systematically varying the amplitude of change, rate of change, and indoor temperature, and applied them across three body sites on the hand, forearm, and upper arm. We then collected perceived intensity, valence, and arousal ratings from 12 participants. The results revealed the efficacy of the thermal design parameters. For example, the amplitude of change served as the primary parameter influencing the intensity and arousal ratings across body sites, while it affected valence only when thermal feedback was applied to the forearm and upper arm. Using the collected data, we developed a neural network to predict the intensity sensation and emotion ratings elicited by thermal feedback. Our model outperformed three baseline machine learning models and demonstrated strong alignment with non-linear sensory and emotional responses. We present four guidelines for designing thermal feedback and discuss implications for future research and applications in haptic design.
Purpose: This study examined the effects of reduced bandwidth and auditory-visual congruence on emotional responses to nonspeech auditory-only and auditory-visual stimuli. Auditory-visual stimuli were picture/sound pairs that were congruent or incongruent in terms of valence (e.g., pleasant picture/unpleasant sound or vice versa). Method: Twenty adults with normal hearing rated the valence (pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (exciting to calming) of nonspeech auditory-only and auditory-visual stimuli. Auditory stimuli were presented broadband (~125–8000 Hz) or bandpass filtered (800–2000 Hz). Auditory-visual stimuli were created by combining auditory stimuli with a picture of congruent or incongruent valence. Results: Bandpass filtering of auditory-only stimuli reduced the range of valence responses (less pleasant and less unpleasant). With congruent auditory-visual stimuli, bandpass filtering did not affect valence ratings. Incongruent audiovisual stimuli were rated as less pleasant than were congruent, pleasant, auditory-visual stimuli. Arousal ratings were lower with bandpass filtering but were not affected by congruency. Conclusions: Congruent auditory-visual stimuli resulted in more extreme ratings of valence than did auditory-only stimuli. Incongruent auditory-visual stimuli were generally rated as more unpleasant than pleasant, auditory-only stimuli. Consistent with previous studies of low- and high-pass filtering, bandpass filtering (800–2000 Hz) of auditory-only stimuli resulted in more neutral responses, suggesting that frequencies below 800 Hz and above 2000 Hz are important for ratings of valence. Inconsistent with previous low- and high-pass filtering work, bandpass filtering did not affect ratings of congruent auditory-visual stimuli, suggesting a different set of frequencies are important for ratings of valence when visual cues are also available. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.29971387
We provide an open-access dataset containing salivary cortisol data and self-reported emotional ratings from 371 healthy Chinese participants who took part in a controlled laboratory study using the Maastricht Acute Stress Test (MAST). Of these participants, 241 individuals were assigned to the stress condition and 130 were assigned to the control condition. The dataset includes various variables such as demographic information (e.g., age, gender, and BMI), salivary cortisol levels, trait and state anxiety scores, and positive and negative affect ratings. All of these variables were measured before and after the stress induction. This dataset is a valuable resource for evaluating the effectiveness of MAST in eliciting acute stress responses in Chinese populations, as well as for studying variations in stress reactivity among individuals.
Научной проблемой, решаемой в рамках статьи, является определение теоретических оснований и детализация методики анализа морфемной структуры слова для ее репрезентации в электронном морфемном словаре. В статье предлагается обзор существующих в российской диалектологии опытов интерпретации морфемной структуры слова в диалектной системе. Определяются и комментируются координаты анализа морфемной структуры слова: пространственные, связанные с необходимостью учитывать степень общности исследуемых говоров с точки зрения истории ее развития и условий современного функционирования; временные, связанные с необходимостью учитывать время фиксации сопоставительных лексических данных, а также структурно-мотивационные, сориентированные на структурирование и описание диалектных корневых гнезд и аффиксальных парадигм. Описывается специфика этих комплексных единиц морфемной системы русских говоров, обусловленная устной формой бытования диалектов, узуальным характером диалектной нормы, многообразием формально-семантического варьирования морфем и основ слова в говорах, а также сохранения в них архаических лексем и грамматических форм. В статье комментируется опыт наших лексикографических и архивных разысканий, направленный на описание специфики морфемной системы говоров Вологодской области, а также комментируются итоги более чем двадцатилетнего экспедиционного сбора, классификации и анализа лексики белозерско-бежецких и вологодских говоров, положенные в основу создания электронной поисковой системы диалектного словаря строения слов (2013). На основе анализа этого опыта и постановки новых научных задач определяются исследовательские подходы и предлагаются варианты представления языкового материала в словаре диалектных корневых гнезд и аффиксальных парадигм. The article deals with the following research problem: the definition of theoretical foundations and detailing of the methodology for analyzing the morphemic structure of a word for its representation in an electronic morpheme dictionary. The author suggests an overview of existing (in Russian dialectology) interpretative experiments of word morphemic structure in dialect system. We define and comment on the coordinates of the morphemic structure analysis of the word: spatial, related to the degree of commonality of the studied dialects in terms of its development history and conditions of modern functioning; temporal, related to the time of recording comparative lexical data; and structural-motivational, oriented to structuring and description of dialect root nests and affixal paradigms. The author describes the specifics of these complex units in the morpheme system of Russian local dialects due to the oral form of dialects, the usual character of the dialectal norm, the variety of formal-semantic variation of morphemes and word bases in local dialects, as well as the preservation of archaic lexemes and grammatical forms in them. The author comments on the experience of lexicographic and archival research aimed at describing the specifics of the morpheme system of Vologda local dialects; also describes the results of more than twenty years of expeditionary collection, classification and analysis of the lexicon in Belozersk-Bezhetsky and Vologda local dialects, which formed the basis for the development of the electronic search system in the dialect word structure dictionary (2013). On the basis of analyzing this experience and setting new scientific tasks, the author defines research approaches and suggests options for presenting linguistic material in a dictionary of dialect root nests and affixal paradigms.
For over 100 years, Mongolian and Mongolist scholars studying the khalkha dialect of the Mongolian language itself have classified and named its subdialects differently. These variations are linked to numerous linguistic and non-linguistic factors, such as ethnic origin, historical development, migration patterns, the evolution of local dialects, national borders, political ideologies, and the advancement of dialectology. Furthermore, as any language or dialect undergoes continuous evolution, changes and transformations are always ongoing. Therefore, classifying and dividing languages and dialects is not a one-time task for a single individual; it's an ongoing process that requires periodic re-evaluation and updates. Forty to seventy years have passed since scholars from the Institute of Language and Literature of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences actively conducted research expeditions between the 1950s and 1980s. Since then, continuous population migration has occurred. It's also important to note that very few people today maintain their dialects in their pure form. Within the scope of the "Research on Mongolian Language Dialects" foundational research project, carried out by the Institute of Language and Literature of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences from 2022 to 2024, I have summarized and presented the findings of my research on the current state of the khalkha dialect. Within the Khalkha dialect of Mongolian there are four recognized subdialects. These subdialects share common territory and ethnic origin, but are distinguished by their specific phonological, morphological, and lexical features. Nevertheless, they retain the overall characteristics of the Khalkha dialect and the general features of the Mongolic language as a whole, and they conform to the norms of the standard written language. In addition, there exists an intercurrent Buriad–Khalkha dialect. This variety developed among communities where one group was ethnically Khalkha and the other consisted of Mongolized Evenki (Khamnigan). Having coexisted in the same locality for an extended period, the latter assimilated to the speech, customs, and material culture of the Buriad, while at the same time adopting features from both dialects. Furthermore, eleven branches of subdialects are identified. These generally correspond to subdivisions within the ethnic community based on clan, locality, or historical background, and they exhibit relatively minor but distinctive linguistic traits. However, they still preserve the overall characteristics of central, western, and eastern Khalkha, as well as the intermediate Buriad-Khalkha dialect, while maintaining the shared features of the Khalkha dialect area as a whole. Монгол хэлний халх аялгуу, түүний аман ба салбар аман аялгуунуудын өнөөгийн байдал Хураангуй. Эрдэмтэн судлаачид монгол хэлний халх аялгууг 100 гаруй жил судлахдаа түүний доторх аман болон салбар аман аялгуунуудыг өөр өөрөөр нэрлэж, ангилж, иржээ. Тэдгээр нь хэлэлцэгчдийн угсаа гарал, түүхэн замнал, нүүдэл суурьшил, нутгийн аялгууны хөгжил хувьсал, улс орны хил хязгаар, нутаг орны байршил, улс төрийн үзэл баримтлал, нутгийн аялгуу судлалын ухааны хөгжил гэх мэт хэлний ба хэлний бус олон хүчин зүйлтэй холбоотой юм. Түүнээс гадна аливаа хэл, аялгуу бол тасралтгүй хувьсан хөгжиж байдаг учраас аливаа хувиралт өөрчлөлт байнга үргэлжилсээр байдаг. Иймээс аялгуунуудыг ангилан хуваах ажил бол нэг удаа, нэг хүн хийгээд орхих ажил биш, тодорхой хугацаанд дахин дахин судалж, шинэчилж байх хэрэгтэй ажил юм. ШУА-ийн Хэл зохиолын хүрээлэнгийн эрдэмтэн судлаачид 1950-1980-аад онд хээрийн шинжилгээний ангиудаар олон удаа явж, идэвхтэй судалж байсан тэр үеэс хойш өдгөө 40-70 жил өнгөрчээ. 1990-ээд оноос хойш ард иргэд амьдрах газраа чөлөөтэй сонгох эрхтэй болсон учир шилжилт хөдөлгөөн тасралтгүй өрнөсөөр байна. Өдгөө нутгийн аялгуугaa цэврээр хадгалж буй хүмүүс нэн цөөрснийг ч тэмдэглэх хэрэгтэй. ШУА-ийн Хэл зохиолын хүрээлэнгээс 2022-2024 онд хэрэгжүүлсэн “Монгол хэлний нутгийн аялгууны судалгаа” сэдэвт суурь судалгааны төслийн ажлын хүрээнд миний бие халх аялгууны өнөөгийн байдлыг судалсан судалгааныхаа үр дүнг товчоолон толилуулъя. Монгол хэлний халх нутгийн аялгуун дотор: Улаанбаатарын халх, төв халх (төв халх, өвөрхангайн халх, говийн халх), баруун халх (өрнөд халх, элжигин халх, сартуул), зүүн халх (дорнод халх, дарьганга, халхажсан өвөр монгол), халх-буриадын завсрын (цонгоол, хамниган) хэмээх таван аман аялгуу байна. Түлхүүр үгс: аялгуу, аман аялгуу, салбар аман аялгуу; халх, Улаанбаатарын халх, төв халх (төв халх, өвөрхангайн халх, говийн халх), баруун халх (өрнөд халх, элжигин халх, сартуул), зүүн халх (дорнод халх, дарьганга, халхажсан өвөр монгол), халх-буриадын завсрын (цонгоол, хамниган)
This article offers an overview of the presence of prominent figures from British, American, and Italian cultures in English and Italian language textbooks designed for foreign learners. The acquisition of a foreign language necessarily involves understanding the sociocultural norms and values associated with it. Consequently, language textbooks increasingly include lexical and visual elements that serve as vehicles for the culture of the target language. The study focuses on identifying names and corresponding images of culturally significant individuals within six textbooks—three for English and three for Italian—targeted at intermediate-level learners. These textbooks, published within the last ten years, are currently used in foreign language classes at the Goce Delcev University in Stip, North Macedonia. The selected examples are examined according to several parameters, including the relative frequency of female and male representations, the type of material used (textual mentions or visual illustrations), and the relationship between text and image (whether accompanied by descriptive context or not). Furthermore, the analysis takes into account the domains of activity associated with the represented figures and incorporates a diachronic comparison to identify changes in cultural representation across textbook editions over time. Keywords: textbooks, culture, foreign language, gender representation, sociocultural competence, cultural awareness
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.
The role of phase in neural sequence models remains poorly understood. To isolate this question, we introduce PRISM, a complex-valued encoder that enforces a unit-norm constraint ($|z| = 1$) and replaces attention with gated spectral filtering. Under this constraint, the model cannot use activation magnitude to distinguish signal from noise, and must instead rely on phase angles. We find that semantic relationships correlate with measurable phase structure: synonym pairs exhibit significantly higher phase coherence than random pairs ($R = 0.198$ vs.\ $0.072$, $p < 0.001$), and the model resolves lexical ambiguity via layer-specific phase rotations while maintaining near-unit gain. These phase representations are robust to scalar attenuation, retaining $97\%$ of translation quality when signal magnitude is uniformly reduced. We also identify a spectral density threshold: the model fails to generate coherent output from isolated tokens, requiring minimum sequence length to produce the interference patterns that support its computation. Finally, we show that a hybrid architecture (Wave-Particle Transformer) combining a phase-based encoder with standard attention matches Transformer baselines at $33$M parameters with fewer non-embedding parameters, though we do not claim this generalizes to larger scales. Our findings provide controlled evidence that phase angles can encode semantic information in complex-valued networks, and characterize the conditions under which this encoding succeeds and fails.
The abbreviations by superscript letters in 18th century Portuguese are analyzed, with the aim of finding consistent uses by the copyist of abbreviation strategies by superscription. The hypothesis tested is that there are patterns when abbreviating a lexical item, and that the choices made by the copyist regarding the letters that are selected to be overwritten, as well as their quantity, are not random. The corpus used is the Manuscript PBA-749 from the National Library of Portugal, which title is Primeiro copiador das respostas dos senhores governadores desta capitania [minas gerais] às ordens de s[u]a mag[esta]de, e contas que lhe dãoão que principia no governo do sen[h]or Antonio de Albuquerque Coelho de Carvalho. Based on an exhaustive vocabulary of the abbreviations in the document, we selected the 3,793 occurrences of suspension abbreviations. Then, using the theoretical-methodological framework of René Pellén (2005), we examined all the occurrences in depth, looking for rules that could be generalized, thus helping us to better understand not only the brachygraphic system of the time, but also the 18th century Portuguese language. We conclude that abbreviations by superscript letters are not done arbitrarily, and that there are recurring norms and formulas that can be quantified and given generalizing qualitative analyses.
В статье рассматриваются особенности контаминированной речи персонажей-негров середины XIX века, представленные в текстах англоязычных писателей. Цель исследования — определение характерных особенностей афроамериканского диалекта в произведениях американских писателей, описывающих жизнь рабов в Северо-Американских Соединенных штатах, а также способов их передачи на русский язык. Ранее предметом изучения лингвистов выступали только грамматические искажения и возможность их перевода, рассмотренные на материале всего двух произведений, опубликованных спустя десятилетия после описываемых в них событий. В статье выделены основные фонетические, грамматические и лексические отклонения от языковой нормы. Показано, что переводчики обычно нейтрализуют или заменяют просторечиями эти речевые особенности литературных персонажей, что искажает их образ как представителей определенной этносоциальной группы, и снижает адекватность перевода. The article is concerned with peculiarities of direct speech of African-American characters, depicted in the novels of English language writers. The aim of the article is to define the peculiarities of the dialect, spoken by the slaves in the middle of the XIXth century in the South of the USA, as well as means of their translation into Russian. Only grammar deviations have been studied so far, and in works of fiction, written decades after the events described in them. We have pointed out phonetic, grammar, and lexical deviations from the language norm. Translators tend to neglect them or substitute with colloquial words, which reduces the adequacy of translation.
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.
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.
This study examines how Transcarpathian Hungarian refugees who relocated to Hungary after 24 February 2022 negotiate language variation, identity, and integration in a same-language migration context. Employing a mixed-methods design, an online questionnaire (n = 120) assessed perceptions of dialectal difference, use of Slavic borrowings, comprehension breakdowns, and experiences of evaluative comments; semi-structured follow-up interviews (n = 18) provided in-depth qualitative insights into everyday adaptation and identity work. Quantitative results indicate that the vast majority (90.8%) detected differences between the variant they brought from Transcarpathia and varieties encountered in Hungary; 57% reported instances where their lexical choices were not understood by Hungarian interlocutors, and 40% recalled direct evaluative or stigmatising remarks. Interview narratives clarify these patterns: a shared language eased immediate practical integration, yet heightened metalinguistic salience led many speakers to actively self-monitor, suppress dialectal markers and Slavic loanwords in public contexts, and seek to acquire competence in formal administrative registers. Applying Yeung and Flubacher's framework, the study shows that categorisation, selection, and activation processes operate even within same-language migration, converting subtle intralinguistic features into markers of inclusion/exclusion. The findings underscore that integration policy should extend beyond basic language provision to include orientation to regional registers, administrative terminology, and sociolinguistic norms, while designing interventions that reduce intralinguistic stigma and support maintenance of migrants' dialectal identities.
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.
This study explores how translanguaging, humor, and identity are constructed through the internal signage of a popular Philippine fast-food chain, Greenwich, in Ilocos Norte. Using qualitative linguistic landscape and discourse analysis, the study examines fifty signage texts and identifies five major translanguaging patterns: lexical integration, syntactic blending, pickup-line constructions, metaphorical fusion, and multimodal pairing. These signs reveal the strategic use of Taglish (Tagalog-English hybrid language) to deliver humorous and affective messages that resonate with Filipino youth culture. Drawing from the concept of translanguaging as a unified communicative repertoire, the study shows that bilingual signage is not merely ornamental but functions to index emotional tone, familiarity, and social belonging. Humor types include puns, pop culture references, and affective exaggerations, all contributing to a playful but culturally grounded performance of identity. While these signs effectively reflect a national urban youth identity, the complete absence of Ilokano in signage located in a predominantly Ilokano-speaking region raises questions about linguistic inclusivity. The findings suggest that commercial texts serve as translanguaging spaces that shape consumer-brand rapport and reflect broader social norms, but they also selectively represent national over regional identities in pursuit of market alignment.
This study employs Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework, including textual analysis, discourse practice analysis, and socio-cultural practice analysis, to examine China’s 2023 White Paper a Global Community of Shared Future: China's Proposals and Actions. The analysis investigates how China constructs a self-image as a cooperative, peace-loving, and responsible global power. Drawing on key lexical items such as “cooperation” (合作), “community” (共同体), “peace” (和平), and “win-win” (共赢), as well as traditional concepts like “harmony” (和合) and “all under heaven as one family” (天下一家), the White Paper projects a culturally rooted narrative of inclusive global governance. China’s initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) are framed as practical efforts to promote shared development and civilizational dialogue. However, the discourse is not without tension. The study identifies discursive strategies that aim to counter international skepticism over China’s transparency, debt practices, and assertiveness in contested regions. By unpacking the language and framing of the White Paper, this research contributes to understanding how discourse functions as a tool of soft power and legitimacy in global affairs. It also underscores the importance of critically engaging with strategic narratives in the study of international relations and emerging global norms.
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.
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.
Scientific writing involves multiple dimensions, including epistemic, methodological, theoretical, and textual. Focusing on the last of these, this study examines selected linguistic features related to stance, authorial presence, voice and agency, framing expressions, and conditional structures in the closing sections of educational research articles (RAs) in internationally indexed Q1-rated journals and locally indexed non-Q-rated Turkish journals. It seeks to identify recurrent rhetorical tendencies across these publication contexts and offer linguistically grounded insights to support authors’ strategic choices when navigating different publication environments. The corpus comprised 60 empirical RAs: 30 RAs from SSCI/Scopus-indexed Q1 journals and 30 RAs from locally indexed Turkish journals. The two corpora were compared statistically using a log-likelihood test. Results indicated that international authors employed hedges, obligation modals, boosters, and subjunctive structures more frequently and with greater lexical variety, reflecting nuanced rhetorical positioning, while personal pronouns and active voice were more prevalent, signaling stronger authorial presence and agency; however, Turkish authors relied more on impersonal constructions and passive voice. Both groups used conventionalized expressions to frame recommendations, though international authors demonstrated slightly broader lexical and structural variation. These patterns highlight systematic differences in how stance and agency are realized across publication contexts. Making these patterns explicit through instruction may help authors develop greater rhetorical awareness and flexibility when engaging with the expectations of high-visibility journals, which are often shaped by recurrent editorial, review, and publication practices rather than fixed or universal norms. This, in turn, may support more informed and strategic positioning across different publication venues.
The article is devoted to the current problems of changing language norms under the influence of information and communication technologies. Some theoretical provisions on the specifics of linguistic norms in functional (i.e. norms widely used in speech) and codification aspects (i.e. norms fixed in normative legal acts, dictionaries, reference books, textbooks and grammars) are considered. Some distinctive parameters of the linguistic norms are described as a heterogeneous category characterized, on the one hand, by conservatism, stability, commitment, exemplary, directive and other constant features, on the other hand, by dynamism, instability and variability. The last ones often lead to linguistic deviations. Transformations of linguistic norms in the Internet give an impetus to the emergence of new concepts and the formation of new terms such as “Russian digital literary language” (A.V. Kozulyaev), “criticism of the Internet language” (K. Durscheid), “grammar nazi” and others. The article contains some examples of violations and changes of the norms of the Russian and German languages in the electronic communication. Two areas of criticism of the Internet language are considered: writing (or written texts) and communicative behavior in the Web. Deviations of linguistic norms at different levels (graphic, spelling, lexical, syntactic) in Russian-language online communication are revealed. There are also some prospects for research in this area.