The role of visual representations during the lexical access of spoken words.

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Lewis, Gwyneth; Poeppel, David

2014-07-01

Do visual representations contribute to spoken word recognition? We examine, using MEG, the effects of sublexical and lexical variables at superior temporal (ST) areas and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) compared with that of word imageability at visual cortices. Embodied accounts predict early modulation of visual areas by imageability--concurrently with or prior to modulation of pMTG by lexical variables. Participants responded to speech stimuli varying continuously in imageability during lexical decision with simultaneous MEG recording. We employed the linguistic variables in a new type of correlational time course analysis to assess trial-by-trial activation in occipital, ST, and pMTG regions of interest (ROIs). The linguistic variables modulated the ROIs during different time windows. Critically, visual regions reflected an imageability effect prior to effects of lexicality on pMTG. This surprising effect supports a view on which sensory aspects of a lexical item are not a consequence of lexical activation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cross-Linguistic Transfer among Iranian Learners of English as a Foreign Language

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Talebi, Seyed Hassan

2014-01-01

Cross-linguistic transfer studies began from linguistic aspects of language learning and moved to non-linguistic aspects. The intriguing question is whether students are aware of the nature of these cross-linguistic interactions in their minds. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview was conducted with four Iranian university students. It…

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu.

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Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Ahmed, Saaliha

2016-07-28

This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG) developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012). The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC), noun production (NP), predicate comprehension (PC), and predicate production (PP). Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1) test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2) test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3) present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu

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Ramona Kunene Nicolas

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012. The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC, noun production (NP, predicate comprehension (PC, and predicate production (PP. Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1 test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2 test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3 present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Usage labels network: an approach to lexical variation

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Danko Šipka

1994-12-01

Full Text Available The Problem of lexical variation is frequently addressed within the linguistic community. Its complexity and the broad implications of any possible solution have considerable appeal among theoretical linguists. Lexicographers, in their turn, have been forced to address it in order to provide dictionary usage information, which is normally done by means of dictionary labels such as: American English, obsolete, slang , etc. An insightful overview of the relevant lexicological approaches, as well as some lexicographis projects is provided in Lipka (1990. The most exhaustive sociolinguistic classification, however, can be found in Preston (1986. Lexicographis treatments of lexical variation have been addressed in numerous papers listed in Zgusta (1988.

Innovative and Lexicalized Metaphors in Slovene

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Kaja Dolar

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The metaphor is a multidisciplinary problem which has been addressed in linguistics as well as in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, etc. In linguistics, the problem of metaphor was dealt with in rhetorics, it occupied a special place in structural linguistics, and it was studied in diverse pragmatic, cognitive and textual analysis. In the present paper, metaphors in Slovene are analyzed from the linguistic point of view: grammatical and syntactic structure (monolexical/polylexical, in praesentia/in absentia, etc., semantic field and semantic transfer and degree of conventionality (ranging from innovative to lexicalized metaphors. The cases are taken from the unconventional linguistic corpus, Razvezani jezik, an online dictionary based on collaborative authorship. Authors can freely add new words (formal neologisms or new meanings of existing ones (semantic neologisms which makes it especially interesting for linguistic innovation research. The results show that zoomorphic metaphors are most common and that there is a significant number of reification metaphors (replacing a living being with an object. Phytomorphic metaphors (related to plants are also present, whereas anthropomorphic ones are scarce. These types of metaphors most often refer to character, personality or human behavior, but also to parts of human body, human actions, etc. The corpus is rich in both, lexicalized, conventional as well as in innovative, so called live metaphors, and it seems that Razvezani jezik, an online database for Slovene, is particularly suitable to register these diverse possibilities and usages.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

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Violaine Michel Lange

Full Text Available Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

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Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production. PMID:29091940

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

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Michel Lange, Violaine; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism : In honor of Aafke Hulk

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Blom, E.; Cornips, L.; Schaeffer, J.

2017-01-01

This book presents a current state-of-affairs regarding the study of cross-linguistic influence in bilingualism. Taking Hulk and Müller’s (2000) and Müller and Hulk’s (2001) hypotheses on cross-linguistic influence as a starting point, the book exemplifies the shift from the original focus on syntax

Lexical influence on stress processing in a fixed-stress language.

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Garami, Linda; Ragó, Anett; Honbolygó, Ferenc; Csépe, Valéria

2017-07-01

In the present study, we investigate how lexicality affects the processing of suprasegmental features at the word level. In contrast to earlier studies which analyzed the role of either segmental or suprasegmental feature in language processing our aim was to investigate the effect of the lexical status on the processing of violated stress pattern defined by linguistic rules. We have conducted a passive oddball ERP experiment, presenting a frequent CVCV word with legal (familiar) and illegal (unfamiliar) stress patterns. Former results obtained with pseudo-words in a similar paradigm enabled to assess the influence of lexical information on stress processing. The presence of lexically relevant information resulted in different ERP patterns compared to those obtained with pseudo-words. We obtained two consecutive MMN responses to the illegally stressed words while violating the illegal stress pattern with a legal one the deviant stimulus elicited two consecutive MMN responses as well. In the latter condition lexicality clearly enhanced the comparison of prosodic information between standard and deviant stimuli, as these components very completely missing when presenting pseudo-words. We interpret the results that lexicality acts as a filter since in the absence of lexical familiarity unfamiliar stress patterns are discriminated better. Our results highlight that even when stress is fully predictable, it is taken into account during pre-attentive processing of linguistic input. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Variation, structure and norms

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Harder, Peter

2014-01-01

in linguistics: those that see linguistic norms as antithetical to a descriptive and variational linguistics. Once such a re-evaluation has taken place, however, the social recontextualization of cognition will enable linguistics (including sociolinguistics as an integral part), to eliminate the cracks...... that an evolutionary account can reintegrate the opposed fragments into a whole picture that puts each of them in their ‘ecological position’ with respect to each other. Empirical usage facts should be seen in the context of operational norms in relation to which actual linguistic choices represent adaptations....... Variational patterns should be seen in the context of structural categories without which there would be only ‘differences’ rather than variation. And emergence, individual choice, and flux should be seen in the context of the individual’s dependence on lineages of community practice sustained by collective...

Acquisition of linguistic procedures for printed words: neuropsychological implications for learning.

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Berninger, V W

1988-10-01

A microcomputerized experiment, administered to 45 children in the 2nd, 5th, and 8th month of first grade, manipulated three variables: (a) stimulus unit (whole word or letter-by-letter presentation), (b) nature of stimulus information (phonically regular words, phonically irregular words, nonsense words, and letter strings, which differ in whether phonemic, orthographic, semantic, and/or name codes are available), and (c) linguistic task (lexical decision, naming, and written reproduction). Letter-by-letter presentation resulted in more accurate lexical decision and naming but not more accurate written reproduction. Interactions between nature of stimulus information and linguistic task occurred. Throughout the year, accuracy was greater for lexical decision than for naming or written reproduction. The superiority of lexical decision cannot be attributed to the higher probability of correct responses on a binary choice task because only consistently correct responses on repeated trials were analyzed. The earlier development of lexical decision, a receptive task, than of naming or written reproduction, production tasks, suggests that hidden units (Hinton & Sejnowski, 1986) in tertiary cortical areas may abstract visual-linguistic associations in printed words before production units in primary cortical areas can produce printed words orally or graphically.

Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy.

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Venturaa, Paulo; Kolinsky, Régine; Fernandesa, Sandra; Queridoa, Luís; Morais, José

2007-11-01

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children's judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.

Protein linguistics - a grammar for modular protein assembly?

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Gimona, Mario

2006-01-01

The correspondence between biology and linguistics at the level of sequence and lexical inventories, and of structure and syntax, has fuelled attempts to describe genome structure by the rules of formal linguistics. But how can we define protein linguistic rules? And how could compositional semantics improve our understanding of protein organization and functional plasticity?

Lexical Borrowing in the Speech of First-Generation Hungarian Immigrants in Australia

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Anikó Hatoss

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This article reports findings of a sociolinguistic project which investigated language contact phenomena in the speech of first-generation Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The research aimed to identify and analyze English lexical items borrowed into the spoken Hungarian of first-generation Hungarian–English bilinguals. This research had a mixed methods approach including a quantitative element (count of lexical manifestations by categories such as part of speech and a qualitative element in which the various lexical manifestations have been subjected to a linguistic analysis. The Hungarian National Corpus was used as a reference guide to determine the status of these phenomena in the lexicon of Standard Hungarian. The data were collected through semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews with 22 Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The findings demonstrate that (a first-generation Hungarians are highly creative language users and integrate a large number of English lexical items into their speech. Most lexical borrowings belong to the derivational blends with the highest proportion of the nominal group. Lexical borrowings from English are morphologically integrated with Hungarian-derivational suffixes and inflectional case markings. This research provides original empirical data to better understand the various inter-language lexical manifestations in Hungarian–English bilingual contexts. The study adds to the relatively small body of research on Hungarian–English bilingualism in diasporic context and contributes to understanding lexical borrowing from a contact linguistic perspective.

Evaluating Lexical Cohesion in Nigerian Newspaper Genres: Focus on the Editorials

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Zubairu Malah

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings emerging from such studies would be of pedagogical significance because most of the newspaper genres share certain conventional features with school genres. Similarly, this study explored lexical cohesion in newspaper editorials, and it is understood that the findings could help learners in handling persuasive writings. The study sought to identify the dominant sources of lexical cohesion in the editorials, and also to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized to achieve coherence in the editorials. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL, the study applied Eggins’ (2004 model of lexical cohesion and analyzed 30 editorial texts of 20, 354 words drawn from three major Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard. The analysis revealed 2, 685 ties across 849 sentences. The data demonstrated that the major types of lexical cohesion in the editorials include: repetition (49.5%, expectancy relations (15. 8%, class/sub-class (11%, and synonymy (10.8%. It was further revealed that lexical cohesion devices, which formed into chains (586 and isolated ties (837, were utilized in building coherence in the editorial texts. It was finally shown how findings of the study could be beneficial in ESP, EAP, and EGP learning, especially in persuasive writings.

The effects of bilingual status on lexical comprehension and production in Maltese five-year-old children: A LITMUS-CLT study.

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Gatt, Daniela; Attard, Donna; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

This article investigates whether the bilingual status of 56 typically developing children aged 60-69 months influenced their lexical abilities. The participants were identified as Maltese-dominant (Me) (n = 21), English-dominant (Em) (n = 15) and balanced bilingual (ME) (n = 20) on the basis of language exposure and proficiency, as reported by their parents. Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs were measured using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) in Maltese (CLT-MT) and British English (CLT-EN). Significant effects of bilingual group were identified for performance on lexical comprehension. For production, consistent bilingual group effects resulted when accurate concepts lexicalised in the test language were scored. Lexical mixing was more pronounced when children were tested in their non-dominant language. Maltese noun production elicited the highest levels of mixing across all groups. Findings point towards the need to consider specific exposure dynamics to each language within a single language pair when assessing children's bilingual lexical skills.

A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development

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Dispaldro, Marco; Deevy, Patricia; Altoe, Gianmarco; Benelli, Beatrice; Leonard Purdue, Laurence B.

2013-01-01

Background Although relationships among non-word repetition, real-word repetition and grammatical ability have been documented, it is important to study whether the specific nature of these relationships is tied to the characteristics of a given language. Aims The aim of this study is to explore the potential cross-linguistic differences (Italian and English) in the relationship among non-word repetition, real-word repetition, and grammatical ability in three- and four-year-old children with typical language development. Methods & Procedures To reach this goal, two repetition tasks (one real-word list and one non-word list for each language) were used. In Italian the grammatical categories were the third person plural inflection and the direct-object clitic pronouns, while in English they were the third person singular present tense inflection and the past tense in regular and irregular forms. Outcomes & Results A cross-linguistic comparison showed that in both Italian and English, non-word repetition was a significant predictor of grammatical ability. However, performance on real-word repetition explained children’s grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Conclusions & Implications Abilities underlying non-word repetition performance (e.g., the processing and/or storage of phonological material) play an important role in the development of children’s grammatical abilities in both languages. Lexical ability (indexed by real-word repetition) showed a close relationship to grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cross-linguistic differences, genetic research, clinical intervention and methodological issues. PMID:21899673

A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development.

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Dispaldro, Marco; Deevy, Patricia; Altoé, Gianmarco; Benelli, Beatrice; Leonard, Laurence B

2011-01-01

Although relationships among non-word repetition, real-word repetition and grammatical ability have been documented, it is important to study whether the specific nature of these relationships is tied to the characteristics of a given language. The aim of this study is to explore the potential cross-linguistic differences (Italian and English) in the relationship among non-word repetition, real-word repetition, and grammatical ability in three-and four-year-old children with typical language development. To reach this goal, two repetition tasks (one real-word list and one non-word list for each language) were used. In Italian the grammatical categories were the third person plural inflection and the direct-object clitic pronouns, while in English they were the third person singular present tense inflection and the past tense in regular and irregular forms. A cross-linguistic comparison showed that in both Italian and English, non-word repetition was a significant predictor of grammatical ability. However, performance on real-word repetition explained children's grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Abilities underlying non-word repetition performance (e.g., the processing and/or storage of phonological material) play an important role in the development of children's grammatical abilities in both languages. Lexical ability (indexed by real-word repetition) showed a close relationship to grammatical ability in Italian but not in English. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cross-linguistic differences, genetic research, clinical intervention and methodological issues. © 2011 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

Lexical and constructional organization of argument structure: a contrastive analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Johan

2009-01-01

Abstract. In this chapter I outline some principles for a contrastive analysis of basic clausal expressions in English and Spanish. They are formulated within a general framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The proposed principles for cross-linguistic variation are a challenge to the principles...... of parametric variation in syntax as envisioned in Chomsky (1981) and defended by Snyder (2001). From a theory-internal point of view, they lead to a reinterpretation of Talmy's descriptive typology of macro-events (Talmy 1991, 2000). Particularly, they solve a serious flaw in Talmy's typology due to his......) lexical constructions (e.g. Croft 2001; Fillmore 1988; Goldberg 1995, 2006). In addition, clausal expressions are, according to some CXG-frameworks (e.g. Croft 2001), supposed to be built on language-specific construction types. I hypothesize that languages may differ according to the level...

Unfolding Visual Lexical Decision in Time

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Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni

2012-01-01

Visual lexical decision is a classical paradigm in psycholinguistics, and numerous studies have assessed the so-called “lexicality effect" (i.e., better performance with lexical than non-lexical stimuli). Far less is known about the dynamics of choice, because many studies measured overall reaction times, which are not informative about underlying processes. To unfold visual lexical decision in (over) time, we measured participants' hand movements toward one of two item alternatives by recording the streaming x,y coordinates of the computer mouse. Participants categorized four kinds of stimuli as “lexical" or “non-lexical:" high and low frequency words, pseudowords, and letter strings. Spatial attraction toward the opposite category was present for low frequency words and pseudowords. Increasing the ambiguity of the stimuli led to greater movement complexity and trajectory attraction to competitors, whereas no such effect was present for high frequency words and letter strings. Results fit well with dynamic models of perceptual decision-making, which describe the process as a competition between alternatives guided by the continuous accumulation of evidence. More broadly, our results point to a key role of statistical decision theory in studying linguistic processing in terms of dynamic and non-modular mechanisms. PMID:22563419

Lexical Frames and Reported Speech

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Williams, Howard

2004-01-01

This paper addresses a problem of lexical choice that arises for ESL/EFL learners in the writing of research papers, critiques, interview reports, or any other sort of discourse that requires source attribution. The problem falls naturally into two parts. One part concerns the general lack of linguistic resources typically available (for various…

Lexical Bundle Analysis in Mathematics Classroom Discourse: The Significance of Stance

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Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David; Cortes, Viviana

2010-01-01

In this article, we introduce the lexical bundle, defined by corpus linguists as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 2006; Cortes, "English for Specific Purposes" 23:397-423, 2004). Attention to lexical bundles helps to explore…

How to define a word in a lexical network?

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Dorota Sikora

2012-01-01

Full Text Available As underlined in Wierzbicka (1996: 239, a «linguistic definition is a scientific hypothesis about the concept encoded in a given word». The present paper focuses on the problem of what such hypothesis is about. Lexicon of any language is structured with a set of connections relating lexical items. That is to say that speakers of any language need to master not only separate words, but rather a cluster of connected senses. If so, then a lexical definition should lay out the concept the word lexicalizes in the way that gives access to the whole grasp of its conceptual, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. We discuss the topic of definitional structures developed in the context of the French Lexical Network (Réseau Lexical du Français.

Lexically Allusive Content of Semantic Frames (Based on the Works of John Fowles

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Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Akatova

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The semantic frame is a cognitive model, some mental structure that unites the world map and the thesaurus of a person, the hierarchy of meanings and values of the linguistic model of the world. Conceptual-cognitive content of a semantic frame includes three constituents: the reader, the author, and culture. The postmodernistic metatext, a vivid example of which is the metatext of John Fowles, is made of lexical-semantic frames, filled with allusions, general cultural precedent phenomena, cross-references, leitmotif lexemes. The frames of "freedom" and "game" exemplify integrated leitmotif of enclosed space, sea, theater, meta-theatre, god, god's imitations, magician (wizard, and fool. The application of a semantic frames method for the analysis of lexical-allusive elements in the works of John Fowles (The Aristos, The Magus, The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, French Lieutenant's Woman, A Maggot, Wormholes allowed to identify the net of allusive inclusions and arrange them into lexical-semantic frames, which helped to decode linguocultural metatext of the society and the individual (author. The interpretation of linguistic and cultural items in the text has lead to distinguishing the dominant frame of the metatext, that is "freedom". It is stated that creativity is freedom in action, responsibility is the condition for complete freedom, the path from the Fool to the Magician is the way from blindness of the stereotypes in the society to the intrinsic vision of internal freedom and unifying meaning of existence.

Semantic Analysis of Verbal Collocations with Lexical Functions

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Gelbukh, Alexander

2013-01-01

This book is written for both linguists and computer scientists working in the field of artificial intelligence as well as to anyone interested in intelligent text processing. Lexical function is a concept that formalizes semantic and syntactic relations between lexical units. Collocational relation is a type of institutionalized lexical relations which holds between the base and its partner in a collocation. Knowledge of collocation is important for natural language processing because collocation comprises the restrictions on how words can be used together. The book shows how collocations can be annotated with lexical functions in a computer readable dictionary - allowing their precise semantic analysis in texts and their effective use in natural language applications including parsers, high quality machine translation, periphrasis system and computer-aided learning of lexica. The books shows how to extract collocations from corpora and annotate them with lexical functions automatically. To train algorithms,...

Influence of schooling on language abilities of adults without linguistic disorders

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Ellen Cristina Siqueira Soares

Full Text Available CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: In order to properly assess language, sociodemographic variables that can influence the linguistic performance of individuals with or without linguistic disorders need to be taken into account. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of schooling and age on the results from the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86 language assessment test among individuals without linguistic disorders. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study carried out between March 2006 and August 2007 in the Speech, Language and Hearing Pathology Department of Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp, São Paulo, Brazil. METHODS: Eighty volunteers were selected. Schooling was stratified into three bands: A (1-4 years, B (5-8 years and C (nine years and over. The age range was from 17 to 80 years. All the subjects underwent the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86 language assessment protocol. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences were found in relation to schooling levels, in the tasks of oral comprehension, reading, graphical comprehension, naming, lexical availability, dictation, graphical naming of actions and number reading. Statistically significant age-related differences in dictation and lexical availability tasks were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86 test seems to be sensitive to variations in schooling and age. These variables should be taken into account when this test is used for assessing patients with brain damage.

Influence of schooling on language abilities of adults without linguistic disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Soares, Ellen Cristina Siqueira; Ortiz, Karin Zazo

2009-01-01

In order to properly assess language, sociodemographic variables that can influence the linguistic performance of individuals with or without linguistic disorders need to be taken into account. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of schooling and age on the results from the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) language assessment test among individuals without linguistic disorders. Cross-sectional study carried out between March 2006 and August 2007 in the Speech, Language and Hearing Pathology Department of Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), São Paulo, Brazil. Eighty volunteers were selected. Schooling was stratified into three bands: A (1-4 years), B (5-8 years) and C (nine years and over). The age range was from 17 to 80 years. All the subjects underwent the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) language assessment protocol. Statistically significant differences were found in relation to schooling levels, in the tasks of oral comprehension, reading, graphical comprehension, naming, lexical availability, dictation, graphical naming of actions and number reading. Statistically significant age-related differences in dictation and lexical availability tasks were observed. The Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) test seems to be sensitive to variations in schooling and age. These variables should be taken into account when this test is used for assessing patients with brain damage.

On Linguistic Abilities, Multilingualism, and Linguistic Justice

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Iannàccaro Gabriele

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The notion of linguistic justice should be related to the concept of linguistic ease, by which we mean the full social and communicative freedom of concern of the speaker in a given social interaction involving the use of language(s present in the society, according to the social norms of use. To acquire an acceptable degree of linguistic ease, the knowledge of at least one L2 is considered important. But the acquisition of a L2 is interfered by the previous linguistic skills of the learner/speaker who, in many cases, does not have a suitable competence even of the languages of the society in which he/she lives.

Costs and Benefits of Orthographic Inconsistency in Reading: Evidence from a Cross-Linguistic Comparison.

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Chiara Valeria Marinelli

Full Text Available We compared reading acquisition in English and Italian children up to late primary school analyzing RTs and errors as a function of various psycholinguistic variables and changes due to experience. Our results show that reading becomes progressively more reliant on larger processing units with age, but that this is modulated by consistency of the language. In English, an inconsistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs earlier on and it is demonstrated by faster RTs, a stronger effect of lexical variables and lack of length effect (by fifth grade. However, not all English children are able to master this mode of processing yielding larger inter-individual variability. In Italian, a consistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs later and it is less pronounced. This is demonstrated by larger length effects which remain significant even in older children and by larger effects of a global factor (related to speed of orthographic decoding explaining changes of performance across ages. Our results show the importance of considering not only overall performance, but inter-individual variability and variability between conditions when interpreting cross-linguistic differences.

Spanish norms for age of acquisition, concept familiarity, lexical frequency, manipulability, typicality, and other variables for 820 words from 14 living/nonliving concepts.

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Moreno-Martínez, F Javier; Montoro, Pedro R; Rodríguez-Rojo, Inmaculada C

2014-12-01

This article presents a new corpus of 820 words pertaining to 14 semantic categories, 7 natural (animals, body parts, insects, flowers, fruits, trees, and vegetables) and 7 man-made (buildings, clothing, furniture, kitchen utensils, musical instruments, tools, and vehicles); each word in the database was collected empirically in a previous exemplar generation study. In the present study, 152 Spanish speakers provided data for four psycholinguistic variables known to affect lexical-semantic processing in both neurologically intact and brain-damaged participants: age of acquisition, familiarity, manipulability, and typicality. Furthermore, we collected lexical frequency data derived from Internet search hits, plus three additional Spanish lexical frequency indexes. Word length, number of syllables, and the proportion of respondents citing the exemplar as a category member-which can be useful as an additional measure of typicality-are also provided. Reliability and validity indexes showed that our items display characteristics similar to those of other corpora. Overall, this new corpus of words provides a useful tool for scientists engaged in cognitive- and neuroscience-based research focused on examining language, memory, and object processing. The full set of norms can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Automatic processing of unattended lexical information in visual oddball presentation: neurophysiological evidence

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Yury eShtyrov

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Previous electrophysiological studies of automatic language processing revealed early (100-200 ms reflections of access to lexical characteristics of speech signal using the so-called mismatch negativity (MMN, a negative ERP deflection elicited by infrequent irregularities in unattended repetitive auditory stimulation. In those studies, lexical processing of spoken stimuli became manifest as an enhanced ERP in response to unattended real words as opposed to phonologically matched but meaningless pseudoword stimuli. This lexical ERP enhancement was explained by automatic activation of word memory traces realised as distributed strongly intra-connected neuronal circuits, whose robustness guarantees memory trace activation even in the absence of attention on spoken input. Such an account would predict the automatic activation of these memory traces upon any presentation of linguistic information, irrespective of the presentation modality. As previous lexical MMN studies exclusively used auditory stimulation, we here adapted the lexical MMN paradigm to investigate early automatic lexical effects in the visual modality. In a visual oddball sequence, matched short word and pseudoword stimuli were presented tachistoscopically in perifoveal area outside the visual focus of attention, as the subjects’ attention was concentrated on a concurrent non-linguistic visual dual task in the centre of the screen. Using EEG, we found a visual analogue of the lexical ERP enhancement effect, with unattended written words producing larger brain response amplitudes than matched pseudowords, starting at ~100 ms. Furthermore, we also found significant visual MMN, reported here for the first time for unattended lexical stimuli presented perifoveally. The data suggest early automatic lexical processing of visually presented language outside the focus of attention.

On Norms and Linguistic Categories in Linguistic Diversity Management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Marácz, L.

2014-01-01

Due to globalization there is an increase in the appearances of languages in the multilingual linguistic landscape in urban spaces. Commentators have described this state of affairs as super-, mega- or complex diversity. Mainstream sociolinguists have argued that languages have no fixed boundaries

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

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Anneke P. Potgieter

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Background: There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives: To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1 occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2 in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method: Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results: The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion: As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Background There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. Objectives To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals’ languages, regardless of input quantity. Method Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals’ acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. Results The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals’ acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. Conclusion As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals’ input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure. PMID:27245133

Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans.

Science.gov (United States)

Potgieter, Anneke P

2016-05-20

There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this population. This inevitably impacts on the accuracy of developmental assessments of such speakers. Already negative lay opinion on the effect of early multilingualism on language development rates could be exacerbated by the lack of developmental data, ultimately affecting choices regarding home and school language policies. To establish whether trilinguals necessarily exhibit developmental delay when compared to monolinguals and, if so, whether this delay (1) occurs in terms of both lexical and grammatical development; and (2) in all three the trilinguals' languages, regardless of input quantity. Focusing on isiXhosa, South African English and Afrikaans, the study involved a comparison of 11 four-year-old developing trilinguals' acquisition of vocabulary and passive constructions with that of 10 age-matched monolingual speakers of each language. The trilinguals proved to be monolingual-like in their lexical development in the language to which, on average, they had been exposed most over time, that is, isiXhosa. No developmental delay was found in the trilinguals' acquisition of passive constructions, regardless of the language of testing. As previously found for bilingual development, necessarily reduced quantity of exposure does not hinder lexical development in the trilinguals' input dominant language. The overall lack of delay in their acquisition of the passive is interpreted as possible evidence of cross-linguistic bootstrapping and support for early multilingual exposure.

Translation norms for English and Spanish: The role of lexical variables, word class, and L2 proficiency in negotiating translation ambiguity

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Prior, Anat; MacWhinney, Brian; Kroll, Judith F.

2014-01-01

We present a set of translation norms for 670 English and 760 Spanish nouns, verbs and class ambiguous items that varied in their lexical properties in both languages, collected from 80 bilingual participants. Half of the words in each language received more than a single translation across participants. Cue word frequency and imageability were both negatively correlated with number of translations. Word class predicted number of translations: Nouns had fewer translations than did verbs, which had fewer translations than class-ambiguous items. The translation probability of specific responses was positively correlated with target word frequency and imageability, and with its form overlap with the cue word. Translation choice was modulated by L2 proficiency: Less proficient bilinguals tended to produce lower probability translations than more proficient bilinguals, but only in forward translation, from L1 to L2. These findings highlight the importance of translation ambiguity as a factor influencing bilingual representation and performance. The norms can also provide an important resource to assist researchers in the selection of experimental materials for studies of bilingual and monolingual language performance. These norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive. PMID:18183923

Cross-linguistic influence in multilingual language acquisition: The role of L1 and non-native languages in English and Catalan oral production

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Mireia Ortega

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Most research in third language acquisition has focused on the effects that factors such as language distance, second language (L2 status, proficiency or recency have on the choice of the source language (L1 in cross-linguistic influence (CLI. This paper presents a study of these factors, and of the influence that the L1 (Spanish has on L2 (English and L3 (Catalan oral production. Lexical and syntactic transfer are analysed in the production of Catalan and English of two multilingual speakers with similar knowledge of non-native languages. They were interviewed twice in an informal environment. The results show that the L1 is the main source of transfer, both in L2 and L3 production, but its influence decreases as proficiency in the target language increases. Language distance also plays an important role in CLI, especially if proficiency in the source language is high and if there has been recent exposure to it. The findings also suggest that while syntactic transfer is exclusively L1-based, lexical transfer can occur from a non-native language.

Ethnocultural features of a linguistic persona: the specifics of the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Ethnocultural features of a linguistic persona: the specifics of the representation of universal emotional concepts. ... The paper pays special attention to the ethnocultural content of emotional and lexical units, which indicate the ethnic identity of a linguistic persona and reflect typical, historically developed signs of the ethnic ...

Grammatical Gender Trouble and Hungarian Gender[lessness]. Part I: Comparative Linguistic Gender

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Louise O. Vasvári

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to define linguistic gender[lessness], with particular reference in the latter part of the article to Hungarian, and to show why it is a feminist issue. I will discuss the [socio]linguistics of linguistic gender in three types of languages, those, like German and the Romance languages, among others, which possess grammatical gender, languages such as English, with only pronominal gender (sometimes misnamed ‘natural gender’, and languages such as Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages, as well as many other languages in the world, such as Turkish and Chinese, which have no linguistic or pronomial gender, but, like all languages, can make lexical gender distinctions. While in a narrow linguistic sense linguistic gender can be said to be afunctional, this does not take into account the ideological ramifications in gendered languages of the “leakage” between gender and sex[ism], while at the same time so-called genderless languages can express societal sexist assumptions linguistically through, for example, lexical gender, semantic derogation of women, and naming conventions. Thus, both languages with overt grammatical gender and those with gender-related asymmetries of a more covert nature show language to represent traditional cultural expectations, illustrating that linguistic gender is a feminist issue.

Sensorimotor Behaviour Reflects Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in Czech: An Eye Tracking Study

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Michal Kořenář

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Thinking and speaking about events is a process tightly connected with time perception. We can express when an event has occurred with respect to other events, whether it was a durative or a one-time event, whether it was an ongoing or already finished event, etc. Every human language has its own way and extent to which this complex temporal structure of experienced events is expressed. Upon hearing a story we construct a mental representation of the communicated event (e.g. Givón 1992. Some studies show that this construction already evolves during online processing, thanks to instantly accessible language processing cues (Altman and Kamide 1999, Ferretti, McRae and Hatherell 2001, McRae, Ferretti and Amyote 1997. These cues are employed to capture the intricate temporal structure of the story, for instance. They arise from the interplay of the three basic linguistic components (structure, meaning and function and as such are consistent with a constructional view of language (e.g. Fillmore 1988. Even subtle changes of any of the linguistic cues may lead to a different mental representation. Examples of the sources of grammatical markers and lexical categories from which the linguistic cues arise are grammatical and lexical aspect. In the linguistic field, a lot of attention has been paid to analyses of how those sources of temporal cues function within a language system. However, there is a lack of empirical data on how grammatical and lexical aspect interact, and what the effects of such an interaction are. The present study aims to investigate the link between the complex system of temporal cues and sensorimotor representation in Czech speakers, with specific focus on grammatical verb aspect and so-called event telicity, i.e. lexical aspect, all of which will be further described below.

Lexical tone and stuttering in Cantonese.

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Law, Thomas; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; To, Carol K-S; Tong, Michael C-F; Lee, Kathy Y-S

2018-01-01

Cantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18-33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

LEXICAL ANALYSIS OF THE VERB COOK AND LEARNING VOCABULARY: A CORPUS STUDY

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Priyono Priyono

2011-07-01

Full Text Available English verbs have built-in properties that determine how they behave syntactically and generate appropriate meaning associated. With these inherent properties some verbs can fill in only in certain syntactic structures and some in others. The observation of the verb COOK using English corpus has revealed its lexical properties covering the area of syntax, semantics, and collocation suggesting uniqueness of its behaviours that are distinguishable from other verbs. Having found the lexical properties of COOK, this article concludes that the acquisition of lexicon should include lexical properties that reflect their level of competence. It also argues that the acquisition of lexical properties should be implicit, not through meta-linguistic knowledge. This would render early grammar teaching unnecessary. The acquisition of lexical properties should take place through subconscious process, not explicit grammar instruction. Many of these are grammatical aspects such as word order, sentence construction, grammatical and lexical collocations.

Linguistic Theory in the Practical Lexicography of the African Languages

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Emmanuel Chabata

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract: In this article, we look at the relationship between linguistics and lexicography. We specifically look at the relevance of data derived from theoretical linguistic investigations to the compilation of diction-aries in African languages. Our point of departure is that since it is language description that lies at the core of both lexicography and linguistic theory, lexicographers can improve their work by using insights from theoretically-guided linguistic investigations. Our view is that as long as lexicographers focus on words and their existence in the linguistic system, they cannot work effectively without referring to linguistic theory, consciously or unconsciously. Lexicography is not only concerned with dictionary creation, that is, with the collection of lexical units and their proper description in dictionary entries, but also with the theoretical aspects concerning the lexicon. It is necessary for dictionaries to capture all lexical interrelationships of a phonetic, morphological, syntactic or semantic nature. Drawing examples from a few dictionaries on African languages, we try to show how dictionary compilers have benefited from specific theoretical investigations in general linguistics. We look at how the different linguistic theories have contributed to the improvement in the quality of the contents of some dictionaries of African languages. Our conclusion is that there is a stronger bond between linguistic theory and lexicographic practice than is generally assumed. Ways must therefore be found to understand the various links between the two disciplines. There should be a deliberate move from mutual neglect to collaboration between the two disciplines.

Dyslexia from a Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspective: The Case of Russian and Russia

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Kornev, Aleksandr N.; Rakhlin, Natalia; Grigorenko, Elena L.

2010-01-01

An important goal of research on specific learning disorders (such as dyslexia, or specific reading disability, or dysgraphia, or specific writing disorder) is to elucidate the universal characteristics and cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences of literacy acquisition and disability. However, despite the acknowledged necessity of…

USING AUTHENTIC LITERARY WORKS FOR THE FORMATION OF LEXICAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE GERMAN LANGUAGE TEACHERS

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Антоніна Палецька-Юкало

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the advantages of use of authentic literary works as the main sphere of learning and improvement of foreign language vocabulary.The definition of lexical competence has been suggested. The possibilities for perceiving and analysis of such language phenomena as synonyms, antonyms, polisemic words, lexical links, linguistic clichés non-equivalent and emotionally colored vocabulary of authentic literary works as the basis of the formation of German lexical competence of future teachers have been grounded. The process of investigation has revealed that lexical contents of authentic literary works contribute to a comprehensive dictionary and learning connected speech structures, provide frequent repetition of lexical items, and create a sense of language.

Listen to the beat : A cross-linguistic perspective on the use of stress in segmentation

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van Ommen, S.

2016-01-01

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relation of word stress to word segmentation in a cross-linguistic perspective. While many studies have addressed this issue before, the current one takes a typologically broad cross-linguistic approach to the use of edge-aligned word stress in

Environmental Determinants of Lexical Processing Effort

OpenAIRE

McDonald, Scott

2000-01-01

Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation A central concern of psycholinguistic research is explaining the relative ease or difficulty involved in processing words. In this thesis, we explore the connection between lexical processing effort and measurable properties of the linguistic environment. Distributional information (information about a word’s contexts of use) is easily extracted from large language corpora in the form of co-occurrence statistics. We claim that su...

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lange, Violaine Michel; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter

2017-01-01

to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words...... were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production....

Cross-Language Translation Priming Asymmetry with Chinese-English Bilinguals: A Test of the Sense Model

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Chen, Baoguo; Zhou, Huixia; Gao, Yiwen; Dunlap, Susan

2014-01-01

The present study aimed to test the Sense Model of cross-linguistic masked translation priming asymmetry, proposed by Finkbeiner et al. ("J Mem Lang" 51:1-22, 2004), by manipulating the number of senses that bilingual participants associated with words from both languages. Three lexical decision experiments were conducted with…

Exploiting cross-linguistic similarities in Zulu and Xhosa computational morphology

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Pretorius, L

2009-03-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates the possibilities that cross-linguistic similarities and dissimilarities between related languages offer in terms of bootstrapping a morphological analyser. In this case an existing Zulu morphological analyser prototype (Zul...

Modulation of working memory updating: Does long-term memory lexical association matter?

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Artuso, Caterina; Palladino, Paola

2016-02-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate how working memory updating for verbal material is modulated by enduring properties of long-term memory. Two coexisting perspectives that account for the relation between long-term representation and short-term performance were addressed. First, evidence suggests that performance is more closely linked to lexical properties, that is, co-occurrences within the language. Conversely, other evidence suggests that performance is linked more to long-term representations which do not entail lexical/linguistic representations. Our aim was to investigate how these two kinds of long-term memory associations (i.e., lexical or nonlexical) modulate ongoing working memory activity. Therefore, we manipulated (between participants) the strength of the association in letters based on either frequency of co-occurrences (lexical) or contiguity along the sequence of the alphabet (nonlexical). Results showed a cost in working memory updating for strongly lexically associated stimuli only. Our findings advance knowledge of how lexical long-term memory associations between consonants affect working memory updating and, in turn, contribute to the study of factors which impact the updating process across memory systems.

Riding the lexical speedway: a critical review on the time course of lexical selection in speech production.

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Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt's estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act.

Riding the Lexical Speedway: A Critical Review on the Time Course of Lexical Selection in Speech Production

Science.gov (United States)

Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt’s estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act. PMID:22144973

Verbal Working Memory Is Related to the Acquisition of Cross-Linguistic Phonological Regularities.

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Bosma, Evelyn; Heeringa, Wilbert; Hoekstra, Eric; Versloot, Arjen; Blom, Elma

2017-01-01

Closely related languages share cross-linguistic phonological regularities, such as Frisian -âld [ͻ:t] and Dutch -oud [ʱut], as in the cognate pairs kâld [kͻ:t] - koud [kʱut] 'cold' and wâld [wͻ:t] - woud [wʱut] 'forest'. Within Bybee's (1995, 2001, 2008, 2010) network model, these regularities are, just like grammatical rules within a language, generalizations that emerge from schemas of phonologically and semantically related words. Previous research has shown that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of grammar, but not vocabulary. This suggests that verbal working memory supports the acquisition of linguistic regularities. In order to test this hypothesis we investigated whether verbal working memory is also related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. For three consecutive years, 5- to 8-year-old Frisian-Dutch bilingual children ( n = 120) were tested annually on verbal working memory and a Frisian receptive vocabulary task that comprised four cognate categories: (1) identical cognates, (2) non-identical cognates that either do or (3) do not exhibit a phonological regularity between Frisian and Dutch, and (4) non-cognates. The results showed that verbal working memory had a significantly stronger effect on cognate category (2) than on the other three cognate categories. This suggests that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. More generally, it confirms the hypothesis that verbal working memory plays a role in the acquisition of linguistic regularities.

Relationships between Lexical and Phonological Development: A Look at Bilingual Children--A Commentary on Stoel-Gammon's "Relationships between Lexical and Phonological Development in Young Children"

Science.gov (United States)

Kehoe, Margaret

2011-01-01

Stoel-Gammon (this issue) highlights the close and symbiotic association that exists between the lexical and phonological domains in early linguistic development. Her comprehensive review considers two bodies of literature: (1) child-centred studies; and (2) studies based on adult psycholinguistic research. Within the child-centred studies, both…

Appraising Lexical Bundles in Mathematics Classroom Discourse: Obligation and Choice

Science.gov (United States)

Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David

2010-01-01

Working from a large corpus of transcripts from secondary mathematics classrooms, we identify patterns of speech that encode interpersonal positioning. We extend our analysis from a previous article (Herbel-Eisenmann, Wagner & Cortes, Educ Stud Math, 2010, in press), in which we introduced a concept from corpus linguistics--a "lexical bundle,"…

The Effects of Prohibiting Gestures on Children's Lexical Retrieval Ability

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Pine, Karen J.; Bird, Hannah; Kirk, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

Two alternative accounts have been proposed to explain the role of gestures in thinking and speaking. The Information Packaging Hypothesis (Kita, 2000) claims that gestures are important for the conceptual packaging of information before it is coded into a linguistic form for speech. The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis (Rauscher, Krauss & Chen, 1996)…

Verbal Working Memory Is Related to the Acquisition of Cross-Linguistic Phonological Regularities

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Evelyn Bosma

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Closely related languages share cross-linguistic phonological regularities, such as Frisian -âld [ͻ:t] and Dutch -oud [ʱut], as in the cognate pairs kâld [kͻ:t] – koud [kʱut] ‘cold’ and wâld [wͻ:t] – woud [wʱut] ‘forest’. Within Bybee’s (1995, 2001, 2008, 2010 network model, these regularities are, just like grammatical rules within a language, generalizations that emerge from schemas of phonologically and semantically related words. Previous research has shown that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of grammar, but not vocabulary. This suggests that verbal working memory supports the acquisition of linguistic regularities. In order to test this hypothesis we investigated whether verbal working memory is also related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. For three consecutive years, 5- to 8-year-old Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (n = 120 were tested annually on verbal working memory and a Frisian receptive vocabulary task that comprised four cognate categories: (1 identical cognates, (2 non-identical cognates that either do or (3 do not exhibit a phonological regularity between Frisian and Dutch, and (4 non-cognates. The results showed that verbal working memory had a significantly stronger effect on cognate category (2 than on the other three cognate categories. This suggests that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. More generally, it confirms the hypothesis that verbal working memory plays a role in the acquisition of linguistic regularities.

Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects on verbal working memory and vocabulary: testing language-minority children with an immigrant background.

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de Abreu, Pascale M J Engel; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L; Befi-Lopes, Debora M

2013-04-01

In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics.

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Poeppel, David; Idsardi, William J; van Wassenhove, Virginie

2008-03-12

Speech perception consists of a set of computations that take continuously varying acoustic waveforms as input and generate discrete representations that make contact with the lexical representations stored in long-term memory as output. Because the perceptual objects that are recognized by the speech perception enter into subsequent linguistic computation, the format that is used for lexical representation and processing fundamentally constrains the speech perceptual processes. Consequently, theories of speech perception must, at some level, be tightly linked to theories of lexical representation. Minimally, speech perception must yield representations that smoothly and rapidly interface with stored lexical items. Adopting the perspective of Marr, we argue and provide neurobiological and psychophysical evidence for the following research programme. First, at the implementational level, speech perception is a multi-time resolution process, with perceptual analyses occurring concurrently on at least two time scales (approx. 20-80 ms, approx. 150-300 ms), commensurate with (sub)segmental and syllabic analyses, respectively. Second, at the algorithmic level, we suggest that perception proceeds on the basis of internal forward models, or uses an 'analysis-by-synthesis' approach. Third, at the computational level (in the sense of Marr), the theory of lexical representation that we adopt is principally informed by phonological research and assumes that words are represented in the mental lexicon in terms of sequences of discrete segments composed of distinctive features. One important goal of the research programme is to develop linking hypotheses between putative neurobiological primitives (e.g. temporal primitives) and those primitives derived from linguistic inquiry, to arrive ultimately at a biologically sensible and theoretically satisfying model of representation and computation in speech.

Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms.

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Gibbs, R W; Nayak, N P; Bolton, J L; Keppel, M E

1989-01-01

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.

Linguistic culture – active attitude toward (standard) language norm

OpenAIRE

Nikolovska, Violeta

2013-01-01

Ever since the respectable Prague School of Linguistics the issues of standard language have been getting serious treatment in linguistics. These issues are addressed in sociolinguistics, language policy and language planning - domains that are receiving the treatment of specific scientific disciplines today. This paper deals with one segment of the language standard functioning, and that is its cultivation. This segment of the functioning of the language standard begins with its codification...

Towards a theoretical framework for analyzing complex linguistic networks

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Lücking, Andy; Banisch, Sven; Blanchard, Philippe; Job, Barbara

2016-01-01

The aim of this book is to advocate and promote network models of linguistic systems that are both based on thorough mathematical models and substantiated in terms of linguistics. In this way, the book contributes first steps towards establishing a statistical network theory as a theoretical basis of linguistic network analysis the boarder of the natural sciences and the humanities.This book addresses researchers who want to get familiar with theoretical developments, computational models and their empirical evaluation in the field of complex linguistic networks. It is intended to all those who are interested in statisticalmodels of linguistic systems from the point of view of network research. This includes all relevant areas of linguistics ranging from phonological, morphological and lexical networks on the one hand and syntactic, semantic and pragmatic networks on the other. In this sense, the volume concerns readers from many disciplines such as physics, linguistics, computer science and information scien...

Quantifying cross-linguistic influence with a computational model : A study of case-marking comprehension

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Matusevych, Yevgen; Alishahi, Afra; Backus, Albert

2017-01-01

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is one of the key phenomena in bilingual and second language learning. We propose a method for quantifying CLI in the use of linguistic constructions with the help of a computational model, which acquires constructions in two languages from bilingual input. We focus

Broadcast news gisting using lexical cohesion analysis

OpenAIRE

Stokes, Nicola; Newman, Eamonn; Carthy, Joe; Smeaton, Alan F.

2004-01-01

In this paper we describe an extractive method of creating very short summaries or gists that capture the essence of a news story using a linguistic technique called lexical chaining. The recent interest in robust gisting and title generation techniques originates from a need to improve the indexing and browsing capabilities of interactive digital multimedia systems. More specifically these systems deal with streams of continuous data, like a news programme, that require further annotation be...

Lexical Retention and Cultural Significance in Tzeltal-Tzotzil Comparative Ethnobotany. Working Papers of the Language Behavior Research Laboratory, No. 29.

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Berlin, Brent; And Others

Attempts have been made by linguists and anthropologists to reconstruct aspects of culture history by using synchronically derived lexical data. Related to this concern with culture history is one which attempts to explore the diachronic processes of lexical change over time. As a result of a comparative survey of Tzeltal and Tzotzil…

Linguistics and Literacy.

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Kindell, Gloria

1983-01-01

Discusses four general areas of linguistics studies that are particularly relevant to literacy issues: (1) discourse analysis, including text analysis, spoken and written language, and home and school discourse; (2) relationships between speech and writing, the distance between dialects and written norms, and developmental writing; (3)…

Stanford Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 3. Papers from the Annual California Linguistics Conference (3rd, May 5-6, 1973).

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Gee, James Paul, Ed.; And Others

This volume includes 12 of the 24 papers presented at the Third Annual California Linguistics Conference. Selections are drawn from each of the four sessions, covering semantic and lexical structure, phonology, syntax, and language in context. Each of the papers includes a bibliography, as well as diagrams, charts, and appendixes when necessary.…

A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English.

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Yu, Vickie Y; Andruski, Jean E

2010-08-01

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.

Lexical ambiguity resolution

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Small, S.; Cottrell, G.; Tanenhaus, M.

1987-01-01

This book collects much of the best research currently available on the problem of lexical ambiguity resolution in the processing of human language. When taken out of context, sentences are usually ambiguous. When actually uttered in a dialogue or written in text, these same sentences often have unique interpretations. The inherent ambiguity of isolated sentences, becomes obvious in the attempt to write a computer program to understand them. Different views have emerged on the nature of context and the mechanisms by which it directs unambiguous understanding of words and sentences. These perspectives are represented and discussed. Eighteen original papers from a valuable source book for cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics.

Interaction between lexical and grammatical language systems in the brain

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Ardila, Alfredo

2012-06-01

This review concentrates on two different language dimensions: lexical/semantic and grammatical. This distinction between a lexical/semantic system and a grammatical system is well known in linguistics, but in cognitive neurosciences it has been obscured by the assumption that there are several forms of language disturbances associated with focal brain damage and hence language includes a diversity of functions (phoneme discrimination, lexical memory, grammar, repetition, language initiation ability, etc.), each one associated with the activity of a specific brain area. The clinical observation of patients with cerebral pathology shows that there are indeed only two different forms of language disturbances (disturbances in the lexical/semantic system and disturbances in the grammatical system); these two language dimensions are supported by different brain areas (temporal and frontal) in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, these two aspects of the language are developed at different ages during child's language acquisition, and they probably appeared at different historical moments during human evolution. Mechanisms of learning are different for both language systems: whereas the lexical/semantic knowledge is based in a declarative memory, grammatical knowledge corresponds to a procedural type of memory. Recognizing these two language dimensions can be crucial in understanding language evolution and human cognition.

REALIZATION OF TRAINING PROGRAMME ON THE BASIS OF LINGUISTIC DATABASE FOR AUTOMATIC TEXTS PROCESSING SYSTEM

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M. A. Makarych

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Due to the constant increasing of electronic textual information, modern society needs for the automatic processing of natural language (NL. The main purpose of NL automatic text processing systems is to analyze and create texts and represent their content. The purpose of the paper is the development of linguistic and software bases of an automatic system for processing English publicistic texts. This article discusses the examples of different approaches to the creation of linguistic databases for processing systems. The author gives a detailed description of basic building blocks for a new linguistic processor: lexical-semantic, syntactical and semantic-syntactical. The main advantage of the processor is using special semantic codes in the alphabetical dictionary. The semantic codes have been developed in accordance with a lexical-semantic classification. It helps to precisely define semantic functions of the keywords that are situated in parsing groups and allows the automatic system to avoid typical mistakes. The author also represents the realization of a developed linguistic database in the form of a training computer program.

Words Get in the Way: Linguistic Effects on Talker Discrimination.

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Narayan, Chandan R; Mak, Lorinda; Bialystok, Ellen

2017-07-01

A speech perception experiment provides evidence that the linguistic relationship between words affects the discrimination of their talkers. Listeners discriminated two talkers' voices with various linguistic relationships between their spoken words. Listeners were asked whether two words were spoken by the same person or not. Word pairs varied with respect to the linguistic relationship between the component words, forming either: phonological rhymes, lexical compounds, reversed compounds, or unrelated pairs. The degree of linguistic relationship between the words affected talker discrimination in a graded fashion, revealing biases listeners have regarding the nature of words and the talkers that speak them. These results indicate that listeners expect a talker's words to be linguistically related, and more generally, indexical processing is affected by linguistic information in a top-down fashion even when listeners are not told to attend to it. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Linguistic adaptation between mothers and children in ASD

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fusaroli, Riccardo; Weed, Ethan; Fein, Deborah

We investigate mother-child linguistic adaptation in 33 ASD and 33 matched TD children at two time-scales: conversational match and longitudinal development. We employ a longitudinal corpus (6 visits over 2 years) consisting of controlled playful activities between mothers and their children...... (Goodwin et al. 2012). We quantified amount (number of words and utterances) and complexity (lexical repertoire and utterance length) of linguistic behavior in both mother and child. We used mixed-effects growth curve models to quantify i)match within-conversation and ii)longitudinal impact between visits....... Child and mother are strongly correlated in their linguistic behaviors (R2 between .07 and .62, pMother-child pairs in the ASD group, however, show a shallower increase in match. Amount and complexity...

'Chicken’ in Somali class. Unbounded use of linguistic resources across a compartmentalised language curriculum

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Daugaard, Line Møller

impact on what counts as desirable language(s), apt linguistic norms and ideals, relevant activities and appropriate ways of managing linguistic diversity in the classroom. A linguistic ethnographic analysis of Abdullahi’s skilfully calibrated linguistic performances in the language classroom at the same...

The Spanish word tiempo: its omnipresence and conceptual, logical and lexical versatility

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Karlo Budor

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The common Spanish word tiempo corresponds to three English terms, each of them being a lexical equivalent based on a specific notion: (1 time – physical, astronomical, philosophical reference; (2 weather – geographical, climatological, meteorological reference; (3 tense: linguistic, lexical, grammatical reference. As far as universal and metalinguistic referential distinctions are concerned, all natural languages in fact present a considerable degree of variation ranging from inexistent or very vague to complete differentiation of these terms. In order to express these three types of specific references, some languages have a single word of general usage covering all its lexical acceptations. Therefore in such languages, Spanish included, different references can be distinguished only in part lexically. However, asemantic analysis of the Spanish word tiempo reveals its complexity as well as its conceptual, logical and lexical versatility. This is reflected in its capacity to combine in numerous lexical units, i.e. word compounds and/or phrases, endowed with different or specific semantic meanings. The repertory of these virtual and derived lexical forms appears to be practically unlimited, although their sphere of application and their boundaries are neither always very clear nor precise, which can be illustrated with the examples given in Spanish dictionaries.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in French-English Bilingual Children's Possessive Constructions

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Nicoladis, Elena

2012-01-01

The purpose of this article was to test the predictions of a speech production model of cross-linguistic influence in French-English bilingual children. A speech production model predicts bidirectional influence (i.e., bilinguals' greater use of periphrastic constructions like the hat of the dog relative to monolinguals in English and reversed…

Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Grosvald, Michael; Gutierrez, Eva; Hafer, Sarah; Corina, David

2012-04-01

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language sentences, each consisting of a "frame" (a sentence without the last word; e.g. BOY SLEEP IN HIS) followed by a "last item" belonging to one of four categories: a high-close-probability sign (a "semantically reasonable" completion to the sentence; e.g. BED), a low-close-probability sign (a real sign that is nonetheless a "semantically odd" completion to the sentence; e.g. LEMON), a pseudo-sign (phonologically legal but non-lexical form), or a non-linguistic grooming gesture (e.g. the performer scratching her face). We found significant N400-like responses in the incongruent and pseudo-sign contexts, while the gestures elicited a large positivity. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The tool for the automatic analysis of lexical sophistication (TAALES): version 2.0.

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Kyle, Kristopher; Crossley, Scott; Berger, Cynthia

2017-07-11

This study introduces the second release of the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (TAALES 2.0), a freely available and easy-to-use text analysis tool. TAALES 2.0 is housed on a user's hard drive (allowing for secure data processing) and is available on most operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux). TAALES 2.0 adds 316 indices to the original tool. These indices are related to word frequency, word range, n-gram frequency, n-gram range, n-gram strength of association, contextual distinctiveness, word recognition norms, semantic network, and word neighbors. In this study, we validated TAALES 2.0 by investigating whether its indices could be used to model both holistic scores of lexical proficiency in free writes and word choice scores in narrative essays. The results indicated that the TAALES 2.0 indices could be used to explain 58% of the variance in lexical proficiency scores and 32% of the variance in word-choice scores. Newly added TAALES 2.0 indices, including those related to n-gram association strength, word neighborhood, and word recognition norms, featured heavily in these predictor models, suggesting that TAALES 2.0 represents a substantial upgrade.

Lexical Range and Communicative Competence of Learners in Bilingual Schools in Lower Austria

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Claudia Mewald

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners’ ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual (German-English and regular school classes at grades 5-8 in Austrian secondary schools. Results suggest that a wider lexical range results in better communicative competence and fluency and that breakdown of communication in spoken or written performance is more frequently caused by insufficient vocabulary rather than by lack of control or grammatical problems. Consequently, insights from cognitive linguistics, the Lexical Approach, and Lexical Priming are discussed to justify the concept of vocabulary instruction in contextualized units. Taking the scarceness of theoretical and practical concepts into consideration, the need for research on the explicit instruction of vocabulary and metacognitive strategies is fleshed out.

Lexical Bundles and the Construction of an Academic Voice in Business Writing

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Mhedhbi, Malek

2014-01-01

Most previous studies on disciplinary academic writing focused on the structures in research articles or linguistic realizations of each move (Lau, 2004; Hyland, 2000). Few have been conducted to address the interpersonal aspect of disciplinary discourse texts. The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of lexical bundles' (LBs) awareness…

Study on Lexical Cohesion in English and Persian Research Articles (A Comparative Study)

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Mirzapour, Fatemeh; Ahmadi, Maryam

2011-01-01

The present study aims to analyze comparatively English and Persian research articles (Linguistics, Literature, and Library and Information disciplines) in terms of number and degree of utilization of sub-types of lexical cohesion in order to appreciate textualization processes in the two languages concerned. The study analyzes 60 research…

Putting lexical constraints in context into the visual-world paradigm.

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Novick, Jared M; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L; Trueswell, John C

2008-06-01

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of Put the frog on the napkin... despite strong lexical biases associated with Put that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632-1634; Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M. & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73, 89-134). This pattern is not expected under constraint-based parsing theories: cue conflict between the lexical evidence (which supports the Goal analysis) and the visuo-contextual evidence (which supports the Modifier analysis) should result in uncertainty about the intended analysis and partial consideration of the Goal analysis. We reexamined these put studies (Experiment 1) by introducing a response time-constraint and a spatial contrast between competing referents (a frog on a napkin vs. a frog in a bowl). If listeners immediately interpret on the... as the start of a restrictive modifier, then their eye movements should rapidly converge on the intended referent (the frog on something). However, listeners showed this pattern only when the phrase was unambiguously a Modifier (Put the frog that's on the...). Syntactically ambiguous trials resulted in transient consideration of the Competitor animal (the frog in something). A reading study was also run on the same individuals (Experiment 2) and performance was compared between the two experiments. Those individuals who relied heavily on lexical biases to resolve a complement ambiguity in reading (The man heard/realized the story had been...) showed increased sensitivity to both lexical and contextual constraints in the put-task; i

Waardes as norme en as meta-norme/beginsels

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P. J. Van Niekerk

1987-03-01

Full Text Available The fruitfulness and the necessity of the distinction between values and norms and as principles are investigated by way of the theory of political development, the legal philosophical issue surrounding natural law and positivism and the views of Habermas. In political developmental theory questions centring on value gained legitimate relevancy under the influ­ ence of the post-behaviorist approach. The quest for cultural universalia or values as principles became important in this sphere because it seems to be the only way to escape from the syndrome of modernity. Through the rejection of the oppositions and one-sidedness of legal positivism and natural law and with the aid of the distinction between values, norms and principles the productive contribution of this spurious dilemma is high­ lighted and a clearer delineation is given of the concepts legal develop­ ment and structural violence. In conclusion Habermas's distinction between norms and meta-norms is investigated critically and immanent contradictions in his views are pointed out. The central place which this issue has in his thought can be seen as a confirmation of the importance of this distinction. It is relevant for all the normative disciplines which - in contrast to the natural sciences - focus on the role of linguistic, social, ethical, legal and artistic norms valid for human societies.

Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Vietnamese and English with Implications for Vietnamese Language Acquisition and Maintenance in the United States

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Giang Tang

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Two overall goals of this paper are a to provide a linguistic basis for promoting first language maintenance of Vietnamese in a larger United States context and b to stimulate future research in language acquisition of Vietnamese-English speakers. This paper is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses previous studies on first language (L1 maintenance among Vietnamese Americans. Section 2 presents a cross-linguistic comparison of Vietnamese and English across speech-sound, word, and grammatical language levels. A cross-linguistic analysis may help educators better understand speaking patterns of Vietnamese American students. Based on this cross-linguistic comparison, Section 3 presents potential bi-directional interactions between Vietnamese and English within an individual speaker. These predictions are intended to provide a framework for future empirical studies related to bilingual development.

A large-scale cross-linguistic investigation of the acquisition of passive

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Armon Lotem, Sharon; Haman, Ewa; Jensen de López, Kristine M.

2016-01-01

This cross-linguistic study evaluates children’s understanding of passives in eleven typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between the c...... in typical language acquisition. Therefore, difficulties with passives (short or full) can be used for identifying SLI at the age of five only in those languages in which it has already been mastered by typically developing children.......This cross-linguistic study evaluates children’s understanding of passives in eleven typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between...... the comprehension of active and passive and between short and full passive hold crosslinguistically. The present study offers two major findings. The first is the relative ease in which five year-old children across 11 different languages are able to comprehend short passive constructions (compared to the full...

The Role of Phonological Working Memory and Environmental Factors in Lexical Development in Italian-Speaking Late Talkers: A One-Year Follow-Up Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Marini, Andrea; Ruffino, Milena; Sali, Maria Enrica; Molteni, Massimo

2017-12-20

This follow-up study assessed (a) the influence of phonological working memory (pWM), home literacy environment, and a family history of linguistic impairments in late talkers (LTs); (b) the diagnostic accuracy of a task of nonword repetition (NWR) in identifying LTs; and (c) the persistence of lexical weaknesses after 10 months. Two hundred ninety-three children were assessed at approximately 32 (t1) and 41 (t2) months. At t1, they were administered the Italian adaptation of the Language Development Survey, an NWR task (used to assess pWM), and questionnaires assessing home literacy environment and family history of language impairments. Thirty-three LTs were identified. The linguistic skills of the participants were evaluated at t2 by administering tasks assessing Articulation, Naming, Semantic Fluency, and Lexical Comprehension. At t2, LTs performed more poorly as compared with age-matched typically developing peers in articulatory and naming skills, had reduced lexical comprehension abilities, and had limited lexical knowledge. Their performance on the NWR task at t1 correlated with the extension of their vocabularies at t2 (as estimated with a Semantic Fluency task). The Language Development Survey recently adapted to Italian is sensitive to LTs. Former LTs still have a mild lexical delay at approximately 40 months. As an indirect measure of pWM, the task of NWR is an early indicator of future lexical deficits.

Probed Serial Recall in Williams Syndrome: Lexical Influences on Phonological Short-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Brock, Jan; McCormack, Teresa; Boucher, Jill

2005-01-01

Williams syndrome is a genetic disorder that, it has been claimed, results in an unusual pattern of linguistic strengths and weaknesses. The current study investigated the hypothesis that there is a reduced influence of lexical knowledge on phonological short-term memory in Williams syndrome. Fourteen children with Williams syndrome and 2…

Competitive dynamics of lexical innovations in multi-layer networks

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Javarone, Marco Alberto

2014-04-01

We study the introduction of lexical innovations into a community of language users. Lexical innovations, i.e. new term added to people's vocabulary, plays an important role in the process of language evolution. Nowadays, information is spread through a variety of networks, including, among others, online and offline social networks and the World Wide Web. The entire system, comprising networks of different nature, can be represented as a multi-layer network. In this context, lexical innovations diffusion occurs in a peculiar fashion. In particular, a lexical innovation can undergo three different processes: its original meaning is accepted; its meaning can be changed or misunderstood (e.g. when not properly explained), hence more than one meaning can emerge in the population. Lastly, in the case of a loan word, it can be translated into the population language (i.e. defining a new lexical innovation or using a synonym) or into a dialect spoken by part of the population. Therefore, lexical innovations cannot be considered simply as information. We develop a model for analyzing this scenario using a multi-layer network comprising a social network and a media network. The latter represents the set of all information systems of a society, e.g. television, the World Wide Web and radio. Furthermore, we identify temporal directed edges between the nodes of these two networks. In particular, at each time-step, nodes of the media network can be connected to randomly chosen nodes of the social network and vice versa. In doing so, information spreads through the whole system and people can share a lexical innovation with their neighbors or, in the event they work as reporters, by using media nodes. Lastly, we use the concept of "linguistic sign" to model lexical innovations, showing its fundamental role in the study of these dynamics. Many numerical simulations have been performed to analyze the proposed model and its outcomes.

Validating the psycholinguistic aspects of LITMUS-CLT: Evidence from Polish and Norwegian.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Pernille; Simonsen, Hanne Gram; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

The novel assessment tool Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) aims for comparable cross-linguistic assessment of multilingual children's lexical skills by basing each language version on two language-specific variables: age of acquisition (AoA) and complexity index (CI), a novel measure related to phonology, morphology, exposure and etymology. This article investigates the validity of this methodology, asking whether the underlying properties are robust predictors of children's performance. The Polish and Norwegian CLTs were used to assess 32 bilingual Polish-Norwegian, 34 monolingual Norwegian and 36 monolingual Polish children. The effects of AoA and CI were contrasted with frequency in child directed speech (CDS) and imageability, two known predictors of lexical development. AoA was a reliable predictor of performance within all parts of CLT, in contrast to CI. Apart from AoA, only exposure and CDS frequency had a significant effect within both monolinguals and bilinguals. These results indicate that CLT assesses lexical skills in a cross-linguistically comparable manner, but suggest a revision of the CI measure.

Attention deficits revealed by passive auditory change detection for pure tones and lexical tones in ADHD children.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Ming-Tao; Hsu, Chun-Hsien; Yeh, Pei-Wen; Lee, Wang-Tso; Liang, Jao-Shwann; Fu, Wen-Mei; Lee, Chia-Ying

2015-01-01

Inattention (IA) has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN) as event-related potential (ERP) markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli-pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones-were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years). Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones) were applied. The pure tone oddball paradigm included a standard stimulus (1000 Hz, 80%) and two deviant stimuli (1015 and 1090 Hz, 10% each). The Mandarin lexical tone oddball paradigm's standard stimulus was /yi3/ (80%) and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each). The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents' and teachers' ratings on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for the evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to

Attention deficits revealed by passive auditory change detection for pure tones and lexical tones in ADHD children

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Ming-Tao eYang

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Inattention has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN, P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN as event-related potential (ERP markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli - pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones - were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years. Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones were applied. Pure tone paradigm included standard stimuli (1000 Hz, 80% and two deviant stimuli (1015 Hz and 1090 Hz, 10% each. The Mandarin lexical tone paradigm’s standard stimuli was /yi3/ (80% and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each. The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents’ and teachers’ rating on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to alleviate these

A taste for words and sounds: a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Colizoli, O.; Murre, J.M.J.; Rouw, R.

2013-01-01

Gustatory forms of synesthesia involve the automatic and consistent experience of tastes that are triggered by non-taste related inducers. We present a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia within one individual, SC. Most words and a subset of non-linguistic sounds induce the

Social network size can influence linguistic malleability and the propagation of linguistic change.

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Lev-Ari, Shiri

2018-07-01

We learn language from our social environment, but the more sources we have, the less informative each source is, and therefore, the less weight we ascribe its input. According to this principle, people with larger social networks should give less weight to new incoming information, and should therefore be less susceptible to the influence of new speakers. This paper tests this prediction, and shows that speakers with smaller social networks indeed have more malleable linguistic representations. In particular, they are more likely to adjust their lexical boundary following exposure to a new speaker. Experiment 2 uses computational simulations to test whether this greater malleability could lead people with smaller social networks to be important for the propagation of linguistic change despite the fact that they interact with fewer people. The results indicate that when innovators were connected with people with smaller rather than larger social networks, the population exhibited greater and faster diffusion. Together these experiments show that the properties of people's social networks can influence individuals' learning and use as well as linguistic phenomena at the community level. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Translation of Lexical Stylistic Devices from English to Chinese in Com-mercial Advertisements

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

林鑫

2014-01-01

With rapid development of China, a growing number of foreign products are entering the Chinese market. An excel-lent translation of a product’s advertisement from English to Chinese undoubtedly contributes to its successful promotion in the Chinese market. Although the translation practice contains multiple difficulties, the translation of lexical stylistic devices is a big challenge for translators. It is not simply because lexical stylistic devices are diverse and various in form, but also because most de-vices involve linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese. This thesis analyzed a number of current English to Chinese translations of the devices in commercial advertisements, which mainly come from two translation scholars ’works and official websites of world-known brands. By analyzing the selected data, seven translation strategies are found to be the major translation strategies in this respect, namely literal translation, free translation, flexible translation, extended translation, adaptation translation, compensation translation and amplification translation strategies. Moreover, a number of linguistic and cultural issues which need to be considered by translators are also illustrated here.

The Perilous Life of a Linguistic Genre Convention

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Borchmann, Simon

2014-01-01

, the descriptions are more informative than the structures hitherto described by text linguistics. Secondly, as historical norms, they are a testimony to the development and change of language use. Thirdly, the descriptions contribute to language users’ awareness of the origin of standards, their understanding......The primary, theoretical aim of the article is to present a linguistic text analysis that differs from standard text linguistic approaches by being informative with regard to the linguistic choices and textual organisation that characterise a text as a social act. The analysis is exemplified...... by using texts of a relatively new Danish journalistic genre nyhedsanalyse (news analysis). The secondary, empirical aim of the article is to present a corpus-based, linguistic analysis of central elements of the genre nyhedsanalyse within the Danish system of newspaper genres. Text linguistics is based...

Bootstrapping in Applied Linguistics: Assessing Its Potential Using Shared Data

Science.gov (United States)

Plonsky, Luke; Egbert, Jesse; Laflair, Geoffrey T.

2015-01-01

Parametric analyses such as t tests and ANOVAs are the norm--if not the default--statistical tests found in quantitative applied linguistics research (Gass 2009). Applied statisticians and one applied linguist (Larson-Hall 2010, 2012; Larson-Hall and Herrington 2010), however, have argued that this approach may not be appropriate for small samples…

THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF ENGLISH AND INDO-EUROPEAN "URBAN TERMS": A RADICAL LINGUISTIC THEORY APPROACH

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Zaidan Ali Jassem

2015-06-01

Full Text Available This paper traces the Arabic origins of English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit "urban terms" from a radical linguistic (or lexical root theory perspective. The data comprises 130 such terms like abide, building, city, construction, courtyard, hotel, house, live, mansion, mason, palace, metropolis, residence, road, rural, sedentary, sojourn, stay, structure, tent, town, urban, villa, village, zoo, and so on. The results clearly show that all such words have true Arabic cognates with the same or similar forms and meanings, whose differences are due to natural and plausible causes and different routes of linguistic change. Moreover, the results support the adequacy of the radical linguistic theory according to which, unlike the Comparative Method and/or Family Tree Model, Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit are dialects of the same language or family, renamed Eurabian or Urban family, with Arabic being their origin all for sharing the whole cognates with them and for its huge phonetic, morphological, grammatical, and lexical variety and wealth. Also, they indicate that there is a radical language from which all human languages stemmed and which has been preserved almost intact in Arabic as the most conservative and productive language, without which it is impossible to interpret its linguistic richness and versatility on all levels.

Pathways from Toddler Information Processing to Adolescent Lexical Proficiency

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Rose, Susan A.; Feldman, Judith F.; Jankowski, Jeffery J.

2015-01-01

This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

A LEXICAL ANALYSIS IN GALICIA AND IN BAHIA: DESIGNATIONS FOR ‘BALD’

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Cezar Alexandre Neri Santos

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This paper is part of a lexical research, providing an analysis of the semantic-lexical variation in Galician and Bahia areas and has as more latent benefit the comparison of data in Brazilian Portuguese and Galician, cognate languages within the linguistic genealogy. Thus, with regard to Galicia territory, the Atlas Lingüístico Galego will be analyzed (BLANCO; GARCIA; FERNÁNDEZ, 2005 and, with regard to Brazil, data from Bahia will be analyzed, recorded in Atlas Lingüístico de Sergipe (FERREIRA et al., 1987. The objective is to examine the linguistic designations for ‘bald’ in two biases: i semantic, providing the motive roots of name formation in the paradigmatic plane of language, understanding the language selection as a political-cultural act; ii lexicographical, checking whether these names are and how they are on historical and etymological, Portuguese and Latin Language dictionaries or not, as well as whether such lexicographical markings have meanings related to baldness. Through these Atlas it is intended to check the type of relationship that can be established between the lexicon for ‘bald’ in Galicia and in Bahia.

Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study.

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Le Guen, Olivier; Samland, Jana; Friedrich, Thomas; Hanus, Daniel; Brown, Penelope

2015-01-01

In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of "chance," "coincidence," or "randomness" that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention-to-Action, Action-to-Outcome, and Intention-to-Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like relations are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action-to-Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law-like relations. The data suggests that the concept of "chance" is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group.

Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study

Science.gov (United States)

Le Guen, Olivier; Samland, Jana; Friedrich, Thomas; Hanus, Daniel; Brown, Penelope

2015-01-01

In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of “chance,” “coincidence,” or “randomness” that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention-to-Action, Action-to-Outcome, and Intention-to-Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like relations are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action-to-Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law-like relations. The data suggests that the concept of “chance” is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group. PMID:26579028

Productivity of lexical categories in French-speaking children with cochlear implants.

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Le Normand, M-T; Ouellet, C; Cohen, H

2003-11-01

The productivity of lexical categories was studied longitudinally in a sample of 17 young hearing-impaired French-speaking children with cochlear implants. Age of implantation ranged from 22 months to 76 months. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at six-month intervals over a period of 36 months, starting at the one-word stage. Four general measures of their linguistic production (number of utterances, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and grammatical production) as well as 36 specific lexical categories, according to the CHILDES codes, were computed in terms of tokens, i.e., total number of words. Cochlear-implanted children (CI) were compared to a French database of normally hearing children aged 2-4 compiled by the first author. Follow-up results indicate that, at the two-year post-implantation follow-up, noun, and verb morphology was significantly impaired. At the three-year follow-up, the cochlear-implanted group had recovered on adjectives, determiners and nouns, main verbs, and auxiliaries. The two groups differed significantly in processing locative adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs (infinitive verb, modal, and modal lexical), but individual variability within the cochlear-implanted group was substantial. Results are discussed in terms of recovery and developmental trends and variability in the acquisition of lexical categories by French children two years and three years post-implantation.

A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Development of Gesture and Speech in Zulu and French Oral Narratives

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Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Guidetti, Michele; Colletta, Jean-Marc

2017-01-01

The present study reports on a developmental and cross-linguistic study of oral narratives produced by speakers of Zulu (a Bantu language) and French (a Romance language). Specifically, we focus on oral narrative performance as a bimodal (i.e., linguistic and gestural) behaviour during the late language acquisition phase. We analyzed seventy-two…

New tests of the distal speech rate effect: Examining cross-linguistic generalization

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Laura eDilley

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Recent findings [Dilley and Pitt, 2010. Psych. Science. 21, 1664-1670] have shown that manipulating context speech rate in English can cause entire syllables to disappear or appear perceptually. The current studies tested two rate-based explanations of this phenomenon while attempting to replicate and extend these findings to another language, Russian. In Experiment 1, native Russian speakers listened to Russian sentences which had been subjected to rate manipulations and performed a lexical report task. Experiment 2 investigated speech rate effects in cross-language speech perception; non-native speakers of Russian of both high and low proficiency were tested on the same Russian sentences as in Experiment 1. They decided between two lexical interpretations of a critical portion of the sentence, where one choice contained more phonological material than the other (e.g., /stərʌ'na/ side vs. /strʌ'na/ country. In both experiments, with native and non-native speakers of Russian, context speech rate and the relative duration of the critical sentence portion were found to influence the amount of phonological material perceived. The results support the generalized rate normalization hypothesis, according to which the content perceived in a spectrally ambiguous stretch of speech depends on the duration of that content relative to the surrounding speech, while showing that the findings of Dilley and Pitt (2010 extend to a variety of morphosyntactic contexts and a new language, Russian. Findings indicate that relative timing cues across an utterance can be critical to accurate lexical perception by both native and non-native speakers.

Linguistic Features of Humor in Academic Writing

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Stephen Skalicky

2016-06-01

Full Text Available A corpus of 313 freshman college essays was analyzed in order to better understand the forms and functions of humor in academic writing. Human ratings of humor and wordplay were statistically aggregated using Factor Analysis to provide an overall Humor component score for each essay in the corpus. In addition, the essays were also scored for overall writing quality by human raters, which correlated (r = .195 with the humor component score. Correlations between the humor component scores and linguistic features were examined. To investigate the potential for linguistic features to predict the Humor component scores, regression analysis identified four linguistic indices that accounted for approximately 17.5% of the variance in humor scores. These indices were related to text descriptiveness (i.e., more adjective and adverb use, lower cohesion (i.e., less paragraph-to-paragraph similarity, and lexical sophistication (lower word frequency. The findings suggest that humor can be partially predicted by linguistic features in the text. Furthermore, there was a small but significant correlation between the humor and essay quality scores, suggesting a positive relation between humor and writing quality. Keywords: humor, academic writing, text analysis, essay score, human rating

Infant VEPs reveal neural correlates of implicit naming: Lateralized differences between lexicalized versus name-unknown pictures

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Styles, Suzy J.; Plunkett, Kim; Duta, Mihaela D.

2015-01-01

Recent behavioural studies with toddlers have demonstrated that simply viewing a picture in silence triggers a cascade of linguistic processing which activates a representation of the picture’s name (Mani and Plunkett, 2010, 2011). Electrophysiological studies have also shown that viewing a picture modulates the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) triggered by later speech, from early in the second year of life (Duta et al., 2012; Friedrich and Friederici, 2005; Mani et al., 2011) further supporting the notion that picture viewing gives rise to a representation of the picture’s name against which later speech can be matched. However, little is known about how and when the implicit name arises during picture viewing, or about the electrophysiological activity which supports this linguistic process. We report differences in the visual evoked potentials (VEPs) of fourteen-month-old infants who saw photographs of animals and objects, some of which were name-known (lexicalized), while waiting for an auditory label to be presented. During silent picture viewing, lateralized neural activity was selectively triggered by lexicalized items, as compared to nameless items. Lexicalized items generated a short-lasting negative-going deflection over frontal, left centro-temporal, and left occipital regions shortly after the picture appeared (126–225 ms). A positive deflection was also observed over the right hemisphere (particularly centro-temporal regions) in a later, longer-lasting window (421–720 ms). The lateralization of these differences in the VEP suggests the possible involvement of linguistic processes during picture viewing, and may reflect activity involved in the implicit activation of the picture’s name. PMID:26232744

Actes des Journees de linguistique (Proceedings of the Linguistics Conference) (7th, March 1993).

Science.gov (United States)

Drouin, Patrick, Ed.; And Others

Papers from a 1993 conference on linguistics, all in French, include essays on the following: Yoruba morphophonology; literary Arabic morphophonology; grammatical cohesion in Burushaski; phonological and lexical variation in French Canadian dialects, including Acadian; insults in Madrid Spanish; discourse analysis; maintenance of meaning in…

Titles of Scientific Letters and Research Papers in Astrophysics: A Comparative Study of Some Linguistic Aspects and Their Relationship with Collaboration Issues

Science.gov (United States)

Méndez, David I.; Alcaraz, M. Ángeles

2017-01-01

In this study we compare the titles of scientific letters and those of research papers published in the field of astrophysics in order to identify the possible differences and/or similarities between both genres in terms of several linguistic and extra-linguistic variables (length, lexical density, number of prepositions, number of compound…

ANGLICISMS IN THE ECONOMIC TERMINOLOGY OF THE CROATIAN LANGUAGE AND THE STANDARD LANGUAGE NORM

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Branka Drljača

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The standard language norm fulfils two basic requirements: stability of language and its development. The former covers replacing of foreign terms with Croatian equivalents or at least their adaptation according to the rules of the Croatian language. The latter implies fulfilling new lexical needs. The economic power of the United States of America is reflected in the influence of the English language on term-formation in Croatian. Acceptance of lexical innovations is primarily gained due to the language of the media.

Support for linguistic macrofamilies from weighted sequence alignment

Science.gov (United States)

Jäger, Gerhard

2015-01-01

Computational phylogenetics is in the process of revolutionizing historical linguistics. Recent applications have shed new light on controversial issues, such as the location and time depth of language families and the dynamics of their spread. So far, these approaches have been limited to single-language families because they rely on a large body of expert cognacy judgments or grammatical classifications, which is currently unavailable for most language families. The present study pursues a different approach. Starting from raw phonetic transcription of core vocabulary items from very diverse languages, it applies weighted string alignment to track both phonetic and lexical change. Applied to a collection of ∼1,000 Eurasian languages and dialects, this method, combined with phylogenetic inference, leads to a classification in excellent agreement with established findings of historical linguistics. Furthermore, it provides strong statistical support for several putative macrofamilies contested in current historical linguistics. In particular, there is a solid signal for the Nostratic/Eurasiatic macrofamily. PMID:26403857

Frequency Analysis of the Words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and Non-AWL Content Words in Applied Linguistics Research Papers

Science.gov (United States)

Vongpumivitch, Viphavee; Huang, Ju-yu; Chang, Yu-Chia

2009-01-01

This study is a corpus-based lexical study that aims to explore the use of words in Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) in journal articles in the field of applied linguistics. A 1.5 million-word corpus called the Applied Linguistics Research Articles Corpus (ALC) was created for this study. The corpus consists of 200 research articles that…

Let's all speak together! Exploring the masking effects of various languages on spoken word identification in multi-linguistic babble.

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Gautreau, Aurore; Hoen, Michel; Meunier, Fanny

2013-01-01

This study aimed to characterize the linguistic interference that occurs during speech-in-speech comprehension by combining offline and online measures, which included an intelligibility task (at a -5 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and 2 lexical decision tasks (at a -5 dB and 0 dB SNR) that were performed with French spoken target words. In these 3 experiments we always compared the masking effects of speech backgrounds (i.e., 4-talker babble) that were produced in the same language as the target language (i.e., French) or in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) to the masking effects of corresponding non-speech backgrounds (i.e., speech-derived fluctuating noise). The fluctuating noise contained similar spectro-temporal information as babble but lacked linguistic information. At -5 dB SNR, both tasks revealed significantly divergent results between the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) with Italian and French hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish led to significantly better performances on these tasks. By comparing the performances obtained with speech and fluctuating noise backgrounds, we were able to evaluate the effect of each language. The intelligibility task showed a significant difference between babble and fluctuating noise for French, Irish and Italian, suggesting acoustic and linguistic effects for each language. However, the lexical decision task, which reduces the effect of post-lexical interference, appeared to be more accurate, as it only revealed a linguistic effect for French. Thus, although French and Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. This finding suggests that the differences observed between the masking effects of Italian and Irish can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level.

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: the role of phonological, lexical, and semantic processing.

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Caza, Nicole; Belleville, Sylvie

2008-05-01

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients' capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.

Microsyntactic Annotation of Corpora and its Use in Computational Linguistics Tasks

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Iomdin Leonid

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Microsyntax is a linguistic discipline dealing with idiomatic elements whose important properties are strongly related to syntax. In a way, these elements may be viewed as transitional entities between the lexicon and the grammar, which explains why they are often underrepresented in both of these resource types: the lexicographer fails to see such elements as full-fledged lexical units, while the grammarian finds them too specific to justify the creation of individual well-developed rules. As a result, such elements are poorly covered by linguistic models used in advanced modern computational linguistic tasks like high-quality machine translation or deep semantic analysis. A possible way to mend the situation and improve the coverage and adequate treatment of microsyntactic units in linguistic resources is to develop corpora with microsyntactic annotation, closely linked to specially designed lexicons. The paper shows how this task is solved in the deeply annotated corpus of Russian, SynTagRus.

Eloquent silences: A musical and lexical analysis of conversation between oncologists and their patients.

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Bartels, Josef; Rodenbach, Rachel; Ciesinski, Katherine; Gramling, Robert; Fiscella, Kevin; Epstein, Ronald

2016-10-01

Silences in doctor-patient communication can be "connectional" and communicative, in contrast to silences that indicate awkwardness or distraction. Musical and lexical analyses can identify and characterize connectional silences in consultations between oncologists and patients. Two medical students and a professor of voice screened all 1211 silences over 2s in length from 124 oncology office visits. We developed a "strength of connection" taxonomy and examined ten connectional silences for lexical and musical features including pitch, volume, and speaker turn-taking rhythm. We identified connectional silences with good reliability. Typical dialog rhythms surrounding connectional silences are characterized by relatively equal turn lengths and frequent short vocalizations. We found no pattern of volume and pitch variability around these silences. Connectional silences occurred in a wide variety of lexical contexts. Particular patterns of dialog rhythm mark connectional silences. Exploring structures of connectional silence extends our understanding of the audio-linguistic conditions that mark patient-clinician connection. Communicating with an awareness of pitch, rhythm, and silence - in addition to lexical content - can facilitate shared understanding and emotional connection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms

Science.gov (United States)

Hareli, Shlomo; Kafetsios, Konstantinos; Hess, Ursula

2015-01-01

When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral) can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece, and the US), which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in all four countries, anger was a stronger norm violation signal than sadness or neutral expressions. However, angry and sad expressions were perceived as more intense and the relevant norm was learned better in Germany and Israel than in Greece and the US. Participants in Greece were relatively better at using sadness as a sign of a likely norm violation. The results demonstrate both cultural universality and cultural differences in the use of group emotion expressions in norm learning. In terms of cultural differences they underscore that the social signal value of emotional expressions may vary with culture as a function of cultural differences, both in emotion perception, and as a function of a differential use of emotions. PMID:26483744

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms.

Science.gov (United States)

Hareli, Shlomo; Kafetsios, Konstantinos; Hess, Ursula

2015-01-01

When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral) can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece, and the US), which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in all four countries, anger was a stronger norm violation signal than sadness or neutral expressions. However, angry and sad expressions were perceived as more intense and the relevant norm was learned better in Germany and Israel than in Greece and the US. Participants in Greece were relatively better at using sadness as a sign of a likely norm violation. The results demonstrate both cultural universality and cultural differences in the use of group emotion expressions in norm learning. In terms of cultural differences they underscore that the social signal value of emotional expressions may vary with culture as a function of cultural differences, both in emotion perception, and as a function of a differential use of emotions.

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms

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Shlomo eHareli

2015-10-01

Full Text Available When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece and the US, which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in all four countries, anger was a stronger norm violation signal than sadness or neutral expressions. However, angry and sad expressions were perceived as more intense and the relevant norm was learned better in Germany and Israel than in Greece and the US. Participants in Greece were relatively better at using sadness as a sign of a likely norm violation. The results demonstrate both cultural universality and cultural differences in the use of group emotion expressions in norm learning. In terms of cultural differences they underscore that the social signal value of emotional expressions may vary with culture as a function of cultural differences, both in emotion perception, and as a function of a differential use of emotions.

Automatic extraction of property norm-like data from large text corpora.

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Kelly, Colin; Devereux, Barry; Korhonen, Anna

2014-01-01

Traditional methods for deriving property-based representations of concepts from text have focused on either extracting only a subset of possible relation types, such as hyponymy/hypernymy (e.g., car is-a vehicle) or meronymy/metonymy (e.g., car has wheels), or unspecified relations (e.g., car--petrol). We propose a system for the challenging task of automatic, large-scale acquisition of unconstrained, human-like property norms from large text corpora, and discuss the theoretical implications of such a system. We employ syntactic, semantic, and encyclopedic information to guide our extraction, yielding concept-relation-feature triples (e.g., car be fast, car require petrol, car cause pollution), which approximate property-based conceptual representations. Our novel method extracts candidate triples from parsed corpora (Wikipedia and the British National Corpus) using syntactically and grammatically motivated rules, then reweights triples with a linear combination of their frequency and four statistical metrics. We assess our system output in three ways: lexical comparison with norms derived from human-generated property norm data, direct evaluation by four human judges, and a semantic distance comparison with both WordNet similarity data and human-judged concept similarity ratings. Our system offers a viable and performant method of plausible triple extraction: Our lexical comparison shows comparable performance to the current state-of-the-art, while subsequent evaluations exhibit the human-like character of our generated properties.

Thresholds of visibility for masked lexical, non-lexical, and non-linguistic items in aphasia

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JoAnn P Silkes

2015-04-01

Data collected to date demonstrate a clear difference between individuals with and without aphasia in their ability to perceive masked real words, but there appears to be no difference between groups for non-words and non-linguistic stimuli, although a trend is seen for these groups. Given the high variability for the NW and NL conditions, these analyses may be underpowered; therefore, data collection is ongoing and a clearer picture should be available by the time of presentation. Regardless of the eventual outcome, this poster will discuss the theoretical motivation for the study, and will discuss the possible implications for understanding the nature of underlying deficits in aphasia.

Semantics, contrastive linguistics and parallel corpora

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Violetta Koseska

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Semantics, contrastive linguistics and parallel corpora In view of the ambiguity of the term “semantics”, the author shows the differences between the traditional lexical semantics and the contemporary semantics in the light of various semantic schools. She examines semantics differently in connection with contrastive studies where the description must necessary go from the meaning towards the linguistic form, whereas in traditional contrastive studies the description proceeded from the form towards the meaning. This requirement regarding theoretical contrastive studies necessitates construction of a semantic interlanguage, rather than only singling out universal semantic categories expressed with various language means. Such studies can be strongly supported by parallel corpora. However, in order to make them useful for linguists in manual and computer translations, as well as in the development of dictionaries, including online ones, we need not only formal, often automatic, annotation of texts, but also semantic annotation - which is unfortunately manual. In the article we focus on semantic annotation concerning time, aspect and quantification of names and predicates in the whole semantic structure of the sentence on the example of the “Polish-Bulgarian-Russian parallel corpus”.

Verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bosma, E.; Heeringa, W.; Hoekstra, E.; Versloot, A.; Blom, E.

Closely related languages share cross-linguistic phonological regularities, such as Frisian -âld [c:t] and Dutch -oud [hut], as in the cognate pairs kâld [kc:t] - koud [khut] 'cold' and wâld [wc:t] - woud [whut] 'forest'. Within Bybee's (1995, 2001, 2008, 2010) network model, these regularities are,

Phonemes: Lexical access and beyond.

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Kazanina, Nina; Bowers, Jeffrey S; Idsardi, William

2018-04-01

Phonemes play a central role in traditional theories as units of speech perception and access codes to lexical representations. Phonemes have two essential properties: they are 'segment-sized' (the size of a consonant or vowel) and abstract (a single phoneme may be have different acoustic realisations). Nevertheless, there is a long history of challenging the phoneme hypothesis, with some theorists arguing for differently sized phonological units (e.g. features or syllables) and others rejecting abstract codes in favour of representations that encode detailed acoustic properties of the stimulus. The phoneme hypothesis is the minority view today. We defend the phoneme hypothesis in two complementary ways. First, we show that rejection of phonemes is based on a flawed interpretation of empirical findings. For example, it is commonly argued that the failure to find acoustic invariances for phonemes rules out phonemes. However, the lack of invariance is only a problem on the assumption that speech perception is a bottom-up process. If learned sublexical codes are modified by top-down constraints (which they are), then this argument loses all force. Second, we provide strong positive evidence for phonemes on the basis of linguistic data. Almost all findings that are taken (incorrectly) as evidence against phonemes are based on psycholinguistic studies of single words. However, phonemes were first introduced in linguistics, and the best evidence for phonemes comes from linguistic analyses of complex word forms and sentences. In short, the rejection of phonemes is based on a false analysis and a too-narrow consideration of the relevant data.

Approaching the axiomatic enrichment of the Gene Ontology from a lexical perspective.

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Quesada-Martínez, Manuel; Mikroyannidi, Eleni; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás; Stevens, Robert

2015-09-01

The main goal of this work is to measure how lexical regularities in biomedical ontology labels can be used for the automatic creation of formal relationships between classes, and to evaluate the results of applying our approach to the Gene Ontology (GO). In recent years, we have developed a method for the lexical analysis of regularities in biomedical ontology labels, and we showed that the labels can present a high degree of regularity. In this work, we extend our method with a cross-products extension (CPE) metric, which estimates the potential interest of a specific regularity for axiomatic enrichment in the lexical analysis, using information on exact matches in external ontologies. The GO consortium recently enriched the GO by using so-called cross-product extensions. Cross-products are generated by establishing axioms that relate a given GO class with classes from the GO or other biomedical ontologies. We apply our method to the GO and study how its lexical analysis can identify and reconstruct the cross-products that are defined by the GO consortium. The label of the classes of the GO are highly regular in lexical terms, and the exact matches with labels of external ontologies affect 80% of the GO classes. The CPE metric reveals that 31.48% of the classes that exhibit regularities have fragments that are classes into two external ontologies that are selected for our experiment, namely, the Cell Ontology and the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology, and 18.90% of them are fully decomposable into smaller parts. Our results show that the CPE metric permits our method to detect GO cross-product extensions with a mean recall of 62% and a mean precision of 28%. The study is completed with an analysis of false positives to explain this precision value. We think that our results support the claim that our lexical approach can contribute to the axiomatic enrichment of biomedical ontologies and that it can provide new insights into the engineering of

Nasalance norms in Greek adults.

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Okalidou, Areti; Karathanasi, Asimina; Grigoraki, Eleni

2011-08-01

The purposes of this study were to derive nasalance norms for monolingual Greek speakers, to examine nasalance scores as a function of gender and to draw cross-linguistic comparisons based on normative data. Participants read aloud a corpus of linguistic material, consisting of (1) a nasal text, an oral text and a balanced text; (2) a set of nasal sentences and four sets of oral sentences and (3) repetitions of each of 12 syllable types (8 oral and 4 nasal). The last two sets of material corpus were based on an adaptation of the Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures Test (SNAP test) test ( MacKay and Kummer, 1994 ) in Greek, called the G-SNAP test. Eighty monolingual healthy young adult speakers of Greek, 40 males (mean age = 21 years) and 40 females (mean age = 20.5 years), with normal hearing and speech characteristics and unremarkable history were included in the study. The Nasometer (model 6200-3) was used to derive nasalance scores. Mean normative nasalance for spoken Greek was 25.50%, based on the G-oronasal text (with 8.6% nasals). Nasalance scores did not differ significantly with respect to gender. Finally, spoken Greek consistently yielded lower nasalance scores than other languages examined in past work. The aforementioned normative data on nasalance of young adult speakers of Greek are valid across gender and have direct clinical utility as they provide valuable reference information for the diagnosis and management of Greek adults with resonance disorders caused by velar dysfunction.

The Fluctuating Development of Cross-Linguistic Semantic Awareness: A Longitudinal Multiple-Case Study

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Zheng, Yongyan

2014-01-01

Second language (L2) learners' awareness of first language-second language (L1-L2) semantic differences plays a critical role in L2 vocabulary learning. This study investigates the long-term development of eight university-level Chinese English as a foreign language learners' cross-linguistic semantic awareness over the course of 10 months. A…

On the Nature of Cross-Linguistic Transfer: A Case Study of Andean Spanish

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Muntendam, Antje G.

2013-01-01

This paper presents the results of a study on cross-linguistic transfer in Andean Spanish word order. In Andean Spanish the object appears in preverbal position more frequently than in non-Andean Spanish, which has been attributed to an influence from Quechua (a Subject-Object-Verb language). The high frequency of preverbal objects could be…

Women and Men Facing Lexical Innovation

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Paola Cañete Gonzalez

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Over the last few decades, the gender variable has been investigated in terms of linguistic variation. A number of studies (mainly phonological in nature have been carried out which have generated preliminary conclusions such as women are more conservative and use more standard forms of language than men or that men are more innovative than women (Chambers, 2009; Labov, 1994. Generally, we are aware that new words are created every day which is indicative of the dynamism of languages and the changes taking place in a given society. The study of new lexical entities, called neologisms, allows us to understand how language speakers adapt to social changes. The two issues mentioned above are our main motivation to conduct this investigation which will be based on a linguistic approach with a focus on neology. Hence, this paper focuses on Spanish neological units produced by women and men as found in contemporary newspaper articles and blogs through a qualitative analysis of neologisms used by women and men as well as a qualitative analysis of the formation of these neologisms. Finally, we present a comparison between the results obtained in both types of text.

First Steps into Language? Examining the Specific Longitudinal Relations between Walking, Exploration and Linguistic Skills.

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Oudgenoeg-Paz, Ora; Volman, M Chiel J M; Leseman, Paul P M

2016-01-01

Recent empirical evidence demonstrates relationships between motor and language development that are partially mediated by exploration. This is in line with the embodied cognition approach to development that views language as grounded in real-life sensorimotor interactions with the environment. This view implies that the relations between motor and linguistic skills should be specific. Moreover, as motor development initially changes the possibilities children have to explore the environment, initial relations between motor and linguistic skills should become weaker over time. Empirical evidence pertaining to the duration and specificity of these relations is still lacking. The current study investigated longitudinal relations between attainment of walking and the development of several linguistic skills, and tested whether exploration through self-locomotion mediated these relations. Linguistic skills were measured at age 43 months, which is later than the age used in previous studies. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) the relations between walking and language found at younger ages will decrease over time (2) exploration through self-locomotion will remain an important predictor of spatial language (3) no relation will be found between walking, exploration and the use of grammatical and lexical categories and between exploration and general vocabulary. Thirty-one Dutch children took part in a longitudinal study. Parents reported about age of attainment of walking. Exploration through self-locomotion was measured using observations of play with a standard set of toys at age 20 months. Receptive vocabulary, spatial language and use of grammatical and lexical categories were measured at age 43 months using (standard) tests. Results reveal that age of walking does not directly predict spatial language at age 43 months. Exploration through self-locomotion does significantly and completely mediate the indirect effect of age of walking on spatial language. Moreover

First steps into language? Examining the specific longitudinal relations between walking, exploration and linguistic skills

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Ora Oudgenoeg-Paz

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Recent empirical evidence demonstrates relationships between motor and language development that are partially mediated by exploration. This is in line with the embodied cognition approach to development that views language as grounded in real-life sensorimotor interactions with the environment. This view implies that the relations between motor and linguistic skills should be specific. Moreover, as motor development initially changes the possibilities children have to explore the environment, initial relations between motor and linguistic skills should become weaker over time. Empirical evidence pertaining to the duration and specificity of these relations is still lacking. The current study investigated longitudinal relations between attainment of walking and the development of several linguistic skills, and tested whether exploration through self-locomotion mediated these relations. Linguistic skills were measured at age 43 months, which is later than the age used in previous studies. Three hypotheses were tested: (1 the relations between walking and language found at younger ages will decrease over time (2 exploration through self-locomotion will remain an important predictor of spatial language (3 no relation will be found between walking, exploration and the use of grammatical and lexical categories and between exploration and general vocabulary. Thirty-one Dutch children took part in a longitudinal study. Parents reported about age of attainment of walking. Exploration through self-locomotion was measured using observations of play with a standard set of toys at age 20 months. Receptive vocabulary, spatial language and use of grammatical and lexical categories were measured at age 43 months using (standard tests. Results reveal that age of walking does not directly predict spatial language at age 43 months. Exploration through self-locomotion does significantly and completely mediate the indirect effect of age of walking on spatial

NORMS IN BRITISH AND SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH E. Ridge http ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

standard English as "that kind of English which draws least attention to itself". For this ..... to linguistic or communicative norms, putative sex-indefinite pronouns among them ... South African English has necessarily been rather selective. It does ...

Relationship between conversational repair strategies and cognitive-linguistic skills in children with moderate hearing loss in Ahvaz, Southern Iran

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Peyman Zamani

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: Conversational repair skills are essential for establishing mutually successful verbal communication. Cognitive and linguistic disorders can have negative effects on these skills. Children with hearing loss have special cognitive and linguistic issues. This study was performed to contribute to the paucity of data on conversational repair strategies used by hearing impaired children.Methods: The participants included 58 children with moderate hearing loss (38 boys and 20 girls aged 6 to 7 from Ahvaz city. A cross-sectional study design was used. Frequency of using different types of repair strategies in ten repair situations was calculated. Scores of intelligence, memory, word finding, lexical richness, and mean length of sentences was obtained through cognitive-linguistic tests. Data was analyzed employing an independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and logistic regression.Results: A direct correlation was observed between clarification strategy and communicative social intelligence (p=0.045. A direct correlation was observed between applying different types of conversational repair strategies and linguistic abilities in children with moderate hearing loss (p<0.05.Conclusion: Children with moderate hearing loss (age: 6-7 years use repetition more than any other strategy to repair conversation. One unit increase in word finding ability or in mean length of sentence predicts one unit increase in the degree of using repetition strategy.

Neural correlates of rhyming vs. lexical and semantic fluency.

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Kircher, Tilo; Nagels, Arne; Kirner-Veselinovic, André; Krach, Sören

2011-05-19

Rhyming words, as in songs or poems, is a universal feature of human language across all ages. In the present fMRI study a novel overt rhyming task was applied to determine the neural correlates of rhyme production. Fifteen right-handed healthy male volunteers participated in this verbal fluency study. Participants were instructed to overtly articulate as many words as possible either to a given initial letter (LVF) or to a semantic category (SVF). During the rhyming verbal fluency task (RVF), participants had to generate words that rhymed with pseudoword stimuli. On-line overt verbal responses were audiotaped in order to correct the imaging results for the number of generated words. Fewer words were generated in the rhyming compared to both the lexical and the semantic condition. On a neural level, all language tasks activated a language network encompassing the left inferior frontal gyrus, the middle and superior temporal gyri as well as the contralateral right cerebellum. Rhyming verbal fluency compared to both lexical and semantic verbal fluency demonstrated significantly stronger activation of left inferior parietal region. Generating novel rhyme words seems to be mainly mediated by the left inferior parietal lobe, a region previously found to be associated with meta-phonological as well as sub-lexical linguistic processes. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Constructing and Using Broad-coverage Lexical Resource for Enhancing Morphological Analysis of Arabic

OpenAIRE

Sawalha, M.; Atwell, E.S.

2010-01-01

Broad-coverage language resources which provide prior linguistic knowledge must improve the accuracy and the performance of NLP applications. We are constructing a broad-coverage lexical resource to improve the accuracy of morphological analyzers and part-of-speech taggers of Arabic text. Over the past 1200 years, many different kinds of Arabic language lexicons were constructed; these lexicons are different in ordering, size and aim or goal of construction. We collected 23 machine-readable l...

Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

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Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

Having Linguistic Rules and Knowing Linguistic Facts

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Peter Ludlow

2010-11-01

Full Text Available

'Knowledge' doesn't correctly describe our relation to linguistic rules. It is too thick a notion (for example, we don't believe linguistic rules. On the other hand, 'cognize', without further elaboration, is too thin a notion, which is to say that it is too thin to play a role in a competence theory. One advantage of the term 'knowledge'-and presumably Chomsky's original motivation for using it-is that knowledge would play the right kind of role in a competence theory: Our competence would consist in a body of knowledge which we have and which we may or may not act upon-our performance need not conform to the linguistic rules that we know.

Is there a way out of the dilemma? I'm going to make the case that the best way to talk about grammatical rules is simply to say that we have them. That doesn't sound very deep, I know, but saying that we have individual rules leaves room for individual norm guidance in a way that 'cognize' does not. Saying we have a rule like subjacency is also thicker than merely saying we cognize it. Saying I have such a rule invites the interpretation that it is a rule for me-that I am normatively guided by it. The competence theory thus becomes a theory of the rules that we have. Whether we follow those rules is another matter entirely.

Neural correlates reveal sub-lexical orthography and phonology during reading aloud: A review

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Kalinka eTimmer

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The sub-lexical conversion of graphemes-to-phonemes (GPC during reading has been investigated extensively with behavioral measures, as well as event-related potentials (ERPs. Most research utilizes silent reading (e.g., lexical decision task for which phonological activation is not a necessity. However, recent research employed reading aloud to capture sub-lexical GPC. The masked priming paradigm avoids strategic processing and is therefore well suitable for capturing sub-lexical processing instead of lexical effects. By employing ERPs, the on-line time course of sub-lexical GPC can be observed before the overt response. ERPs have revealed that besides phonological activation, as revealed by behavioral studies, there is also early orthographic activation. This review describes studies in one’s native language, in one’s second language, and in a cross-language situation. We discuss the implications the ERP results have on different (computational models. First, the ERP results show that computational models should assume an early locus of the grapheme-to-phoneme-conversion (GPC. Second, cross-language studies reveal that the phonological representations from both languages of a bilingual become activated automatically and the phonology belonging to the context is selected rapidly. Therefore, it is important to extend the scope of computational models of reading (aloud to multiple lexicons.

Prosodic Abilities in Spanish and English Children with Williams Syndrome: A Cross-Linguistic Study

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Martinez-Castilla, Pastora; Stojanovik, Vesna; Setter, Jane; Sotillo, Maria

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to compare the prosodic profiles of English- and Spanish-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS), examining cross-linguistic differences. Two groups of children with WS, English and Spanish, of similar chronological and nonverbal mental age, were compared on performance in expressive and receptive prosodic tasks…

A Machine Learning Approach to Measurement of Text Readability for EFL Learners Using Various Linguistic Features

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Kotani, Katsunori; Yoshimi, Takehiko; Isahara, Hitoshi

2011-01-01

The present paper introduces and evaluates a readability measurement method designed for learners of EFL (English as a foreign language). The proposed readability measurement method (a regression model) estimates the text readability based on linguistic features, such as lexical, syntactic and discourse features. Text readability refers to the…

The Chinese Lexicon Project: A megastudy of lexical decision performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character compound words.

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Tse, Chi-Shing; Yap, Melvin J; Chan, Yuen-Lai; Sze, Wei Ping; Shaoul, Cyrus; Lin, Dan

2017-08-01

Using a megastudy approach, we developed a database of lexical variables and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character compound words. Each word was responded to by about 33 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. This resource provides a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the Chinese single-character, English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Three analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential uses of the database. First, we compared the proportion of variance in lexical decision performance accounted for by six word frequency measures and established that the best predictor was Cai and Brysbaert's (PLoS One, 5, e10729, 2010) contextual diversity subtitle frequency. Second, we ran virtual replications of three previously published lexical decision experiments and found convergence between the original experiments and the present megastudy. Finally, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the effects of theoretically important lexical variables in our normative data. This is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese two-character compound word processing, which should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

Concreteness norms for 1,659 French words: Relationships with other psycholinguistic variables and word recognition times.

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Bonin, Patrick; Méot, Alain; Bugaiska, Aurélia

2018-02-12

Words that correspond to a potential sensory experience-concrete words-have long been found to possess a processing advantage over abstract words in various lexical tasks. We collected norms of concreteness for a set of 1,659 French words, together with other psycholinguistic norms that were not available for these words-context availability, emotional valence, and arousal-but which are important if we are to achieve a better understanding of the meaning of concreteness effects. We then investigated the relationships of concreteness with these newly collected variables, together with other psycholinguistic variables that were already available for this set of words (e.g., imageability, age of acquisition, and sensory experience ratings). Finally, thanks to the variety of psychological norms available for this set of words, we decided to test further the embodied account of concreteness effects in visual-word recognition, championed by Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, and Del Campo (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 14-34, 2011). Similarly, we investigated the influences of concreteness in three word recognition tasks-lexical decision, progressive demasking, and word naming-using a multiple regression approach, based on the reaction times available in Chronolex (Ferrand, Brysbaert, Keuleers, New, Bonin, Méot, Pallier, Frontiers in Psychology, 2; 306, 2011). The norms can be downloaded as supplementary material provided with this article.

Acoustic and Lexical Representations for Affect Prediction in Spontaneous Conversations.

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Cao, Houwei; Savran, Arman; Verma, Ragini; Nenkova, Ani

2015-01-01

In this article we investigate what representations of acoustics and word usage are most suitable for predicting dimensions of affect|AROUSAL, VALANCE, POWER and EXPECTANCY|in spontaneous interactions. Our experiments are based on the AVEC 2012 challenge dataset. For lexical representations, we compare corpus-independent features based on psychological word norms of emotional dimensions, as well as corpus-dependent representations. We find that corpus-dependent bag of words approach with mutual information between word and emotion dimensions is by far the best representation. For the analysis of acoustics, we zero in on the question of granularity. We confirm on our corpus that utterance-level features are more predictive than word-level features. Further, we study more detailed representations in which the utterance is divided into regions of interest (ROI), each with separate representation. We introduce two ROI representations, which significantly outperform less informed approaches. In addition we show that acoustic models of emotion can be improved considerably by taking into account annotator agreement and training the model on smaller but reliable dataset. Finally we discuss the potential for improving prediction by combining the lexical and acoustic modalities. Simple fusion methods do not lead to consistent improvements over lexical classifiers alone but improve over acoustic models.

THE CATEGORY OF GENERATION IN POLISH LINGUISTIC STUDIES (CURRENT STATUS AND PERSPECTIVES

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Marek Ruszkowski

2015-04-01

Full Text Available In linguistic studies, a generation is understood as “a group of people who are more or less the same age (Dubisz red. 2003, t. 3: 298 ”. It is assumed that the linguistic memory, the knowledge of linguistic conventions, the ability to take notice of nuances in one's language is the only and unique cultural heritage that is difficult to learn and is passed from generation to generation, albeit with smaller or bigger modifications. Such modifications are the reason why the language is differentiated in generational terms, and it is the age that plays the principal role in that differentiation. Apart from the biological criterion, the geographic one, that is the area of a specific region, determinates the distinct features in the speech of generations. The analysis of differences in speech of generations allows determining the direction, nature, pace, mechanism of and reasons for linguistic changes. Generally, scientists focus on phonetic, lexical, and morphological differences shown in the language spoken by people from different generations. In Poland, the studies of differences in the speech of generations are at an introductory stage. The reconnaissance of the research area has been carried out, and basic determinations have been made, but the scope of analysis seems to be too narrow. A research perspective would be to use the quantitative indicators that are showing now and will show in the future that the common sense assumptions about specific frequency ratios between parts of speech, an increase in complexity of utterances and their lexical wealth concurrent with age does not need to be corroborated by empirical research. It is also advisable to analyse the differences in speech of one generation, especially the medium-age or old-age generation, in terms of sex, education, living, and other possible parameters. It will give the answer to the question to what extent the speech of people from a specific generation is a linguistic

A normative study of lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse elderly population.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Bong Jo; Lee, Cheol Soon; Oh, Byoung Hoon; Hong, Chang Hyung; Lee, Kang Soo; Son, Sang Joon; Han, Changsu; Park, Moon Ho; Jeong, Hyun-Ghang; Kim, Tae Hui; Park, Joon Hyuk; Kim, Ki Woong

2013-12-01

Lexical fluency tests are frequently used to assess language and executive function in clinical practice. We investigated the influences of age, gender, and education on lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse, elderly Korean population and provided its' normative information. We administered the lexical verbal fluency test (LVFT) to 1676 community-dwelling, cognitively normal subjects aged 60 years or over. In a stepwise linear regression analysis, education (B=0.40, SE=0.02, standardized B=0.506) and age (B=-0.10, SE=0.01, standardized B=-0.15) had significant effects on LVFT scores (p0.05). Education explained 28.5% of the total variance in LVFT scores, which was much larger than the variance explained by age (5.42%). Accordingly, we presented normative data of the LVFT stratified by age (60-69, 70-74, 75-79, and ≥80 years) and education (0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and ≥13 years). The LVFT norms should provide clinically useful data for evaluating elderly people and help improve the interpretation of verbal fluency tasks and allow for greater diagnostic accuracy.

Verbal Working Memory Is Related to the Acquisition of Cross-Linguistic Phonological Regularities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bosma, E.; Heeringa, Wilbert; Hoekstra, E.; Versloot, A.P.; Blom, W.B.T.

2017-01-01

Closely related languages share cross-linguistic phonological regularities, such as Frisian -âld [ͻ:t] and Dutch -oud [ʱut], as in the cognate pairs kâld [kͻ:t] – koud [kʱut] ‘cold’ and wâld [wͻ:t] – woud [wʱut] ‘forest’. Within Bybee’s (1995, 2001, 2008, 2010) network model, these regularities are,

Pragmatic expressions in cross-linguistic perspective

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Maryann Overstreet

2012-09-01

Full Text Available This paper focuses on some pragmatic expressions that are characteristic of informal spoken English, their possible equivalents in some other languages, and their use by EFL learners from different backgrounds. These expressions, called general extenders (e.g. and stuff, or something, are shown to be different from discourse markers and to exhibit variation in form, function and distribution across varieties of English, as well as in other languages. In EFL contexts, students are reported to use fewer pragmatic expressions and a smaller range of possible forms. They also tend to favor expressions more often associated with writing and formal speaking (e.g. and so on, include literal translation equivalents from their first language that are not used in English (e.g. and, and, and, or used only in restricted contexts (e.g. or so, and often seem not to realize that some forms may carry negative connotations (e.g. and blah, blah, blah. The possibility of fostering better pragmatic awareness among EFL students is discussed in terms of an explicit cross-linguistic focus on the forms and functions of pragmatic expressions.

Lexical representation of novel L2 contrasts

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Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Masuda, Kyoko

2005-04-01

There is much interest among psychologists and linguists in the influence of the native language sound system on the acquisition of second languages (Best, 1995; Flege, 1995). Most studies of second language (L2) speech focus on how learners perceive and produce L2 sounds, but we know of only two that have considered how novel sound contrasts are encoded in learners' lexical representations of L2 words (Pallier et al., 2001; Ota et al., 2002). In this study we investigated how native speakers of English encode Japanese consonant quantity contrasts in their developing Japanese lexicons at different stages of acquisition (Japanese contrasts singleton versus geminate consonants but English does not). Monolingual English speakers, native English speakers learning Japanese for one year, and native speakers of Japanese were taught a set of Japanese nonwords containing singleton and geminate consonants. Subjects then performed memory tasks eliciting perception and production data to determine whether they encoded the Japanese consonant quantity contrast lexically. Overall accuracy in these tasks was a function of Japanese language experience, and acoustic analysis of the production data revealed non-native-like patterns of differentiation of singleton and geminate consonants among the L2 learners of Japanese. Implications for theories of L2 speech are discussed.

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

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Reza Kalantari

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST. Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012, three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011, and four Vocabprofile indices (Cobb, 2000 were selected to measure different dimensions of LC. Results of repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA indicated an improvement with regard to only lexical sophistication. Positive and significant relationships were found between time and mean values in Academic Word List and Beyond-2000 as indicators of lexical sophistication. The remaining seven indices of LC, falling short of significance, tended to flatten over the course of this writing program. Correlation analyses among LC indices indicated that lexical density enjoyed positive correlations with lexical sophistication. However, lexical diversity revealed no significant correlations with both lexical density and lexical sophistication. This study suggests that DST perspective specifies a viable foundation for analyzing lexical complexity

The integration of lexical, syntactic, and discourse features in bilingual adolescents' writing: an exploratory approach.

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Danzak, Robin L

2011-10-01

The purpose of this study was to assess the bilingual writing of adolescent English language learners (ELLs) using quantitative tools. Linguistic measures were applied to the participants' writing at the lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels, with the goal of comparing outcomes at each of these levels across languages (Spanish/English) and genres (expository/narrative). Twenty Spanish-speaking ELLs, ages 11-14 years, each produced 8 expository and narrative autobiographical texts. Texts were coded and scored for lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and overall text quality. Scores were analyzed using Friedman's 2-way analysis of variance by ranks (Siegel & Castellan, 1988); resulting ranks were compared across languages and genre topics. The text topic impacted rank differences at all levels. Performance at the three levels was similar across languages, indicating that participants were emerging writers in both Spanish and English. The impact of genre was generally inconsequential at all levels. Similar results across languages implied the potential transfer of writing skills. Overall, students appeared to apply a knowledge-telling strategy to writing rather than strategically planning, composing, and revising their writing. Finally, outcomes highlighted the synergistic relationships among linguistic levels in text composition, indicating a need to address the interaction of vocabulary, morphosyntax, and text-level structures in the instruction and assessment of ELL writing.

Cross-Linguistic Evidence and the Licensing of Implicit Arguments

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Eva Kardos

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the occurrence and the licensing of implicit object arguments, also referred to in the literature as null complements or understood arguments. Functionalist accounts (such as those by Groefsema and Németh T. which are couched in a relevance-theoretic framework have repeatedly claimed that this phenomenon is fundamentally dependent on dis-course-interpretational factors. In particular, it has been stated that implicit arguments can be used in Hungarian in a rather unrestricted way, and their occurrence is only limited by considerations of interpretability. We argue against both of these positions and try to show that cross-linguistic data can assist in revealing the circular nature and ultimate inadequacy of existing functional accounts of implicit argument licensing.

Objective age of acquisition for 223 Italian words: norms and effects on picture naming speed.

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Lotto, Lorella; Surian, Luca; Job, Remo

2010-02-01

The present study provides a set of objective age of acquisition (AoA) norms for 223 Italian words that may be useful for conducting cross-linguistic studies or experiments on Italian language processing. The data were collected by presenting children from the ages of 2 to 11 with a normed picture set (Lotto, Dell'Acqua, & Job, 2001). Following the study of Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997), we report two measures of objective AoA. Both measures strongly correlated with each other, and they also showed a good correlation with the rated AoA provided by adult participants. Furthermore, we assessed the relationship between the AoA measures and other variables used in psycholinguistic experiments. Regression analyses showed that familiarity, typicality, and word frequency were significant predictors of AoA. AoA, but not word frequency, was found to determine naming latencies. Finally, we present a path model in which AoA is a mediator in predicting speed in picture naming. The norms and the picture set can also be downloaded from http://dpss.psy.unipd.it/files/strumenti.php and from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Linguistic intergroup bias in political communication.

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Anolli, Luigi; Zurloni, Valentino; Riva, Giuseppe

2006-07-01

The Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB) illustrates the disposition to communicate positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors more abstractly than negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. The present research examined the function of language in reinforcing this bias in political communication. To illustrate the LIB, the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) was used, including a nouns category. Because social stereotypes are usually conveyed by nominal terms, the aim was to observe the relationship between stereotypes and language in political communication. Moreover, we were interested in analyzing the psychological processes that drive the LIB. Therefore, we verified whether the LIB is more related to language abstractness than to agent-patient causality. Several political debates and interviews, which took place before the latest Italian provincial elections, were analyzed. Results suggested that the language politicians use in communicating about political groups are conceptualized as stereotypes rather than as trait-based categories. Moreover, it seems that the LIB could not be explained only at a lexical level. Social implications of the present findings in interpersonal relations and causal attribution were discussed.

Lexical-Access Ability and Cognitive Predictors of Speech Recognition in Noise in Adult Cochlear Implant Users

OpenAIRE

Kaandorp, Marre W.; Smits, Cas; Merkus, Paul; Festen, Joost M.; Goverts, S. Theo

2017-01-01

Not all of the variance in speech-recognition performance of cochlear implant (CI) users can be explained by biographic and auditory factors. In normal-hearing listeners, linguistic and cognitive factors determine most of speech-in-noise performance. The current study explored specifically the influence of visually measured lexical-access ability compared with other cognitive factors on speech recognition of 24 postlingually deafened CI users. Speech-recognition performance was measured with ...

Performance-based vs socially supportive culture : A cross-national study of descriptive norms and entrepreneurship

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Ute, S.; Uhlaner, L.M.

2010-01-01

This paper is a cross-national study testing a framework relating cultural descriptive norms to entrepreneurship in a sample of 40 nations. Based on data from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project, we identify two higher-order dimensions of culture – socially

Aphasia therapy in the age of globalization: cross-linguistic therapy effects in bilingual aphasia.

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Ansaldo, Ana Inés; Saidi, Ladan Ghazi

2014-01-01

Globalization imposes challenges to the field of behavioural neurology, among which is an increase in the prevalence of bilingual aphasia. Thus, aphasiologists have increasingly focused on bilingual aphasia therapy and, more recently, on the identification of the most efficient procedures for triggering language recovery in bilinguals with aphasia. Therapy in both languages is often not available, and, thus, researchers have focused on the transfer of therapy effects from the treated language to the untreated one. This paper discusses the literature on bilingual aphasia therapy, with a focus on cross-linguistic therapy effects from the language in which therapy is provided to the untreated language. Fifteen articles including two systematic reviews, providing details on pre- and posttherapy in the adult bilingual population with poststroke aphasia and anomia are discussed with regard to variables that can influence the presence or absence of cross-linguistic transfer of therapy effects. . The potential for CLT of therapy effects from the treated to the untreated language depends on the word type, the degree of structural overlap between languages, the type of therapy approach, the pre- and postmorbid language proficiency profiles, and the status of the cognitive control circuit.

Visual Word Recognition in Deaf Readers: Lexicality Is Modulated by Communication Mode

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Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects. PMID:23554976

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

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Laura Barca

Full Text Available Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Economic anglicisms: adaptation to the Spanish linguistic system

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Paloma López Zurita

2005-10-01

Full Text Available The enormous number of anglicisms used everyday in Spanish language generates lexical interference between both languages. This paper provides a semantic analysis of the changes in lexis this language contact brings about, through the different linguistic mechanisms of inter-language adaptation involved. When these anglicisms come from the current trend to include English words in Spanish discourse, we also add appropriate equivalents which could avoid the excess of redundant neologisms. A glossary of the most habitual terms derived from interference in English and Spanish in the economic field is included as a result of this study.

Peculiarities of Creating Foreign Students’ Lexical Competence

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Aigul Eskermesovna Sadenova

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Teaching of vocabulary includes several aspects of teaching content: linguistic, methodological and psychological. Teaching of vocabulary is a process which is inextricably entwined with understanding relations between new words and phonetic and grammar aspects of the language. On the one hand, simultaneous learning of two languages complicates the tasks set to the students, but, on the other hand, it simplifies the process. The complexity is in the scope of vocabulary to be remembered, as well as in the differences between grammar structures used in Russian and Kazakh. The simplification is in the fact that students are fully aware that lexical competence is formed gradually, and that every language has its lexical base required at the initial stage, and that such base is to be developed for mastering a specific language. Before identifying the methods of vocabulary semantization in the course of teaching a language to foreign students, students shall be offered active vocabulary, used to express their ideas orally and in written form, and passive vocabulary, used to perceive oral and written information. It is not possible to teach semantics only. It is necessary to create paradigmatic, syntactic and associative relations. The formation of lexical skills is connected with the solidity of vocabulary retention. In order to ensure reinforcement of the vocabulary learnt, the students shall be offered exercises contributing to the development of their skills of using vocabulary in listening, speaking, reading and writing. All above mentioned types of vocabulary semantization constitute a unified whole. Different ways of semantization are set forth for methodological purposes, to facilitate the achievement of the desired result. Translation and non-translation techniques for vocabulary presentation, as well as some tips and exercises, are given. The use of basic vocabulary at elementary and advanced levels is suggested. Certain methods for the

A Bayesian phylogenetic approach to estimating the stability of linguistic features and the genetic biasing of tone.

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Dediu, Dan

2011-02-07

Language is a hallmark of our species and understanding linguistic diversity is an area of major interest. Genetic factors influencing the cultural transmission of language provide a powerful and elegant explanation for aspects of the present day linguistic diversity and a window into the emergence and evolution of language. In particular, it has recently been proposed that linguistic tone-the usage of voice pitch to convey lexical and grammatical meaning-is biased by two genes involved in brain growth and development, ASPM and Microcephalin. This hypothesis predicts that tone is a stable characteristic of language because of its 'genetic anchoring'. The present paper tests this prediction using a Bayesian phylogenetic framework applied to a large set of linguistic features and language families, using multiple software implementations, data codings, stability estimations, linguistic classifications and outgroup choices. The results of these different methods and datasets show a large agreement, suggesting that this approach produces reliable estimates of the stability of linguistic data. Moreover, linguistic tone is found to be stable across methods and datasets, providing suggestive support for the hypothesis of genetic influences on its distribution.

The Analysis of Metaphor: To What Extent Can the Theory of Lexical Priming Help Our Understanding of Metaphor Usage and Comprehension?

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Patterson, Katie J.

2016-01-01

This paper addresses the issues with current systems of categorisation and measurement of linguistic metaphoricity, which have coloured most research into the area to-date. The paper discusses the role of metaphor as a form of creative language and a deviation from more linguistic norms and conventionalities. Two current theories are discussed as…

Novel Word Lexicalization and the Prime Lexicality Effect

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Qiao, Xiaomei; Forster, Kenneth I.

2013-01-01

This study investigates how newly learned words are integrated into the first-language lexicon using masked priming. Two lexical decision experiments are reported, with the aim of establishing whether newly learned words behave like real words in a masked form priming experiment. If they do, they should show a prime lexicality effect (PLE), in…

Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Perception: L2 and L3 Perception of Japanese Contrasts

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Onishi, Hiromi

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation…

EEG Correlates of Song Prosody: A New Look at the Relationship between Linguistic and Musical Rhythm

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Gordon, Reyna L.; Magne, Cyrille L.; Large, Edward W.

2011-01-01

Song composers incorporate linguistic prosody into their music when setting words to melody, a process called “textsetting.” Composers tend to align the expected stress of the lyrics with strong metrical positions in the music. The present study was designed to explore the idea that temporal alignment helps listeners to better understand song lyrics by directing listeners’ attention to instances where strong syllables occur on strong beats. Three types of textsettings were created by aligning metronome clicks with all, some or none of the strong syllables in sung sentences. Electroencephalographic recordings were taken while participants listened to the sung sentences (primes) and performed a lexical decision task on subsequent words and pseudowords (targets, presented visually). Comparison of misaligned and well-aligned sentences showed that temporal alignment between strong/weak syllables and strong/weak musical beats were associated with modulations of induced beta and evoked gamma power, which have been shown to fluctuate with rhythmic expectancies. Furthermore, targets that followed well-aligned primes elicited greater induced alpha and beta activity, and better lexical decision task performance, compared with targets that followed misaligned and varied sentences. Overall, these findings suggest that alignment of linguistic stress and musical meter in song enhances musical beat tracking and comprehension of lyrics by synchronizing neural activity with strong syllables. This approach may begin to explain the mechanisms underlying the relationship between linguistic and musical rhythm in songs, and how rhythmic attending facilitates learning and recall of song lyrics. Moreover, the observations reported here coincide with a growing number of studies reporting interactions between the linguistic and musical dimensions of song, which likely stem from shared neural resources for processing music and speech. PMID:22144972

EEG correlates of song prosody: A new look at the relationship between linguistic and musical rhythm

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Reyna L Gordon

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Song composers incorporate linguistic prosody into their music when setting words to melody, a process called textsetting. Composers tend to align the expected stress of the lyrics with strong metrical positions in the music. The present study was designed to explore the idea that temporal alignment helps listeners to better understand song lyrics by directing listeners’ attention to instances where strong syllables occur on strong beats. Three types of textsettings were created by aligning metronome clicks with all, some or none of the strong syllables in sung sentences. Electroencephalographic (EEG recordings were taken while participants listened to the sung sentences (primes and performed a lexical decision task on subsequent words and pseudowords (targets, presented visually. Comparison of misaligned and well-aligned sentences showed that temporal alignment between strong/weak syllables and strong/weak musical beats were associated with modulations of induced beta and evoked gamma power, which have been shown to fluctuate with rhythmic expectancies. Furthermore, targets that followed well-aligned primes elicited greater induced alpha and beta activity, and better lexical decision task performance, compared with targets that followed misaligned and varied sentences. Overall, these findings suggest that alignment of linguistic stress and musical meter in song enhances musical beat tracking and comprehension of lyrics by synchronizing neural activity with strong syllables. This approach may begin to explain the mechanisms underlying the relationship between linguistic and musical rhythm in songs, and how rhythmic attending facilitates learning and recall of song lyrics. Moreover, the observations reported here coincide with a growing number of studies reporting interactions between the linguistic and musical dimensions of song, which likely stem from shared neural resources for processing music and speech.

EEG Correlates of Song Prosody: A New Look at the Relationship between Linguistic and Musical Rhythm.

Science.gov (United States)

Gordon, Reyna L; Magne, Cyrille L; Large, Edward W

2011-01-01

Song composers incorporate linguistic prosody into their music when setting words to melody, a process called "textsetting." Composers tend to align the expected stress of the lyrics with strong metrical positions in the music. The present study was designed to explore the idea that temporal alignment helps listeners to better understand song lyrics by directing listeners' attention to instances where strong syllables occur on strong beats. Three types of textsettings were created by aligning metronome clicks with all, some or none of the strong syllables in sung sentences. Electroencephalographic recordings were taken while participants listened to the sung sentences (primes) and performed a lexical decision task on subsequent words and pseudowords (targets, presented visually). Comparison of misaligned and well-aligned sentences showed that temporal alignment between strong/weak syllables and strong/weak musical beats were associated with modulations of induced beta and evoked gamma power, which have been shown to fluctuate with rhythmic expectancies. Furthermore, targets that followed well-aligned primes elicited greater induced alpha and beta activity, and better lexical decision task performance, compared with targets that followed misaligned and varied sentences. Overall, these findings suggest that alignment of linguistic stress and musical meter in song enhances musical beat tracking and comprehension of lyrics by synchronizing neural activity with strong syllables. This approach may begin to explain the mechanisms underlying the relationship between linguistic and musical rhythm in songs, and how rhythmic attending facilitates learning and recall of song lyrics. Moreover, the observations reported here coincide with a growing number of studies reporting interactions between the linguistic and musical dimensions of song, which likely stem from shared neural resources for processing music and speech.

A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Questions in German and French Adult Second Language Acquisition

OpenAIRE

Matthias Bonnesen; Solveig Chilla

2012-01-01

Several studies have been conducted to try and understand and explain the morphological and syntactic aspects of adult second language acquisition (SLA). Two prominent hypotheses that have been put forward concerning late L2 speakers' knowledge of inflectional morphology and of related functional categories and their feature values are the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH).The cross-linguistic comparison of the acquisition of questio...

Lexical polysynthesis : Should we treat lexical bases and their affixes as a continuum ?

OpenAIRE

Tersis , Nicole

2006-01-01

International audience; Polysynthesis in Inuit appears at both lexical and sentence levels. The analysis of a sampling of 3000 lexical entries and 300 affixes collected in Eastern Greenland (Tunumiisut) shows how polysynthesis works in lexical morphology and how phonetic wastage helps to obscure the motivation for some lexical forms and favors the development of homophones. Furthermore, the analysis of the full set of affixes reveals a number of formal and semantic similarities which relate a...

Road Sign Romanization in Oman: The Linguistic Landscape Close-Up

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Jamoussi, Rafik; Roche, Thomas

2017-01-01

Throughout the Arab Gulf States, bilingual road signs are the norm, employing both Arabic and a romanized counterpart for the large expatriate population. The existing romanization is inconsistent, with potentially misleading variant spellings of place names signposting the region. This study provides a linguistic analysis of signs on the arterial…

The Role of Phonological Working Memory and Environmental Factors in Lexical Development in Italian-Speaking Late Talkers: A One-Year Follow-Up Study

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Marini, Andrea; Ruffino, Milena; Sali, Maria Enrica; Molteni, Massimo

2017-01-01

Purpose: This follow-up study assessed (a) the influence of phonological working memory (pWM), home literacy environment, and a family history of linguistic impairments in late talkers (LTs); (b) the diagnostic accuracy of a task of nonword repetition (NWR) in identifying LTs; and (c) the persistence of lexical weaknesses after 10 months. Method:…

How lexical is the lexicon? Evidence for integrated auditory memory representations.

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Pufahl, April; Samuel, Arthur G

2014-05-01

Previous research has shown that lexical representations must include not only linguistic information (what word was said), but also indexical information (how it was said, and by whom). The present work demonstrates that even this expansion is not sufficient. Seemingly irrelevant information, such as an unattended background sound, is retained in memory and can facilitate subsequent speech perception. We presented participants with spoken words paired with environmental sounds (e.g., a phone ringing), and had them make an "animate/inanimate" decision for each word. Later performance identifying filtered versions of the words was impaired to a similar degree if the voice changed or if the environmental sound changed. Moreover, when quite dissimilar words were used at exposure and test, we observed the same result when we reversed the roles of the words and the environmental sounds. The experiments also demonstrated limits to these effects, with no benefit from repetition. Theoretically, our results support two alternative possibilities: (1) Lexical representations are memory representations, and are not walled off from those for other sounds. Indexical effects reflect simply one type of co-occurrence that is incorporated into such representations. (2) The existing literature on indexical effects does not actually bear on lexical representations - voice changes, like environmental sounds heard with a word, produce implicit memory effects that are not tied to the lexicon. We discuss the evidence and implications of these two theoretical alternatives. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH CHILDREN'S SONGS

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Ms. Valeria A. Buryakovskaya

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Linguistic and cultural specificity of children's songs is determined by the extralinguistic and linguistic characteristics that most clearly are seen in the light of comparative analysis. For a long historical period there was a stream of cultural phenomena from Western Europe to Russia including the UK, which is reflected in the language including children's songs. The purpose of the study is to identify the similarities and differences of children's songs in Russian and English folklore cultures. It is established that the main differences of the Russian song culture from the European one are determined by historical, religious, regional, ethnic, musical, poetic and other traditions. The similarities are observed in the structural, phonetic and genre-themed events. At the same time, Russian and English children's songs differ from each other in their lexical-grammatical and stylistic peculiarities, the set of concepts and characters.

Unravelling the influence of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) on cognitive-linguistic processing: a comparative group analysis.

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Barwood, Caroline H S; Murdoch, Bruce E

2013-06-01

Cognitive-linguistic deficits often accompany traumatic brain injury (TBI) and can negatively impact communicative competency. The linguistic sequelae underpinning mild TBI (MTBI) remain largely unexplored in contemporary literature. The present research methods aim to provide group evidence pertaining to the influence of MTBI on linguistic and higher-level language processing. Extrapolating on the findings of recent case reports, it is hypothesized that performance of the MTBI patients will be significantly reduced compared to normal controls performance on the employed high-level linguistic tasks. Sixteen patients with MTBI and 16 age- and education-matched normal control participants were assessed using a comprehensive battery of cognitive-linguistic assessments. The results demonstrated statistically significant differences between MTBI and normal control group performance across a number of higher-level linguistic, general cognitive and general language tasks. MTBI group performance was significantly lower than the normal control group on tasks requiring complex lexical semantic operations and memory demands, including: Recall, organization, making inferences, naming and perception/discrimination. These outcomes confer that post-MTBI, cognitive, high-level language and isolated general language performance (e.g. naming) is significantly reduced in MTBI patients, compared to normal controls. Furthermore, the detailed cognitive-linguistic profile offered provides a necessary direction for the identification of areas of linguistic decline in MTBI and targets for therapeutic intervention of impaired cognitive-linguistic processes to ultimately improve communicative outcomes in MTBI.

Are there mental lexicons? The role of semantics in lexical decision.

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Dilkina, Katia; McClelland, James L; Plaut, David C

2010-12-13

What is the underlying representation of lexical knowledge? How do we know whether a given string of letters is a word, whereas another string of letters is not? There are two competing models of lexical processing in the literature. The first proposes that we rely on mental lexicons. The second claims there are no mental lexicons; we identify certain items as words based on semantic knowledge. Thus, the former approach - the multiple-systems view - posits that lexical and semantic processing are subserved by separate systems, whereas the latter approach - the single-system view - holds that the two are interdependent. Semantic dementia patients, who have a cross-modal semantic impairment, show an accompanying and related lexical deficit. These findings support the single-system approach. However, a report of an SD patient whose impairment on lexical decision was not related to his semantic deficits in item-specific ways has presented a challenge to this view. If the two types of processing rely on a common system, then shouldn't damage impair the same items on all tasks? We present a single-system model of lexical and semantic processing, where there are no lexicons, and performance on lexical decision involves the activation of semantic representations. We show how, when these representations are damaged, accuracy on semantic and lexical tasks falls off together, but not necessarily on the same set of items. These findings are congruent with the patient data. We provide an explicit explanation of this pattern of results in our model, by defining and measuring the effects of two orthogonal factors - spelling consistency and concept consistency. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

From Sensory Perception to Lexical-Semantic Processing: An ERP Study in Non-Verbal Children with Autism.

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Cantiani, Chiara; Choudhury, Naseem A; Yu, Yan H; Shafer, Valerie L; Schwartz, Richard G; Benasich, April A

2016-01-01

This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was similar in amplitude to typically-developing children. However, significant differences between groups were found at the lexical-semantic level, suggesting more atypical higher-order processes. The results suggest that although basic perception is relatively preserved in NV/MV children with ASD, higher levels of processing, including lexical- semantic functions, are impaired. The use of passive ERP paradigms that do not require active participant response shows significant potential for assessment of non-compliant populations such as NV/MV children with ASD.

From Sensory Perception to Lexical-Semantic Processing: An ERP Study in Non-Verbal Children with Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Cantiani, Chiara; Choudhury, Naseem A.; Yu, Yan H.; Shafer, Valerie L.; Schwartz, Richard G.; Benasich, April A.

2016-01-01

This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was similar in amplitude to typically-developing children. However, significant differences between groups were found at the lexical-semantic level, suggesting more atypical higher-order processes. The results suggest that although basic perception is relatively preserved in NV/MV children with ASD, higher levels of processing, including lexical- semantic functions, are impaired. The use of passive ERP paradigms that do not require active participant response shows significant potential for assessment of non-compliant populations such as NV/MV children with ASD. PMID:27560378

Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Neural Representation of Human Language: Evidence from Users of Signed Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Corina, David P.; Lawyer, Laurel A.; Cates, Deborah

2013-01-01

Studies of deaf individuals who are users of signed languages have provided profound insight into the neural representation of human language. Case studies of deaf signers who have incurred left- and right-hemisphere damage have shown that left-hemisphere resources are a necessary component of sign language processing. These data suggest that, despite frank differences in the input and output modality of language, core left perisylvian regions universally serve linguistic function. Neuroimaging studies of deaf signers have generally provided support for this claim. However, more fine-tuned studies of linguistic processing in deaf signers are beginning to show evidence of important differences in the representation of signed and spoken languages. In this paper, we provide a critical review of this literature and present compelling evidence for language-specific cortical representations in deaf signers. These data lend support to the claim that the neural representation of language may show substantive cross-linguistic differences. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings with respect to an emerging understanding of the neurobiology of language. PMID:23293624

Features Of Household Lexics, Their Characteristics And Structural Analysis In The Modern English Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aygun Yusifova

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The present paper aims to analyze the most inherent features and characteristics of household lexis in English. Special emphasis has been placed on their names of the objects used in everyday life, kitchen utensils, animal and birds. Lexical units concerning ceremonies, habits and traditions are also among the scope of the paper. Moreover, the study deals with the structural features of the units under consideration. It is believed that the thematic-semantic characterization of every-day lexis can have both pedagogical and linguistic implications, especially when dealing with comparative structures.

Some properties of the computable cross-norm criterion for separability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rudolph, Oliver

2003-01-01

The computable cross-norm (CCN) criterion is a powerful analytical and computable separability criterion for bipartite quantum states, which is also known to systematically detect bound entanglement. In certain aspects this criterion complements the well-known Peres positive partial transpose (PPT) criterion. In the present paper we study important analytical properties of the CCN criterion. We show that in contrast to the PPT criterion it is not sufficient in dimension 2x2. In higher dimensions, theorems connecting the fidelity of a quantum state with the CCN criterion are proved. We also analyze the behavior of the CCN criterion under local operations and identify the operations that leave it invariant. It turns out that the CCN criterion is in general not invariant under local operations

The Role of Lexical Cohesion in Writing Quality

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Hmoud Alotaibi

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The idea of whether repetition has any relation with the writing quality of the text has remained an issue that intrigues a number of scholars in linguistics and in writing studies. Michael Hoey (1991, Halliday and Hasan (1976 are two prominent works in presenting detailed and thoughtful analysis of repetition occurrences in the text. This study uses a model of lexical cohesion proposed by Witte and Faigley (1981 which itself is based on the taxonomies of cohesive ties presented by Halliday and Hasan (1976.  The model deals with lexical cohesion and its subclasses, namely, repetition (same type, synonym, near-synonym, super-ordinate item, and general item and collocation. The corpus includes five argumentative essays written by students in the field of English language literature. Five teaching assistants were asked to rank the papers on a five-point scale based on their perception of the papers’ writing quality. The results showed that the paper that received the lowest rating in terms of the writing quality was the one that included the largest number of repetition occurrences of the same type. The study concludes by arguing that repetition may not be considered as monolithic, and suggests that every type of repetition needs to be examined individually in order to determine what enhances and what deteriorates the writing quality.

T. S. Eliot’s ‘Obscurity’ in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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Longxing Wei

2016-07-01

Full Text Available T. S. Eliot's earliest verse is composed of observations, detached, ironic, and alternatively disillusioned and nostalgic in tone. Eliot's mingling of subtle observation with unexpected cliché represents a difficulty that is often magnified because too much 'obscurity' is assumed. This paper aims at clarifying the 'obscurity' by means of a stylistic analysis of the linguistic devices that the poet used to create "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and its intended meaning. Adopting the concept of style as 'foregrounding', the idea that style is constituted by departures from linguistic norms, it analyzes the poem in terms of its lexical foregrounding, and adopting the concept of style as 'choice', the idea that style is constituted by choices of linguistic devices, it analyzes the poem in terms of its syntactic choices. It claims that it is the systematic foregrounding or violation of the norm of the standard which makes possible the poetic utilization of language. Without seeing foregrounding as a poet's linguistic device, there could be no poetry for the poet or no possible understanding of poems for the reader. It also claims that stylistically significant syntactic choices by the poet serve effectively the intended meaning.

Marching to a Different Drummer: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Young Adolescents Who Challenge Gender Norms.

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Yu, Chunyan; Zuo, Xiayun; Blum, Robert W; Tolman, Deborah L; Kågesten, Anna; Mmari, Kristin; De Meyer, Sara; Michielsen, Kristien; Basu, Sharmistha; Acharya, Rajib; Lian, Qiguo; Lou, Chaohua

2017-10-01

Little is known about how gender norms regulate adolescents' lives across different cultural settings. This study aims to illustrate what is considered as violating gender norms for boys and girls in four urban poor sites as well as the consequences that follow the challenging of gender norms. Data were collected as part of the Global Early Adolescent Study, a 15-country collaboration to explore gender norms and health in early adolescence. The current study analyzed narrative and in-depth interviews conducted in urban poor sites in two middle-income (Shanghai, China; and New Delhi, India) and two high-income countries (Baltimore, U.S.; and Ghent, Belgium). A total of 238 participants, 59 boys and 70 girls aged 11-13 years old and 109 of their parents/guardians (28 male adults and 81 female adults), were interviewed. A thematic analysis was conducted across sites using Atlas.Ti 7.5 software. Findings revealed that although most perceptions and expressions about gender were regulated by stereotypical norms, there was a growing acceptability for girls to wear boyish clothes and engage in stereotypical masculine activities such as playing soccer/football. However, there was no comparable acceptance of boys engaging in traditional feminine behaviors. Across all sites, challenging gender norms was often found to lead to verbal, physical, and/or psychological retribution. While it is sometimes acceptable for young adolescents to cross gender boundaries, once it becomes clear that a behavior is socially defined as typical for the other sex, and the adolescent will face more resistance. Researchers, programmers, and clinicians working in the field of adolescent health need not only attend to those who are facing the consequences of challenging prevailing gender norms, but also to address the environment that fosters exclusion and underscores differences. Copyright © 2017 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Analyse linguistique, normes scolaires et differenciations socio-culturelles (Linguistic Analysis, Educational Standards, and Socio-Cultural Differentiation).

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Francois, Frederic

1980-01-01

Questions the validity of some child language studies that measure cognitive ability by the degree of complexity of the linguistic expression. Claims that these studies ignore many facets of the children's sociocultural experience as well as the influence of situational factors on their choice of linguistic codes, perpetuating socially biased…

Age Acquisition Norms from Elderly Spanish People: Characteristics and the Prediction of Word Recognition Performance in Alzheimer's Disease

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Cuetos, Fernando; Samartino, Tamara; Ellis, Andrew W.

2012-01-01

Age of acquisition is possibly the single most potent variable affecting lexical access. It is also a variable that determines the retention or loss of words in patients who have suffered brain injury, and in patients with Alzheimer's disease. But the norms of age of acquisition currently available have largely been obtained from university…

Growth, financial development, societal norms and legal institutions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Garretsen, Harry; Lensink, Robert; Sterken, Elmer

2002-01-01

This paper analyses whether societal norms help to explain cross-country differences in financial development. We analyze whether societal norms in addition to legal institutions have an impact on financial development. We address the implications of the inclusion of societal norms for the analysis

Sensory Intelligence for Extraction of an Abstract Auditory Rule: A Cross-Linguistic Study.

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Guo, Xiao-Tao; Wang, Xiao-Dong; Liang, Xiu-Yuan; Wang, Ming; Chen, Lin

2018-02-21

In a complex linguistic environment, while speech sounds can greatly vary, some shared features are often invariant. These invariant features constitute so-called abstract auditory rules. Our previous study has shown that with auditory sensory intelligence, the human brain can automatically extract the abstract auditory rules in the speech sound stream, presumably serving as the neural basis for speech comprehension. However, whether the sensory intelligence for extraction of abstract auditory rules in speech is inherent or experience-dependent remains unclear. To address this issue, we constructed a complex speech sound stream using auditory materials in Mandarin Chinese, in which syllables had a flat lexical tone but differed in other acoustic features to form an abstract auditory rule. This rule was occasionally and randomly violated by the syllables with the rising, dipping or falling tone. We found that both Chinese and foreign speakers detected the violations of the abstract auditory rule in the speech sound stream at a pre-attentive stage, as revealed by the whole-head recordings of mismatch negativity (MMN) in a passive paradigm. However, MMNs peaked earlier in Chinese speakers than in foreign speakers. Furthermore, Chinese speakers showed different MMN peak latencies for the three deviant types, which paralleled recognition points. These findings indicate that the sensory intelligence for extraction of abstract auditory rules in speech sounds is innate but shaped by language experience. Copyright © 2018 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Model Selection in Continuous Test Norming With GAMLSS.

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Voncken, Lieke; Albers, Casper J; Timmerman, Marieke E

2017-06-01

To compute norms from reference group test scores, continuous norming is preferred over traditional norming. A suitable continuous norming approach for continuous data is the use of the Box-Cox Power Exponential model, which is found in the generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. Applying the Box-Cox Power Exponential model for test norming requires model selection, but it is unknown how well this can be done with an automatic selection procedure. In a simulation study, we compared the performance of two stepwise model selection procedures combined with four model-fit criteria (Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, generalized Akaike information criterion (3), cross-validation), varying data complexity, sampling design, and sample size in a fully crossed design. The new procedure combined with one of the generalized Akaike information criterion was the most efficient model selection procedure (i.e., required the smallest sample size). The advocated model selection procedure is illustrated with norming data of an intelligence test.

Design Features for Linguistically-Mediated Meaning Construction: The Relative Roles of the Linguistic and Conceptual Systems in Subserving the Ideational Function of Language.

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Evans, Vyvyan

2016-01-01

nature of these qualitatively distinct representations. And second, language itself is adapted to the conceptual system-the semantic potential-that it marshals in the meaning construction process. Hence, a linguistic system itself exhibits a bifurcation, in terms of the symbolic resources at its disposal. This design feature I dub the birfucation in linguistic organization. As I shall argue, this relates to two distinct reference strategies available for symbolic encoding in language: what I dub words-to-world reference and words-to-words reference. In slightly different terms, this design feature of language amounts to a distinction between a lexical subsystem, and a grammatical subsystem.

A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms

OpenAIRE

Shlomo eHareli; Konstantinos eKafetsios; Ursula eHess

2015-01-01

When we do not know how to correctly behave in a new context, the emotions that people familiar with the context show in response to the behaviors of others, can help us understand what to do or not to do. The present study examined cross-cultural differences in how group emotional expressions (anger, sadness, neutral) can be used to deduce a norm violation in four cultures (Germany, Israel, Greece, and the US), which differ in terms of decoding rules for negative emotions. As expected, in al...

Norms for 10,491 Spanish words for five discrete emotions: Happiness, disgust, anger, fear, and sadness.

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Stadthagen-González, Hans; Ferré, Pilar; Pérez-Sánchez, Miguel A; Imbault, Constance; Hinojosa, José Antonio

2017-09-18

The discrete emotion theory proposes that affective experiences can be reduced to a limited set of universal "basic" emotions, most commonly identified as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Here we present norms for 10,491 Spanish words for those five discrete emotions collected from a total of 2,010 native speakers, making it the largest set of norms for discrete emotions in any language to date. When used in conjunction with the norms from Hinojosa, Martínez-García et al. (Behavior Research Methods, 48, 272-284, 2016) and Ferré, Guasch, Martínez-García, Fraga, & Hinojosa (Behavior Research Methods, 49, 1082-1094, 2017), researchers now have access to ratings of discrete emotions for 13,633 Spanish words. Our norms show a high degree of inter-rater reliability and correlate highly with those from Ferré et al. (2017). Our exploration of the relationship between the five discrete emotions and relevant lexical and emotional variables confirmed findings of previous studies conducted with smaller datasets. The availability of such large set of norms will greatly facilitate the study of emotion, language and related fields. The norms are available as supplementary materials to this article.

Can ethnic-linguistic diversity explain cross country differences in social capital?: a global perspective

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Cong; Steiner, Bodo

2015-01-01

Motivated by theoretical arguments (see e.g. Putnam, 2007) that assert a negative impact of ethnolinguistic diversity on social capital, this paper aims to provide some empirical evidence on the relationship between the two variables. In particular, using a cross section sample of 68 developed an...... diversity tend to have lower levels of social trust, fewer memberships in social organizations, deteriorated social norms and structure, hence, lower overall social capital stock....

A Lexical Analysis Tool with Ambiguity Support

OpenAIRE

Quesada, Luis; Berzal, Fernando; Cortijo, Francisco J.

2012-01-01

Lexical ambiguities naturally arise in languages. We present Lamb, a lexical analyzer that produces a lexical analysis graph describing all the possible sequences of tokens that can be found within the input string. Parsers can process such lexical analysis graphs and discard any sequence of tokens that does not produce a valid syntactic sentence, therefore performing, together with Lamb, a context-sensitive lexical analysis in lexically-ambiguous language specifications.

Holiday or vacation? The processing of variation in vocabulary across dialects

OpenAIRE

Martin, Clara D.; Garcia, Xabier; Potter, Douglas; Melinger, Alissa; Costa, ALbert

2016-01-01

Published online: 20 Oct 2015 Native speakers with different linguistic backgrounds differ in their usage of language, and particularly in their vocabulary. For instance, British natives would use the word "holiday" when American natives would prefer the word "vacation". This study investigates how cross-dialectal lexical variation impacts lexical processing. Electrophysiological responses were recorded, while British natives listened to British or American speech in which lexi...

A core avenue for transcultural research on dementia: on the cross-linguistic generalization of language-related effects in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

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Calvo, Noelia; Ibáñez, Agustín; Muñoz, Edinson; García, Adolfo M

2018-06-01

Language is a key source of cross-cultural variability, which may have both subtle and major effects on neurocognition. However, this issue has been largely overlooked in two flourishing lines of research assessing the relationship between language-related neural systems and dementia. This paper assesses the limitations of the evidence on (i) the neuroprotective effects of bilingualism in Alzheimer's disease and (ii) specific language deficits as markers of Parkinson's disease. First, we outline the rationale behind each line of research. Second, we review available evidence and discuss the potential impact of cross-linguistic factors. Third, we outline ideas to foster progress in both fields and, with it, in cross-cultural neuroscience at large. On the one hand, studies on bilingualism suggest that sustained use of more than one language may protect against Alzheimer's disease symptoms. On the other hand, insights from the embodied cognition framework point to syntactic and action-verb deficits as early (and even preclinical) markers of Parkinson's disease. However, both fields share a key limitation that lies at the heart of cultural neuroscience: the issue of cross-linguistic generalizability. Relevant evidence for both research trends comes from only a handful of (mostly Indo-European) languages, which are far from capturing the full scope of structural and typological diversity of the linguistic landscape worldwide. This raises questions on the external validity of reported findings. Greater collaboration between linguistic typology and cognitive neuroscience seems crucial as a first step to assess the impact of transcultural differences on language-related effects across neurodegenerative diseases. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using Predictability for Lexical Segmentation.

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Çöltekin, Çağrı

2017-09-01

This study investigates a strategy based on predictability of consecutive sub-lexical units in learning to segment a continuous speech stream into lexical units using computational modeling and simulations. Lexical segmentation is one of the early challenges during language acquisition, and it has been studied extensively through psycholinguistic experiments as well as computational methods. However, despite strong empirical evidence, the explicit use of predictability of basic sub-lexical units in models of segmentation is underexplored. This paper presents an incremental computational model of lexical segmentation for exploring the usefulness of predictability for lexical segmentation. We show that the predictability cue is a strong cue for segmentation. Contrary to earlier reports in the literature, the strategy yields state-of-the-art segmentation performance with an incremental computational model that uses only this particular cue in a cognitively plausible setting. The paper also reports an in-depth analysis of the model, investigating the conditions affecting the usefulness of the strategy. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Adolescents' Sexual Wellbeing in Southwestern Uganda: A Cross-Sectional Assessment of Body Image, Self-Esteem and Gender Equitable Norms.

Science.gov (United States)

Kemigisha, Elizabeth; Nyakato, Viola N; Bruce, Katharine; Ndaruhutse Ruzaaza, Gad; Mlahagwa, Wendo; Ninsiima, Anna B; Coene, Gily; Leye, Els; Michielsen, Kristien

2018-02-22

Measures of sexual wellbeing and positive aspects of sexuality in the World Health Organization definition for sexual health are rarely studied and remain poorly understood, especially among adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study was to assess sexual wellbeing in its broad sense-i.e., body image, self-esteem, and gender equitable norms-and associated factors in young adolescents in Uganda. A cross-sectional survey of adolescents ages 10-14 years in schools was carried out between June and July 2016. Among 1096 adolescents analyzed, the median age was 12 (Inter-Quartile Range (IQR): 11, 13) and 58% were female. Self-esteem and body image scores were high with median 24 (IQR: 22, 26, possible range: 7-28) and median 22 (IQR: 19, 24, possible range: 5-25) respectively. Gender equitable norms mean score was 28.1 (SD 5.2: possible range 11-44). We noted high scores for self-esteem and body image but moderate scores on gender equitable norms. Girls had higher scores compared to boys for all outcomes. A higher age and being sexually active were associated with lower scores on gender equitable norms. Gender equitable norms scores decreased with increasing age of adolescents. Comprehensive and timely sexuality education programs focusing on gender differences and norms are recommended.

Equality in Language Learning. Proceedings of the Nordic Conference of Applied Linguistics, (5th, Jyvaskyla, Finland, June 4-7, 1987). AFinLA Series No. 45.

Science.gov (United States)

Sajavaara, Kari, Ed.

Papers presented at the conference on applied linguistics include the following: "Speaking of Grammars: Is Big Beautiful?" (Jan Svartvik); "A Sociosemiotic View of the Grasp of Language at Reality: The Lexical Field 'Aesthetic Judgment'" (Wolfgang Kuhlwein); "Language as a Target and Instrument of the Educational Process…

Working Memory for Linguistic and Non-linguistic Manual Gestures: Evidence, Theory, and Application.

Science.gov (United States)

Rudner, Mary

2018-01-01

Linguistic manual gestures are the basis of sign languages used by deaf individuals. Working memory and language processing are intimately connected and thus when language is gesture-based, it is important to understand related working memory mechanisms. This article reviews work on working memory for linguistic and non-linguistic manual gestures and discusses theoretical and applied implications. Empirical evidence shows that there are effects of load and stimulus degradation on working memory for manual gestures. These effects are similar to those found for working memory for speech-based language. Further, there are effects of pre-existing linguistic representation that are partially similar across language modalities. But above all, deaf signers score higher than hearing non-signers on an n-back task with sign-based stimuli, irrespective of their semantic and phonological content, but not with non-linguistic manual actions. This pattern may be partially explained by recent findings relating to cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals. It suggests that in linguistic gesture-based working memory, semantic aspects may outweigh phonological aspects when processing takes place under challenging conditions. The close association between working memory and language development should be taken into account in understanding and alleviating the challenges faced by deaf children growing up with cochlear implants as well as other clinical populations.

Lexical Discourse Analysis in Translation

Science.gov (United States)

Al Khotaba, Eissa; Al Tarawneh, Khaled

2015-01-01

Lexical Discourse very often depend on lexis. Lexical Discourse analysis, however, has not yet been given enough consideration of the phenomenon of translation. This paper investigates lexical discourse analysis in translation from one language to another. This qualitative study comprises 15 text translated by M.A. students at the Department of…

Data modelling in corpus linguistics: how low may we go?

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van Velzen, Marjolein H; Nanetti, Luca; de Deyn, Peter P

2014-06-01

Corpus linguistics allows researchers to process millions of words. However, the more words we analyse, i.e., the more data we acquire, the more urgent the call for correct data interpretation becomes. In recent years, a number of studies saw the light attempting to profile some prolific authors' linguistic decline, linking this decline to pathological conditions such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). However, in line with the nature of the (literary) work that was analysed, numbers alone do not suffice to 'tell the story'. The one and only objective of using statistical methods for the analysis of research data is to tell a story--what happened, when, and how. In the present study we describe a computerised but individualised approach to linguistic analysis--we propose a unifying approach, with firm grounds in Information Theory, that, independently from the specific parameter being investigated, guarantees to produce a robust model of the temporal dynamics of an author's linguistic richness over his or her lifetime. We applied this methodology to six renowned authors with an active writing life of four decades or more: Iris Murdoch, Gerard Reve, Hugo Claus, Agatha Christie, P.D. James, and Harry Mulisch. The first three were diagnosed with probable Alzheimer Disease, confirmed post-mortem for Iris Murdoch; this same condition was hypothesized for Agatha Christie. Our analysis reveals different evolutive patterns of lexical richness, in turn plausibly correlated with the authors' different conditions. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Linguistic aspects of eponymic professional endocrinologic terminology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N.I. Bytsko

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Background. Special linguistic researches of terminological units of different branches of medicine allow analyzing in details the ways of creating the systems of clinical terminology from different aspects: historical, scientific, cultural, linguistic and semantic. There is a wide area of terminology related to the clinical and experimental endocrino­logy within general medical terminological system. The purpose of the study: to demonstrate the structure of endocrine medical terms — eponyms through the prism of systematization of methodological researches on eponymic vocabulary. Materials and methods. The actual material received as a result of a total choice of eponyms (there were 296 terms from the “Reference dictionary for endocrinologist”, which was composed by the scientists of V. Danilevsky Institute of Endocrine Pathology Problems and Kharkiv Medical Academy of Postgraduate education — A.V. Kozakov, N.A. Kravchun, I.M. Ilyina, M.I. Zubko, O.A. Goncharova, I.V. Cherniavska has 10,000 endocrine terms, the authors successfully streamlined medical terms of the clinical and experimental endocrinology into the vocabulary. The method of total choice of terms from professional literature, the descriptive method and distributive method were used in the study that allowed distinguishing lexical and semantic features of eponymic terms in the branch of endocrinology. Results. The obtained results point out to the modernity of studies in the field of clinical and experimental endocrinology, which is due to the fact that this is the oldest terminology, by the example of which it is possible to trace the ways of formation, development and improvement of terms, the realization of semantic processes, certain trends, ways and means of word formation. Conclusions. The results of the research on the above mentioned sublanguage of clinical medicine at the level of linguistic observations of the functio­ning in dictionaries and scientific works will

Cross-linguistic patterns in the acquisition of quantifiers

Science.gov (United States)

Cummins, Chris; Gavarró, Anna; Kuvač Kraljević, Jelena; Hrzica, Gordana; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.; Skordi, Athina; Jensen de López, Kristine; Sundahl, Lone; van Hout, Angeliek; Hollebrandse, Bart; Overweg, Jessica; Faber, Myrthe; van Koert, Margreet; Smith, Nafsika; Vija, Maigi; Zupping, Sirli; Kunnari, Sari; Morisseau, Tiffany; Rusieshvili, Manana; Yatsushiro, Kazuko; Fengler, Anja; Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Konstantzou, Katerina; Farby, Shira; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Vernice, Mirta; Okabe, Reiko; Isobe, Miwa; Crosthwaite, Peter; Hong, Yoonjee; Balčiūnienė, Ingrida; Ahmad Nizar, Yanti Marina; Grech, Helen; Gatt, Daniela; Cheong, Win Nee; Asbjørnsen, Arve; Torkildsen, Janne von Koss; Haman, Ewa; Miękisz, Aneta; Gagarina, Natalia; Puzanova, Julia; Anđelković, Darinka; Savić, Maja; Jošić, Smiljana; Slančová, Daniela; Kapalková, Svetlana; Barberán, Tania; Özge, Duygu; Hassan, Saima; Chan, Cecilia Yuet Hung; Okubo, Tomoya; van der Lely, Heather; Sauerland, Uli; Noveck, Ira

2016-01-01

Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here, we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier’s specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for “all,” “none,” “some,” “some…not,” and “most” in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-y-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation. PMID:27482119

Variation as a main feature of norm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Poladova

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The past half-century has witnessed remarkable growth in the study of language variation, and it has now become a highly productive subfield of research in sociolinguistics. Variability is everywhere in language, from the unique details in each production of a sound or sign to the auditory or visual processing of the linguistic signal. All languages that we can observe today show variation; what is more, they vary in identical ways, namely geographically and socially. It’s no secret that languages like English are full of variation. So, the aim of the article is to detect the reasons of variation and to uncover rates of usage of different free variations for a given set of lexical items. The research work is carried out by using the descriptive, comparative methods by subjecting to analysis the specific language materials. The discovery of law of variation became a starting point for the evolution of linguistics. The problem of search of variation facts and its role in the functioning of language system concerns many specialists from the outset. The scope of the investigation was to set up a system out of chaos of phenomena. Currently, the fact of conditionality of variation by system relations existing in the language is considered to be established.

Differential lexical correlates of social cognition and metacognition in schizophrenia; a study of spontaneously-generated life narratives.

Science.gov (United States)

Buck, Benjamin; Minor, Kyle S; Lysaker, Paul H

2015-04-01

Social cognition and metacognition have been identified as important cognitive domains in schizophrenia, which are separable from general neurocognition and predictive of functional and treatment outcomes. However, one challenge to improved models of schizophrenia has been the conceptual overlap between the two. One tool used in previous research to develop cognitive models of psychopathology is language analysis. In this article we aimed to clarify distinctions between social cognition and metacognition in schizophrenia using computerized language software. Fifty-eight (n=58) individuals with schizophrenia completed the Metacognitive Assessment Scale Abbreviated and measures of social cognition using the Hinting, Eyes, BLERT and Picture Arrangement test. A lexical analysis of participants' speech using Language Inquiry and Word Count software was conducted to examine relative frequencies of word types. Lexical characteristics were examined for their relationships to social cognition and metacognition. We found that lexical characteristics indicative of cognitive complexity were significantly related to level of metacognitive capacity while social cognition was related to second-person pronoun use, articles, and prepositions, and pronoun use overall. The relationships between lexical variables and metacognition persisted after controlling for demographics, verbal intelligence, and overall word count, but the same was not true for social cognition. Our findings provided support for the view that metacognition requires more synthetic and complex verbal and linguistic operations, while social cognition is associated with the representation and clear identification of others. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

On the accessibility of phonological, orthographic, and semantic aspects of second language vocabulary learning and their relationship with spatial and linguistic intelligences

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Abbas Ali Zarei

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The present study was an attempt to investigate the differences in the accessibility of phonological, semantic, and orthographic aspects of words in L2 vocabulary learning. For this purpose, a sample of 119 Iranian intermediate level EFL students in a private language institute in Karaj was selected. All of the participants received the same instructional treatment. At the end of the experimental period, three tests were administered based on the previously-taught words. A subset of Gardner’s’ (1983 Multiple Intelligences questionnaire was also used for data collection. A repeated measures one-way ANOVA procedure was used to analyze the obtained data. The results showed significant differences in the accessibility of phonological, semantic, and orthographic aspects of words in second language vocabulary learning. Moreover, to investigate the relationships between spatial and linguistic intelligences and the afore-mentioned aspects of lexical knowledge, a correlational analysis was used. No significant relationships were found between spatial and linguistic intelligences and the three aspects of lexical knowledge. These findings may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for researchers, teachers, and learners.

Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Probability: A Probabilistic View of Linguistic Knowledge.

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Lau, Jey Han; Clark, Alexander; Lappin, Shalom

2017-07-01

The question of whether humans represent grammatical knowledge as a binary condition on membership in a set of well-formed sentences, or as a probabilistic property has been the subject of debate among linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for many decades. Acceptability judgments present a serious problem for both classical binary and probabilistic theories of grammaticality. These judgements are gradient in nature, and so cannot be directly accommodated in a binary formal grammar. However, it is also not possible to simply reduce acceptability to probability. The acceptability of a sentence is not the same as the likelihood of its occurrence, which is, in part, determined by factors like sentence length and lexical frequency. In this paper, we present the results of a set of large-scale experiments using crowd-sourced acceptability judgments that demonstrate gradience to be a pervasive feature in acceptability judgments. We then show how one can predict acceptability judgments on the basis of probability by augmenting probabilistic language models with an acceptability measure. This is a function that normalizes probability values to eliminate the confounding factors of length and lexical frequency. We describe a sequence of modeling experiments with unsupervised language models drawn from state-of-the-art machine learning methods in natural language processing. Several of these models achieve very encouraging levels of accuracy in the acceptability prediction task, as measured by the correlation between the acceptability measure scores and mean human acceptability values. We consider the relevance of these results to the debate on the nature of grammatical competence, and we argue that they support the view that linguistic knowledge can be intrinsically probabilistic. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Language as a whole - A new framework for linguistic knowledge integration. Comment on "Approaching human language with complex networks" by Cong and Liu

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Chen, Xinying

2014-12-01

Researchers have been talking about the language system theoretically for many years [1]. A well accepted assumption is that language is a complex adaptive system [2] which is hierarchical [3] and contains multiple levels along the meaning-form dimension [4]. Over the last decade or so, driven by the availability of digital language data and the popularity of statistical approach, many researchers interested in theoretical questions have started to try to quantitatively describe microscopic linguistic features in a certain level of a language system by using authentic language data. Despite the fruitful findings, one question remains unclear. That is, how does a whole language system look like? For answering this question, network approach, an analysis method emphasizes the macro features of structures, has been introduced into linguistic studies [5]. By analyzing the static and dynamic linguistics networks constructed from authentic language data, many macro and micro linguistic features, such as lexical, syntactic or semantic features have been discovered and successfully applied in linguistic typographical studies so that the huge potential of linguistic networks research has revealed [6].

Can yu rid guat ay rot? A Developmental Investigation of Cross-Linguistic Spelling Errors among Spanish-English Bilingual Students

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Howard, Elizabeth R.; Green, Jennifer D.; Arteagoitia, Igone

2012-01-01

This study contributes to the literature on cross-linguistic literacy relationships for English language learners, and in particular, the Spanish-influenced spelling patterns of Spanish-English bilinguals. English spelling, reading, and vocabulary assessments were administered to 220 students in four TWI programs over a three-year period, from…

Performance-based vs socially supportive culture: A cross-national study of descriptive norms and entrepreneurship

OpenAIRE

Ute Stephan; Lorraine M Uhlaner

2010-01-01

This paper is a cross-national study testing a framework relating cultural descriptive norms to entrepreneurship in a sample of 40 nations. Based on data from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project, we identify two higher-order dimensions of culture – socially supportive culture (SSC) and performance-based culture (PBC) – and relate them to entrepreneurship rates and associated supply-side and demand-side variables available from the Global Entrepreneurship Mo...

Minority acculturation and peer rejection: Costs of acculturation misfit with peer-group norms.

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Celeste, Laura; Meeussen, Loes; Verschueren, Karine; Phalet, Karen

2016-09-01

How do minority adolescents' personal acculturation preferences and peer norms of acculturation affect their social inclusion in school? Turkish and Moroccan minority adolescents (N = 681) reported their preferences for heritage culture maintenance, mainstream culture adoption, and their experiences of peer rejection as a key indicator of adjustment problems. Additionally, we aggregated peer acculturation norms of maintenance and adoption within ethnically diverse classrooms (N = 230 in 50 Belgian schools), distinguishing between co-ethnic (Turkish or Moroccan classmates only, N = 681) and cross-ethnic norms (also including N = 1,930 other classmates). Cross-ethnic peer-group norms (of adoption and maintenance) and co-ethnic norms (of maintenance, marginally) predicted minority experiences of peer rejection (controlling for ethnic composition). Moreover, misfit of minorities' own acculturation preferences with both cross-ethnic and co-ethnic peer-group norms was harmful. When cross-ethnic norms stressed adoption, 'integrationist' minority youth - who combined culture adoption with maintenance - experienced most peer rejection. Yet, when co-ethnic peers stressed maintenance, 'assimilationist' minority youth experienced most rejection. In conclusion, acculturation misfit with peer-group norms is a risk factor for minority inclusion in ethnically diverse environments. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Working Memory for Linguistic and Non-linguistic Manual Gestures: Evidence, Theory, and Application

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Mary Rudner

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Linguistic manual gestures are the basis of sign languages used by deaf individuals. Working memory and language processing are intimately connected and thus when language is gesture-based, it is important to understand related working memory mechanisms. This article reviews work on working memory for linguistic and non-linguistic manual gestures and discusses theoretical and applied implications. Empirical evidence shows that there are effects of load and stimulus degradation on working memory for manual gestures. These effects are similar to those found for working memory for speech-based language. Further, there are effects of pre-existing linguistic representation that are partially similar across language modalities. But above all, deaf signers score higher than hearing non-signers on an n-back task with sign-based stimuli, irrespective of their semantic and phonological content, but not with non-linguistic manual actions. This pattern may be partially explained by recent findings relating to cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals. It suggests that in linguistic gesture-based working memory, semantic aspects may outweigh phonological aspects when processing takes place under challenging conditions. The close association between working memory and language development should be taken into account in understanding and alleviating the challenges faced by deaf children growing up with cochlear implants as well as other clinical populations.

Lexical Sophistication as a Multidimensional Phenomenon: Relations to Second Language Lexical Proficiency, Development, and Writing Quality

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Kim, Minkyung; Crossley, Scott A.; Kyle, Kristopher

2018-01-01

This study conceptualizes lexical sophistication as a multidimensional phenomenon by reducing numerous lexical features of lexical sophistication into 12 aggregated components (i.e., dimensions) via a principal component analysis approach. These components were then used to predict second language (L2) writing proficiency levels, holistic lexical…

Are Cross-National Differences in IQ Profiles Stable? A Comparison of Finnish and U.S. WAIS Norms

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Roivainen, Eka

2013-01-01

To study the concept of national IQ profile, we compared U.S. and Finnish WAIS, WAIS-R, and WAIS III nonverbal and working memory subtest norms. The U.S. standardization samples had consistently higher scores on the Coding and Digit span subtests, while the Finnish samples had higher scores on the Block design subtest. No stable cross-national…

The comparative impact of lexical translation and lexical inferencing on EFL learners’ vocabulary retention

OpenAIRE

Nasim Shangarfam; Neda Ghorbani; Ehsan Safarpoor; Mahshid Maha

2013-01-01

The present study is an attempt to investigate the comparative effects of lexical translation and lexical inferencing techniques on Female intermediate EFL learners’ vocabulary retention. For this purpose, 90 female learners attending the Jahad Daneshgahi Center in Qom took a piloted sample KET test, 60 of whom were selected as homogenous learners. They were randomly divided into two experimental groups-one learning new vocabulary items through lexical translation technique and the other with...

Corpus–Based Lexicographical Descriptions with a Special Focus on Pragmatics: The Case of the Slovene Lexical Database

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Mojca Šorli

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The present paper focuses on ways in which the pragmatic (functional meaning that arises from various contextual features, known in corpus linguistics as semantic prosody, can become an integral part of lexicographical descriptions as they are represented in the Slovene Lexical Database (SLD. This is particularly important for the treatment of phraseology and idiomatics. First, the theoretical background is provided, with the focus on the prototype theory and its practical implications for monolingual lexicography. A parallel is drawn with the model of meaning analysis in the SLD. The second part begins with a brief introduction to semantic prosody and continues with an analysis of monolingual meaning descriptions in the SLD against a number of authentic corpus examples, investigating how their pragmatic components have been identified. The analysis of corpus data shows that pragmatics is an important contributor to the process of sense discrimination in works of lexical and lexicographic relevance.

Experiment on building Sundanese lexical database based on WordNet

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Dewi Budiwati, Sari; Nurani Setiawan, Novihana

2018-03-01

Sundanese language is the second biggest local language used in Indonesia. Currently, Sundanese language is rarely used since we have the Indonesian language in everyday conversation and as the national language. We built a Sundanese lexical database based on WordNet and Indonesian WordNet as an alternative way to preserve the language as one of local culture. WordNet was chosen because of Sundanese language has three levels of word delivery, called language code of conduct. Web user participant involved in this research for specifying Sundanese semantic relations, and an expert linguistic for validating the relations. The merge methodology was implemented in this experiment. Some words are equivalent with WordNet while another does not have its equivalence since some words are not exist in another culture.

Cross-domain variation in the X itself as a grammatical construction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Kim Ebensgaard

2016-01-01

The X itself is a nominal construction that has not received much attention within cognitive linguistics despite it having a quite interesting function, as it serves to select a core part in a partonomy and thus specify lexical relations within a text. Apart from being mentioned in passing in Croft...... are divided into. Applying quantitative techniques, including lexical diversity measures and multidimensional scaling, this article explores aspects of the discursive behavior of the X itself across these domains and addresses the extent to which the construction interacts with the registers associated...

The influence of linguistic and musical experience on Cantonese word learning.

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Cooper, Angela; Wang, Yue

2012-06-01

Adult non-native speech perception is subject to influence from multiple factors, including linguistic and extralinguistic experience such as musical training. The present research examines how linguistic and musical factors influence non-native word identification and lexical tone perception. Groups of native tone language (Thai) and non-tone language listeners (English), each subdivided into musician and non-musician groups, engaged in Cantonese tone word training. Participants learned to identify words minimally distinguished by five Cantonese tones during training, also completing musical aptitude and phonemic tone identification tasks. First, the findings suggest that either musical experience or a tone language background leads to significantly better non-native word learning proficiency, as compared to those with neither musical training nor tone language experience. Moreover, the combination of tone language and musical experience did not provide an additional advantage for Thai musicians above and beyond either experience alone. Musicianship was found to be more advantageous than a tone language background for tone identification. Finally, tone identification and musical aptitude scores were significantly correlated with word learning success for English but not Thai listeners. These findings point to a dynamic influence of musical and linguistic experience, both at the tone dentification level and at the word learning stage.

Clear speech and lexical competition in younger and older adult listeners.

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Van Engen, Kristin J

2017-08-01

This study investigated whether clear speech reduces the cognitive demands of lexical competition by crossing speaking style with lexical difficulty. Younger and older adults identified more words in clear versus conversational speech and more easy words than hard words. An initial analysis suggested that the effect of lexical difficulty was reduced in clear speech, but more detailed analyses within each age group showed this interaction was significant only for older adults. The results also showed that both groups improved over the course of the task and that clear speech was particularly helpful for individuals with poorer hearing: for younger adults, clear speech eliminated hearing-related differences that affected performance on conversational speech. For older adults, clear speech was generally more helpful to listeners with poorer hearing. These results suggest that clear speech affords perceptual benefits to all listeners and, for older adults, mitigates the cognitive challenge associated with identifying words with many phonological neighbors.

Fracture Mechanics Method for Word Embedding Generation of Neural Probabilistic Linguistic Model.

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Bi, Size; Liang, Xiao; Huang, Ting-Lei

2016-01-01

Word embedding, a lexical vector representation generated via the neural linguistic model (NLM), is empirically demonstrated to be appropriate for improvement of the performance of traditional language model. However, the supreme dimensionality that is inherent in NLM contributes to the problems of hyperparameters and long-time training in modeling. Here, we propose a force-directed method to improve such problems for simplifying the generation of word embedding. In this framework, each word is assumed as a point in the real world; thus it can approximately simulate the physical movement following certain mechanics. To simulate the variation of meaning in phrases, we use the fracture mechanics to do the formation and breakdown of meaning combined by a 2-gram word group. With the experiments on the natural linguistic tasks of part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition and semantic role labeling, the result demonstrated that the 2-dimensional word embedding can rival the word embeddings generated by classic NLMs, in terms of accuracy, recall, and text visualization.

The sounds of sarcasm in English and Cantonese: A cross-linguistic production and perception study

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Cheang, Henry S.

Three studies were conducted to examine the acoustic markers of sarcasm in English and in Cantonese, and the manner in which such markers are perceived across these languages. The first study consisted of acoustic analyses of sarcastic utterances spoken in English to verify whether particular prosodic cues correspond to English sarcastic speech. Native English speakers produced utterances expressing sarcasm, sincerity, humour, or neutrality. Measures taken from each utterance included fundamental frequency (F0), amplitude, speech rate, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR, to probe voice quality), and one-third octave spectral values (to probe resonance). The second study was conducted to ascertain whether specific acoustic features marked sarcasm in Cantonese and how such features compare with English sarcastic prosody. The elicitation and acoustic analysis methods from the first study were applied to similarly-constructed Cantonese utterances spoken by native Cantonese speakers. Direct acoustic comparisons between Cantonese and English sarcasm exemplars were also made. To further test for cross-linguistic prosodic cues of sarcasm and to assess whether sarcasm could be conveyed across languages, a cross-linguistic perceptual study was then performed. A subset of utterances from the first two studies was presented to naive listeners fluent in either Cantonese or English. Listeners had to identify the attitude in each utterance regardless of language of presentation. Sarcastic utterances in English (regardless of text) were marked by lower mean F0 and reductions in HNR and F0 standard deviation (relative to comparison attitudes). Resonance changes, reductions in both speech rate and F0 range signalled sarcasm in conjunction with some vocabulary terms. By contrast, higher mean F0, amplitude range reductions, and F0 range restrictions corresponded with sarcastic utterances spoken in Cantonese regardless of text. For Cantonese, reduced speech rate and higher HNR interacted

GreekLex 2: A comprehensive lexical database with part-of-speech, syllabic, phonological, and stress information.

Science.gov (United States)

Kyparissiadis, Antonios; van Heuven, Walter J B; Pitchford, Nicola J; Ledgeway, Timothy

2017-01-01

Databases containing lexical properties on any given orthography are crucial for psycholinguistic research. In the last ten years, a number of lexical databases have been developed for Greek. However, these lack important part-of-speech information. Furthermore, the need for alternative procedures for calculating syllabic measurements and stress information, as well as combination of several metrics to investigate linguistic properties of the Greek language are highlighted. To address these issues, we present a new extensive lexical database of Modern Greek (GreekLex 2) with part-of-speech information for each word and accurate syllabification and orthographic information predictive of stress, as well as several measurements of word similarity and phonetic information. The addition of detailed statistical information about Greek part-of-speech, syllabification, and stress neighbourhood allowed novel analyses of stress distribution within different grammatical categories and syllabic lengths to be carried out. Results showed that the statistical preponderance of stress position on the pre-final syllable that is reported for Greek language is dependent upon grammatical category. Additionally, analyses showed that a proportion higher than 90% of the tokens in the database would be stressed correctly solely by relying on stress neighbourhood information. The database and the scripts for orthographic and phonological syllabification as well as phonetic transcription are available at http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/greeklex/.

Macrostructural Treatment of Multi-word Lexical Items

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Alenka Vrbinc

2011-05-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses the macrostructural treatment of multi-word lexical items in mono- and bilingual dictionaries. First, the classification of multi-word lexical items is presented, and special attention is paid to the discussion of compounds – a specific group of multi-word lexical items that is most commonly afforded headword status but whose inclusion in the headword list may also depend on spelling. Then the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in monolingual dictionaries is dealt with in greater detail, while the results of a short survey on the inclusion of five randomly chosen multi-word lexical items in seven English monolingual dictionaries are presented. The proposals as to how to treat these five multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries are presented in the section about the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries. The conclusion is that it is most important to take the users’ needs into consideration and to make any dictionary as user friendly as possible.

Lexical-Access Ability and Cognitive Predictors of Speech Recognition in Noise in Adult Cochlear Implant Users.

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Kaandorp, Marre W; Smits, Cas; Merkus, Paul; Festen, Joost M; Goverts, S Theo

2017-01-01

Not all of the variance in speech-recognition performance of cochlear implant (CI) users can be explained by biographic and auditory factors. In normal-hearing listeners, linguistic and cognitive factors determine most of speech-in-noise performance. The current study explored specifically the influence of visually measured lexical-access ability compared with other cognitive factors on speech recognition of 24 postlingually deafened CI users. Speech-recognition performance was measured with monosyllables in quiet (consonant-vowel-consonant [CVC]), sentences-in-noise (SIN), and digit-triplets in noise (DIN). In addition to a composite variable of lexical-access ability (LA), measured with a lexical-decision test (LDT) and word-naming task, vocabulary size, working-memory capacity (Reading Span test [RSpan]), and a visual analogue of the SIN test (text reception threshold test) were measured. The DIN test was used to correct for auditory factors in SIN thresholds by taking the difference between SIN and DIN: SRT diff . Correlation analyses revealed that duration of hearing loss (dHL) was related to SIN thresholds. Better working-memory capacity was related to SIN and SRT diff scores. LDT reaction time was positively correlated with SRT diff scores. No significant relationships were found for CVC or DIN scores with the predictor variables. Regression analyses showed that together with dHL, RSpan explained 55% of the variance in SIN thresholds. When controlling for auditory performance, LA, LDT, and RSpan separately explained, together with dHL, respectively 37%, 36%, and 46% of the variance in SRT diff outcome. The results suggest that poor verbal working-memory capacity and to a lesser extent poor lexical-access ability limit speech-recognition ability in listeners with a CI.

Language differences in the brain network for reading in naturalistic story reading and lexical decision.

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Wang, Xiaojuan; Yang, Jianfeng; Yang, Jie; Mencl, W Einar; Shu, Hua; Zevin, Jason David

2015-01-01

Differences in how writing systems represent language raise important questions about whether there could be a universal functional architecture for reading across languages. In order to study potential language differences in the neural networks that support reading skill, we collected fMRI data from readers of alphabetic (English) and morpho-syllabic (Chinese) writing systems during two reading tasks. In one, participants read short stories under conditions that approximate natural reading, and in the other, participants decided whether individual stimuli were real words or not. Prior work comparing these two writing systems has overwhelmingly used meta-linguistic tasks, generally supporting the conclusion that the reading system is organized differently for skilled readers of Chinese and English. We observed that language differences in the reading network were greatly dependent on task. In lexical decision, a pattern consistent with prior research was observed in which the Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) and right Fusiform Gyrus (rFFG) were more active for Chinese than for English, whereas the posterior temporal sulcus was more active for English than for Chinese. We found a very different pattern of language effects in a naturalistic reading paradigm, during which significant differences were only observed in visual regions not typically considered specific to the reading network, and the middle temporal gyrus, which is thought to be important for direct mapping of orthography to semantics. Indeed, in areas that are often discussed as supporting distinct cognitive or linguistic functions between the two languages, we observed interaction. Specifically, language differences were most pronounced in MFG and rFFG during the lexical decision task, whereas no language differences were observed in these areas during silent reading of text for comprehension.

Adolescents’ Sexual Wellbeing in Southwestern Uganda: A Cross-Sectional Assessment of Body Image, Self-Esteem and Gender Equitable Norms

Science.gov (United States)

Kemigisha, Elizabeth; Nyakato, Viola N.; Bruce, Katharine; Ndaruhutse Ruzaaza, Gad; Mlahagwa, Wendo; Ninsiima, Anna B.; Coene, Gily; Leye, Els; Michielsen, Kristien

2018-01-01

Measures of sexual wellbeing and positive aspects of sexuality in the World Health Organization definition for sexual health are rarely studied and remain poorly understood, especially among adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study was to assess sexual wellbeing in its broad sense—i.e., body image, self-esteem, and gender equitable norms—and associated factors in young adolescents in Uganda. A cross-sectional survey of adolescents ages 10–14 years in schools was carried out between June and July 2016. Among 1096 adolescents analyzed, the median age was 12 (Inter-Quartile Range (IQR): 11, 13) and 58% were female. Self-esteem and body image scores were high with median 24 (IQR: 22, 26, possible range: 7–28) and median 22 (IQR: 19, 24, possible range: 5–25) respectively. Gender equitable norms mean score was 28.1 (SD 5.2: possible range 11–44). We noted high scores for self-esteem and body image but moderate scores on gender equitable norms. Girls had higher scores compared to boys for all outcomes. A higher age and being sexually active were associated with lower scores on gender equitable norms. Gender equitable norms scores decreased with increasing age of adolescents. Comprehensive and timely sexuality education programs focusing on gender differences and norms are recommended. PMID:29470388

Ambiguity in the Acquisition of Lexical Information

OpenAIRE

Vanderwende, Lucy

1995-01-01

This paper describes an approach to the automatic identification of lexical information in on-line dictionaries. This approach uses bootstrapping techniques, specifically so that ambiguity in the dictionary text can be treated properly. This approach consists of processing an on-line dictionary multiple times, each time refining the lexical information previously acquired and identifying new lexical information. The strength of this approach is that lexical information can be acquired from de...

Phonological and acoustic bases for earliest grammatical category assignment: a cross-linguistic perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, R; Morgan, J L; Allopenna, P

1998-02-01

Maternal infant-directed speech in Mandarin Chinese and Turkish (two mother-child dyads each; ages of children between 0;11 and 1;8) was examined to see if cues exist in input that might assist infants' assignment of words to lexical and functional item categories. Distributional, phonological, and acoustic measures were analysed. In each language, lexical and functional items (i.e. syllabic morphemes) differed significantly on numerous measures. Despite differences in mean values between categories, distributions of values typically displayed substantial overlap. However, simulations with self-organizing neural networks supported the conclusion that although individual dimensions had low cue validity, in each language multidimensional constellations of presyntactic cues are sufficient to guide assignment of words to rudimentary grammatical categories.

A radical construction grammar perspective on the modal particle-discourse particle distinction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fischer, Kerstin; Alm, Maria

2013-01-01

between the contributions of lexical and grammatical constructions. In accordance with Croft’s (2001) Radical Construction Grammar approach, cross-linguistic comparison is then carried out on the basis of the conceptual space, which comprises the language specific sets of functions discourse and modal...

Framing effects reveal discrete lexical-semantic and sublexical procedures in reading: an fMRI study.

Science.gov (United States)

Danelli, Laura; Marelli, Marco; Berlingeri, Manuela; Tettamanti, Marco; Sberna, Maurizio; Paulesu, Eraldo; Luzzatti, Claudio

2015-01-01

According to the dual-route model, a printed string of letters can be processed by either a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) route or a lexical-semantic route. Although meta-analyses of the imaging literature support the existence of distinct but interacting reading procedures, individual neuroimaging studies that explored neural correlates of reading yielded inconclusive results. We used a list-manipulation paradigm to provide a fresh empirical look at this issue and to isolate specific areas that underlie the two reading procedures. In a lexical condition, we embedded disyllabic Italian words (target stimuli) in lists of either loanwords or trisyllabic Italian words with unpredictable stress position. In a GPC condition, similar target stimuli were included within lists of pseudowords. The procedure was designed to induce participants to emphasize either the lexical-semantic or the GPC reading procedure, while controlling for possible linguistic confounds and keeping the reading task requirements stable across the two conditions. Thirty-three adults participated in the behavioral study, and 20 further adult participants were included in the fMRI study. At the behavioral level, we found sizeable effects of the framing manipulations that included slower voice onset times for stimuli in the pseudoword frames. At the functional anatomical level, the occipital and temporal regions, and the intraparietal sulcus were specifically activated when subjects were reading target words in a lexical frame. The inferior parietal and anterior fusiform cortex were specifically activated in the GPC condition. These patterns of activation represented a valid classifying model of fMRI images associated with target reading in both frames in the multi-voxel pattern analyses. Further activations were shared by the two procedures in the occipital and inferior parietal areas, in the premotor cortex, in the frontal regions and the left supplementary motor area. These regions are most

BEASTling: A software tool for linguistic phylogenetics using BEAST 2

Science.gov (United States)

Forkel, Robert; Kaiping, Gereon A.; Atkinson, Quentin D.

2017-01-01

We present a new open source software tool called BEASTling, designed to simplify the preparation of Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data using the BEAST 2 platform. BEASTling transforms comparatively short and human-readable configuration files into the XML files used by BEAST to specify analyses. By taking advantage of Creative Commons-licensed data from the Glottolog language catalog, BEASTling allows the user to conveniently filter datasets using names for recognised language families, to impose monophyly constraints so that inferred language trees are backward compatible with Glottolog classifications, or to assign geographic location data to languages for phylogeographic analyses. Support for the emerging cross-linguistic linked data format (CLDF) permits easy incorporation of data published in cross-linguistic linked databases into analyses. BEASTling is intended to make the power of Bayesian analysis more accessible to historical linguists without strong programming backgrounds, in the hopes of encouraging communication and collaboration between those developing computational models of language evolution (who are typically not linguists) and relevant domain experts. PMID:28796784

BEASTling: A software tool for linguistic phylogenetics using BEAST 2.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luke Maurits

Full Text Available We present a new open source software tool called BEASTling, designed to simplify the preparation of Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data using the BEAST 2 platform. BEASTling transforms comparatively short and human-readable configuration files into the XML files used by BEAST to specify analyses. By taking advantage of Creative Commons-licensed data from the Glottolog language catalog, BEASTling allows the user to conveniently filter datasets using names for recognised language families, to impose monophyly constraints so that inferred language trees are backward compatible with Glottolog classifications, or to assign geographic location data to languages for phylogeographic analyses. Support for the emerging cross-linguistic linked data format (CLDF permits easy incorporation of data published in cross-linguistic linked databases into analyses. BEASTling is intended to make the power of Bayesian analysis more accessible to historical linguists without strong programming backgrounds, in the hopes of encouraging communication and collaboration between those developing computational models of language evolution (who are typically not linguists and relevant domain experts.

Combining Gender, Work, and Family Identities: The Cross-Over and Spill-Over of Gender Norms into Young Adults' Work and Family Aspirations.

Science.gov (United States)

Meeussen, Loes; Veldman, Jenny; Van Laar, Colette

2016-01-01

The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (in)compatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women's family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults ( N = 445) perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and family identities and male and work identities than vice versa, and that young men and women mirror their aspirations to this traditional division of tasks. Spill-over effects of norms across life domains and cross-over effects of norms across gender-groups indicated that young women, more than young men, aimed to 'have it all': mirroring their career ambitions to a male career model, while keeping their family aspirations high. Moreover, young women opposed traditional role divisions in the family domain by decreasing their family aspirations in face of norms of lower family involvement or higher career involvement of men. Conversely, in line with traditional gender roles, young men showed lower family aspirations in the face of strong male career norms; and showed increases in their career aspirations when perceiving women to take up more family roles. Young men's family aspirations were, however, more influenced by new norms prescribing men to invest more in their family, suggesting opportunities for change. Together, these findings show that through social norms, young adults' gender identity affects aspirations for how to manage the co-presence of their work and family identities. Altering these norms may provide leverage for change to allow both men and women to combine their multiple identities in an enriching way.

Efecto de la riqueza semántica en distintos niveles del procesamiento léxico-semántico (Semantic richness effect at different levels of lexical-semantic processing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mauro Fragapane

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Semantic richness is a multidimensional construct that refers to the extent of variability of information associated with the meaning of a word. The Number of Features (NoF is a dimension of semantic richness that has been shown to have a major influence on lexical and semantic processing. Several studies have shown that concepts with a higher NoF allow faster lexical processing than those with a lower NoF. The current study is the first to use a NoF measure based on norms obtained from a sample of Spanish-speaking participants. The aim was to study the effect of this variable in visual word recognition. The sample included 90 young native Spanish-speaking adults. Three tasks were administered that require access to different lexico-semantic levels: lexical decision, concreteness semantic categorization (concrete/abstract, and domain semantic categorization (living/non-living. A semantic richness effect was found in lexical decision and domain semantic categorization tasks, with greater effect in the latter task. Results are interpreted within the framework of the General Domain Interactive Activation model.

A computational linguistics motivated mapping of ICPC-2 PLUS to SNOMED CT.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yefeng; Patrick, Jon; Miller, Graeme; O'Hallaran, Julie

2008-10-27

A great challenge in sharing data across information systems in general practice is the lack of interoperability between different terminologies or coding schema used in the information systems. Mapping of medical vocabularies to a standardised terminology is needed to solve data interoperability problems. We present a system to automatically map an interface terminology ICPC-2 PLUS to SNOMED CT. Three steps of mapping are proposed in this system. The UMLS metathesaurus mapping utilises explicit relationships between ICPC-2 PLUS and SNOMED CT terms in the UMLS library to perform the first stage of the mapping. Computational linguistic mapping uses natural language processing techniques and lexical similarities for the second stage of mapping between terminologies. Finally, the post-coordination mapping allows one ICPC-2 PLUS term to be mapped into an aggregation of two or more SNOMED CT terms. A total 5,971 of all 7,410 ICPC-2 terms (80.58%) were mapped to SNOMED CT using the three stages but with different levels of accuracy. UMLS mapping achieved the mapping of 53.0% ICPC2 PLUS terms to SNOMED CT with the precision rate of 96.46% and overall recall rate of 44.89%. Lexical mapping increased the result to 60.31% and post-coordination mapping gave an increase of 20.27% in mapped terms. A manual review of a part of the mapping shows that the precision of lexical mappings is around 90%. The accuracy of post-coordination has not been evaluated yet. Unmapped terms and mismatched terms are due to the differences in the structures between ICPC-2 PLUS and SNOMED CT. Terms contained in ICPC-2 PLUS but not in SNOMED CT caused a large proportion of the failures in the mappings. Mapping terminologies to a standard vocabulary is a way to facilitate consistent medical data exchange and achieve system interoperability and data standardisation. Broad scale mapping cannot be achieved by any single method and methods based on computational linguistics can be very useful for the task

Assessment of Lexical and Non-Lexical Spelling in Students in Grades 1-7

Science.gov (United States)

Kohnen, Saskia; Colenbrander, Danielle; Krajenbrink, Trudy; Nickels, Lyndsey

2015-01-01

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and…

$q$-norms are really norms

OpenAIRE

Belbachir, H.; Mirzavaziri, M.; Moslehian, M. S.

2005-01-01

Replacing the triangle inequality, in the definition of a norm, by $|x + y| ^{q}\\leq 2^{q-1}(|x| ^{q} + |y| ^{q}) $, we introduce the notion of a q-norm. We establish that every q-norm is a norm in the usual sense, and that the converse is true as well.

The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: a Japanese-English cross-linguistic study.

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshida, Katherine A; Iversen, John R; Patel, Aniruddh D; Mazuka, Reiko; Nito, Hiromi; Gervain, Judit; Werker, Janet F

2010-05-01

Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers' non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and English-learning infants of 5-6 and 7-8 months of age to explore the development of grouping preferences. At 5-6 months, neither the Japanese nor the English infants revealed any systematic perceptual biases. However, by 7-8 months, the same age as when linguistic phrasal grouping develops, infants developed non-linguistic grouping preferences consistent with their language's structure (and the grouping biases found in adulthood). These results reveal an early difference in non-linguistic perception between infants growing up in different language environments. The possibility that infants' linguistic phrasal grouping is bootstrapped by abstract perceptual principles is discussed. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: cross-linguistic evidence.

Science.gov (United States)

Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J; Gillis, Steven; Samson, Graham

2007-06-01

Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.

Crossing the Line in Quebec and Catalonia: The Consequences of the Linguistically "Mixed" Marriage.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Donnell, Paul E.

2000-01-01

The linguistically mixed marriage stands at he crossroads of important factors in the future of French in North American and Catalan in Europe: reversing language shift. While Quebec and Catalonia appear strikingly similar, strong evidence indicates that demographic, linguistic, socioeconomic, and even lifestyle factors may make linguistic exogamy…

Lexically guided perceptual learning in Mandarin Chinese

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Burchfield, L.A.; Luk, S.H.K.; Antoniou, M.; Cutler, A.

2017-01-01

Lexically guided perceptual learni ng refers to the use of lexical knowledge to retune sp eech categories and thereby adapt to a novel talker's pronunciation. This adaptation has been extensively documented, but primarily for segmental-based learning in English and Dutch. In languages with lexical

Can Ethnic-Linguistic Diversity Explain Cross-Country Differences in Social Capital Formation?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Cong; Steiner, Bodo

and developing countries, this paper has found a significant negative effect of ethnolinguistic diversity on social capital. Countries with fractionalized ethnic and linguistic groups as captured by both log number of languages and Desmet et al. (2012) and La Porta et al. (1999)’s measures on linguistic...

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mark Kit

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these studies. Lexical need analysis can be also used to learn specifics of translator’s lexical space and then to take measures for selection of translators and improvement of their skills.

Predicting Lexical Proficiency in Language Learner Texts Using Computational Indices

Science.gov (United States)

Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

The authors present a model of lexical proficiency based on lexical indices related to vocabulary size, depth of lexical knowledge, and accessibility to core lexical items. The lexical indices used in this study come from the computational tool Coh-Metrix and include word length scores, lexical diversity values, word frequency counts, hypernymy…

Lexical Resources and Their Application.

Science.gov (United States)

Gellerstam, Martin

This paper discusses computer-based resources for lexical data and their uses. First, the kinds of lexical data available are described, including those related to form (spelling, pronunciation, inflection, word class), meaning (definition/equivalent, synonyms/antonyms/hyperonyms, thesaurus classification), context (grammatical collocations,…

Automating the generation of lexical patterns for processing free text in clinical documents.

Science.gov (United States)

Meng, Frank; Morioka, Craig

2015-09-01

Many tasks in natural language processing utilize lexical pattern-matching techniques, including information extraction (IE), negation identification, and syntactic parsing. However, it is generally difficult to derive patterns that achieve acceptable levels of recall while also remaining highly precise. We present a multiple sequence alignment (MSA)-based technique that automatically generates patterns, thereby leveraging language usage to determine the context of words that influence a given target. MSAs capture the commonalities among word sequences and are able to reveal areas of linguistic stability and variation. In this way, MSAs provide a systemic approach to generating lexical patterns that are generalizable, which will both increase recall levels and maintain high levels of precision. The MSA-generated patterns exhibited consistent F1-, F.5-, and F2- scores compared to two baseline techniques for IE across four different tasks. Both baseline techniques performed well for some tasks and less well for others, but MSA was found to consistently perform at a high level for all four tasks. The performance of MSA on the four extraction tasks indicates the method's versatility. The results show that the MSA-based patterns are able to handle the extraction of individual data elements as well as relations between two concepts without the need for large amounts of manual intervention. We presented an MSA-based framework for generating lexical patterns that showed consistently high levels of both performance and recall over four different extraction tasks when compared to baseline methods. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Linguistic Engineering and Linguistic of Engineering: Adaptation of Linguistic Paradigm for Circumstance of Engineering Epoch

OpenAIRE

Natalya Halina

2014-01-01

The article is devoted to the problems of linguistic knowledge in the Engineering Epoch. Engineering Epoch is the time of adaptation to the information flows by knowledge management, The system of adaptation mechanisms is connected with linguistic and linguistic technologies, forming in new linguistic patterns Linguistic Engineering and Linguistic of Engineering.

How Do Different Cognitive and Linguistic Variables Contribute to Reading in Arabic? A Cross-Sectional Study from First to Sixth Grade

Science.gov (United States)

Asadi, Ibrahim A.; Khateb, Asaid; Ibrahim, Raphiq; Taha, Haitham

2017-01-01

The contribution of linguistic and cognitive variables to reading processes might vary depending on the particularities of the languages studied. This view is thought to be particularly true for Arabic which is a diglossic language and has particular orthographic and morpho-syntactic systems. This cross-sectional study examined the contribution of…

Comparison of Linguistic Knowledge between Students and Their Healthy Peers

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Hiva Mohammadi

2008-07-01

Full Text Available Objectives: There are many reports about relations between stuttering and language development. Some studies reveal that bilingualism is a contributing factor to the development of stuttering. Main objective of this study was comparison of linguistic knowledge in Kurdish (L1 and Farsi (L2 between bilingual stutterers and their normal peers. Materials & Methods: In this case-control and comparative study all of 31 Kurdish-Farsi bilingual stutterers from 4 and 5 grades in primary schools of Javanrood were selected as case group and 31 normal peers were selected as control group by Pairs Matching Method. The linguistic knowledge of two groups in L1 and L2 were evaluated and compared by analyzing the speech quality indices (speech fluency index, speech complexity index, type-token ratio in a sample of their spontaneous speech in Kurdish and Farsi. Data were analyzed by Independent -T-test and Mann-Whitney U. Results: In both Kordish and Farsi Language, Speech unfluency was more in stutterd students than normal group. Also, speech complexity, speech fluency and lexical diversity of stuttered students were less than normal group and there were significant differences between two groups in all speech indices (P<0.05. Conclusion: The linguistic knowledge of stuttered group was less than normal group in both Kordish and Farsi language. This finding confirms that level of language proficiency may be considered as a contributing factor to stuttering.

The Multi/Plural Turn, Postcolonial Theory, and Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Complicities and Implications for Applied Linguistics

Science.gov (United States)

Kubota, Ryuko

2016-01-01

In applied linguistics and language education, an increased focus has been placed on plurality and hybridity to challenge monolingualism, the native speaker norm, and the modernist view of language and language use as unitary and bounded. The multi/plural turn parallels postcolonial theory in that they both support hybridity and fluidity while…

Combining gender, work, and family identities: The cross-over and spill-over of gender norms into young adults’ work and family aspirations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Loes Meeussen

2016-11-01

Full Text Available The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (incompatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women’s family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults (N=445 perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and family identities and male and work identities than vice versa, and that young men and women mirror their aspirations to this traditional division of tasks. Spill-over effects of norms across life domains and cross-over effects of norms across gender-groups indicated that young women, more than young men, aimed to ‘have it all’: mirroring their career ambitions to a male career model, while keeping their family aspirations high. Moreover, young women opposed traditional role divisions in the family domain by decreasing their family aspirations in face of norms of lower family involvement or higher career involvement of men. Conversely, in line with traditional gender roles, young men showed lower family aspirations in the face of strong male career norms; and showed increases in their career aspirations when perceiving women to take up more family roles. Young men’s family aspirations were, however, more influenced by new norms prescribing men to invest more in their family, suggesting opportunities for change. Together, these findings show that through social norms, young adults’ gender identity affects aspirations for how to manage the co-presence of their work and family identities. Altering these norms may provide leverage for change to allow both men and women to combine their multiple identities in an enriching way.

Combining Gender, Work, and Family Identities: The Cross-Over and Spill-Over of Gender Norms into Young Adults’ Work and Family Aspirations

Science.gov (United States)

Meeussen, Loes; Veldman, Jenny; Van Laar, Colette

2016-01-01

The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (in)compatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women’s family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults (N = 445) perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and family identities and male and work identities than vice versa, and that young men and women mirror their aspirations to this traditional division of tasks. Spill-over effects of norms across life domains and cross-over effects of norms across gender-groups indicated that young women, more than young men, aimed to ‘have it all’: mirroring their career ambitions to a male career model, while keeping their family aspirations high. Moreover, young women opposed traditional role divisions in the family domain by decreasing their family aspirations in face of norms of lower family involvement or higher career involvement of men. Conversely, in line with traditional gender roles, young men showed lower family aspirations in the face of strong male career norms; and showed increases in their career aspirations when perceiving women to take up more family roles. Young men’s family aspirations were, however, more influenced by new norms prescribing men to invest more in their family, suggesting opportunities for change. Together, these findings show that through social norms, young adults’ gender identity affects aspirations for how to manage the co-presence of their work and family identities. Altering these norms may provide leverage for change to allow both men and women to combine their multiple identities in an enriching way. PMID:27909416

Reusable Lexical Representations for Idioms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Odijk, J.E.J.M.

2004-01-01

In this paper I introduce (1) a technically simple and highly theory-independent way for lexically representing flexible idiomatic expressions, and (2) a procedure to incorporate these lexical representations in a wide variety of NLP systems. The method is based on Structural EQuivalence Classes

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children's language production.

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2010-09-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e. a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children's production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed.

Fracture Mechanics Method for Word Embedding Generation of Neural Probabilistic Linguistic Model

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Size Bi

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Word embedding, a lexical vector representation generated via the neural linguistic model (NLM, is empirically demonstrated to be appropriate for improvement of the performance of traditional language model. However, the supreme dimensionality that is inherent in NLM contributes to the problems of hyperparameters and long-time training in modeling. Here, we propose a force-directed method to improve such problems for simplifying the generation of word embedding. In this framework, each word is assumed as a point in the real world; thus it can approximately simulate the physical movement following certain mechanics. To simulate the variation of meaning in phrases, we use the fracture mechanics to do the formation and breakdown of meaning combined by a 2-gram word group. With the experiments on the natural linguistic tasks of part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition and semantic role labeling, the result demonstrated that the 2-dimensional word embedding can rival the word embeddings generated by classic NLMs, in terms of accuracy, recall, and text visualization.

Cross-cultural feigning assessment: A systematic review of feigning instruments used with linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse samples.

Science.gov (United States)

Nijdam-Jones, Alicia; Rosenfeld, Barry

2017-11-01

The cross-cultural validity of feigning instruments and cut-scores is a critical concern for forensic mental health clinicians. This systematic review evaluated feigning classification accuracy and effect sizes across instruments and languages by summarizing 45 published peer-reviewed articles and unpublished doctoral dissertations conducted in Europe, Asia, and North America using linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse samples. The most common psychiatric symptom measures used with linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse samples included the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The most frequently studied cognitive effort measures included the Word Recognition Test, the Test of Memory Malingering, and the Rey 15-item Memory test. The classification accuracy of these measures is compared and the implications of this research literature are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Language differences in the brain network for reading in naturalistic story reading and lexical decision.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaojuan Wang

Full Text Available Differences in how writing systems represent language raise important questions about whether there could be a universal functional architecture for reading across languages. In order to study potential language differences in the neural networks that support reading skill, we collected fMRI data from readers of alphabetic (English and morpho-syllabic (Chinese writing systems during two reading tasks. In one, participants read short stories under conditions that approximate natural reading, and in the other, participants decided whether individual stimuli were real words or not. Prior work comparing these two writing systems has overwhelmingly used meta-linguistic tasks, generally supporting the conclusion that the reading system is organized differently for skilled readers of Chinese and English. We observed that language differences in the reading network were greatly dependent on task. In lexical decision, a pattern consistent with prior research was observed in which the Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG and right Fusiform Gyrus (rFFG were more active for Chinese than for English, whereas the posterior temporal sulcus was more active for English than for Chinese. We found a very different pattern of language effects in a naturalistic reading paradigm, during which significant differences were only observed in visual regions not typically considered specific to the reading network, and the middle temporal gyrus, which is thought to be important for direct mapping of orthography to semantics. Indeed, in areas that are often discussed as supporting distinct cognitive or linguistic functions between the two languages, we observed interaction. Specifically, language differences were most pronounced in MFG and rFFG during the lexical decision task, whereas no language differences were observed in these areas during silent reading of text for comprehension.

Lexical priming in Alzheimer's disease and aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Arroyo-Anlló, Eva Maria; Beauchamps, Mireille; Ingrand, Pierre; Neau, Jean Philippe; Gil, Roger

2013-01-01

Lexical priming was examined in patients with Alzheimer's disease and in aphasic patients. Control participants were divided into young and elderly [cf. Arroyo-Anlló et al.: Eur J Cogn Psychol 2004;16:535-553]. For lexical priming, a word-stem completion task was used. Normal elderly participants had lexical priming scores that were significantly lower than those of young individuals. Analysis of covariance with age and educational level as covariates showed that the control participants, aphasic and Alzheimer patients did not differ significantly on the lexical priming task. Our results suggest that performance in the lexical priming task diminishes with physiological aging, but is not significantly affected by mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease or by fluent or non-fluent aphasia. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

On possible linguistic correlates to brain lateralization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tania Kouteva/Kuteva

2014-04-01

The present paper compares the two modes of processing proposed by Van Lancker Sidtis (2009 in her dual process model and the two domains of discourse organization distinguished in the framework of Discourse Grammar (Heine et al. 2013; Kaltenböck et al. 2011. These two frameworks were developed on different kinds of data. In the dual process model it is observations on patients with left or right hemisphere damage that marked the starting point of analysis. Central to the dual process model is the distinction between novel speech (or novel language, or newly created language, or propositional speech and formulaic speech (or formulaic expressions or automatic speech. Easily identified instances of formulaic speech are swear words, interjections, pause fillers, discourse elements, non-literal lexical meanings for idioms, proverbs. Unlike the dual process model, in the Discourse Grammar model it is linguistic discontinuities that provided the basis of analysis. Discourse grammar in this model is understood as all the linguistic resources that are available for constructing spoken and written (and signed texts. We argue that Discourse Grammar can be divided into two distinct domains, namely Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar. Whereas Sentence Grammar has been at the centre of interest in mainstream linguistics, Thetical Grammar encompasses linguistic phenomena – such as formulae of social exchange, imperatives, vocatives, interjections, including hesitation markers and pause fillers and what is traditionally known as “parenthetical” constructions – that pose a problem to orthodox grammatical analysis. We show that the findings made within the two frameworks are largely compatible with one another: both models converge on claiming that there is a significant correlation between linguistic categorization and hemisphere-based brain activity. In the dual process model it is hypothesized that there is a significant correlation between certain kinds of speech

An Analysis of the Linguistic Deviation in Chapter X of Oliver Twist

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

刘聪

2013-01-01

Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. In language, he is often compared with William Shakespeare for his adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary. Charles Dickens achieved a recognizable place among English writers through the use of the stylistic features in his fictional language. Oliver Twist is the best representative of Charles Dickens’style, which makes it the most appropriate choice for the present stylistic study on Charles Dickens. No one who has ever read the dehumanizing workhouse scenes of Oliver Twist and the dark, criminal underworld life can forget them. This thesis attempts to investigate Oliver Twist through the approach of modern stylistics, particularly the theory of linguistic devia-tion. This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. The introduction offers a brief summary of the com-ments on Charles Dickens and Chapter X of Oliver Twist, introduces the newly rising linguistic deviation theories, and brings about the theories on which this thesis settles. The main body explores the deviation effects produced from four aspects: lexical deviation, grammatical deviation, graphological deviation, and semantic deviation. It endeavors to show Dickens ’manipulating language and the effects achieved through this manipulation. The conclusion mainly sums up the previous analysis, and reveals the theme of the novel, positive effect of linguistic deviation and significance of deviation application.

On the use of the distortion-sensitivity approach in examining the role of linguistic abilities in speech understanding in noise.

Science.gov (United States)

Goverts, S Theo; Huysmans, Elke; Kramer, Sophia E; de Groot, Annette M B; Houtgast, Tammo

2011-12-01

Researchers have used the distortion-sensitivity approach in the psychoacoustical domain to investigate the role of auditory processing abilities in speech perception in noise (van Schijndel, Houtgast, & Festen, 2001; Goverts & Houtgast, 2010). In this study, the authors examined the potential applicability of the distortion-sensitivity approach for investigating the role of linguistic abilities in speech understanding in noise. The authors applied the distortion-sensitivity approach by measuring the processing of visually presented masked text in a condition with manipulated syntactic, lexical, and semantic cues and while using the Text Reception Threshold (George et al., 2007; Kramer, Zekveld, & Houtgast, 2009; Zekveld, George, Kramer, Goverts, & Houtgast, 2007) method. Two groups that differed in linguistic abilities were studied: 13 native and 10 non-native speakers of Dutch, all typically hearing university students. As expected, the non-native subjects showed substantially reduced performance. The results of the distortion-sensitivity approach yielded differentiated results on the use of specific linguistic cues in the 2 groups. The results show the potential value of the distortion-sensitivity approach in studying the role of linguistic abilities in speech understanding in noise of individuals with hearing impairment.

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

OpenAIRE

Mark Kit; Elena Berg

2014-01-01

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these stu...

Cognitive status, lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zahra Jafari

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim : Learning and memory are two high level cognitive performances in human that hearing loss influences them. In our study, mini-mental state examination (MMSE and Ray auditory-verbal learning test (RAVLT was conducted to study cognitive stat us and lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language. Methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was conducted on 30 available congenitally deaf adults using sign language in Persian and 46 normal adults aged 19 to 27 years for both sexes, with a minimum of diploma level of education. After mini-mental state examination, Rey auditory-verbal learning test was run through computers to evaluate lexical learning and memory with visual presentation. Results: Mean scores of mini-mental state examination and Rey auditory-verbal learning test in congenitally deaf adults were significantly lower than normal individuals in all scores (p=0.018 except in the two parts of the Rey test. Significant correlation was found between results of two tests just in the normal group (p=0.043. Gender had no effect on test results. Conclusion: Cognitive status and lexical memory and learning in congenitally deaf individuals is weaker than in normal subjects. It seems that using sign language as the main way of communication in deaf people causes poor lexical memory and learning.

Automatically Assessing Lexical Sophistication: Indices, Tools, Findings, and Application

Science.gov (United States)

Kyle, Kristopher; Crossley, Scott A.

2015-01-01

This study explores the construct of lexical sophistication and its applications for measuring second language lexical and speaking proficiency. In doing so, the study introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of LExical Sophistication (TAALES), which calculates text scores for 135 classic and newly developed lexical indices related to word…

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Reuter, Martin; Montag, Christian; Peters, Kristina; Kocher, Anne; Kiefer, Markus

2009-01-01

The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N = 104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs), direct and indirect priming), COMT was not significantly related to priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 and 14.5% of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Reuter

2009-08-01

Full Text Available The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N=104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs, direct and indirect priming, COMT was not significantly related to masked priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 to 14.5 % of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

The Time-Course of Lexical Activation during Sentence Comprehension in People with Aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Ferrill, Michelle; Love, Tracy; Walenski, Matthew; Shapiro, Lewis P.

2012-01-01

Purpose: To investigate the time-course of processing of lexical items in auditorily presented canonical (subject-verb-object) constructions in young, neurologically unimpaired control participants and participants with left-hemisphere damage and agrammatic aphasia. Method: A cross modal picture priming (CMPP) paradigm was used to test 114 control…

Cooking verbs and metaphor Contrastive study of Greek and French

OpenAIRE

Tsaknaki, Olympia

2016-01-01

The present cross-linguistic study deals with cooking verbs in Greek and French in the light of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. It intends to explore uniformity and diversity in metaphorical conceptualizations and the lexical choices they underlie. It also discusses the significance of metaphor awareness in foreign language teaching.

Recreational Problem-Solving Activities for Teaching Vocabulary in Elementary and Intermediate Spanish.

Science.gov (United States)

Nuessel, Frank

1994-01-01

Practical strategies for eliciting vocabulary without translation in a Spanish class are discussed, and examples are given of a cross-skills approach that requires students to use different linguistic abilities to generate appropriate lexical responses. Figures showing how to construct these exercises are included. (Contains 14 references.)…

Linguistic Features of Persuasive Communication: The Case of DRTV Short Form Spots

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Smiljana Komar

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Direct response television commercials (DRTV exhibit a very specific style of speech and delivery whose main function is to boost the product’s value and sales. This paper presents the findings of the structural and the linguistic analyses of three English DRTV short form spots as seen on Highstreet TV. The emphasis is on the verbal strategies used by advertisers to get the consumers’ attention, develop their interest and desire to own the product and to convince them to purchase it. These strategies include different lexical, syntactic and prosodic features. The structural analysis focuses mainly on non-verbal strategies of broadcasting advertisements whose purpose is to inspire interest and credibility in potential consumers.

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

OpenAIRE

Reza Kalantari; Javad Gholami

2017-01-01

This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC) through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012), three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011...

Lexical neighborhood effects in pseudoword spelling.

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Tainturier, Marie-Josèphe; Bosse, Marie-Line; Roberts, Daniel J; Valdois, Sylviane; Rapp, Brenda

2013-01-01

The general aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin skilled adult spelling. More specifically, it investigates the influence of lexical neighbors on pseudo-word spelling with the goal of providing a more detailed account of the interaction between lexical and sublexical sources of knowledge in spelling. In prior research examining this topic, adult participants typically heard lists composed of both words and pseudo-words and had to make a lexical decision to each stimulus before writing the pseudo-words. However, these priming paradigms are susceptible to strategic influence and may therefore not give a clear picture of the processes normally engaged in spelling unfamiliar words. In our two Experiments involving 71 French-speaking literate adults, only pseudo-words were presented which participants were simply requested to write to dictation using the first spelling that came to mind. Unbeknownst to participants, pseudo-words varied according to whether they did or did not have a phonological word neighbor. Results revealed that low-probability phoneme/grapheme mappings (e.g., /o/ -> aud in French) were used significantly more often in spelling pseudo-words with a close phonological lexical neighbor with that spelling (e.g., /krepo/ derived from "crapaud," /krapo/) than in spelling pseudo-words with no close neighbors (e.g., /frøpo/). In addition, the strength of this lexical influence increased with the lexical frequency of the word neighbors as well as with their degree of phonetic overlap with the pseudo-word targets. These results indicate that information from lexical and sublexical processes is integrated in the course of spelling, and a specific theoretical account as to how such integration may occur is introduced.

LEXICAL NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECTS IN PSEUDOWORD SPELLING

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Marie-Josephe eTainturier

2013-11-01

Full Text Available The general aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin skilled adult spelling. More specifically, it investigates the influence of lexical neighbours on pseudo-word spelling with the goal of providing a more detailed account of the interaction between lexical and sublexical sources of knowledge in spelling. In prior research examining this topic, subjects typically heard lists composed of both words and pseudo-words and had to make a lexical decision to each stimulus before writing the pseudo-words. However, these priming paradigms are susceptible to strategic influence and may therefore not give a clear picture of the processes normally engaged in spelling unfamiliar words. In our two Experiments involving 71 French speaking literature adults, only pseudo-words were presented which participants were simply requested to write to dictation using the first spelling that came to mind. Unbeknown to participants, pseudo-words varied according to whether they did or did not have a phonological word neighbour. Results revealed that low-probability phoneme/grapheme mappings (e.g., /o/ -> aud in French were used significantly more often in spelling pseudo-words with a close phonological lexical neighbour with that spelling (e.g., /krepo/ derived from crapaud, /krapo/ than in spelling pseudo-words with no close neighbours (e.g., /frøpo/. In addition, the strength of this lexical influence increased with the lexical frequency of the word neighbours as well as with their degree of phonetic overlap with the pseudo-word targets. These results indicate that the activation from lexical and sublexical processes is integrated in the course of spelling, and a specific theoretical account as to how such integration may occur is introduced.

Lexicalization patterns in Brazilian Portuguese

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Dorival Gonçalves Santos Filho

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Neolatin languages belong to a lexicalization pattern in which the verbal root expresses semantic primitives of MOVE and PATH, leaving MANNER or CAUSE to be expressed by an adverb or the gerund form. In German origin languages, on the contrary, verbs lexicalize the semantic primitives of MOVE, MANNER or CAUSE; as for the PATH, it is expressed by a grammatical element that is associated to the verb. Taking into consideration some of the concepts of event of move, guided by Cognitive Semantics, and an analysis of examples extracted from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’ books, the present study aims at showing, at least, three lexicalization patterns in which Brazilian Portuguese fits in.

Visual and linguistic determinants of the eyes' initial fixation position in reading development.

Science.gov (United States)

Ducrot, Stéphanie; Pynte, Joël; Ghio, Alain; Lété, Bernard

2013-03-01

Two eye-movement experiments with one hundred and seven first- through fifth-grade children were conducted to examine the effects of visuomotor and linguistic factors on the recognition of words and pseudowords presented in central vision (using a variable-viewing-position technique) and in parafoveal vision (shifted to the left or right of a central fixation point). For all groups of children, we found a strong effect of stimulus location, in both central and parafoveal vision. This effect corresponds to the children's apparent tendency, for peripherally located targets, to reach a position located halfway between the middle and the left edge of the stimulus (preferred viewing location, PVL), whether saccading to the right or left. For centrally presented targets, refixation probability and lexical-decision time were the lowest near the word's center, suggesting an optimal viewing position (OVP). The viewing-position effects found here were modulated (1) by print exposure, both in central and parafoveal vision; and (2) by the intrinsic qualities of the stimulus (lexicality and word frequency) for targets in central vision but not for parafoveally presented targets. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

THE FOCAL STRUCTURE IN MANDARIN VP-ELLIPSIS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

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Ting-Chi Wei

2009-06-01

Full Text Available This paper argues that Soh’s (2007 ΣP analysis only partially explains polarity operation in Mandarin VP-ellipsis. With new examples of the use of the particle que ‘however’, a polarity contrast of ye ‘also’, we propose that there are two focus projections in VP-ellipsis. One is the contrastive FocP headed by ye or que higher than TP and the other is the polarity PolP headed by an affirmative polarity focus shi ‘be’ or a covert negative polarity focus lower than TP. Foc interacts with Pol by a way of polarity concord, which is responsible for the polarity symmetry or asymmetry across two conjuncts. We suggest that the polarity concord is achieved via the Agree operation (Chomsky 2000, 2001 in line with Watanabe’s (2004 feature copying analysis of the negative concord. A cross-linguistic investigation of languages of various word orders, including English (SVO, Japanese (SOV, Atayal (VOS, and Bunun (VSO lends support to this focus account.

Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online tool for quantifying auditory and visual lexical competition.

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Strand, Julia F

2014-03-01

A widely agreed-upon feature of spoken word recognition is that multiple lexical candidates in memory are simultaneously activated in parallel when a listener hears a word, and that those candidates compete for recognition (Luce, Goldinger, Auer, & Vitevitch, Perception 62:615-625, 2000; Luce & Pisoni, Ear and Hearing 19:1-36, 1998; McClelland & Elman, Cognitive Psychology 18:1-86, 1986). Because the presence of those competitors influences word recognition, much research has sought to quantify the processes of lexical competition. Metrics that quantify lexical competition continuously are more effective predictors of auditory and visual (lipread) spoken word recognition than are the categorical metrics traditionally used (Feld & Sommers, Speech Communication 53:220-228, 2011; Strand & Sommers, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130:1663-1672, 2011). A limitation of the continuous metrics is that they are somewhat computationally cumbersome and require access to existing speech databases. This article describes the Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online, searchable database that provides access to multiple metrics of auditory and visual (lipread) lexical competition for English words, available at www.juliastrand.com/phi-lex .

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children’s language production

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2009-01-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e., a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children’s production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed. PMID:20712738

Lexical diversity and omission errors as predictors of language ability in the narratives of sequential Spanish-English bilinguals: a cross-language comparison.

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Jacobson, Peggy F; Walden, Patrick R

2013-08-01

This study explored the utility of language sample analysis for evaluating language ability in school-age Spanish-English sequential bilingual children. Specifically, the relative potential of lexical diversity and word/morpheme omission as predictors of typical or atypical language status was evaluated. Narrative samples were obtained from 48 bilingual children in both of their languages using the suggested narrative retell protocol and coding conventions as per Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2008) software. An additional lexical diversity measure, VocD, was also calculated. A series of logistical hierarchical regressions explored the utility of the number of different words, VocD statistic, and word and morpheme omissions in each language for predicting language status. Omission errors turned out to be the best predictors of bilingual language impairment at all ages, and this held true across languages. Although lexical diversity measures did not predict typical or atypical language status, the measures were significantly related to oral language proficiency in English and Spanish. The results underscore the significance of omission errors in bilingual language impairment while simultaneously revealing the limitations of lexical diversity measures as indicators of impairment. The relationship between lexical diversity and oral language proficiency highlights the importance of considering relative language proficiency in bilingual assessment.

Spanish normative studies in young adults (NEURONORMA young adults project): norms for verbal fluency tests.

Science.gov (United States)

Casals-Coll, M; Sánchez-Benavides, G; Quintana, M; Manero, R M; Rognoni, T; Calvo, L; Palomo, R; Aranciva, F; Tamayo, F; Peña-Casanova, J

2013-01-01

Lexical fluency tests are frequently used in clinical practice to assess language and executive function. As part of the Spanish normative studies project in young adults (NEURONORMA young adults project), we provide age- and education-adjusted normative data for 3 semantic fluency tasks (animals, fruits and vegetables, and kitchen tools), three formal lexical fluency tasks (words beginning with P, M and R), three excluded-letter fluency tasks (words excluding A, E and S) and a verb fluency task. The sample consisted of 179 participants who are cognitively normal and range in age from 18 to 49 years. Tables are provided to convert raw scores to scaled scores. Age- and education-adjusted scores are provided by applying linear regression techniques. The results show that education impacted most of the verbal fluency test scores, with no effects related to age and only minimal effects related to sex. The norms obtained will be extremely useful in the clinical evaluation of young Spanish adults. Copyright © 2011 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

A linguistic rule-based approach to extract drug-drug interactions from pharmacological documents.

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Segura-Bedmar, Isabel; Martínez, Paloma; de Pablo-Sánchez, César

2011-03-29

A drug-drug interaction (DDI) occurs when one drug influences the level or activity of another drug. The increasing volume of the scientific literature overwhelms health care professionals trying to be kept up-to-date with all published studies on DDI. This paper describes a hybrid linguistic approach to DDI extraction that combines shallow parsing and syntactic simplification with pattern matching. Appositions and coordinate structures are interpreted based on shallow syntactic parsing provided by the UMLS MetaMap tool (MMTx). Subsequently, complex and compound sentences are broken down into clauses from which simple sentences are generated by a set of simplification rules. A pharmacist defined a set of domain-specific lexical patterns to capture the most common expressions of DDI in texts. These lexical patterns are matched with the generated sentences in order to extract DDIs. We have performed different experiments to analyze the performance of the different processes. The lexical patterns achieve a reasonable precision (67.30%), but very low recall (14.07%). The inclusion of appositions and coordinate structures helps to improve the recall (25.70%), however, precision is lower (48.69%). The detection of clauses does not improve the performance. Information Extraction (IE) techniques can provide an interesting way of reducing the time spent by health care professionals on reviewing the literature. Nevertheless, no approach has been carried out to extract DDI from texts. To the best of our knowledge, this work proposes the first integral solution for the automatic extraction of DDI from biomedical texts.

The Design of Lexical Database for Indonesian Language

Science.gov (United States)

Gunawan, D.; Amalia, A.

2017-03-01

Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI), an official dictionary for Indonesian language, provides lists of words with their meaning. The online version can be accessed via Internet network. Another online dictionary is Kateglo. KBBI online and Kateglo only provides an interface for human. A machine cannot retrieve data from the dictionary easily without using advanced techniques. Whereas, lexical of words is required in research or application development which related to natural language processing, text mining, information retrieval or sentiment analysis. To address this requirement, we need to build a lexical database which provides well-defined structured information about words. A well-known lexical database is WordNet, which provides the relation among words in English. This paper proposes the design of a lexical database for Indonesian language based on the combination of KBBI 4th edition, Kateglo and WordNet structure. Knowledge representation by utilizing semantic networks depict the relation among words and provide the new structure of lexical database for Indonesian language. The result of this design can be used as the foundation to build the lexical database for Indonesian language.

1000 Norms Project: protocol of a cross-sectional study cataloging human variation.

Science.gov (United States)

McKay, Marnee J; Baldwin, Jennifer N; Ferreira, Paulo; Simic, Milena; Vanicek, Natalie; Hiller, Claire E; Nightingale, Elizabeth J; Moloney, Niamh A; Quinlan, Kate G; Pourkazemi, Fereshteh; Sman, Amy D; Nicholson, Leslie L; Mousavi, Seyed J; Rose, Kristy; Raymond, Jacqueline; Mackey, Martin G; Chard, Angus; Hübscher, Markus; Wegener, Caleb; Fong Yan, Alycia; Refshauge, Kathryn M; Burns, Joshua

2016-03-01

Clinical decision-making regarding diagnosis and management largely depends on comparison with healthy or 'normal' values. Physiotherapists and researchers therefore need access to robust patient-centred outcome measures and appropriate reference values. However there is a lack of high-quality reference data for many clinical measures. The aim of the 1000 Norms Project is to generate a freely accessible database of musculoskeletal and neurological reference values representative of the healthy population across the lifespan. In 2012 the 1000 Norms Project Consortium defined the concept of 'normal', established a sampling strategy and selected measures based on clinical significance, psychometric properties and the need for reference data. Musculoskeletal and neurological items tapping the constructs of dexterity, balance, ambulation, joint range of motion, strength and power, endurance and motor planning will be collected in this cross-sectional study. Standardised questionnaires will evaluate quality of life, physical activity, and musculoskeletal health. Saliva DNA will be analysed for the ACTN3 genotype ('gene for speed'). A volunteer cohort of 1000 participants aged 3 to 100 years will be recruited according to a set of self-reported health criteria. Descriptive statistics will be generated, creating tables of mean values and standard deviations stratified for age and gender. Quantile regression equations will be used to generate age charts and age-specific centile values. This project will be a powerful resource to assist physiotherapists and clinicians across all areas of healthcare to diagnose pathology, track disease progression and evaluate treatment response. This reference dataset will also contribute to the development of robust patient-centred clinical trial outcome measures. Copyright © 2015 Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improving the functionality of dictionary definitions for lexical sets ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2008) approach to the design of lexicographic definitions for members of lexical sets. The questions raised are how to define and identify lexical sets, how lexical conceptual models (LCMs) can support definitional consistency and coherence in ...

The effects of bilateral presentations on lateralized lexical decision.

Science.gov (United States)

Fernandino, Leonardo; Iacoboni, Marco; Zaidel, Eran

2007-06-01

We investigated how lateralized lexical decision is affected by the presence of distractors in the visual hemifield contralateral to the target. The study had three goals: first, to determine how the presence of a distractor (either a word or a pseudoword) affects visual field differences in the processing of the target; second, to identify the stage of the process in which the distractor is affecting the decision about the target; and third, to determine whether the interaction between the lexicality of the target and the lexicality of the distractor ("lexical redundancy effect") is due to facilitation or inhibition of lexical processing. Unilateral and bilateral trials were presented in separate blocks. Target stimuli were always underlined. Regarding our first goal, we found that bilateral presentations (a) increased the effect of visual hemifield of presentation (right visual field advantage) for words by slowing down the processing of word targets presented to the left visual field, and (b) produced an interaction between visual hemifield of presentation (VF) and target lexicality (TLex), which implies the use of different strategies by the two hemispheres in lexical processing. For our second goal of determining the processing stage that is affected by the distractor, we introduced a third condition in which targets were always accompanied by "perceptual" distractors consisting of sequences of the letter "x" (e.g., xxxx). Performance on these trials indicated that most of the interaction occurs during lexical access (after basic perceptual analysis but before response programming). Finally, a comparison between performance patterns on the trials containing perceptual and lexical distractors indicated that the lexical redundancy effect is mainly due to inhibition of word processing by pseudoword distractors.

Evaluation Techniques of Creating Coherence in Poems of Kaiser Aminpour Relying on the Theory of Halliday’s Linguistics

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Reza Sattari

2016-05-01

Full Text Available AbstractOne of the linguistics theories that are utilized in present age in the analysis of literary texts is the theory of Halliday’s linguistics which is called theory of systemic - functional linguistics. Halliday’s theory in the second half of the twentieth century, in contrast to the "generative linguistics" approach, which is based on formal language like a mental and individual phenomenon.    Hallidayan called the semantic, literal, syntax and logical relationship of words as coherence of a text and believes that the coherence of the text, includes all the semantic relations by which, every piece of speech or writing can serve as text. Hence, cohesion, referred to relations that relates all elements of a sentence to the elements of other sentences. From Hallidayan's  point of view, elements of coherence of a text are divided into two parts: grammatical and lexical. Grammatical cohesion includes factors such as referrals, replacements, removals and relevancy, and lexical coherence includes repetition and collocation in literary language.   Kaiser is one of the contemporary famous poets that have composed many poets in different molds of poetry. Kaiser Manipur's poems benefit the integration due to the poet's fluency in Persian and his familiarity with the vocabulary and grammatical and lexical capacities of Persian literature. In this research, we have studied the cohesion in Kaiser Manipur's poems from two views of lexical and grammatical by using Holidaying theory of coherence as well as the techniques that the poet has applied to reach the cohesion in his poems.    The method of research in the present paper is descriptive-analytical and all the information and data has been collected from the sources of library and electronic. In this paper, we first briefly discussed the Holidaying coherence theory, and then, with a special approach to this theory, the most important techniques that Kaiser Manipur has

Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Miller, George

1997-01-01

The practical outcome of the project, Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory, is an electronic lexical database called WordNet that can be incorporated into computer systems for processing English text...

Lexical Density Of English Reading Texts For Senior High School

OpenAIRE

Nesia, Bersyebah Herljimsi; Ginting, Siti Aisah

2014-01-01

This study deals with the lexical density especially the lexical items of English reading texts in the textbook for senior high school. The objectives of the study are to find out the lexical density especially the lexical items which formed in the reading texts of Look Ahead textbook and the type of genre which has the highest lexical density of the reading texts. This study was conducted by descriptive method with qualitative approach. The data of this research were the English reading text...

Indicators of an "Immigrant Advantage" in the Writing of L3 French Learners

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Knouzi, Ibtissem; Mady, Callie

2017-01-01

Grounded in the cross-linguistic influence(s) (CLI) literature, this study used objective measures to compare the use of English, lexical richness and syntactic complexity, and grammatical accuracy and fluency in the texts of three groups of Grade 6 French immersion students: Canadian-born anglophones (C-A), Canadian-born multilinguals (C-M), and…

Lexical, Morphological, and Syntactic Characteristics of Verbs in the Spontaneous Production of Italian Children

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Laura D'Odorico

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This study investigates from a developmental point of view the lexical, morphological, and syntactic characteristics of verb production during the first stages of language acquisition. The spontaneous productions of children with different mean length of utterance (MLU were analysed, examining the relative production of different types of verbs (transitive, intransitive, and mixed, the arguments expressed or omitted in the utterances containing a verb, the morphological inflections produced by the children for each verb, and the generalisation of the syntactic construction with which specific verbs were produced. Data are interpreted in support of the hypothesis that children have a limited abstract knowledge of verbs in the early period of multiword utterance production and that the process of abstractness and generalisation develops gradually on the basis of linguistic experience.

On the Directionality of Cross-Linguistic Effects in Bidialectal Bilingualism

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Tammer Castro

2017-08-01

Full Text Available This study explores the interpretation of null and overt object pronouns by Brazilian Portuguese (BP and European Portuguese (EP bidialectal bilinguals. Object pronouns are a particularly good domain to examine, given that, particularly with respect to null objects, the underlying syntax as well as the semantic and discourse constraints that regulate their distributions in the two varieties are superficially different but inherently similar. We test the extent to which native BP speakers who moved to Portugal in adulthood and have lived there for a considerable time display cross-linguistic influence in either direction. Each subject is tested twice, once in BP mode and once in EP mode, which allows us not only to test if they have acquired the EP target structure but also to test the extent to which acquisition of EP might have consequences for the same domain in BP. Our results show that the high degree of typological proximity between the L1 and the L2 may contribute to L1 attrition and hinder target-like performance (i.e., processing of L2 properties. We relate the findings to key theoretical questions and debates within the context of the larger field of bilingual studies, particularly with respect to L1 attrition and L2 acquisition.

Listening to accented speech in a second language: First language and age of acquisition effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Larraza, Saioa; Samuel, Arthur G; Oñederra, Miren Lourdes

2016-11-01

Bilingual speakers must acquire the phonemic inventory of 2 languages and need to recognize spoken words cross-linguistically; a demanding job potentially made even more difficult due to dialectal variation, an intrinsic property of speech. The present work examines how bilinguals perceive second language (L2) accented speech and where accommodation to dialectal variation takes place. Dialectal effects were analyzed at different levels: An AXB discrimination task tapped phonetic-phonological representations, an auditory lexical-decision task tested for effects in accessing the lexicon, and an auditory priming task looked for semantic processing effects. Within that central focus, the goal was to see whether perceptual adjustment at a given level is affected by 2 main linguistic factors: bilinguals' first language and age of acquisition of the L2. Taking advantage of the cross-linguistic situation of the Basque language, bilinguals with different first languages (Spanish or French) and ages of acquisition of Basque (simultaneous, early, or late) were tested. Our use of multiple tasks with multiple types of bilinguals demonstrates that in spite of very similar discrimination capacity, French-Basque versus Spanish-Basque simultaneous bilinguals' performance on lexical access significantly differed. Similarly, results of the early and late groups show that the mapping of phonetic-phonological information onto lexical representations is a more demanding process that accentuates non-native processing difficulties. L1 and AoA effects were more readily overcome in semantic processing; accented variants regularly created priming effects in the different groups of bilinguals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Responsible Communication between the Judicial and Deontological Norm

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Daniela Aurelia Popa

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Confronting with numerous problems related to moral judgment, the responsibility and irresponsibility in what concerns the vast domain of communication, we are interested in forming a correct and complete vision that crosses the judicial and deontological domain of the profession. The deontological norms are meant to guarantee, by their freely consented acceptance, the good fulfillment of the mission of the journalists, recognized as being indispensable for the god functioning of any human society. The laws do not expressly refer to the deontological norms, but these norms exist according to the law order and are necessary for its guarantee in this social context, which is chaotic from the point of view of the legislation in communication. The aspects analyzed here aremeant to indicate the manner in which passing from deontological norm to the judicial norm creates an external constraint for the communicator which brings more responsibility in view of avoiding the journalistic conflicts.

Sincretismo e questão racial: relações lexicais e representações conflitantes em dois jornais e duas revistas impressas brasileiras Syncretism and the racial issue: lexical relations and conflicting representations in two newspapers and two magazines in Brazil

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Cláudio Márcio do Carmo

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Na área das Ciências Sociais, em especial a Antropologia, o sincretismo tem comumente sido foco de estudo. Na área de estudos linguísticos, a pesquisa sobre esse tema é ainda incipiente. Este artigo tem como objetivo contribuir para preencher essa lacuna nos estudos linguísticos, partindo da análise do item lexical sincretismo como culturalmente relevante para o estudo de discursos sobre a questão racial, mediados por veículos de comunicação impressa. Utiliza-se como referencial teórico a Análise Crítica do Discurso e algumas ferramentas da Linguística de Corpus para a análise das relações lexicais estabelecidas com o item sincretismo em dois jornais e duas revistas de informaç��o geral. Alguns dos resultados apontam para um conflito entre diferentes discursos religiosos e uma tensão no discurso da democracia racial brasileira.In the field of Social Sciences, especially Anthropology, syncretism has often been focused on as a research topic. In the field of linguistic studies, there is very little or apparently no research on the issue being carried out in Brazil. This article aims at filling in this gap in linguistic studies. It sets out from an analysis of the lexical item syncretism as culturally relevant for the study of discourses on the racial issue in Brazil, as mediated by the press. The theoretical background of Critical Discourse Analysis and some tools of Corpus Linguistics are combined in order to investigate lexical relations constructed with the word sincretismo in two newspapers and two feature magazines. Some of the results suggest there is a conflict between different religious discourses and a tension in the wider discourse of racial democracy in Brazil.

Forensic linguistics: Applications of forensic linguistics methods to anonymous letters

OpenAIRE

NOVÁKOVÁ, Veronika

2011-01-01

The title of my bachelor work is ?Forensic linguistics: Applications of forensic linguistics methods to anonymous letters?. Forensic linguistics is young and not very known branch of applied linguistics. This bachelor work wants to introduce forensic linguistics and its method. The bachelor work has two parts ? theory and practice. The theoretical part informs about forensic linguistics in general. Its two basic aspects utilized in forensic science and respective methods. The practical part t...

Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast.

Science.gov (United States)

Amengual, Mark

2016-01-01

The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ "forest") or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position ((*)/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.

OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE: THE LANGUAGE OF ROBERT LOWTH AND HIS CORRESPONDENTS

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Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade

2005-06-01

Full Text Available Analysing the unpublished correspondence of Robert Lowth, author of A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762, this article attempts to find evidence of linguistic influence between people belonging to the same social network. Such evidence is used to try and determine where Lowth found the linguistic norm he presented in his grammar. Adding to the data presented by Nevalainen and Raumolin Bmnberg (2003 on the basis of their study of fourteen morphosyntactic items in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, a detailed analysis is presented of eighteenth-century English. One of the results is an explanation for the presence in Lowth's grammar of the stricture against double negation at a time when double negation was no longer in current use.

Applied Linguistics and the "Annual Review of Applied Linguistics."

Science.gov (United States)

Kaplan, Robert B.; Grabe, William

2000-01-01

Examines the complexities and differences involved in granting disciplinary status to the role of applied linguistics, discusses the role of the "Annual Review of Applied Linguistics" as a contributor to the development of applied linguistics, and highlights a set of publications for the future of applied linguistics. (Author/VWL)

Neural signatures of lexical tone reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Kwok, Veronica P Y; Wang, Tianfu; Chen, Siping; Yakpo, Kofi; Zhu, Linlin; Fox, Peter T; Tan, Li Hai

2015-01-01

Research on how lexical tone is neuroanatomically represented in the human brain is central to our understanding of cortical regions subserving language. Past studies have exclusively focused on tone perception of the spoken language, and little is known as to the lexical tone processing in reading visual words and its associated brain mechanisms. In this study, we performed two experiments to identify neural substrates in Chinese tone reading. First, we used a tone judgment paradigm to investigate tone processing of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that, relative to baseline, tone perception of printed Chinese characters were mediated by strong brain activation in bilateral frontal regions, left inferior parietal lobule, left posterior middle/medial temporal gyrus, left inferior temporal region, bilateral visual systems, and cerebellum. Surprisingly, no activation was found in superior temporal regions, brain sites well known for speech tone processing. In activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to combine results of relevant published studies, we attempted to elucidate whether the left temporal cortex activities identified in Experiment one is consistent with those found in previous studies of auditory lexical tone perception. ALE results showed that only the left superior temporal gyrus and putamen were critical in auditory lexical tone processing. These findings suggest that activation in the superior temporal cortex associated with lexical tone perception is modality-dependent. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Cross-cultural validation of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) norms in a randomized Norwegian population.

Science.gov (United States)

Berg, M; Aamodt, G; Stanghelle, J; Krumlinde-Sundholm, L; Hussain, A

2008-09-01

The Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) is one of the most commonly used assessments for children with a disability. Normative data from the US are used to determine whether a deficit or delay exists with regard to functional skill development. The purpose of this study was to analyse the cross-cultural validity of the PEDI American normative data for a general Norwegian population. A random selection of 174 typically developed Norwegian children between 1.0 and 5.9 years participated. The results for capability and caregiver assistance in the domains of self-care, mobility, and social function ranged from a mean of 38.0-46.8 against an expected 50. The Norwegian sample scored significantly lower than the US reference values for functional skills and caregiver assistance, and the results had less fit, especially for self-care. For mobility and social function, the magnitudes of the differences were smaller than self-care. Specific items deviated, suggesting necessary adjustments for the applicability of the norm-referenced scores of the PEDI in the Norwegian culture. The result of this research confirms other findings of cultural influence of the age norms in PEDI. Even though interpretations of the normative score results must be made with some caution, the option of using the scaled scores of PEDI is useful and recommended to describe and measure abilities and to evaluate change. This finding highlights the importance of cultural validation of norm-referenced tests.

From Norm Adoption to Norm Internalization

Science.gov (United States)

Conte, Rosaria; Andrighetto, Giulia; Villatoro, Daniel

In this presentation, advances in modeling the mental dynamics of norms will be presented. In particular, the process from norm-adoption, possibly yielding new normative goals, to different forms of norm compliance will be focused upon, including norm internalization, which is at study in social-behavioral sciences and moral philosophy since long. Of late, the debate was revamped within the rationality approach pointing to the role of norm internalization as a less costly and more reliable enforcement system than social control. So far, poor attention was paid to the mental underpinnings of internalization. In this presentation, a rich cognitive model of different types, degrees and factors of internalization is shown. The initial implementation of this model on EMIL-A, a normative agent architecture developed and applied to the.

Finding One's Path into Another Language: On the Expression of Boundary Crossing by English Learners of French

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Hendriks, Henriette; Hickmann, Maya

2015-01-01

Languages vary considerably in how they represent motion. One major source of variation (Talmy, 2000) depends on whether linguistic systems lexicalize path in the verb (verb-framed languages) or in satellites (satellite-framed languages). This typological difference involves more than different verb types in that it also affects elements outside…

Flexible Word Classes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

• First major publication on the phenomenon • Offers cross-linguistic, descriptive, and diverse theoretical approaches • Includes analysis of data from different language families and from lesser studied languages This book is the first major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words...... that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories Verb, Noun, Adjective or Adverb. Flexible words can - without special morphosyntactic marking - serve in functions for which other languages must employ members of two or more of the four traditional, 'specialised' word classes. Thus......, flexible words are underspecified for communicative functions like 'predicating' (verbal function), 'referring' (nominal function) or 'modifying' (a function typically associated with adjectives and e.g. manner adverbs). Even though linguists have been aware of flexible world classes for more than...

Social norms of cigarette and hookah smokers in Iranian universities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Roohafza, Hamidreza; Sadeghi, Masoumeh; Shahnam, Maryam

2013-01-01

BACKGROUND: First experiences of tobacco use usually occur in adolescence. The recognition of social norms leading to youth smoking is hence necessary. We tried to assess the social norms among Iranian young cigarette and hookah smokers. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 451...... regression analysis was used to separately determine associations between hookah and cigarette smoking and the four social norm variables. RESULTS: CIGARETTE AND HOOKAH SMOKERS HAD SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES WITH NONSMOKERS IN TWO SOCIAL NORMS: "Perceived smoking by important characters" [odds ratio (OR) = 1.......35 in cigarette smokers and 1.58 in hookah smokers; P smokers and 6.16 in hookah smokers; P

Lexical richness and collocational competence in second-language writing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vedder, I.; Benigno, V.

2016-01-01

In this article we report on an experiment set up to investigate lexical richness and collocational competence in the written production of 39 low-intermediate and intermediate learners of Italian L2. Lexical richness was assessed by means of a lexical profiling method inspired by Laufer and Nation

Vocabulary Development in European Portuguese: A Replication Study Using the Language Development Survey

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Rescorla, Leslie; Nyame, Josephine; Dias, Pedro

2016-01-01

Purpose: Our objective was to replicate previous cross­linguistic findings by comparing Portuguese and U.S. children with respect to (a) effects of language, gender, and age on vocabulary size; (b) lexical composition; and (c) late talking. Method: We used the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) with children (18-35 months) learning…

The acute mania of King George III: A computational linguistic analysis.

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Vassiliki Rentoumi

Full Text Available We used a computational linguistic approach, exploiting machine learning techniques, to examine the letters written by King George III during mentally healthy and apparently mentally ill periods of his life. The aims of the study were: first, to establish the existence of alterations in the King's written language at the onset of his first manic episode; and secondly to identify salient sources of variation contributing to the changes. Effects on language were sought in two control conditions (politically stressful vs. politically tranquil periods and seasonal variation. We found clear differences in the letter corpus, across a range of different features, in association with the onset of mental derangement, which were driven by a combination of linguistic and information theory features that appeared to be specific to the contrast between acute mania and mental stability. The paucity of existing data relevant to changes in written language in the presence of acute mania suggests that lexical, syntactic and stylometric descriptions of written discourse produced by a cohort of patients with a diagnosis of acute mania will be necessary to support the diagnosis independently and to look for other periods of mental illness of the course of the King's life, and in other historically significant figures with similarly large archives of handwritten documents.

Cross-situational consistency of trait expressions and injunctive norms among Asian Canadian and European Canadian undergraduates.

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Locke, Kenneth D; Sadler, Pamela; McDonald, Kelly

2018-06-14

In the current paper, we sought to clarify when and why Asian Americans/Canadians and European Americans/Canadians differ in self-consistency (the consistency of personality traits across situations). European Canadian (n = 220) and second-generation Asian Canadian (n = 166) undergraduates (Mage = 19 years) described the traits they expressed and the traits others wanted them to express (i.e., injunctive norms, or injunctions) in four different social situations (i.e., with parents, with friends, with siblings, and with professors). Self-consistency was greater among European Canadians than Asian Canadians, but only when comparing behavior with parents versus with peers (i.e., friends and siblings). The same pattern was found for injunctive consistency (cross-situational consistency of trait injunctions). Injunctions strongly predicted the behavior of both Asian and European Canadians, but because the injunctions from parents versus peers diverged more for Asian Canadians, so did their behaviors. Controlling for the effect of inconsistent injunctions across situations eliminated the ethnic difference in self-consistency. Finally, Asian Canadians who perceived their immigrant parents as embracing a Canadian identity were as cross-situationally consistent as European Canadians because they tended to behave-and believe their parents approved of their behaving-with parents similarly to how they behaved with peers (e.g., more carefree and outspoken). Contrary to previous theorizing, cultural influences on broad cognitive or motivational dispositions (e.g., dialecticism, collectivism) alone cannot explain the observed pattern of ethnic differences in consistency. To understand when bicultural individuals are less consistent across situations also requires an understanding of the specific situations across which they tend to encounter divergent social norms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Fruit and vegetable attitudes, norms, and intake in low-income youth

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Fruit and vegetable (FV) attitudes and norms have been shown to influence intake in youth; yet research with low-income youth and studies supplementing self-report with objective measures of intake are lacking. Cross-sectional survey data on self-rated FV intake, FV attitudes, and FV norms were coll...

Investigating the Usefulness of Lexical Phrases in Contemporary Coursebooks

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Koprowski, Mark

2005-01-01

Over the past decade, lexical theory, corpus statistics, and psycholinguistic research have pointed to the pedagogical value of lexical phrases. In response, commercial publishers have been quick to import these insights into their materials in a bid to accommodate consumers and to profit from the "lexical chunk" phenomenon. Contemporary British…

Using Extra-Linguistic Material for Mandarin-French Verbal Constructions Comparison

OpenAIRE

Magistry, Pierre; Prevot, Laurent; Cheung, Hintat; Shiao, C.Y; Desalle, Yann; Gaume, Bruno

2009-01-01

International audience; Systematic cross-linguistic studies of verbs syntactic-semantic behaviors for ty-pologically distant languages such as Mandarin Chinese and French are difficult to conduct.Such studies are nevertheless necessary due to the crucial role that verbal constructions playin the mental lexicon. This paper addresses the problem by combining psycho-linguisticsand computational methods. Psycho-linguistics provides us with a bilingual corpus that fea-tures verbal construction ass...

Disfluency effects on lexical selection.

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Medimorec, Srdan; Young, Torin P; Risko, Evan F

2017-01-01

Recent research has suggested that introducing a disfluency in the context of written composition (i.e., typing with one hand) can increase lexical sophistication. In the current study, we provide a strong test between two accounts of this phenomenon, one that attributes it to the delay caused by the disfluency and one that attributes it to the disruption of typical finger-to-letter mappings caused by the disfluency. To test between these accounts, we slowed down participants' typewriting by introducing a small delay between keystrokes while individuals wrote essays. Critically, this manipulation did not disrupt typical finger-to-letter mappings. Consistent with the delay-based account, our results demonstrate that the essays written in this less fluent condition were more lexically diverse and used less frequent words. Implications for the temporal dynamics of lexical selection in complex cognitive tasks are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Amemiya norm equals Orlicz norm in general

OpenAIRE

Hudzik, Henryk; Maligranda, Lech

2000-01-01

The authors present a proof that in Orlicz spaces the Amemiya norm and the Orlicz norm coincide for any Orlicz function $\\varphi$. This gives the answer for an open problem. They also give a description of the Amemiya type for the Mazur-Orlicz $F$-norm.

Slovene-English Contrastive Phraseology: Lexical Collocations

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Primož Jurko

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Phraseology is seen as one of the key elements and arguably the most productive part of any language. %e paper is focused on collocations and separates them from other phraseological units, such as idioms or compounds. Highlighting the difference between a monolingual and a bilingual (i.e. contrastive approach to collocation, the article presents two distinct classes of collocations: grammatical and lexical. %e latter, treated contrastively, represent the focal point of the paper, since they are an unending source of translation errors to both students of translation and professional translators. %e author introduces a methodology of systematic classification of lexical collocations applied on the Slovene-English language pair and based on structural (lexical congruence and semantic (translational predictability criteria.

Chinese translation norms for 1,429 English words.

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Wen, Yun; van Heuven, Walter J B

2017-06-01

We present Chinese translation norms for 1,429 English words. Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 28) were asked to provide the first Chinese translation that came to mind for 1,429 English words. The results revealed that 71 % of the English words received more than one correct translation indicating the large amount of translation ambiguity when translating from English to Chinese. The relationship between translation ambiguity and word frequency, concreteness and language proficiency was investigated. Although the significant correlations were not strong, results revealed that English word frequency was positively correlated with the number of alternative translations, whereas English word concreteness was negatively correlated with the number of translations. Importantly, regression analyses showed that the number of Chinese translations was predicted by word frequency and concreteness. Furthermore, an interaction between these predictors revealed that the number of translations was more affected by word frequency for more concrete words than for less concrete words. In addition, mixed-effects modelling showed that word frequency, concreteness and English language proficiency were all significant predictors of whether or not a dominant translation was provided. Finally, correlations between the word frequencies of English words and their Chinese dominant translations were higher for translation-unambiguous pairs than for translation-ambiguous pairs. The translation norms are made available in a database together with lexical information about the words, which will be a useful resource for researchers investigating Chinese-English bilingual language processing.

Categorical Effects in Children's Colour Search: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison

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Daoutis, Christine A.; Franklin, Anna; Riddett, Amy; Clifford, Alexandra; Davies, Ian R. L.

2006-01-01

In adults, visual search for a colour target is facilitated if the target and distractors fall in different colour categories (e.g. Daoutis, Pilling, & Davies, in press). The present study explored category effects in children's colour search. The relationship between linguistic colour categories and perceptual categories was addressed by…

The linguistically aware teacher and the teacher-aware linguist.

Science.gov (United States)

McCartney, Elspeth; Ellis, Sue

2013-07-01

This review evaluates issues of teacher linguistic knowledge relating to their work with children with speech, language and communication difficulties (SLCD). Information is from Ellis and McCartney [(2011a). Applied linguistics and primary school teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], a state-of-the-art text deriving from a British Association of Applied Linguistics/Cambridge University Press expert seminar series that details: linguistic research underpinning primary school curricula and pedagogy; the form of linguistic knowledge useful for teachers supporting children with SLCD in partnership with speech and language therapists; and how and when teachers acquire and learn to apply such knowledge. Critical analysis of the options presented for teacher learning indicate that policy enjoinders now include linguistic application as an expected part of teachers' professional knowledge, for all children including those with SLCD, but there is a large unmet learning need. It is concluded that there is a role for clinical linguists to disseminate useable knowledge to teachers in an accessible format. Ways of achieving this are considered.

Field – Football Expressions Dictionary: a lexicographic resource based on the theoretical-methodological approach of frame semantics and corpus linguistics

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Rove Luiza de Oliveira Chishman

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The present article aims at problematizing the relevance of Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1982 in the development of Field – Dictionary of Football Expressions – which the configuration allows the access to football language through expressions or through scenarios – or semantic frames. Frame Semantics, a theory developed in the realm of Cognitive Linguistics, is based on empirical data collected from the analysis of electronic corpora. The extraction of the data presented in this study was done with the Sketch Engine concordance, while their analysis was relegated to Frame Semantics. Among the results, it is possible to point out at the manner in which Fillmore´s theory contributes to the analysis of polysemy, presenting the different senses of a lexical unit considering different situations – or different frames – in which they appear. This article also emphasizes the pertinence of corpus linguistics and the processing of corpora as resources that allow the analysis of linguistic constructs present in the texts. It is also important to emphasize the applicability of Frame Semantics to a resource devoted to a non-specialized public, once the theory makes the contextualization of language possible through the everyday routine of the speakers.

The Theory of Adaptive Dispersion and Acoustic-phonetic Properties of Cross-language Lexical-tone Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Alexander, Jennifer Alexandra

Lexical-tone languages use fundamental frequency (F0/pitch) to convey word meaning. About 41.8% of the world's languages use lexical tone (Maddieson, 2008), yet those systems are under-studied. I aim to increase our understanding of speech-sound inventory organization by extending to tone-systems a model of vowel-system organization, the Theory of Adaptive Dispersion (TAD) (Liljencrants and Lindblom, 1972). This is a cross-language investigation of whether and how the size of a tonal inventory affects (A) acoustic tone-space size and (B) dispersion of tone categories within the tone-space. I compared five languages with very different tone inventories: Cantonese (3 contour, 3 level tones); Mandarin (3 contour, 1 level tone); Thai (2 contour, 3 level tones); Yoruba (3 level tones only); and Igbo (2 level tones only). Six native speakers (3 female) of each language produced 18 CV syllables in isolation, with each of his/her language's tones, six times. I measured tonal F0 across the vowel at onset, midpoint, and offglide. Tone-space size was the F0 difference in semitones (ST) between each language's highest and lowest tones. Tone dispersion was the F0 distance (ST) between two tones shared by multiple languages. Following the TAD, I predicted that languages with larger tone inventories would have larger tone-spaces. Against expectations, tone-space size was fixed across level-tone languages at midpoint and offglide, and across contour-tone languages (except Thai) at offglide. However, within each language type (level-tone vs. contour-tone), languages with smaller tone inventories had larger tone spaces at onset. Tone-dispersion results were also unexpected. The Cantonese mid-level tone was further dispersed from a tonal baseline than the Yoruba mid-level tone; Cantonese mid-level tone dispersion was therefore greater than theoretically necessary. The Cantonese high-level tone was also further dispersed from baseline than the Mandarin high-level tone -- at midpoint

A norm knockout method on indirect reciprocity to reveal indispensable norms

Science.gov (United States)

Yamamoto, Hitoshi; Okada, Isamu; Uchida, Satoshi; Sasaki, Tatsuya

2017-03-01

Although various norms for reciprocity-based cooperation have been suggested that are evolutionarily stable against invasion from free riders, the process of alternation of norms and the role of diversified norms remain unclear in the evolution of cooperation. We clarify the co-evolutionary dynamics of norms and cooperation in indirect reciprocity and also identify the indispensable norms for the evolution of cooperation. Inspired by the gene knockout method, a genetic engineering technique, we developed the norm knockout method and clarified the norms necessary for the establishment of cooperation. The results of numerical investigations revealed that the majority of norms gradually transitioned to tolerant norms after defectors are eliminated by strict norms. Furthermore, no cooperation emerges when specific norms that are intolerant to defectors are knocked out.

Linguistic Norms at the Crossover: The Verbal Tenses and Modes, and the Structure of the Predicate in «Libro decimosexto» from Comentarios de erudición by Bartolomé Jiménez Patón

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Juan Miguel Monterrubio Prieto

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This study examines verb modes and tenses as well as the predicate structure in «Libro decimosexto» of Bartolomé Jiménez Patón’s Comentarios de erudición in an effort to demonstrate how the text straddles the line between Medieval and Golden Age norms. Jiménez Patón, thus, combines traits already considered archaic at the time, due perhaps to his solid training in grammar and his linguistic awareness, with those modern solutions which, towards the end of the 1500’s, were forging the new Spanish language (that of the «plain style», which he championed, one that was gradually being refined in order to take its place as the language of culture.

Linguistic Polyphony

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nølke, Henning

on the Scandinavian variant of polyphony, ScaPoLine. ScaPoLine is a formal linguistic theory whose main purpose is to specify the instructions conveyed through linguistic form for the creation of polyphonic meaning. The theoretical introduction is followed by polyphonic analyses of linguistic phenomena...

The derived allele of ASPM is associated with lexical tone perception.

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Patrick C M Wong

Full Text Available The ASPM and MCPH1 genes have been implicated in the adaptive evolution of the human brain [Mekel-Bobrov N. et al., 2005. Ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM, a brain size determinant in homo sapiens. Science 309; Evans P.D. et al., 2005. Microcephalin, a gene regulating brain size, continues to evolve adaptively in humans. Science 309]. Curiously, experimental attempts have failed to connect the implicated SNPs in these genes with higher-level brain functions. These results stand in contrast with a population-level study linking the population frequency of their alleles with the tendency to use lexical tones in a language [Dediu D., Ladd D.R., 2007. Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and microcephalin. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104]. In the present study, we found a significant correlation between the load of the derived alleles of ASPM and tone perception in a group of European Americans who did not speak a tone language. Moreover, preliminary results showed a significant correlation between ASPM load and hemodynamic responses to lexical tones in the auditory cortex, and such correlation remained after phonemic awareness, auditory working memory, and non-verbal IQ were controlled. As in previous studies, no significant correlation between ASPM and cognitive measures were found. MCPH1 did not correlate with any measures. These results suggest that the association between the recently derived allele of ASPM is likely to be specific and is tied to higher level brain functions in the temporal cortex related to human communication.

Automatic detection of lexical change: an auditory event-related potential study.

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Muller-Gass, Alexandra; Roye, Anja; Kirmse, Ursula; Saupe, Katja; Jacobsen, Thomas; Schröger, Erich

2007-10-29

We investigated the detection of rare task-irrelevant changes in the lexical status of speech stimuli. Participants performed a nonlinguistic task on word and pseudoword stimuli that occurred, in separate conditions, rarely or frequently. Task performance for pseudowords was deteriorated relative to words, suggesting unintentional lexical analysis. Furthermore, rare word and pseudoword changes had a similar effect on the event-related potentials, starting as early as 165 ms. This is the first demonstration of the automatic detection of change in lexical status that is not based on a co-occurring acoustic change. We propose that, following lexical analysis of the incoming stimuli, a mental representation of the lexical regularity is formed and used as a template against which lexical change can be detected.

Impact of Text-Mining and Imitating Strategies on Lexical Richness, Lexical Diversity and General Success in Second Language Writing

Science.gov (United States)

Çepni, Sevcan Bayraktar; Demirel, Elif Tokdemir

2016-01-01

This study aimed to find out the impact of "text mining and imitating" strategies on lexical richness, lexical diversity and general success of students in their compositions in second language writing. The participants were 98 students studying their first year in Karadeniz Technical University in English Language and Literature…

Conversational Implicatures in English Plays and Their Persian Translations: A Norm-governed Study

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Zahra Hassani Laharomi

2013-09-01

Full Text Available The present study attempted to describe in full detail the status of implicature translation in two 20-year time periods before and after Iran Islamic Revolution to provide a clear picture of the strategies applied by translators in the two eras and, as its main objective, to shed light on the translational norms of this linguistic element. To this end, it first sought to elaborate on the reasons and the ways they emerge in conversations. Accordingly, identifying the implicatures arose due to the violation of Grice’s (1975 four maxims of conversation, the researcher separately categorized the translations of the implicatures based on Desilla’s (2009 classification. As the last phase of the study, the strategies for implicature translation were thoroughly scrutinized with the hope to determine the dominant norms of implicature translation in light of Toury’s (1995 notion of initial norm. Based on the results obtained from both pre- and post-revolution data, preservation was revealed to be the most frequent strategy in both eras, attesting to the significance of the adequacy of implicature translation; modification and explicitation were the second and the third most frequent strategies respectively. However, the frequency of modification and explicitation increased in the post-revolution translations. It seems that the trend of the norm of implicature translation moves toward acceptability.

Lexical and metaphonological abilities in preschoolers with phonological disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Costa, Ranilde Cristiane Cavalcante; Avila, Clara Regina Brandão de

2010-01-01

lexical and metaphonological abilities of phonologically disordered preschoolers. to investigate the influence of Phonological Disorder on the lexical and metaphonological abilities of a group of preschoolers and the correlation between them. participants were 56 preschoolers - 32 boys and 24 girls - with ages between 4 years and 6 months and 6 years and 11 months, divided into two different groups: the Research Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with Phonological Disorder, and the Control Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with normal speech and no oral speech-related complaints, paired to the research group by gender and age. All of the participants were initially assessed by the ABFW Test - Phonology. After that, they were assessed on their lexical and metaphonological abilities by the ABFW Test - Vocabulary and phonological awareness test: sequential assessment instrument, CONFIAS - identification tasks and, rhyme and alliteration production, respectively. regarding lexical ability, the preschoolers from both groups presented similar behavior. The disordered preschoolers presented the worst performance on the overall analysis of the metaphonological ability. Age had an influence on the performance of lexical ability for both groups and the metaphonological abilities only for the Control Group. Correlations were identified, mostly positive, good to moderate between lexical and metaphonological abilities. the influence of Phonological Disorder may only be observed on the metaphonological performance. Phonological Disorder did not interfere with the development of the lexical ability of this group of preschoolers. Positive correlations were identified between both abilities in the studied age group.

What Is Lexical Proficiency? Some Answers from Computational Models of Speech Data

Science.gov (United States)

Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement. Generally speaking, lexical proficiency comprises breadth of…

Parenthetical Cohesive Explicitness: A Linguistic Approach for a Modified Translation of the Quranic Text

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Mohammad Amin Hawamdeh

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Motivated by the severe criticism the Hilali and Khan (HK Translation of the Holy Quran has received for its too many parenthetical insertions, this study aimed at linguistically realizing how such added pieces of information could be for necessary cohesive explicitness or worthless redundant interpolation. Methodically, the HK translation of the first 8 verses of Chapter 18 (The Cave, Surah Al Kahf of the Holy Quran was selected to be a subject material. A number of 15 instances of explicitation put in parentheses were encountered; they were found to be based upon 23 cohesive (grammatical/lexical relationships and, hence, to be considered as ones of cohesive explicitness. Eventually, such an analysis could be of use for modifying the available translations of the Holy Quran.

A Fuzzy Linguistic Methodology to Deal With Unbalanced Linguistic Term Sets

OpenAIRE

Herrera, F.; Herrera-Viedma, Enrique; Martinez, L.

2008-01-01

Many real problems dealing with qualitative aspects use linguistic approaches to assess such aspects. In most of these problems, a uniform and symmetrical distribution of the linguistic term sets for linguistic modeling is assumed. However, there exist problems whose assessments need to be represented by means of unbalanced linguistic term sets, i.e., using term sets that are not uniformly and symmetrically distributed. The use of linguistic variables implies processes of computing with words...

Sluníčkář

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Nejedlý, Petr

2017-01-01

Roč. 100, č. 2 (2017), s. 109-111 ISSN 0027-8203 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA15-00987S Institutional support: RVO:68378092 Keywords : Czech lexicon * occasional lexical units * lexical meaning * origin of the word s * onomasiological categories * suffixes Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics OBOR OECD: Linguistics

Lexical variations in the Bible translations

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Barashkova Daria Sergeyevna

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The paper contains the comparative analysis of the Ostromir Gospels (1056-1057 and the Synodal translation of the Bible in order to identify lexical variations (alternatives. A source of the analysis are identic contexts from the Bible. Besides the author examines the materials of the others Old Slavonic written manuscripts. As a result of the comparative analysis some lexical options reflecting both synonymic and hyper-hyponymic relations and derivational variability were revealed.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ КЛАССОВЫХ НОРМ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА (НА ОСНОВЕ РЕЧЕВЫХ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИК КИНОПЕРСОНАЖЕЙ

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Gurova, Y.I.

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to explore vocabulary used by representatives of different social classes. This objective involves the following tasks: consideration of the concepts of norm and social class; consideration functions of various layers of language used in different situations; identification the types of word's connotation in the speech of main characters; analysis of selection of language means in the speech of people who belong to different social classes. The level of scientific development is formed by the theoretical basis of scientific papers, giving a broad concept of class rules, and what they include, as well as involving consideration of lexical units of the language and stylistic means of expressiveness. The object of this study is the image of various social classes of the British society. The subject of the research are lexical stylistic means of creating this image in the cinema. The purpose of the study is to highlight the lexical-stylistic means, which are used to create the image of the representatives of the various classes of society on the material selected four films of different years of release and see how linguistic patterns have been changing over time.

African languages, linguistics, child speech and speech pathology – the connection

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Gxilishe, Sandile

2008-12-01

Full Text Available This article deals with the need for the incorporation of the study of child language in the field of African Linguistics. It gives an overview of some of the studies conducted in the area of acquisition of Xhosa with a view to developing norms for the development of Xhosa amongst monolingual Xhosa-speaking children. This is useful in the diagnosis of speech and language disorders using criterion referenced measures. The developmental data may be used in the development of culturally appropriate standardised assessment measures: which are severely lacking for the indigenous languages of South Africa.

Dual-Coding Theory and Connectionist Lexical Selection

OpenAIRE

Wang, Ye-Yi

1994-01-01

We introduce the bilingual dual-coding theory as a model for bilingual mental representation. Based on this model, lexical selection neural networks are implemented for a connectionist transfer project in machine translation. This lexical selection approach has two advantages. First, it is learnable. Little human effort on knowledge engineering is required. Secondly, it is psycholinguistically well-founded.

English and Persian Cognates/Pseudo Cognates-A Cross-Linguistic Investigation

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Amin Marzban

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Different world languages have a lot of contact with each other and have had different influences on one another. Cognates, words which are similar across two or more languages in some aspects, especially with regard to pronunciation, portray an interesting and relevant aspect of foreign/second language translation and research. This study intended to identify a type of cognate words called false cognates in Persian and English, words which have the same form in two languages but represent different meanings, and tried to study and determine the historical relations between English and Persian words. It also aimed to trace their route back from Proto Indo-European languages to the modern languages. To this end, the related literature was gone through and a sufficient corpus of information has been revealed. Afterwards, authentic monolingual dictionaries in both Farsi and English languages were consulted to provide definitions for the cognates and allow for their cross-linguistic comparison. The findings revealed that most of such problematic cognates with different meanings in Farsi and English as found through this study are likely to be confusing and deceptive for Farsi-speaking EFL learners. The findings also pointed to the need for this line of research to receive more scholarly attention. The study of true and false cognates has some implications for contrastive analysts, error analysts, translators, translation theorists, foreign language teachers, curriculum designers, as well as lexicographers and lexicologists.

Population Size Predicts Lexical Diversity, but so Does the Mean Sea Level --Why It Is Important to Correctly Account for the Structure of Temporal Data.

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Koplenig, Alexander; Müller-Spitzer, Carolin

2016-01-01

In order to demonstrate why it is important to correctly account for the (serial dependent) structure of temporal data, we document an apparently spectacular relationship between population size and lexical diversity: for five out of seven investigated languages, there is a strong relationship between population size and lexical diversity of the primary language in this country. We show that this relationship is the result of a misspecified model that does not consider the temporal aspect of the data by presenting a similar but nonsensical relationship between the global annual mean sea level and lexical diversity. Given the fact that in the recent past, several studies were published that present surprising links between different economic, cultural, political and (socio-)demographical variables on the one hand and cultural or linguistic characteristics on the other hand, but seem to suffer from exactly this problem, we explain the cause of the misspecification and show that it has profound consequences. We demonstrate how simple transformation of the time series can often solve problems of this type and argue that the evaluation of the plausibility of a relationship is important in this context. We hope that our paper will help both researchers and reviewers to understand why it is important to use special models for the analysis of data with a natural temporal ordering.

How School Norms, Peer Norms, and Discrimination Predict Interethnic Experiences among Ethnic Minority and Majority Youth

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Tropp, Linda R.; O'Brien, Thomas C.; González Gutierrez, Roberto; Valdenegro, Daniel; Migacheva, Katya; de Tezanos-Pinto, Pablo; Berger, Christian; Cayul, Oscar

2016-01-01

This research tests how perceived school and peer norms predict interethnic experiences among ethnic minority and majority youth. With studies in Chile (654 nonindigenous and 244 Mapuche students, M = 11.20 and 11.31 years) and the United States (468 non-Hispanic White and 126 Latino students, M = 11.66 and 11.68 years), cross-sectional results…

Linguistic Peculiarities of Methodical Educational Publications Issued in 2012

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Regina Žukienė

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The article presents linguistic peculiarities of methodical educational publications prepared and published using European structural funds allocated to the VGTU Transport Engineering, Biomechanics and Aviation Mechanical Engineering project “Renewal of the Study Programmes in Accordance with the EU Requirements by Improving the Quality of the Studies and Applying Innovative Study Methods” carried out in accordance with the Lithuania’s 2007–2013 year Human Resources Development Operational Programme, priority axis 2 “Education and Lifelong Learning”, measure VP1-2.2-MES-07-K “Improving Studies Quality, Increasing Internationalization”. Characteristic properties of style and culture of writing, compliance with language norms, and instances of foreign words used in aviation are analysed.

Lexical Sentiment Analysis in Slovenian Texts

OpenAIRE

VOLČANŠEK, MATEJA

2015-01-01

The goal of this thesis is to create a sentiment dictionary for the Slovenian language which can be used in lexical methods for automatic sentiment analysis. We start from a sentiment dictionary for the English language, translate it semi-automatically to Slovenian and curate its content. We test the performance of using the translated dictionary for automated lexical sentiment analysis on a corpus of 5000 manually annotated Slovenian news articles gathered from the main Slovenian news por...

Proposing a clinical quantification framework of macro-linguistic structures in aphasic narratives

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Anthony Pak Hin Kong

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Background Analysis of aphasic narratives can be a challenge for clinicians. Previous studies have mainly employed measures that categorized speech samples at the word level. They included quantification of the use and misuse of different word classes, presence and absence of narrative contents and errors, paraphasias, and perseverations, as well as morphological structures and errors within a narrative. In other words, a great amount of research has been conducted in the aphasiology literature focusing on micro-linguistic structures of oral narratives. Aspects of macro- linguistic structures, such as the analysis of content information by a speaker, consistency of using cohesive devices to present information within a narrative, and order of presenting information necessary to form a coherent discourse, have not been extensively investigated. The current investigation proposes a clinical analytic system to target three aspects of macro-linguistic structures in narratives among speakers with aphasia. Specifically, (1 the presence of search events (i.e., the mentioning of key events that allow the listener to understand; Capilouto, Wright, &Wagovich, 2006 within a narrative, (2 the sequence of the mentioned events, and (3 the informativeness (i.e., the fulfillment of lexical items that allow the user to understand what the event is detailing of the event contents, were focused in the proposed framework. Method Ten controls transcripts from were selected from the AphasiaBank (MacWhinney, Fromm, Forbes, & Holland, 2011. Three narrative tasks, including sequential picture description of ‘Refused Umbrella’, procedural narrative of making a ‘Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich’, and telling of ‘Cinderella’ story, were used to establish normative data for the basis of analysis. Specifically, the Search Events (e and Informative Words (i used by at least 70% of the speakers were listed for each genre. The sequential order of mentioning the

Marketing norm perception among medical representatives in Indian pharmaceutical industry.

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Nagashekhara, Molugulu; Agil, Syed Omar Syed; Ramasamy, Ravindran

2012-03-01

Study of marketing norm perception among medical representatives is an under-portrayed component that deserves further perusal in the pharmaceutical industry. The purpose of this study is to find out the perception of marketing norms among medical representatives. The research design is quantitative and cross sectional study with medical representatives as unit of analysis. Data is collected from medical representatives (n=300) using a simple random and cluster sampling using a structured questionnaire. Results indicate that there is no difference in the perception of marketing norms among male and female medical representatives. But there is a difference in opinion among domestic and multinational company's medical representatives. Educational back ground of medical representatives also shows the difference in opinion among medical representatives. Degree holders and multinational company medical representatives have high perception of marketing norms compare to their counterparts. The researchers strongly believe that mandatory training on marketing norms is beneficial in decision making process during the dilemmas in the sales field.

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

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周倩

2015-01-01

This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combination of diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

周倩

2015-01-01

[ABSTRACT]This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combinationof diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of the Utterances of Three South African Physical Sciences Teachers

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Jawahar, Kavish; Dempster, Edith R.

2013-06-01

In this study, the sociocultural view of science as a language and some quantitative language features of the complementary theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics are employed to analyse the utterances of three South African Physical Sciences teachers. Using a multi-case study methodology, this study provides a sophisticated description of the utterances of Pietermaritzburg Physical Sciences teachers in language contexts characterised by varying proportions of English Second Language (ESL) students in each class. The results reveal that, as expected, lexical cohesion as measured by the cohesive harmony index and proportion of repeated content words relative to total words, increased with an increasing proportion of ESL students. However, the use of nominalisation by the teachers and the lexical density of their utterances did not decrease with an increasing proportion of ESL students. Furthermore, the results reveal that each individual Physical Sciences teacher had a 'signature' talk, unrelated to the language context in which they taught. This study signals the urgent and critical need for South African science teacher training programmes to place a greater emphasis on the functional use of language for different language contexts in order to empower South African Physical Sciences teachers to adequately apprentice their students into the use of the register of scientific English.

EMPRUNTS LEXICAUX EN LOBIRI, LANGUE GUR DE CÔTE D’IVOIRE / LEXICAL BORROWINGS IN LOBIRI, A GUR LANGUAGE OF CÔTE D’IVOIRE / ÎMPRUMUTURI LEXICALE ÎN LOBIRI, LIMBA VOLTAICĂ DIN COSTA DE FILDEŞ

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Sib Sié Justin

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Language Contacts cause them to maintain or evolve through analogy and borrowing. The Lobiri (gur language Ivory Coast shares its linguistic environment with local Ivorian languages such as teen; Koulango, Dioula ...It is also in contact with Indo-European languages such as French and English. The need to name or to represent realities that do not appear in its language environment prompts speakers of Lobiri to incorporate words and phrases related to technological innovation, social development, language and trade. Thus, we see the rapid development of a linguistic phenomenon that contributes to the fertilization of the lexical stock of Lobiri. As such, occured phonological, morphological, semantic and syllabic particularities. The objective of the study is to describe the impact of loans on the Lobiri

The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words.

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Soares, Ana Paula; Costa, Ana Santos; Machado, João; Comesaña, Montserrat; Oliveira, Helena Mendes

2017-06-01

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive research. Because of their complexity, using words requires strict control of their objective (lexical and sublexical) and subjective properties. In this work, we present the Minho Word Pool (MWP), a dataset that provides normative values of imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 (European) Portuguese words-three subjective measures that, in spite of being used extensively in research, have been scarce for Portuguese. Data were collected with 2,357 college students who were native speakers of European Portuguese. The participants rated 100 words drawn randomly from the full set for each of the three subjective indices, using a Web survey procedure (via a URL link). Analyses comparing the MWP ratings with those obtained for the same words from other national and international databases showed that the MWP norms are reliable and valid, thus providing researchers with a useful tool to support research in all neuroscientific areas using verbal stimuli. The MWP norms can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases .

Lexical association and false memory for words in two cultures.

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Lee, Yuh-shiow; Chiang, Wen-Chi; Hung, Hsu-Ching

2008-01-01

This study examined the relationship between language experience and false memory produced by the DRM paradigm. The word lists used in Stadler, et al. (Memory & Cognition, 27, 494-500, 1999) were first translated into Chinese. False recall and false recognition for critical non-presented targets were then tested on a group of Chinese users. The average co-occurrence rate of the list word and the critical word was calculated based on two large Chinese corpuses. List-level analyses revealed that the correlation between the American and Taiwanese participants was significant only in false recognition. More importantly, the co-occurrence rate was significantly correlated with false recall and recognition of Taiwanese participants, and not of American participants. In addition, the backward association strength based on Nelson et al. (The University of South Florida word association, rhyme and word fragment norms, 1999) was significantly correlated with false recall of American participants and not of Taiwanese participants. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between language experiences and lexical association in creating false memory for word lists.

COLLOCATION PHRASES IN RELATION TO OTHER LEXICAL PHRASES IN CROATIAN

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Goranka Blagus Bartolec

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes the semantic and lexicological aspects of collocation phrases in Croatian with tendency to separate them from other lexical phrases in Croatian (terms, idioms, names. The collocation phrase is defined as a special lexical phrase on a syntagmatic level, based on the semantic correlation of the two individual lexical components in which their meanings are specified.

NORM - practical guide; NORM - guia pratico

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Reis, Rocio dos (ed.)

2016-07-01

The experience of the authors and a literature review on the evaluation of national and international regulatory guides are presented. The objective is to help understand the need to implement the best practices for NORM management in the industries that produce the NORM wastes. The book should act as a reference point, basic, friendly and useful to assist the reader in NORM management activities. The reader should be warned that management requires consultation and involvement of a significant number of stakeholders, in addition to the approval of competent authorities. A list and the technical biography of the authors are also described.

Linguistic and Perceptual Mapping in Spatial Representations: An Attentional Account.

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Valdés-Conroy, Berenice; Hinojosa, José A; Román, Francisco J; Romero-Ferreiro, Verónica

2018-03-01

Building on evidence for embodied representations, we investigated whether Spanish spatial terms map onto the NEAR/FAR perceptual division of space. Using a long horizontal display, we measured congruency effects during the processing of spatial terms presented in NEAR or FAR space. Across three experiments, we manipulated the task demands in order to investigate the role of endogenous attention in linguistic and perceptual space mapping. We predicted congruency effects only when spatial properties were relevant for the task (reaching estimation task, Experiment 1) but not when attention was allocated to other features (lexical decision, Experiment 2; and color, Experiment 3). Results showed faster responses for words presented in Near-space in all experiments. Consistent with our hypothesis, congruency effects were observed only when a reaching estimate was requested. Our results add important evidence for the role of top-down processing in congruency effects from embodied representations of spatial terms. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

THE LANGUAGE OF MEDICAL ADVERTISING MATERIALS

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Birutė Briaukienė

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Increasingly audacious steps in advertising are made to affect the customer and to encourage them to buy the advertised goods. Advertising is highly important in gaining a foothold in the business environment. Usually, the advertising texts fail to meet the norms of the standard Lithuanian language. The aim of this article is to compare the language of the advertising booklets of two pharmacies. The linguistic analysis of the advertising booklets of Camelia and Euro Pharmacy for March 2014 showed that in terms of language errors the booklets of the two pharmacies were similar, and the character of the errors was identical in both cases. The advertising booklets of both pharmacies contained lexical, syntactic, morphological, and logical errors. The advertising booklet of the Camelia pharmacy presents 121 items, which advertising descriptions contain 55.3% of language errors. The advertising booklet of the Euro Pharmacy presents advertising descriptions of 103 items, where language errors comprise 57.2%. The majority of the errors detected in the advertising booklets of the two pharmacies are lexical (Camelia – 33.8%, and Euro Pharmacy – 37.3% or syntactic (Camelia – 27.9%, and Euro Pharmacy – 37.3%. Both publications contain nearly equal numbers of lexical errors (Camelia – 17.6%, and Euro Pharmacy – 18.7%. The greatest difference was observed in the number of morphological errors (Camelia – 20.7%, and Euro Pharmacy – 5.7%. In addition to that, the name of the Camelia pharmacy is in conflict with the norms of both Lithuanian and Latin languages.

Lexical competition in nonnative speech comprehension.

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FitzPatrick, Ian; Indefrey, Peter

2010-06-01

Electrophysiological studies consistently find N400 effects of semantic incongruity in nonnative (L2) language comprehension. These N400 effects are often delayed compared with native (L1) comprehension, suggesting that semantic integration in one's second language occurs later than in one's first language. In this study, we investigated whether such a delay could be attributed to (1) intralingual lexical competition and/or (2) interlingual lexical competition. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to English (L2) sentences in which the sentence-final word was (a) semantically fitting and (b) semantically incongruent or semantically incongruent but initially congruent due to sharing initial phonemes with (c) the most probable sentence completion within the L2 or (d) the L1 translation equivalent of the most probable sentence completion. We found an N400 effect in each of the semantically incongruent conditions. This N400 effect was significantly delayed to L2 words but not to L1 translation equivalents that were initially congruent with the sentence context. Taken together, these findings firstly demonstrate that semantic integration in nonnative listening can start based on word initial phonemes (i.e., before a single lexical candidate could have been selected based on the input) and secondly suggest that spuriously elicited L1 lexical candidates are not available for semantic integration in L2 speech comprehension.

Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words

OpenAIRE

Vejdemo, Susanne; H?rberg, Thomas

2016-01-01

The rate of lexical replacement estimates the diachronic stability of word forms on the basis of how frequently a proto-language word is replaced or retained in its daughter languages. Lexical replacement rate has been shown to be highly related to word class and word frequency. In this paper, we argue that content words and function words behave differently with respect to lexical replacement rate, and we show that semantic factors predict the lexical replacement rate of content words. For t...

Evidence accumulation as a model for lexical selection.

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Anders, R; Riès, S; van Maanen, L; Alario, F X

2015-11-01

We propose and demonstrate evidence accumulation as a plausible theoretical and/or empirical model for the lexical selection process of lexical retrieval. A number of current psycholinguistic theories consider lexical selection as a process related to selecting a lexical target from a number of alternatives, which each have varying activations (or signal supports), that are largely resultant of an initial stimulus recognition. We thoroughly present a case for how such a process may be theoretically explained by the evidence accumulation paradigm, and we demonstrate how this paradigm can be directly related or combined with conventional psycholinguistic theory and their simulatory instantiations (generally, neural network models). Then with a demonstrative application on a large new real data set, we establish how the empirical evidence accumulation approach is able to provide parameter results that are informative to leading psycholinguistic theory, and that motivate future theoretical development. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

On projecting grammatical persons into social neurocognition: a view from linguistics.

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Evans, Nicholas

2013-08-01

Though it draws on the grammatical metaphor of person (first, third, second) in terms of representations, Schilbach et al.'s target article does not consider an orthogonal line of evidence for the centrality of interaction to social cognition: the many grammatical phenomena, some widespread cross-linguistically and some only being discovered, which are geared to supporting real-time interaction. My commentary reviews these, and the contribution linguistic evidence can make to a fuller account of social cognition.

Corpus linguistics and statistics with R introduction to quantitative methods in linguistics

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Desagulier, Guillaume

2017-01-01

This textbook examines empirical linguistics from a theoretical linguist’s perspective. It provides both a theoretical discussion of what quantitative corpus linguistics entails and detailed, hands-on, step-by-step instructions to implement the techniques in the field. The statistical methodology and R-based coding from this book teach readers the basic and then more advanced skills to work with large data sets in their linguistics research and studies. Massive data sets are now more than ever the basis for work that ranges from usage-based linguistics to the far reaches of applied linguistics. This book presents much of the methodology in a corpus-based approach. However, the corpus-based methods in this book are also essential components of recent developments in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Material from the book will also be appealing to researchers in digital humanities and the many non-linguistic fields that use textual data analysis and t...

Deviation in “Vis and Rāmin” by Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani

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Masoud Forouzandeh

2016-09-01

 Finally, from among all the norm deviations proposed by Leech, temporal, style, written, lexical and, particularly, semantic norm deviations are the ones that can be considered norm deviations to compose poems. It should be said that there were no evidence to indicate the existence of written and style norm deviations in Vis and Ramin. Totally, by analyzing the verses order of occurrence of norm deviations in Vis and Ramin is as follow: syntactic, phonetic, semantic, lexical, temporal and dialectic norm deviations. It is worth mentioning that the poet has observed the elements of conductivity and aesthetic in applying norm deviations.

Extending the Mertonian Norms: Scientists' Subscription to Norms of Research

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Anderson, Melissa S.; Ronning, Emily A.; De Vries, Raymond; Martinson, Brian C.

2010-01-01

This analysis, based on focus groups and a national survey, assesses scientists' subscription to the Mertonian norms of science and associated counternorms. It also supports extension of these norms to governance (as opposed to administration), as a norm of decision-making, and quality (as opposed to quantity), as an evaluative norm. (Contains 1…

Early lexical and phonological acquisition and its relationships.

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Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Nóro, Letícia Arruda; Mota, Helena Bolli

2014-01-01

Verifying likely relationships between lexical and phonological development of children aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, who were enrolled in public kindergarten schools of Santa Maria (RS). The sample consisted of 18 children of both genders, with typical language development and aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, separated in three age subgroups. Visual recordings of spontaneous speech of each child were collected and then lexical analysis regarding the types of the said lexical items and phonological assessment were performed. The number of sounds acquired and partially acquired were counted together, and the 19 sounds and two all phones of Brazilian Portuguese were considered. To the statistical analysis, the tests of Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon were used, with significance level of prelace_LT0.05. When compared the means relating to the acquired sounds and mean of the acquired and partially acquired sounds percentages, there was difference between the first and the second age subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup. In the comparison of the said lexical items means among the age subgroups, there was difference between the first and the second subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup again. In the comparison between the said lexical items and acquired and partially acquired sounds in each age subgroup, there was difference only in the age subgroup of 1 year and 8 months to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, in which the sounds highlighted. The phonological and lexical domains develop as a growing process and influence each other. The Phonology has a little advantage.

Social norms of cigarette and hookah smokers in Iranian universities

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Hamidreza Roohafza

2013-02-01

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: First experiences of tobacco use usually occur in adolescence. The recognition of social norms leading to youth smoking is hence necessary. We tried to assess the social norms among Iranian young cigarette and hookah smokers. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 451 girls and 361 boys aging 20-25 years old who entered Isfahan and Kashan Universities (Iran in 2007. Demographic factors (age, gender, and age at smoking onset cigarette and hookah smoking status, having a smoking father or smoking friends and four related social norms were recorded. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to separately determine associations between hookah and cigarette smoking and the four social norm variables. RESULTS: Cigarette and hookah smokers had significant differences with nonsmokers in two social norms: “Perceived smoking by important characters” [odds ratio (OR = 1.35 in cigarette smokers and 1.58 in hookah smokers; P < 0.001] and “smoking makes gatherings friendly” (OR = 3.62 in cigarette smokers and 6.16 in hookah smokers; P < 0.001. Furthermore, cigarette and hookah smoking were significantly associated with having smoking friends. CONCLUSION: Highlighting the social norms leading to cigarette and hookah smoking may help policy makers develop comprehensive interventions to prevent smoking among adolescents.   Keywords: Cigarette, Hookah, Smoking, Social Norm

Lexical Modernization in Nepali: A Study of Borrowing.

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Acharya, Jayaraj

1990-01-01

Focuses on the controversy among Nepali language specialists over the sources of lexical borrowing in Nepali. Lexical items currently are borrowed from both English and Sanskrit, and also Hindi/Urdu, Persian and Arabic. After reviewing Nepali history and language, the question of borrowing from different sources within different domains of…

Social Norms: Do We Love Norms Too Much?

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Bell, David C; Cox, Mary L

2015-03-01

Social norms are often cited as the cause of many social phenomena, especially as an explanation for prosocial family and relationship behaviors. And yet maybe we love the idea of social norms too much, as suggested by our failure to subject them to rigorous test. Compared to the detail in social norms theoretical orientations, there is very little detail in tests of normative theories. To provide guidance to researchers who invoke social norms as explanations, we catalog normative orientations that have been proposed to account for consistent patterns of action. We call on researchers to conduct tests of normative theories and the processes such theories assert.

Policy for the treatment of insulting and sensitive lexical items in the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Keywords: policy, treatment, insulting lexical items, sensitive lexical items, dictionary, woordeboek van die afrikaanse taal, simplexes, compounds, expressions, general usage criterion, labelling, synonyms, metalanguage, collocations, editorial usage examples, citations, advisors, racist lexical items, neutral lemmas, ...

The Word Composite Effect Depends on Abstract Lexical Representations But Not Surface Features Like Case and Font

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Paulo Ventura

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Prior studies have shown that words show a composite effect: When readers perform a same-different matching task on a target-part of a word, performance is affected by the irrelevant part, whose influence is severely reduced when the two parts are misaligned. However, the locus of this word composite effect is largely unknown. To enlighten it, in two experiments, Portuguese readers performed the composite task on letter strings: in Experiment 1, in written words varying in surface features (between-participants: courier, notera, alternating-cAsE, and in Experiment 2 in pseudowords. The word composite effect, signaled by a significant interaction between alignment of the two word parts and congruence between parts was found in the three conditions of Experiment 1, being unaffected by NoVeLtY of the configuration or by handwritten form. This effect seems to have a lexical locus, given that in Experiment 2 only the main effect of congruence between parts was significant and was not modulated by alignment. Indeed, the cross-experiment analysis showed that words presented stronger congruence effects than pseudowords only in the aligned condition, because when misaligned the whole lexical item configuration was disrupted. Therefore, the word composite effect strongly depends on abstract lexical representations, as it is unaffected by surface features and is specific to lexical items.

The Word Composite Effect Depends on Abstract Lexical Representations But Not Surface Features Like Case and Font.

Science.gov (United States)

Ventura, Paulo; Fernandes, Tânia; Leite, Isabel; Almeida, Vítor B; Casqueiro, Inês; Wong, Alan C-N

2017-01-01

Prior studies have shown that words show a composite effect: When readers perform a same-different matching task on a target-part of a word, performance is affected by the irrelevant part, whose influence is severely reduced when the two parts are misaligned. However, the locus of this word composite effect is largely unknown. To enlighten it, in two experiments, Portuguese readers performed the composite task on letter strings: in Experiment 1, in written words varying in surface features (between-participants: courier, notera, alternating-cAsE), and in Experiment 2 in pseudowords. The word composite effect, signaled by a significant interaction between alignment of the two word parts and congruence between parts was found in the three conditions of Experiment 1, being unaffected by NoVeLtY of the configuration or by handwritten form. This effect seems to have a lexical locus, given that in Experiment 2 only the main effect of congruence between parts was significant and was not modulated by alignment. Indeed, the cross-experiment analysis showed that words presented stronger congruence effects than pseudowords only in the aligned condition, because when misaligned the whole lexical item configuration was disrupted. Therefore, the word composite effect strongly depends on abstract lexical representations, as it is unaffected by surface features and is specific to lexical items.

Russian Speech in Radio: Norm and Deviation

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Igor V. Nefedov

2017-06-01

Full Text Available National radio, like television, is called upon to bring to the masses not only relevant information, but also a high culture of language. There were always serious demands to oral public speech from the point of view of the correctness and uniformity of the pronunciation. However, today the analysis of the language practice of broadcasting often indicates a discrepancy between the use of linguistic resources in existing literary norms. The author of the article from the end of December 2016 to early April 2017 listened and analyzed from the point of view of language correctness the majority of programs on the radio Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP. In general, recognizing the good speech qualification of the workers of this radio, as well as their «guests» (political scientists, lawyers, historians, etc., one can not but note the presence of a significant number of errors in their speech. The material presented in the article allows us to conclude that at present, broadcasting is losing its position in the field of speech culture. Neglect of the rules of the Russian language on the radio «Komsomolskaya Pravda» negatively affects the image of the Russian language, which is formed in the minds of listeners. The language of radio should strive to become a standard of cleanliness and high culture for the population, since it has the enormous power of mass impact and supports the unity of the cultural and linguistic space.

Structural similarities between brain and linguistic data provide evidence of semantic relations in the brain.

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Colleen E Crangle

Full Text Available This paper presents a new method of analysis by which structural similarities between brain data and linguistic data can be assessed at the semantic level. It shows how to measure the strength of these structural similarities and so determine the relatively better fit of the brain data with one semantic model over another. The first model is derived from WordNet, a lexical database of English compiled by language experts. The second is given by the corpus-based statistical technique of latent semantic analysis (LSA, which detects relations between words that are latent or hidden in text. The brain data are drawn from experiments in which statements about the geography of Europe were presented auditorily to participants who were asked to determine their truth or falsity while electroencephalographic (EEG recordings were made. The theoretical framework for the analysis of the brain and semantic data derives from axiomatizations of theories such as the theory of differences in utility preference. Using brain-data samples from individual trials time-locked to the presentation of each word, ordinal relations of similarity differences are computed for the brain data and for the linguistic data. In each case those relations that are invariant with respect to the brain and linguistic data, and are correlated with sufficient statistical strength, amount to structural similarities between the brain and linguistic data. Results show that many more statistically significant structural similarities can be found between the brain data and the WordNet-derived data than the LSA-derived data. The work reported here is placed within the context of other recent studies of semantics and the brain. The main contribution of this paper is the new method it presents for the study of semantics and the brain and the focus it permits on networks of relations detected in brain data and represented by a semantic model.

Lexical semantic access and letter access are involved in different aspects of reading

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Mads

). In this subset sample, both letter access and lexical access accounted for unique variance in reading fluency. The pattern of effects for lexical access did not change by controlling for serial rapid naming (RAN). Conclusions: The results suggest that letter access and lexical access are important for different......Purpose: This study investigated the effects of lexical access speed and letter access speed on reading fluency and reading comprehension. We hypothesized that 1) letter access speed would correlate with reading fluency but not comprehension, while 2) lexical access speed would influence reading...... comprehension. For readers who are struggling with recoding, most of the reading effort is probably tied up with recoding, leaving little to be explained by lexical access. Therefore we expected that 3) lexical access speed would primarily predict reading fluency for readers who were no longer struggling...

Selected Lexical Patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Lesa; Palmer, Jeffrey Levi; Reynolds, Wanette

2012-01-01

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and…

Portuguese Lexical Clusters and CVC Sequences in Speech Perception and Production.

Science.gov (United States)

Cunha, Conceição

2015-01-01

This paper investigates similarities between lexical consonant clusters and CVC sequences differing in the presence or absence of a lexical vowel in speech perception and production in two Portuguese varieties. The frequent high vowel deletion in the European variety (EP) and the realization of intervening vocalic elements between lexical clusters in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) may minimize the contrast between lexical clusters and CVC sequences in the two Portuguese varieties. In order to test this hypothesis we present a perception experiment with 72 participants and a physiological analysis of 3-dimensional movement data from 5 EP and 4 BP speakers. The perceptual results confirmed a gradual confusion of lexical clusters and CVC sequences in EP, which corresponded roughly to the gradient consonantal overlap found in production. © 2015 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Morphological Cues for Lexical Semantics

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Light, Marc

1996-01-01

Most natural language processing tasks require lexical semantic information such as verbal argument structure and selectional restrictions, corresponding nominal semantic class, verbal aspectual class...

Typing pictures: Linguistic processing cascades into finger movements.

Science.gov (United States)

Scaltritti, Michele; Arfé, Barbara; Torrance, Mark; Peressotti, Francesca

2016-11-01

The present study investigated the effect of psycholinguistic variables on measures of response latency and mean interkeystroke interval in a typewritten picture naming task, with the aim to outline the functional organization of the stages of cognitive processing and response execution associated with typewritten word production. Onset latencies were modulated by lexical and semantic variables traditionally linked to lexical retrieval, such as word frequency, age of acquisition, and naming agreement. Orthographic variables, both at the lexical and sublexical level, appear to influence just within-word interkeystroke intervals, suggesting that orthographic information may play a relevant role in controlling actual response execution. Lexical-semantic variables also influenced speed of execution. This points towards cascaded flow of activation between stages of lexical access and response execution. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Grammatical category dissociation in multilingual aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Faroqi-Shah, Yasmeen; Waked, Arifi N

2010-03-01

Word retrieval deficits for specific grammatical categories, such as verbs versus nouns, occur as a consequence of brain damage. Such deficits are informative about the nature of lexical organization in the human brain. This study examined retrieval of grammatical categories across three languages in a trilingual person with aphasia who spoke Arabic, French, and English. In order to delineate the nature of word production difficulty, comprehension was tested, and a variety of concomitant lexical-semantic variables were analysed. The patient demonstrated a consistent noun-verb dissociation in picture naming and narrative speech, with severely impaired production of verbs across all three languages. The cross-linguistically similar noun-verb dissociation, coupled with little evidence of semantic impairment, suggests that (a) the patient has a true "nonsemantic" grammatical category specific deficit, and (b) lexical organization in multilingual speakers shares grammatical class information between languages. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the architecture of lexical organization in bilinguals.

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF NATO’S MEDIA IMAGE (THE CASE STUDY OF BRITISH ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

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Valuyskaya Olga Ruslanovna

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The paper investigates linguistic specific means of NATO's image making in online British leading newspapers. The case study involves news reports and analytical articles that represent explicit and implicit evaluation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The investigation is based on the principles of the media linguistic approach and suggests the structural peculiarities of a media image that can be analyzed as a three-sided unit including positive, negative and neutral structural elements of image introduction into a media text. The NATO's image can be viewed as that of a geopolitical actor, creating its Natoland. Certain media topics are analyzed as creating positive and negative images of the NATO as a military organization. A finite list of positive and negative constituents to the Alliance's image is presented in the paper. It is assumed that the simplistic writer-reader model of interaction shapes certain elements of a media image that can be interpreted by a reader. The author distinguishes in the paper the principle constituents of an international organization in general, and the NATO in particular. Findings of the study demonstrate that the NATO's media image is interpreted by the readers as the conceptual entity of two key images: a peacemaker and a hawk that are restored on lexical and intertextual levels.

Differential lexical predictors of reading comprehension in fourth graders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swart, N.M.; Muijselaar, M.M.L.; Steenbeek-Planting, E.G.; Droop, M.; de Jong, P.F.; Verhoeven, L.

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical

Quotient normed cones

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

general setting of the space CL(X, Y ) of all continuous linear mappings from a normed cone (X, p) to a normed cone (Y, q), extending several well-known results related to open continuous linear mappings between normed linear spaces. Keywords. Normed cone; extended quasi-metric; continuous linear mapping; bicom-.

Manger hors norme, respecter les normes

OpenAIRE

Régnier, Faustine

2007-01-01

Fondée sur un corpus de près de 10 000 recettes de cuisine de la presse féminine française et allemande (1930‑2000), cette contribution met en évidence la façon dont l’exotisme permet de manger hors norme tout en restant dans les normes. Les pratiques culinaires étrangères ne peuvent être adoptées qu’au terme d’un travail de normalisation. Elles sont modifiées de manière à ce que soient respectées les normes du pays d’accueil, par là même mises en œuvre. Elles sont donc conçues comme un ensem...

Lexical Borrowings in the ESL Classrooms in Malaysia

Science.gov (United States)

Thirusanku, Jantmary; Yunus, Melor Md

2013-01-01

This paper attempts to show the use of lexical borrowings in ten teaching materials used by the English as Second Language (ESL) teachers in the ESL classrooms in the National Secondary Schools in the Klang district in Selangor, Malaysia. It also discusses the general and pedagogical implications involved in using lexical borrowings. This paper…

Cross-linguistic transfer of phonological skills: a Malaysian perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Gomez, Caroline; Reason, Rea

2002-01-01

This study examined the phonological and reading performance in English of Malaysian children whose home language was Bahasa Malaysia (BM). A sample of 69 Malaysian Standard Two pupils (aged 7-8 years) was selected for the study. Since commencing school at the age of 6 years, the children had been learning to read in BM and had subsequently also been learning to read in English for some 12 months. The study was part of a larger scale research programme that fully recognized the limitations of tests that had not been developed and standardized in Malaysia. Nevertheless, as a first step to developing such tests, a comparison with existing norms for the Phonological Assessment Battery (PhAB) and the Wechsler Objective Reading Dimension (WORD) was undertaken in relation to information about the children's L1 and L2 language competencies. Results showed that the children's performance on PhAB was at least comparable to the UK norms while, not surprisingly, they fared less well on WORD. The results are discussed in terms of L1 and L2 transfer, whereby the transparency of written BM and the structured way in which reading is taught in BM facilitates performance on phonological tasks in English. This has implications for identifying children with phonologically based reading difficulties.

Rapid Linguistic Ambiguity Resolution in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Eye Tracking Evidence for the Limits of Weak Central Coherence.

Science.gov (United States)

Hahn, Noemi; Snedeker, Jesse; Rabagliati, Hugh

2015-12-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have often been reported to have difficulty integrating information into its broader context, which has motivated the Weak Central Coherence theory of ASD. In the linguistic domain, evidence for this difficulty comes from reports of impaired use of linguistic context to resolve ambiguous words. However, recent work has suggested that impaired use of linguistic context may not be characteristic of ASD, and is instead better explained by co-occurring language impairments. Here, we provide a strong test of these claims, using the visual world eye tracking paradigm to examine the online mechanisms by which children with autism resolve linguistic ambiguity. To address concerns about both language impairments and compensatory strategies, we used a sample whose verbal skills were strong and whose average age (7; 6) was lower than previous work on lexical ambiguity resolution in ASD. Participants (40 with autism and 40 controls) heard sentences with ambiguous words in contexts that either strongly supported one reading or were consistent with both (John fed/saw the bat). We measured activation of the unintended meaning through implicit semantic priming of an associate (looks to a depicted baseball glove). Contrary to the predictions of weak central coherence, children with ASD, like controls, quickly used context to resolve ambiguity, selecting appropriate meanings within a second. We discuss how these results constrain the generality of weak central coherence. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Linguistic Representation of Emotions in Japanese and Hungarian: Quantity and Abstractness

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Márton SZEMEREY

2012-05-01

Full Text Available In the present paper, two linguistic aspects of emotion expression are studied in the form they are performed in present day Japanese and Hungarian. After a brief summary on the recent emotional researches connected to Japanese culture and language, the concept of Linguistic Category Model is introduced. The quantitative study presented afterwards investigates emotion expression in terms of amount and abstraction. Translations were used for comparison and the results showed that 1 Japanese tend to use less explicit emotion terms compared to Hungarians and 2 emotion language in Japanese is characterized by the choice of less abstract phrases compared to Hungarian. These findings are discussed in the light of their relevance to former researches of cross-cultural psychology and linguistics.

Revisiting verbs of emission: an update on some relevant theoretical accounts of lexical specification and argument structure of emission verbs

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Natasa Milivojevic

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The paper addresses the question of what semantic properties lexicalized in verbs determine their syntactic behavior in intransitive motion events and in resultative constructions in English and Serbian. Special attention is devoted to English and Serbian verbs of emission (specifically verbs of sound emission and partly also verbs of light, smell and substance emission regarding their potential to surface as main verbs in these constructions and to combine with directional phrases within specific morphosyntactic templates (unaccusatives and unergatives. The presented research promotes a theoretical view according to which the established syntactic patterns can be applied across the whole class of verbs of emission to express a full er range of atypical verb meanings in motion events. Theoretical conclusions of the research are also relevant for a wider theoretical description of motion events and resultatives in a cross - linguistic perspective. The paper puts forth additional implica tions regarding the projectionalist approach to semantic verb classes against the theoretical framework of Beth Levin (1993. Finally, the paper considers the relevant points of structurally realized similarities via relevant constructional templates in En glish and in Serbian, as well as some important points of morphosyntactic divergence between the two languages. The conclusions presented aim at a more comprehensive contrastive language typology based on language “framing” parameters.

Probabilistic lexical generalization for French dependency parsing

OpenAIRE

Henestroza Anguiano , Enrique; Candito , Marie

2012-01-01

International audience; This paper investigates the impact on French dependency parsing of lexical generalization methods beyond lemmatization and morphological analysis. A distributional thesaurus is created from a large text corpus and used for distributional clustering and WordNet automatic sense ranking. The standard approach for lexical generalization in parsing is to map a word to a single generalized class, either replacing the word with the class or adding a new feature for the class....

Cross-language activation of morphological relatives in cognates: the role of orthographic overlap and task-related processing

Science.gov (United States)

Mulder, Kimberley; Dijkstra, Ton; Baayen, R. Harald

2015-01-01

We considered the role of orthography and task-related processing mechanisms in the activation of morphologically related complex words during bilingual word processing. So far, it has only been shown that such morphologically related words (i.e., morphological family members) are activated through the semantic and morphological overlap they share with the target word. In this study, we investigated family size effects in Dutch-English identical cognates (e.g., tent in both languages), non-identical cognates (e.g., pil and pill, in English and Dutch, respectively), and non-cognates (e.g., chicken in English). Because of their cross-linguistic overlap in orthography, reading a cognate can result in activation of family members both languages. Cognates are therefore well-suited for studying mechanisms underlying bilingual activation of morphologically complex words. We investigated family size effects in an English lexical decision task and a Dutch-English language decision task, both performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. English lexical decision showed a facilitatory effect of English and Dutch family size on the processing of English-Dutch cognates relative to English non-cognates. These family size effects were not dependent on cognate type. In contrast, for language decision, in which a bilingual context is created, Dutch and English family size effects were inhibitory. Here, the combined family size of both languages turned out to better predict reaction time than the separate family size in Dutch or English. Moreover, the combined family size interacted with cognate type: the response to identical cognates was slowed by morphological family members in both languages. We conclude that (1) family size effects are sensitive to the task performed on the lexical items, and (2) depend on both semantic and formal aspects of bilingual word processing. We discuss various mechanisms that can explain the observed family size effects in a spreading activation framework

Cross-language activation of morphological relatives in cognates: The role of orthographic overlap and task-related processing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kimberley eMulder

2015-02-01

Full Text Available We considered the role of orthography and task-related processing mechanisms in the activation of morphologically related complex words during bilingual word processing. So far, it has only been shown that such morphologically related words (i.e., morphological family members are activated through the semantic and morphological overlap they share with the target word. In this study, we investigated family size effects in Dutch-English identical cognates (e.g., tent in both languages, non-identical cognates (e.g., pil and pill, in English and Dutch, respectively, and non-cognates (e.g., chicken in English. Because of their cross-linguistic overlap in orthography, reading a cognate can result in activation of family members both languages. Cognates are therefore well-suited for studying mechanisms underlying bilingual activation of morphologically complex words. We investigated family size effects in an English lexical decision task and a Dutch-English language decision task, both performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. English lexical decision showed a facilitatory effect of English and Dutch family size on the processing of English-Dutch cognates relative to English non-cognates. These family size effects were not dependent on cognate type. In contrast, for language decision, in which a bilingual context is created, Dutch and English family size effects were inhibitory. Here, the combined family size of both languages turned out to better predict reaction time than the separate family size in Dutch or English. Moreover, the combined family size interacted with cognate type: The response to identical cognates was slowed by morphological family members in both languages. We conclude that (1 family size effects are sensitive to the task performed on the lexical items, and (2 depend on both semantic and formal aspects of bilingual word processing. We discuss various mechanisms that can explain the observed family size effects in a spreading

The unique role of lexical accessibility in predicting kindergarten emergent literacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Verhoeven, Ludo; van Leeuwe, Jan; Irausquin, Rosemarie; Segers, Eliane

The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine how lexical quality predicts the emergence of literacy abilities in 169 Dutch kindergarten children before formal reading instruction has started. At the beginning of the school year, a battery of precursor measures associated with lexical quality was related to the emergence of letter knowledge and word decoding. Confirmatory factor analysis evidenced five domains related to lexical quality, i.e., vocabulary, phonological coding, phonological awareness, lexical retrieval and phonological working memory. Structural equation modeling showed that the development of letter knowledge during the year could be predicted from children's phonological awareness and lexical retrieval, and the emergence of word decoding from their phonological awareness and letter knowledge. It is concluded that it is primarily the accessibility of phonological representations in the mental lexicon that predicts the emergence of literacy in kindergarten.

Regulation of NORM industries and NORM residues in Belgium

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Biermans, G.; Dehandschutter, B.; Pepin, S.; Sonck, M. [Federal Agency for Nuclear Control - FANC (Belgium)

2014-07-01

In the Belgian Royal Decree of 20 July 2001, which transposed the EU Directive 96/26/EURATOM (BSS) into national legislation regarding radiation protection regulations, a list of 'work activities involving natural radiation sources' (i.e. NORM industries) was defined based on the concept described in Article 40 of the Directive. These activities are subject to declaration to the Belgian radiation protection authority (Federal Agency for Nuclear Control - FANC). The initial list was subsequently modified by a FANC decree in 2012 to reflect the increased knowledge about NORM in other industrial sectors, most of which have also been added in the recently published New Basic Safety Standards (Directive 2013/53/EURATOM). In March 2013, an additional decree was published by FANC regulating the acceptance of NORM residues by non-radioactive waste treatment facilities. This regulation was fitted within the framework described above by introducing NORM residue treatment into the existing NORM industry list. It introduces generic exemption levels above which the processing or disposal of NORM residues will be considered as a 'work activity' and submitted to declaration according to the Belgian radiation protection regulations. On basis of this declaration, specific acceptance criteria are assigned to the disposal or processing facility. FANC has published technical and methodological guides for the operators of the concerned facilities and industries to facilitate the declaration process, and has recently organized a round-table gathering both NORM industries and waste processing industries to identify the needs, uncertainties and concerns regarding the regulatory control of NORM in Belgium. Document available in abstract form only. (authors)

Linguistic Structure Prediction

CERN Document Server

Smith, Noah A

2011-01-01

A major part of natural language processing now depends on the use of text data to build linguistic analyzers. We consider statistical, computational approaches to modeling linguistic structure. We seek to unify across many approaches and many kinds of linguistic structures. Assuming a basic understanding of natural language processing and/or machine learning, we seek to bridge the gap between the two fields. Approaches to decoding (i.e., carrying out linguistic structure prediction) and supervised and unsupervised learning of models that predict discrete structures as outputs are the focus. W

A forgotten social science? Creating a place for linguistics in the historical dialogue.

Science.gov (United States)

Martin-Nielsen, Janet

2011-01-01

The post-World War II era was one of great triumph for American linguists-and yet linguistics is all but absent from the historical literature on postwar social science. This paper aims to illuminate this curious situation: to understand its provenance, evaluate its merits, and contextualize it broadly. I argue that the historiographic lacuna results from two factors: (1) the opt-out of linguists from the wider American social science community, and (2) historical-developmental and -orientational factors that stand linguistics apart from the social science mainstream. The resultant isolation of linguistics has led to a parallel isolation in the historical literature. Ultimately, this paper poses a pivotal and timely question: How is the postwar social science space construed within the existing historiographic framework, and how should it be construed in order to maximize understanding? I propose a rethink of the received historiography centered on intellectual transformations and cross-disciplinary integration. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Microstructural Treatment of Sub lexical Lemmas in Afrikaans ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

include synonyms and semantic oppositions. Since all Afrikaans descriptive dictionaries supply these lexical relations for lexical lemmas, there is no reason why they should be omitted in the articles of sublexicallemmas. Naturally the synonym or antonym for sublexical lemmas need not be sublexical as well,.

Increasing Statistical Literacy by Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity of Technical Terms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jennifer Kaplan

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Instructional inattention to language poses a barrier for students in entry-level science courses, in part because students may perceive a subject as difficult solely based on the lack of understanding of the vocabulary. In addition, the technical use of terms that have different everyday meanings may cause students to misinterpret statements made by instructors, leading to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the domain. Terms that have different technical and everyday meanings are said to have lexical ambiguity and statistics, as a discipline, has many lexically ambiguous terms. This paper presents a cyclic process for designing activities to address lexical ambiguity in statistics. In addition, it describes three short activities aimed to have high impact on student learning associated with two different lexically ambiguous words or word pairs in statistics. Preliminary student-level data are used to assess the efficacy of the activities, and future directions for development of activities and research about lexical ambiguity in statistics in particular and STEM in general are discussed.

The Social Norms of Suicidal and Self-Harming Behaviours in Scottish Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Quigley, Jody; Rasmussen, Susan; McAlaney, John

2017-03-15

Although the suicidal and self-harming behaviour of individuals is often associated with similar behaviours in people they know, little is known about the impact of perceived social norms on those behaviours. In a range of other behavioural domains (e.g., alcohol consumption, smoking, eating behaviours) perceived social norms have been found to strongly predict individuals' engagement in those behaviours, although discrepancies often exist between perceived and reported norms. Interventions which align perceived norms more closely with reported norms have been effective in reducing damaging behaviours. The current study aimed to explore whether the Social Norms Approach is applicable to suicidal and self-harming behaviours in adolescents. Participants were 456 pupils from five Scottish high-schools (53% female, mean age = 14.98 years), who completed anonymous, cross-sectional surveys examining reported and perceived norms around suicidal and self-harming behaviour. Friedman's ANOVA with post-hoc Wilcoxen signed-ranks tests indicated that proximal groups were perceived as less likely to engage in or be permissive of suicidal and self-harming behaviours than participants' reported themselves, whilst distal groups tended towards being perceived as more likely to do so. Binary logistic regression analyses identified a number of perceived norms associated with reported norms, with close friends' norms positively associated with all outcome variables. The Social Norms Approach may be applicable to suicidal and self-harming behaviour, but associations between perceived and reported norms and predictors of reported norms differ to those found in other behavioural domains. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are considered.

The Social Norms of Suicidal and Self-Harming Behaviours in Scottish Adolescents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jody Quigley

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Although the suicidal and self-harming behaviour of individuals is often associated with similar behaviours in people they know, little is known about the impact of perceived social norms on those behaviours. In a range of other behavioural domains (e.g., alcohol consumption, smoking, eating behaviours perceived social norms have been found to strongly predict individuals’ engagement in those behaviours, although discrepancies often exist between perceived and reported norms. Interventions which align perceived norms more closely with reported norms have been effective in reducing damaging behaviours. The current study aimed to explore whether the Social Norms Approach is applicable to suicidal and self-harming behaviours in adolescents. Participants were 456 pupils from five Scottish high-schools (53% female, mean age = 14.98 years, who completed anonymous, cross-sectional surveys examining reported and perceived norms around suicidal and self-harming behaviour. Friedman’s ANOVA with post-hoc Wilcoxen signed-ranks tests indicated that proximal groups were perceived as less likely to engage in or be permissive of suicidal and self-harming behaviours than participants’ reported themselves, whilst distal groups tended towards being perceived as more likely to do so. Binary logistic regression analyses identified a number of perceived norms associated with reported norms, with close friends’ norms positively associated with all outcome variables. The Social Norms Approach may be applicable to suicidal and self-harming behaviour, but associations between perceived and reported norms and predictors of reported norms differ to those found in other behavioural domains. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are considered.

Improving the Functionality of Dictionary Definitions for Lexical Sets: The Role of Definitional Templates, Definitional Consistency, Definitional Coherence and the Incorporation of Lexical Conceptual Models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Piet Swanepoel

2011-10-01

Full Text Available

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on some of the problems raised by Atkins and Rundell's (2008 approach to the design of lexicographic definitions for members of lexical sets. The questions raised are how to define and identify lexical sets, how lexical conceptual models (LCMs can support definitional consistency and coherence in defining members of lexical sets, and what the ideal content and structure of LCMs could be. Although similarity of meaning is proposed as the defining feature of lexical sets, similarity of meaning is only one dimension of the broader concept of lexical coherence. The argument is presented that numerous conceptual lexical models (e.g. taxonomies, folk models, frames, etc. in fact indicate, justify or explain how lexical items cohere (and thus form sets. In support of Fillmore's (2003 suggestion that definitions of the lexical items of cohering sets should be linked to such explanatory models, additional functionally-orientated arguments are presented for the incorporation of conceptual lexical models in electronic monolingual learners' dictionaries. Numerous resources exist to support the design of LCMs which can improve the functionality of definitions of members of lexical sets. A few examples are discussed of how such resources can be used to design functionally justified LCMs.

OPSOMMING: Verbetering van die funksionaliteit van woordeboekdefinisies vir leksikale versamelings: Die rol van definisiematryse, definisie-eenvormigheid, definisiesamehang en die inkorporering van leksikale konseptuele modelle. Hierdie artikel fokus op sommige van die probleme wat ter sprake kom deur Atkins en Rundell (2008 se benadering tot die ontwerp van leksikografiese definisies vir lede van leksikale versamelings. Die vrae wat gestel word, is hoe leksikale versamelings gedefinieer en geïdentifiseer moet word, hoe leksikale konseptuele modelle (LKM's definisie-eenvormigheid en-samehang kan ondersteun by die definiëring van lede

The Contribution of Lexical Diversity to College-Level Writing

Science.gov (United States)

González, Melanie C.

2017-01-01

This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which lexical frequency and lexical diversity contribute to writing proficiency scores on monolingual English-speaking writers' and advanced multilingual writers' academic compositions. The data consist of essays composed by 104 multilingual English learners enrolled in advanced…

What can speech production errors tell us about cross-linguistic processing in bilingual aphasia? Evidence from four English/Afrikaans bilingual individuals with aphasia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diane Kendall

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Introduction: The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke. Methods: This is a case series analysis of four Afrikaans/English bilingual aphasic individuals following a left cerebrovascular accident. Error analysis of confrontation naming data in both languages was performed. Research questions were directed toward the between language differences in lexical retrieval abilities, types of errors produced and degree of cognate overlap. Results: Three of the four participants showed significantly higher naming accuracy in first acquired language (L1 relative to the second acquired language (L2 and the largest proportion of error type for those three participants in both L1 and L2 was omission. One of the four participants (linguistically balanced showed no between language accuracy difference. Regarding cognate overlap, there was a trend for higher accuracy for higher cognate words (compared to low. Discussion: This study showed that naming performance in these four individuals was reflective of their relative language proficiency and use patterns prior to their stroke. These findings are consistent with the hierarchical model, in normal bilingual speakers and with persons with bilingual aphasia.

The Ways of Expression of Cultural Norms in the Egyptian Dialect

OpenAIRE

Machut-Mendecka, Ewa

2011-01-01

In this paper I am going to present the ways in which the Egyptian dialect renders social norms, which will be illustrated by the examples of expressions regarding human- to-human interaction. This provides an outline of the existent system of values with special emphasis laid upon the values of collectivism and individualism (perceived in the categories of cross-cultural psychology) and related phenomena. The basis for cultural norms reflected in the language will be the two different system...

Prosody and informativity: A cross-linguistic investigation

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Ouyang, Iris Chuoying

This dissertation aims to extend our knowledge of prosody -- in particular, what kinds of information may be conveyed through prosody, which prosodic dimensions may be used to convey them, and how individual speakers differ from one another in how they use prosody. Four production studies were conducted to examine how various factors interact with one another in shaping the prosody of an utterance and how prosody fulfills its multi-functional role. Experiments 1 explores the interaction between two types of informativity, namely information structure and information-theoretic properties. The results show that the prosodic consequences of new-information focus are modulated by the focused word's frequency, whereas the prosodic consequences of corrective focus are modulated by the focused word's probability in the context. Furthermore, f0 ranges appear to be more informative than f0 shapes in reflecting informativity across speakers. Specifically, speakers seem to have individual 'preferences' regarding f0 shapes, the f0 ranges they use for an utterance, and the magnitude of differences in f0 ranges by which they mark information-structural distinctions. In contrast, there is more cross-speaker validity in the actual directions of differences in f0 ranges between information-structural types. Experiments 2 and 3 further show that the interaction found between corrective focus and contextual probability depends on the interlocutor's knowledge state. When the interlocutor has no access to the crucial information concerning utterances' contextual probability, speakers prosodically emphasize contextually improbable corrections, but not contextually probable corrections. Furthermore, speakers prosodically emphasize the corrections in response to contextually probable misstatements, but not the corrections in response to contextually improbable misstatements. In contrast, completely opposite patterns are found when words' contextual probability is shared knowledge between

Probabilistic linguistics

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Bod, R.; Heine, B.; Narrog, H.

2010-01-01

Probabilistic linguistics takes all linguistic evidence as positive evidence and lets statistics decide. It allows for accurate modelling of gradient phenomena in production and perception, and suggests that rule-like behaviour is no more than a side effect of maximizing probability. This chapter

Topological self-organization and prediction learning support both action and lexical chains in the brain.

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Chersi, Fabian; Ferro, Marcello; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Pirrelli, Vito

2014-07-01

A growing body of evidence in cognitive psychology and neuroscience suggests a deep interconnection between sensory-motor and language systems in the brain. Based on recent neurophysiological findings on the anatomo-functional organization of the fronto-parietal network, we present a computational model showing that language processing may have reused or co-developed organizing principles, functionality, and learning mechanisms typical of premotor circuit. The proposed model combines principles of Hebbian topological self-organization and prediction learning. Trained on sequences of either motor or linguistic units, the network develops independent neuronal chains, formed by dedicated nodes encoding only context-specific stimuli. Moreover, neurons responding to the same stimulus or class of stimuli tend to cluster together to form topologically connected areas similar to those observed in the brain cortex. Simulations support a unitary explanatory framework reconciling neurophysiological motor data with established behavioral evidence on lexical acquisition, access, and recall. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese

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Mitsuhiko Ota

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months.

Norma categorial para el español de Bogotá, Colombia Category norm for the Spanish spoken in Bogota, Colombia

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Albeiro Migue Ángel Ramírez Sarmiento

2010-07-01

Full Text Available En este trabajo presentamos los resultados de un estudio elaborado en Bogotá con 210 estudiantes universitarios de 5 instituciones con diferentes características sociodemográficas, con el fin de establecer las normas categoriales léxicas. Se utilizaron las 56 categorías léxico-semánticas usadas en el clásico estudio de Battig y Motague (1969 y se recogieron más de 7800 palabras que fueron organizadas por rango y moda. En la revisión bibliográfica realizada no se encontraron trabajos de esta naturaleza para el español colombiano (o latinoamericano, y se espera que sus resultados sean usados en protocolos para el campo de la terapia del lenguaje y los estudios psicolingüísticos. Los datos recogidos fueron comparados con uno de los estudios de norma categorial realizados para el español ibérico.In this article, we present the results of a study carried out in Bogotá, Colombia with 210 university students from five different universities pertaining to diverse socio-demographic groups. The objective of the study was to establish the lexical category norms. 56 lexical-semantic categories used by Battig and Montague (1969 in their classic study were employed. More than 7800 words were collected and organized by range and mode. There are no other studies on this subject for Colombian or Latin American Spanish. We hope that the results presented here will be used both in psycholinguistic and language therapy studies. The collected data were compared to one of the category norm studies made for European Spanish.

Reaching Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Young Learners with Disabilities.

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Marcus, Susanne D.; Ames, Margery E.

1998-01-01

Describes how cross-over training and a whole-school approach help preschool educators assist disabled students who have not yet acquired their native language, examining New York's English-as-a Second-Language/Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Training Program for Pre-K Special Education Personnel, which trains preschool personnel to meet…

Tracking lexical consolidation with ERPs: Lexical and semantic-priming effects on N400 and LPC responses to newly-learned words.

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Bakker, Iske; Takashima, Atsuko; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2015-12-01

Novel words can be recalled immediately and after little exposure, but require a post-learning consolidation period to show word-like behaviour such as lexical competition. This pattern is thought to reflect a qualitative shift from episodic to lexical representations. However, several studies have reported immediate effects of meaningful novel words on semantic processing, suggesting that integration of novel word meanings may not require consolidation. The current study synthesises and extends these findings by showing a dissociation between lexical and semantic effects on the electrophysiological (N400, LPC) response to novel words. The difference in N400 amplitude between novel and existing words (a lexical effect) decreased significantly after a 24-h consolidation period, providing novel support for the hypothesis that offline consolidation aids lexicalisation. In contrast, novel words preceded by semantically related primes elicited a more positive LPC response (a semantic-priming effect) both before and after consolidation, indicating that certain semantic effects can be observed even when words have not been fully lexicalised. We propose that novel meanings immediately start to contribute to semantic processing, but that the underlying neural processes may shift from strategic to more automatic with consolidation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cross-cultural decoding of positive and negative non-linguistic emotion vocalizations.

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Laukka, Petri; Elfenbein, Hillary Anger; Söder, Nela; Nordström, Henrik; Althoff, Jean; Chui, Wanda; Iraki, Frederick K; Rockstuhl, Thomas; Thingujam, Nutankumar S

2013-01-01

Which emotions are associated with universally recognized non-verbal signals?We address this issue by examining how reliably non-linguistic vocalizations (affect bursts) can convey emotions across cultures. Actors from India, Kenya, Singapore, and USA were instructed to produce vocalizations that would convey nine positive and nine negative emotions to listeners. The vocalizations were judged by Swedish listeners using a within-valence forced-choice procedure, where positive and negative emotions were judged in separate experiments. Results showed that listeners could recognize a wide range of positive and negative emotions with accuracy above chance. For positive emotions, we observed the highest recognition rates for relief, followed by lust, interest, serenity and positive surprise, with affection and pride receiving the lowest recognition rates. Anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and negative surprise received the highest recognition rates for negative emotions, with the lowest rates observed for guilt and shame. By way of summary, results showed that the voice can reveal both basic emotions and several positive emotions other than happiness across cultures, but self-conscious emotions such as guilt, pride, and shame seem not to be well recognized from non-linguistic vocalizations.

CONFIGURATION OF CULTURAL NORMS IN TRADITIONAL RICE PLANTING RITUAL DISCOURSE THE TRADITIONAL FARMING COMMUNITY OF BAYAN, NORTH LOMBOK

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I Made Netra

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This is the study of traditional rice planting ritual discourse of the traditional farming community of Bayan, North Lombok in an ethno-pragmatic perspective.  It is specifically aimed at describing the cultural norms and their meaning configurations.  The theory used in the study is the cultural scripts developed by Wierzbicka (2002a considering that cultural norms constitute rules and regulations in social interaction practices. They can be investigated from the use of grammatical aspects of language and linguistic routines which are context-bound. They can be configured by paraphrasing in simple and mini language using single space. The results of the study showed that there were some cultural norms found on the traditional rice planting ritual discourse of the traditional farming community of Bayan, North Lombok. They included: (1 asserting thought and hope, (2 respecting other entities, (3 apologizing, (4 promising, and (5 giving advice. The configuration of these cultural norms was in accordance with the understanding of local cultural scripts and wisdom in terms of rituals of the local farming system. The configuration is constructed in low-level script with components of “when” and “if”. It contains the aspects of thinking, speaking, and doing. It is derived from the semantic primes of both evaluation and perception.

A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Questions in German and French Adult Second Language Acquisition

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Matthias Bonnesen

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Several studies have been conducted to try and understand and explain the morphological and syntactic aspects of adult second language acquisition (SLA. Two prominent hypotheses that have been put forward concerning late L2 speakers' knowledge of inflectional morphology and of related functional categories and their feature values are the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH.The cross-linguistic comparison of the acquisition of questions in German and French provided in this study offers a new perspective to differences and similarities between first language acquisition (FLA and adult SLA. Comparing a Germanic and a Romance L2, differing not only in their overall linguistic properties (such as i. e. OV/VO, V2, clitics, but explicitly in the formation and regularities of questions, we present striking similarities in adult SLA, and irrespective of the first and the second languages and of instructed versus non-instructed learning. The investigation of the adult SLA of morphological and structural aspects of questions in French and German strengthens the assumption that the acquisition of morphology and syntax is connected in French and German FLA but is disentangled in adult SLA. Our data reveal variability of question syntax, and with the syntactic position of the verb in particular. Instead of discovering the correct position of the verb at a certain stage of acquisition which can be accounted for by parameter setting in FLA, the adult learners gradually approach the target word order but still exhibit a great deal of variation after several years of exposure to the L2.The findings provided here contradict the predictions of the MSIH (Prévost/White 2000; Ionin/Wexler 2002; among others, for not only morphological features, but syntactic finiteness of finiteness are problematic in adult SLA, and that the Impairment Representation Hypothesis (IRH (Beck 1998; Eubank 1993/1994; among others

The development of determiners in the context of French-English bilingualism: a study of cross-linguistic influence.

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Hervé, Coralie; Serratrice, Ludovica

2018-05-01

This paper reports the preliminary results of a study examining the role of structural overlap, language exposure, and language use on cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual first language acquisition. We focus on the longitudinal development of determiners in a corpus of two French-English children between the ages of 2;4 and 3;7. The results display bi-directional CLI in the rate of development, i.e., accelerated development in English and a minor delay in French. Unidirectional CLI from English to French was instead observed in the significantly higher rate of ungrammatical determiner omissions in plural and generic contexts than in singular specific contexts in French. These findings suggest that other language-internal mechanisms may be at play. They also lend support to the role of expressive abilities on the magnitude of this phenomenon.

Mixed-effects regression models in linguistics

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Heylen, Kris; Geeraerts, Dirk

2018-01-01

When data consist of grouped observations or clusters, and there is a risk that measurements within the same group are not independent, group-specific random effects can be added to a regression model in order to account for such within-group associations. Regression models that contain such group-specific random effects are called mixed-effects regression models, or simply mixed models. Mixed models are a versatile tool that can handle both balanced and unbalanced datasets and that can also be applied when several layers of grouping are present in the data; these layers can either be nested or crossed.  In linguistics, as in many other fields, the use of mixed models has gained ground rapidly over the last decade. This methodological evolution enables us to build more sophisticated and arguably more realistic models, but, due to its technical complexity, also introduces new challenges. This volume brings together a number of promising new evolutions in the use of mixed models in linguistics, but also addres...

Some lexical aspects of Cape Muslim Afrikaans | Davids | Lexikos

African Journals Online (AJOL)

It looks at the role of the literary tradition of Arabic-Afrikaans and the Islamic religious education system at the Cape in this regard. Of particular interest are the changes which occur in the orthoepic nature and syntactical function of inherited and borrowed lexical units, by the affixing of lexical or grammatical morphemes, ...

Linguistic Stereotyping in Older Adults' Perceptions of Health Care Aides.

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Rubin, Donald; Coles, Valerie Berenice; Barnett, Joshua Trey

2016-07-01

The cultural and linguistic diversity of the U.S. health care provider workforce is expanding. Diversity among health care personnel such as paraprofessional health care assistants (HCAs)-many of whom are immigrants-means that intimate, high-stakes cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contact characterizes many health interactions. In particular, nonmainstream HCAs may face negative patient expectations because of patients' language stereotypes. In other contexts, reverse linguistic stereotyping has been shown to result in negative speaker evaluations and even reduced listening comprehension quite independently of the actual language performance of the speaker. The present study extends the language and attitude paradigm to older adults' perceptions of HCAs. Listeners heard the identical speaker of Standard American English as they watched interactions between an HCA and an older patient. Ethnolinguistic identities-either an Anglo native speaker of English or a Mexican nonnative speaker-were ascribed to HCAs by means of fabricated personnel files. Dependent variables included measures of perceived HCA language proficiency, personal characteristics, and professional competence, as well as listeners' comprehension of a health message delivered by the putative HCA. For most of these outcomes, moderate effect sizes were found such that the HCA with an ascribed Anglo identity-relative to the Mexican guise-was judged more proficient in English, socially superior, interpersonally more attractive, more dynamic, and a more satisfactory home health aide. No difference in listening comprehension emerged, but the Anglo guise tended to engender a more compliant listening mind set. Results of this study can inform both provider-directed and patient-directed efforts to improve health care services for members of all linguistic and cultural groups.

A diffusion decision model analysis of evidence variability in the lexical decision task.

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Tillman, Gabriel; Osth, Adam F; van Ravenzwaaij, Don; Heathcote, Andrew

2017-12-01

The lexical-decision task is among the most commonly used paradigms in psycholinguistics. In both the signal-detection theory and Diffusion Decision Model (DDM; Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, Psychological Review, 111, 159-182, 2004) frameworks, lexical-decisions are based on a continuous source of word-likeness evidence for both words and non-words. The Retrieving Effectively from Memory model of Lexical-Decision (REM-LD; Wagenmakers et al., Cognitive Psychology, 48(3), 332-367, 2004) provides a comprehensive explanation of lexical-decision data and makes the prediction that word-likeness evidence is more variable for words than non-words and that higher frequency words are more variable than lower frequency words. To test these predictions, we analyzed five lexical-decision data sets with the DDM. For all data sets, drift-rate variability changed across word frequency and non-word conditions. For the most part, REM-LD's predictions about the ordering of evidence variability across stimuli in the lexical-decision task were confirmed.

Coyote Papers: The University of Arizona Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 11. Special Volume on Native American Languages.

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Weinberg, Jessica P., Ed.; O'Bryan, Erin L., Ed.; Moll, Laura A., Ed.; Haugan, Jason D., Ed.

The five papers included in this volume approach the study of American Indian languages from a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches to linguistics. Two papers focus on approaches that come from the applied linguistics tradition, emphasizing ethnolinguistics and discourse analysis: Sonya Bird's paper "A Cross Cultural…

Lexical Variation and Change in British Sign Language

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Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Rentelis, Ramas; Woll, Bencie; Cormier, Kearsy

2014-01-01

This paper presents results from a corpus-based study investigating lexical variation in BSL. An earlier study investigating variation in BSL numeral signs found that younger signers were using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct variants, suggesting that levelling may be taking place. Here, we report findings from a larger investigation looking at regional lexical variants for colours, countries, numbers and UK placenames elicited as part of the BSL Corpus Project. Age, school location and language background were significant predictors of lexical variation, with younger signers using a more levelled variety. This change appears to be happening faster in particular sub-groups of the deaf community (e.g., signers from hearing families). Also, we find that for the names of some UK cities, signers from outside the region use a different sign than those who live in the region. PMID:24759673

Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Mandarin-speaking Congenital Amusics

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Wan Ting Huang

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Previous research suggests that within Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics, only a subgroup has behavioral lexical tone perception impairments (tone agnosia, whereas the rest of amusics do not. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the categorical nature of lexical tone perception in Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without behavioral lexical tone deficits. Three groups of listeners (controls, pure amusics and amusics with tone agnosia participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Indexes of the categorical perception of a physical continuum of fundamental frequencies ranging from a rising to level tone were measured. Specifically, the stimulus durations were manipulated at 100 and 200 ms. For both stimulus durations, all groups exhibited similar categorical boundaries. The pure amusics showed sharp identification slopes and significantly peaked discrimination functions similar to those of normal controls. However, such essential characteristics for the categorical perception of lexical tones were not observed in amusics with tone agnosia. An enlarged step-size from 20 Hz to 35 Hz was not able to produce any discrimination peaks in tone agnosics either. The current study revealed that only amusics with tone agnosia showed a lack of categorical tone perception, while the pure amusics demonstrated typical categorical perception of lexical tones, indicating that the deficit of pitch processing in music does not necessarily result in the deficit in the categorical perception of lexical tones. The different performance between congenital amusics with and without tone agnosia provides a new perspective on the proposition of the relationship between music and speech perception.

Drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness: Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath's experience of depression.

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Demjén, Zsófia

2014-01-01

This paper demonstrates how a range of linguistic methods can be harnessed in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the 'lived experience' of psychological disorders. It argues that such methods should be applied more in medical contexts, especially in medical humanities. Key extracts from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath are examined, as a case study of the experience of depression. Combinations of qualitative and quantitative linguistic methods, and inter- and intra-textual comparisons are used to consider distinctive patterns in the use of metaphor, personal pronouns and (the semantics of) verbs, as well as other relevant aspects of language. Qualitative techniques provide in-depth insights, while quantitative corpus methods make the analyses more robust and ensure the breadth necessary to gain insights into the individual experience. Depression emerges as a highly complex and sometimes potentially contradictory experience for Plath, involving both a sense of apathy and inner turmoil. It involves a sense of a split self, trapped in a state that one cannot overcome, and intense self-focus, a turning in on oneself and a view of the world that is both more negative and more polarized than the norm. It is argued that a linguistic approach is useful beyond this specific case.

Norm-Aware Socio-Technical Systems

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Savarimuthu, Bastin Tony Roy; Ghose, Aditya

The following sections are included: * Introduction * The Need for Norm-Aware Systems * Norms in human societies * Why should software systems be norm-aware? * Case Studies of Norm-Aware Socio-Technical Systems * Human-computer interactions * Virtual environments and multi-player online games * Extracting norms from big data and software repositories * Norms and Sustainability * Sustainability and green ICT * Norm awareness through software systems * Where To, From Here? * Conclusions

A New Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic TOPSIS Method for Group Multi-Criteria Linguistic Decision Making

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Fangling Ren

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision making is a focus point in linguistic decision making, in which the main method is based on preference ordering. This paper develops a new hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method for group multi-criteria linguistic decision making; the method is inspired by the TOPSIS method and the preference degree between two hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs. To this end, we first use the preference degree to define a pseudo-distance between two HFLTSs and analyze its properties. Then we present the positive (optimistic and negative (pessimistic information of each criterion provided by each decision maker and aggregate these by using weights of decision makers to obtain the hesitant fuzzy linguistic positive and negative ideal solutions. On the basis of the proposed pseudo-distance, we finally obtain the positive (negative ideal separation matrix and a new relative closeness degree to rank alternatives. We also design an algorithm based on the provided method to carry out hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision making. An illustrative example shows the elaboration of the proposed method and comparison with the symbolic aggregation-based method, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method and the hesitant fuzzy linguistic VIKOR method; it seems that the proposed method is a useful and alternative decision-making method.

LEXICAL AND CONTEXTUAL VARIABILITY OF IDIOMATIC PHRASAL VERBS IN HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS MOVIES

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Ghofar Romli

2017-04-01

Full Text Available The popularity of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HPDH as a novel is almost accentuated in the movie version. However, the fascination of watching the movies may be interrupted by the problems arising from the use of some problematic expressions in the original language, especially idiomatic phrasal verbs (IPVs. The Indonesian viewers who happen to be learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL will not have the fullest understanding of the story/text/sentence of the movies when they translate idiom lexically as the meaning of an idiom cannot be predicted from its individual constituents (Langlotz, 2006:4. This paper undergoes some procedures of the analysis starting from the process of data collection, progressing to selection, filtering, and labeling. It extracts PVs in HPDH (97 in HPDH part one and 70 in part two using linguistic concepts of PV. Later by limiting the PVs under conventional and characteristics modelling function of idioms, IPVs can be identified and served as the primary data. The final phase of the analysis wants to see how lexical interpretation, relying on Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary 8th Edition (OALD 8th ed, and Halidayan contextual variability (field, tenor and mode help classifying and explaining the meanings of the IPVs. Finally it is expected that this paper can offer appropriate logical and contextual interpretations of the IPVs. This way, by watching the HPDH, learners of English can gain better understanding of the movies and, more importantly, better knowledge of IPVs as inseparable part of their competence of EFL.

Exploiting Lexical Regularities in Designing Natural Language Systems.

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1988-04-01

ELEMENT. PROJECT. TASKN Artificial Inteligence Laboratory A1A4WR NTumet 0) 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 Ln *t- CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND...RO-RI95 922 EXPLOITING LEXICAL REGULARITIES IN DESIGNING NATURAL 1/1 LANGUAGE SYSTENS(U) MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE...oes.ary and ftdou.Ip hr Nl wow" L,2This paper presents the lexical component of the START Question Answering system developed at the MIT Artificial

English Phonological Awareness in Bilinguals: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Tamil, Malay and Chinese English-Language Learners

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Dixon, L. Quentin; Chuang, Hui-Kai; Quiroz, Blanca

2012-01-01

To test the lexical restructuring hypothesis among bilingual English-language learners, English phonological awareness (PA), English vocabulary and ethnic language vocabulary (Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil) were assessed among 284 kindergarteners (168 Chinese, 71 Malays and 45 Tamils) in Singapore. A multi-level regression analysis showed that…

Linguistic Imperialism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Phillipson, Robert

2013-01-01

The study of linguistic imperialism focuses on how and why certain languages dominate internationally, and attempts to account for such dominance in a theoretically informed way.......The study of linguistic imperialism focuses on how and why certain languages dominate internationally, and attempts to account for such dominance in a theoretically informed way....

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts-A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger.

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Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M; Conrad, Markus

2016-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales-valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking-for 57 German poems (" die verteidigung der wölfe ") which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either "friendly," "sad," or "spiteful." Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning . Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43-70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23-48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level.

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts—A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger

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Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M.; Conrad, Markus

2017-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales—valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking—for 57 German poems (“die verteidigung der wölfe”) which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either “friendly,” “sad,” or “spiteful.” Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning. Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43–70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23–48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level

Lexical and Grammatical Collocations in Writing Production of EFL Learners

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Maryam Bahardoust

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Lewis (1993 recognized significance of word combinations including collocations by presenting lexical approach. Because of the crucial role of collocation in vocabulary acquisition, this research set out to evaluate the rate of collocations in Iranian EFL learners' writing production across L1 and L2. In addition, L1 interference with L2 collocational use in the learner' writing samples was studied. To achieve this goal, 200 Persian EFL learners at BA level were selected. These participants were taking paragraph writing and essay writing courses in two successive semesters. As for the data analysis, mid-term, final exam, and also the assignments of L2 learners were evaluated. Because of the nominal nature of the data, chi-square test was utilized for data analysis. Then, the rate of lexical and grammatical collocations was calculated. Results showed that the lexical collocations outnumbered the grammatical collocations. Different categories of lexical collocations were also compared with regard to their frequencies in EFL writing production. The rate of the verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations appeared to be the highest and noun-verb collocations the lowest. The results also showed that L1 had both positive and negative effect on the occurrence of both grammatical and lexical collocations.

Contests versus Norms: Implications of Contest-Based and Norm-Based Intervention Techniques.

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Bergquist, Magnus; Nilsson, Andreas; Hansla, André

2017-01-01

Interventions using either contests or norms can promote environmental behavioral change. Yet research on the implications of contest-based and norm-based interventions is lacking. Based on Goal-framing theory, we suggest that a contest-based intervention frames a gain goal promoting intensive but instrumental behavioral engagement. In contrast, the norm-based intervention was expected to frame a normative goal activating normative obligations for targeted and non-targeted behavior and motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviors in the future. In two studies participants ( n = 347) were randomly assigned to either a contest- or a norm-based intervention technique. Participants in the contest showed more intensive engagement in both studies. Participants in the norm-based intervention tended to report higher intentions for future energy conservation (Study 1) and higher personal norms for non-targeted pro-environmental behaviors (Study 2). These findings suggest that contest-based intervention technique frames a gain goal, while norm-based intervention frames a normative goal.

Contests versus Norms: Implications of Contest-Based and Norm-Based Intervention Techniques

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Magnus Bergquist

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Interventions using either contests or norms can promote environmental behavioral change. Yet research on the implications of contest-based and norm-based interventions is lacking. Based on Goal-framing theory, we suggest that a contest-based intervention frames a gain goal promoting intensive but instrumental behavioral engagement. In contrast, the norm-based intervention was expected to frame a normative goal activating normative obligations for targeted and non-targeted behavior and motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviors in the future. In two studies participants (n = 347 were randomly assigned to either a contest- or a norm-based intervention technique. Participants in the contest showed more intensive engagement in both studies. Participants in the norm-based intervention tended to report higher intentions for future energy conservation (Study 1 and higher personal norms for non-targeted pro-environmental behaviors (Study 2. These findings suggest that contest-based intervention technique frames a gain goal, while norm-based intervention frames a normative goal.

Lexicalization of idioms in urban fifth graders: a reaction time study.

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Qualls, Constance Dean; Treaster, Beth; Blood, Gordon W; Hammer, Carol Scheffner

2003-01-01

Idioms are an important aspect of language that comprises a sizeable portion of our vocabulary. However, lexical access research has largely been limited to understanding how literal words are accessed and processed in the mental lexicon. Adult data show that idioms are quickly accessed from the lexicon and are likely processed as long words [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523]. The purpose of this study was to examine lexicalization of idioms in a group of school-aged children. Using a phrase classification design, this research tested the Lexical Representation Hypothesis [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523] in 19 urban fifth graders (5 boys, 14 girls; M age=10.16 years). On a computer, the students classified 54 phrases, including 24 idioms (high, moderate, and low familiarity [J. Speech Hear. Res. 36 (1993) 728]), 24 grammatical control word strings and 6 unrelated foils as either idioms or nonidioms. The idioms were identified with 62% accuracy. Unexpectedly, the boys tended to show higher rates of accuracy than the girls. Response latencies were shorter on the idioms compared to the controls and high familiarity idioms were processed faster than moderate and low familiarity idioms. These findings provide developmental data for lexicalization of idioms and the relationship between lexicalization and familiarity. At the cocnlusion of this articel, the reader will be able to: (1). discuss the various theories of idiom access and processing, (2). discuss how lexical access relates to idiom knowledge in school-aged children, and (3). consider the association between lexical access and familiarity relative to idiom comprehension in school-aged children.

What Is Applied Linguistics?

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James, Carl

1993-01-01

Ostensive and expository definitions of applied linguistics are assessed. It is suggested that the key to a meaningful definition lies in the dual articulation of applied linguistics: it is an interface between linguistics and practicality. Its role as an "expert system" is suggested. (45 references) (Author/LB)

Identification and Definition of Lexically Ambiguous Words in Statistics by Tutors and Students

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Richardson, Alice M.; Dunn, Peter K.; Hutchins, Rene

2013-01-01

Lexical ambiguity arises when a word from everyday English is used differently in a particular discipline, such as statistics. This paper reports on a project that begins by identifying tutors' perceptions of words that are potentially lexically ambiguous to students, in two different ways. Students' definitions of nine lexically ambiguous words…

Crossing Borders: The Linguistic Practices of Aspiring Bilinguals in the Malay Community

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Rajadurai, Joanne

2011-01-01

This paper reports on a study of Malay learners of English in Malaysia as they attempt to extend their use of English outside the classroom and thus participate in new linguistic practices. Using a multiple case study approach, the study examines the narrative accounts of learners generated through student journals and focus group discussions.…

[Cross-cultural validated adaptation of dysfunctional voiding symptom score (DVSS) to Japanese language and cognitive linguistics in questionnaire for pediatric patients].

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Imamura, Masaaki; Usui, Tomoko; Johnin, Kazuyoshi; Yoshimura, Koji; Farhat, Walid; Kanematsu, Akihiro; Ogawa, Osamu

2014-07-01

Validated questionnaire for evaluation of pediatric lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) is of a great need. We performed cross-cultural validated adaptation of Dysfunctional Voiding Symptom Score (DVSS) to Japanese language, and assessed whether children understand and respond to questionnaire correctly, using cognitive linguistic approach. We translated DVSS into two Japanese versions according to a standard validation methodology: translation, synthesis, back-translation, expert review, and pre-testing. One version was written in adult language for parents, and the other was written in child language for children. Pre-testing was done with 5 to 15-year-old patients visiting us, having normal intelligence. A specialist in cognitive linguistics observed the response by children and parents to DVSS as an interviewer. When a child could not understand a question without adding or paraphrasing the question by the parents, it was defined as 'misidentification'. We performed pretesting with 2 trial versions of DVSS before having the final version. The pre-testing for the first trial version was done for 32 patients (male to female ratio was 19 : 13). The pre-testing for the second trial version was done for 11 patients (male to female ratio was 8 : 3). In DVSS in child language, misidentification was consistently observed for representation of time or frequency. We completed the formal validated translation by amending the problems raised in the pre-testing. The cross-cultural validated adaptation of DVSS to child and adult Japanese was completed. Since temporal perception is not fully developed in children, caution should be taken for using the terms related with time or frequency in the questionnaires for children.

Main industries generating NORM; Principais industrias geradoras de NORM

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lauria, Dejanira da Costa; Mazzilli, Barbara Paci; Feliciano, Vanusa Maria Delage; Borges, Flavia Luiza Soares; Cruz, Paulo Roberto; Matta, Luiz Ernesto Santos de Carvalho

2016-07-01

This chapter 5 the industrial activities related to NORM question is presented. Besides, some industries that in Brazil have higher probability of occurrence de NORM are covered. Economic activities related to mining and its processing are listed.

Lexical effects on speech production and intelligibility in Parkinson's disease

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Chiu, Yi-Fang

Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) often have speech deficits that lead to reduced speech intelligibility. Previous research provides a rich database regarding the articulatory deficits associated with PD including restricted vowel space (Skodda, Visser, & Schlegel, 2011) and flatter formant transitions (Tjaden & Wilding, 2004; Walsh & Smith, 2012). However, few studies consider the effect of higher level structural variables of word usage frequency and the number of similar sounding words (i.e. neighborhood density) on lower level articulation or on listeners' perception of dysarthric speech. The purpose of the study is to examine the interaction of lexical properties and speech articulation as measured acoustically in speakers with PD and healthy controls (HC) and the effect of lexical properties on the perception of their speech. Individuals diagnosed with PD and age-matched healthy controls read sentences with words that varied in word frequency and neighborhood density. Acoustic analysis was performed to compare second formant transitions in diphthongs, an indicator of the dynamics of tongue movement during speech production, across different lexical characteristics. Young listeners transcribed the spoken sentences and the transcription accuracy was compared across lexical conditions. The acoustic results indicate that both PD and HC speakers adjusted their articulation based on lexical properties but the PD group had significant reductions in second formant transitions compared to HC. Both groups of speakers increased second formant transitions for words with low frequency and low density, but the lexical effect is diphthong dependent. The change in second formant slope was limited in the PD group when the required formant movement for the diphthong is small. The data from listeners' perception of the speech by PD and HC show that listeners identified high frequency words with greater accuracy suggesting the use of lexical knowledge during the

The Study of Critical Eco-Linguistic in Green Discourse: Prospective Eco-Linguistic Analysis

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Tommi Yuniawan

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Eco-linguistic studies are influenced by one of the other interdisciplinary sciences, namely critical discourse analysis. The combination of these two sciences is called critical eco-linguistic studies. Critical eco-linguistic examines the discourse about the environment and various forms of discourse and their ideology which concerns people and the environment. The environmental discourse with all its manifestations (oral text, written text is called green discourse. To that end, critical eco-linguistic dictates the linguistic aspects contained in the green discourse. Utilization of lingual units in green discourse will affect the sense and logic of people involved in the discourse, ie the writers and readers or the speakers and the speakers. What is recorded in their cognition, will affect their attitudes and actions to the environment. If green discourse is constructive, then their attitude and actions to the environment are constructive. Conversely, if green discourse is more destructive and exploitative, then their attitudes and actions towards the environment will also be affected towards destruction and exploitation. For this reason, critical eco-linguistic studies in green discourse deserve to be given space as a form of prospective eco-linguistic analysis.

Reliance on God, prayer, and religion reduces influence of perceived norms on drinking.

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Neighbors, Clayton; Brown, Garrett A; Dibello, Angelo M; Rodriguez, Lindsey M; Foster, Dawn W

2013-05-01

Previous research has shown that perceived social norms are among the strongest predictors of drinking among young adults. Research has also consistently found religiousness to be protective against risk and negative health behaviors. The present research evaluates the extent to which reliance on God, prayer, and religion moderates the association between perceived social norms and drinking. Participants (n = 1,124 undergraduate students) completed a cross-sectional survey online, which included measures of perceived norms, religious values, and drinking. Perceived norms were assessed by asking participants their perceptions of typical student drinking. Drinking outcomes included drinks per week, drinking frequency, and typical quantity consumed. Regression analyses indicated that religiousness and perceived norms had significant unique associations in opposite directions for all three drinking outcomes. Significant interactions were evident between religiousness and perceived norms in predicting drinks per week, frequency, and typical quantity. In each case, the interactions indicated weaker associations between norms and drinking among those who assigned greater importance to religiousness. The extent of the relationship between perceived social norms and drinking was buffered by the degree to which students identified with religiousness. A growing body of literature has shown interventions including personalized feedback regarding social norms to be an effective strategy in reducing drinking among college students. The present research suggests that incorporating religious or spiritual values into student interventions may be a promising direction to pursue.

Effects of cigarette smoking on lexical decision-making.

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Hale, C R; Gentry, M V; Meliska, C J

1999-02-01

10 habitual smokers, aged 19-25 yr., were randomly assigned to smoke either a very low nicotine "Placebo" cigarette (.05-mg nicotine delivery as estimated by the FTC method) or a Nicotine cigarette (.7-mg estimated nicotine delivery). Each participant was asked to abstain from smoking for 4 to 7 hr. prior to testing. After completing a presmoking test of lexical decision-making, participants smoked either a Nicotine or Placebo cigarette and were then retested for reaction times and accuracy on the lexical decision test. When presented the most difficult lexical decisions, participants responded significantly faster after smoking a Nicotine cigarette than they did before smoking; smoking a Placebo cigarette did not affect reaction times. Response accuracy was unaffected by smoking either kind of cigarette. These results suggest that smoking a nicotine cigarette may improve attention or memory retrieval after several hours of smoking abstinence.

The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics.

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List, Johann-Mattis; Greenhill, Simon J; Gray, Russell D

2017-01-01

The amount of data from languages spoken all over the world is rapidly increasing. Traditional manual methods in historical linguistics need to face the challenges brought by this influx of data. Automatic approaches to word comparison could provide invaluable help to pre-analyze data which can be later enhanced by experts. In this way, computational approaches can take care of the repetitive and schematic tasks leaving experts to concentrate on answering interesting questions. Here we test the potential of automatic methods to detect etymologically related words (cognates) in cross-linguistic data. Using a newly compiled database of expert cognate judgments across five different language families, we compare how well different automatic approaches distinguish related from unrelated words. Our results show that automatic methods can identify cognates with a very high degree of accuracy, reaching 89% for the best-performing method Infomap. We identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of these different methods and point to major challenges for future approaches. Current automatic approaches for cognate detection-although not perfect-could become an important component of future research in historical linguistics.

The Emar Lexical Texts

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gantzert, Merijn

2011-01-01

This four-part work provides a philological analysis and a theoretical interpretation of the cuneiform lexical texts found in the Late Bronze Age city of Emar, in present-day Syria. These word and sign lists, commonly dated to around 1100 BC, were almost all found in the archive of a single school.

Attitudes and Descriptive Norms of Alcohol-Related Problems as Predictors of Alcohol Use among College Students

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Sheppard, Meg E.; Usdan, Stuart L.; Higginbotham, John C.; Cremeens-Matthews, Jennifer L.

2016-01-01

Background: The purpose of this study is to identify predictors of alcohol use based on personal values and several constructs from the Integrated Behavioral Model (i.e., attitudes, injunctive norms and descriptive norms) among undergraduate college students. Methods: A cross sectional study design was used with a convenience sample of college…

Who Do You Love, Your Mother or Your Horse? An Event-Related Brain Potential Analysis of Tone Processing in Mandarin Chinese

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Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta

2004-01-01

In Mandarin Chinese, word meaning is partially determined by lexical tone (Wang, 1973). Previous studies suggest that lexical tone is processed as linguistic information and not as pure tonal information (Gandour, 1998; Van Lanker & Fromkin, 1973). The current study explored the online processing of lexical tones. Event-related potentials were…

Adaptation and perceptual norms

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Webster, Michael A.; Yasuda, Maiko; Haber, Sara; Leonard, Deanne; Ballardini, Nicole

2007-02-01

We used adaptation to examine the relationship between perceptual norms--the stimuli observers describe as psychologically neutral, and response norms--the stimulus levels that leave visual sensitivity in a neutral or balanced state. Adapting to stimuli on opposite sides of a neutral point (e.g. redder or greener than white) biases appearance in opposite ways. Thus the adapting stimulus can be titrated to find the unique adapting level that does not bias appearance. We compared these response norms to subjectively defined neutral points both within the same observer (at different retinal eccentricities) and between observers. These comparisons were made for visual judgments of color, image focus, and human faces, stimuli that are very different and may depend on very different levels of processing, yet which share the property that for each there is a well defined and perceptually salient norm. In each case the adaptation aftereffects were consistent with an underlying sensitivity basis for the perceptual norm. Specifically, response norms were similar to and thus covaried with the perceptual norm, and under common adaptation differences between subjectively defined norms were reduced. These results are consistent with models of norm-based codes and suggest that these codes underlie an important link between visual coding and visual experience.

Linguistic and Psycho-Linguistic Principles of Linguadidactics (theoretical interpretation

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Liudmila Mauzienė

2011-04-01

Full Text Available This article considers linguadidactics being closely related to linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics and didactics and applies their theoretical statements and regularities in its scientific studies. Methodology refers to linguistics which investigates the language as a teaching subject. Methodology is linked to psychology in two ways. First of all, it is based on psychology as the teaching process is an intellectual psychical act and its regularities are necessary to know. On the other hand, methodology applies rules of pedagogy that predicts ways of learning and development of language skills. The article emphasizes that sustainable work experience and analysis of scientific research show that teaching process is more effective if consistent patterns of linguistics and psychology are appropriately applied.

A Systematic Review of Cross-Linguistic and Multilingual Speech and Language Outcomes for Children with Hearing Loss

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Crowe, Kathryn; McLeod, Sharynne

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors affecting the language, speech intelligibility, speech production, and lexical tone development of children with hearing loss who use spoken languages other than English. Relevant studies of children with hearing loss published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed with reference to…

Lexical access changes in patients with multiple sclerosis: a two-year follow-up study.

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Sepulcre, Jorge; Peraita, Herminia; Goni, Joaquin; Arrondo, Gonzalo; Martincorena, Inigo; Duque, Beatriz; Velez de Mendizabal, Nieves; Masdeu, Joseph C; Villoslada, Pablo

2011-02-01

The aim of the study was to analyze lexical access strategies in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and their changes over time. We studied lexical access strategies during semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tests and also confrontation naming in a 2-year prospective cohort of 45 MS patients and 20 healthy controls. At baseline, switching lexical access strategy (both in semantic and in phonemic verbal fluency tests) and confrontation naming were significantly impaired in MS patients compared with controls. After 2 years follow-up, switching score decreased, and cluster size increased over time in semantic verbal fluency tasks, suggesting a failure in the retrieval of lexical information rather than an impairment of the lexical pool. In conclusion, these findings underline the significant presence of lexical access problems in patients with MS and could point out their key role in the alterations of high-level communications abilities in MS.

Measuring Lexical Diversity in Narrative Discourse of People with Aphasia

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Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Wright, Heather H.; West, Thomas M.

2013-01-01

Purpose: A microlinguistic content analysis for assessing lexical semantics in people with aphasia (PWA) is lexical diversity (LD). Sophisticated techniques have been developed to measure LD. However, validity evidence for these methodologies when applied to the discourse of PWA is lacking. The purpose of this study was to evaluate four measures…

THE RECOGNITION OF SPOKEN MONO-MORPHEMIC COMPOUNDS IN CHINESE

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Yu-da Lai

2012-12-01

Full Text Available This paper explores the auditory lexical access of mono-morphemic compounds in Chinese as a way of understanding the role of orthography in the recognition of spoken words. In traditional Chinese linguistics, a compound is a word written with two or more characters whether or not they are morphemic. A monomorphemic compound may either be a binding word, written with characters that only appear in this one word, or a non-binding word, written with characters that are chosen for their pronunciation but that also appear in other words. Our goal was to determine if this purely orthographic difference affects auditory lexical access by conducting a series of four experiments with materials matched by whole-word frequency, syllable frequency, cross-syllable predictability, cohort size, and acoustic duration, but differing in binding. An auditory lexical decision task (LDT found an orthographic effect: binding words were recognized more quickly than non-binding words. However, this effect disappeared in an auditory repetition and in a visual LDT with the same materials, implying that the orthographic effect during auditory lexical access was localized to the decision component and involved the influence of cross-character predictability without the activation of orthographic representations. This claim was further confirmed by overall faster recognition of spoken binding words in a cross-modal LDT with different types of visual interference. The theoretical and practical consequences of these findings are discussed.

Lexical Competition Effects in Aphasia: Deactivation of Lexical Candidates in Spoken Word Processing

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Janse, Esther

2006-01-01

Research has shown that Broca's and Wernicke's aphasic patients show different impairments in auditory lexical processing. The results of an experiment with form-overlapping primes showed an inhibitory effect of form-overlap for control adults and a weak inhibition trend for Broca's aphasic patients, but a facilitatory effect of form-overlap was…

Ještě ke slovu ještě

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Nejedlý, Petr

2016-01-01

Roč. 8, č. 3 (2016), s. 38-48 ISSN 1803-876X. [Jazykovědný strukturalismus na počátku 21. století. Olomouc, 24.04.2014-24.04.2014] R&D Projects: GA ČR GAP406/10/1153 Institutional support: RVO:68378092 Keywords : Miroslav Komárek * lexical unit ještě (= still, yet) * grammatical analysis * lexicological analysis * lexical meaning Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics OBOR OECD: Linguistics

Evidence for a differential interference of noise in sub-lexical and lexical reading routes in healthy participants and dyslexics.

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Pina Rodrigues, Ana; Rebola, José; Jorge, Helena; Ribeiro, Maria José; Pereira, Marcelino; Castelo-Branco, Miguel; van Asselen, Marieke

The ineffective exclusion of surrounding noise has been proposed to underlie the reading deficits in developmental dyslexia. However, previous studies supporting this hypothesis focused on low-level visual tasks, providing only an indirect link of noise interference on reading processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of noise on regular, irregular, and pseudoword reading in 23 dyslexic children and 26 age- and IQ-matched controls, by applying the white noise displays typically used to validate this theory to a lexical decision task. Reading performance and eye movements were measured. Results showed that white noise did not consistently affect dyslexic readers more than typical readers. Noise affected more dyslexic than typical readers in terms of reading accuracy, but it affected more typical than dyslexic readers in terms of response time and eye movements (number of fixations and regressions). Furthermore, in typical readers, noise affected more the speed of reading of pseudowords than real words. These results suggest a particular impact of noise on the sub-lexical reading route where attention has to be deployed to individual letters. The use of a lexical route would reduce the effect of noise. A differential impact of noise between words and pseudowords may therefore not be evident in dyslexic children if they are not yet proficient in using the lexical route. These findings indicate that the type of reading stimuli and consequent reading strategies play an important role in determining the effects of noise interference in reading processing and should be taken into account by further studies.

Lexical bundles in an advanced INTOCSU writing class and engineering texts: A functional analysis

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Alquraishi, Mohammed Abdulrahman

The purpose of this study is to investigate the functions of lexical bundles in two corpora: a corpus of engineering academic texts and a corpus of IEP advanced writing class texts. This study is concerned with the nature of formulaic language in Pathway IEPs and engineering texts, and whether those types of texts show similar or distinctive formulaic functions. Moreover, the study looked into lexical bundles found in an engineering 1.26 million-word corpus and an ESL 65000-word corpus using a concordancing program. The study then analyzed the functions of those lexical bundles and compared them statistically using chi-square tests. Additionally, the results of this investigation showed 236 unique frequent lexical bundles in the engineering corpus and 37 bundles in the pathway corpus. Also, the study identified several differences between the density and functions of lexical bundles in the two corpora. These differences were evident in the distribution of functions of lexical bundles and the minimal overlap of lexical bundles found in the two corpora. The results of this study call for more attention to formulaic language at ESP and EAP programs.

Lexical Orthographic Knowledge Develops from the Beginning of Literacy Acquisition

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Martinet, Catherine; Valdois, Sylviane; Fayol, Michel

2004-01-01

This study reports two experiments assessing the spelling performance of French first graders after 3 months and after 9 months of literacy instruction. The participants were asked to spell high and low frequency irregular words (Experiment 1) and pseudowords, some of which had lexical neighbours (Experiment 2). The lexical database which children…

Genre-dependent interaction of coherence and lexical cohesion in written discourse

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Berzlánovich, I.; Redeker, G.

2012-01-01

We investigate the interaction between coherence and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts using seven encyclopedia texts and seven fundraising letters. We describe genre structure in terms of genre-specific moves and coherence structure with Rhetorical Structure Theory. For lexical

HALF A CENTURY OF GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS – WHAT HAS THE PARADIGM GIVEN TO SOCIAL SCIENCE?

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Mihailo Antović

2007-12-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to join marking the fiftieth anniversary of generativelinguistics by focusing on some principal contributions the field has given to science in general. In the first part of the paper, I discuss the issue of 'modern linguistics', as it is widely taught in local universities, and examine the importance of the generative school in this notion of modernity. In the second part, I analyze the fundamental conceptions and epistemological framework of this school in the study of language, pinpointing fifteen legacies it seems to have already left to human thought, as follows: breakup withbehaviourism; reinstitution of the hypothetico-deductive method; elaboration of the mind-body issue; revival of the thesis that the only true reality is that of the human mind; reintroduction and extension of the term 'cognitive'; participation in rapidterminological changes in the social sciences; return to the problem of language universals with a strong focus on the genetic origins of language faculty; extended usage of the term 'grammar'; contribution to the deletion of clear boundaries between the natural and social sciences, especially in psychology; rise of reductionism in formalsciences; return to the once forgotten Gestalt principles of perception; radical breakup between lexical and sentence semantics; neo-Darwinism; rise of neuroscience; impetus to the foundation of new fields, often multidisciplinary ones. Reconciliation of cognitiveand generative linguistics in the future is anticipated.

No Perceptual Reorganization for Limburgian Tones? A Cross-Linguistic Investigation with 6- to 12-Month-Old Infants

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Ramachers, Stefanie; Brouwer, Susanne; Fikkert, Paula

2018-01-01

Despite the fact that many of the world's languages use lexical tone, the majority of language acquisition studies has focused on non-tone languages. Research on tone languages has typically investigated wellknown tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. The current study looked at a Limburgian dialect of Dutch that uses lexical…

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF COMPOSING A REFERENCE BOOK OF REGIONAL TOPONYMS

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Ilyin Dmitriy Yuryevich

2014-09-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the linguistic issues of composing a reference book of regional toponyms – a genre that requires special consideration in national lexicography. The assortment of these issues gave the possibility to carry out complex description of regional toponyms on the basis of semantic, functional, and orpthologuos criteria that let unify the names of Volgograd region settlements that are registered in various documents. The significance of the composed reference book is determined by several factors – the presence of local subsystems of geographical names in Russian toponymy; the inconsistency of current orthography norms on using capital letter in compound proprius names and fused-with-hyphen spelling of toponyms and off-toponym derivations; the lack of linguistically justified explanation of peculiarities of grammatical norms in the field of proper names use. The reference book of regional toponyms is based on the object description (toponymic vocabulary, principles of lexical units selection (description of spelling and grammatical properties of toponyms, encyclopedic information, the glossary (full list of toponyms of Volgograd region, typical article. The articles in the reference book are arranged in lexicographical zones with grammatical and semantic markers, lexicographical illustrations, other lexicographical labels, word etymology including. The reference book on Volgograd region toponymy is addressed to executive and administration authorities, journalists, regional ethnographers.

Norms as Group-Level Constructs: Investigating School-Level Teen Pregnancy Norms and Behaviors.

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Mollborn, Stefanie; Domingue, Benjamin W; Boardman, Jason D

2014-09-01

Social norms are a group-level phenomenon, but past quantitative research has rarely measured them in the aggregate or considered their group-level properties. We used the school-based design of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to measure normative climates regarding teen pregnancy across 75 U.S. high schools. We distinguished between the strength of a school's norm against teen pregnancy and the consensus around that norm. School-level norm strength and dissensus were strongly (r = -0.65) and moderately (r = 0.34) associated with pregnancy prevalence within schools, respectively. Normative climate partially accounted for observed racial differences in school pregnancy prevalence, but norms were a stronger predictor than racial composition. As hypothesized, schools with both a stronger average norm against teen pregnancy and greater consensus around the norm had the lowest pregnancy prevalence. Results highlight the importance of group-level normative processes and of considering the local school environment when designing policies to reduce teen pregnancy.

Descriptive peer norms, self-control and dietary behaviour in young adults

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Robinson, E.; Otten, R.; Hermans, R.C.J.

2016-01-01

There is evidence that perceived peer eating norms can influence dietary behaviour. This cross-sectional study examined whether certain personality traits increase the likelihood that personal eating habits are similar to perceived peer eating habits. We assessed frequency of consumption of

Online Lexical Competition during Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

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Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Brown, Helen; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-01-01

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7-8 years and tested variables that influence "online" lexical activity in adults. Children…

Predicting the Proficiency Level of Language Learners Using Lexical Indices

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.

2012-01-01

This study explores how second language (L2) texts written by learners at various proficiency levels can be classified using computational indices that characterize lexical competence. For this study, 100 writing samples taken from 100 L2 learners were analyzed using lexical indices reported by the computational tool Coh-Metrix. The L2 writing…

Norms for environmentally responsible behaviour

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thøgersen, John