7 CFR 205.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 205.1 Section 205.1 Agriculture... PROVISIONS NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM Definitions § 205.1 Meaning of words. For the purpose of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be deemed to impart the plural and vice versa, as...

7 CFR 75.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 75.1 Section 75.1 Agriculture... AND CERTIFICATION OF QUALITY OF AGRICULTURAL AND VEGETABLE SEEDS Definitions § 75.1 Meaning of words. Words used in the regulations in this part in the singular form shall be deemed to import the plural and...

7 CFR 48.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 48.1 Section 48.1 Agriculture... SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE FOR THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE PRODUCE AGENCY ACT Definitions § 48.1 Meaning of words. Words in this part in the singular form shall be deemed to import the plural, and vice versa, as the...

7 CFR 58.405 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.405 Section 58.405 Agriculture... for Plants Manufacturing and Packaging Cheese § 58.405 Meaning of words. For the purpose of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be deemed to impart the plural and vice versa as...

9 CFR 592.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 9 Animals and Animal Products 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 592.1 Section 592.1... INSPECTION VOLUNTARY INSPECTION OF EGG PRODUCTS Definitions § 592.1 Meaning of words. Under the regulations in this part words in the singular shall be deemed to import the plural and vice versa, as the case...

7 CFR 58.205 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.205 Section 58.205 Agriculture... Whole Milk, and Dry Buttermilk § 58.205 Meaning of words. For the purpose of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be deemed to impart the plural and vice versa, as the case may...

7 CFR 54.1001 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 54.1001 Section 54.1001 Agriculture... and Poultry Products § 54.1001 Meaning of words. For the purposes of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be deemed to impart the plural and vice versa, as the case may demand. ...

7 CFR 1.410 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 1.410 Section 1.410 Agriculture... Conservation and Shortage Relief Act of 1990 (16 U.S.C. 620 et seq.) § 1.410 Meaning of words. As used in these procedures, words in the singular form shall be deemed to import the plural, and vice versa, as the...

Filaments of Meaning in Word Space

OpenAIRE

Karlgren, Jussi; Holst, Anders; Sahlgren, Magnus

2008-01-01

Word space models, in the sense of vector space models built on distributional data taken from texts, are used to model semantic relations between words. We argue that the high dimensionality of typical vector space models lead to unintuitive effects on modeling likeness of meaning and that the local structure of word spaces is where interesting semantic relations reside. We show that the local structure of word spaces has substantially different dimensionality and character than the global s...

7 CFR 58.705 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.705 Section 58.705 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards... § 58.705 Meaning of words. (a) Pasteurized process cheese and related products. Pasteurized process...

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Cai, Zhenguang G; Gilbert, Rebecca A; Davis, Matthew H; Gaskell, M Gareth; Farrar, Lauren; Adler, Sarah; Rodd, Jennifer M

2017-11-01

Speech carries accent information relevant to determining the speaker's linguistic and social background. A series of web-based experiments demonstrate that accent cues can modulate access to word meaning. In Experiments 1-3, British participants were more likely to retrieve the American dominant meaning (e.g., hat meaning of "bonnet") in a word association task if they heard the words in an American than a British accent. In addition, results from a speeded semantic decision task (Experiment 4) and sentence comprehension task (Experiment 5) confirm that accent modulates on-line meaning retrieval such that comprehension of ambiguous words is easier when the relevant word meaning is dominant in the speaker's dialect. Critically, neutral-accent speech items, created by morphing British- and American-accented recordings, were interpreted in a similar way to accented words when embedded in a context of accented words (Experiment 2). This finding indicates that listeners do not use accent to guide meaning retrieval on a word-by-word basis; instead they use accent information to determine the dialectic identity of a speaker and then use their experience of that dialect to guide meaning access for all words spoken by that person. These results motivate a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition in which comprehenders determine key characteristics of their interlocutor and use this knowledge to guide word meaning access. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

7 CFR 58.805 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.805 Section 58.805 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards... of words. For the purpose of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be...

7 CFR 58.305 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.305 Section 58.305 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards... words. For the purpose of the regulations in this subpart, words in the singular form shall be deemed to...

7 CFR 58.101 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 58.101 Section 58.101 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards... of words. For the purpose of the regulations of this subpart, words in the singular form shall be...

7 CFR 28.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 28.1 Section 28.1 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... of words. Words used in this part in the singular form shall be deemed to import the plural, and vice...

THE LEXICOGRAFIC PRINCIPLES OF WORD MEANINGS IN THE MULTILINGUAL SYNONYMIC DICTIONARIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Siddikova, I.A.

2018-03-01

Full Text Available This article is dedicated to study of principles of description of the meaning of words in the multilingual synonymic dictionaries. The dictionary of synonyms must have full enough and absolutely explicit description of their semantic similarity and distinctions. The description can be full if it includes all existing features of the words, adequately denote every meaning and help the language learners and speakers in choosing possible meanings of synonyms owing to situation. The synonymic dictionary must include all synonyms, their meanings, lexico-semantic combination, distribution, grammatical constructions and stylistic features showing their usage in certain contexts and situations. In some cases according to their contextual meanings synonyms may be substituted depending on situation. The article is based on examples of English, Uzbek and Russian languages.

Learning new meanings for known words: Biphasic effects of prior knowledge

Science.gov (United States)

Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles; Stafura, Joseph

2017-01-01

In acquiring word meanings, learners are often confronted by a single word form that is mapped to two or more meanings. For example, long after how to roller-“skate”, one may learn that “skate” is also a kind of fish. Such learning of new meanings for familiar words involves two potentially contrasting processes, relative to new form-new meaning learning: 1) Form-based familiarity may facilitate learning a new meaning, and 2) meaning-based interference may inhibit learning a new meaning. We examined these two processes by having native English speakers learn new, unrelated meanings for familiar (high frequency) and less familiar (low frequency) English words, as well as for unfamiliar (novel or pseudo-) words. Tracking learning with cued-recall tasks at several points during learning revealed a biphasic pattern: higher learning rates and greater learning efficiency for familiar words relative to novel words early in learning and a reversal of this pattern later in learning. Following learning, interference from original meanings for familiar words was detected in a semantic relatedness judgment task. Additionally, lexical access to familiar words with new meanings became faster compared to their exposure controls, but no such effect occurred for less familiar words. Overall, the results suggest a biphasic pattern of facilitating and interfering processes: Familiar word forms facilitate learning earlier, while interference from original meanings becomes more influential later. This biphasic pattern reflects the co-activation of new and old meanings during learning, a process that may play a role in lexicalization of new meanings. PMID:29399593

Semantic Ambiguity: Do Multiple Meanings Inhibit or Facilitate Word Recognition?

Science.gov (United States)

Haro, Juan; Ferré, Pilar

2018-06-01

It is not clear whether multiple unrelated meanings inhibit or facilitate word recognition. Some studies have found a disadvantage for words having multiple meanings with respect to unambiguous words in lexical decision tasks (LDT), whereas several others have shown a facilitation for such words. In the present study, we argue that these inconsistent findings may be due to the approach employed to select ambiguous words across studies. To address this issue, we conducted three LDT experiments in which we varied the measure used to classify ambiguous and unambiguous words. The results suggest that multiple unrelated meanings facilitate word recognition. In addition, we observed that the approach employed to select ambiguous words may affect the pattern of experimental results. This evidence has relevant implications for theoretical accounts of ambiguous words processing and representation.

9 CFR 202.101 - Rule 1: Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 9 Animals and Animal Products 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Rule 1: Meaning of words. 202.101 Section 202.101 Animals and Animal Products GRAIN INSPECTION, PACKERS AND STOCKYARDS ADMINISTRATION...: Meaning of words. In these rules, words in the singular form shall be deemed to import the plural, and...

Patterns and Meanings of English Words through Word Formation Processes of Acronyms, Clipping, Compound and Blending Found in Internet-Based Media

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rio Rini Diah Moehkardi

2017-02-01

Full Text Available This research aims to explore the word-formation process in English new words found in the internet-based media through acronym, compound,  clipping and blending and their meanings. This study applies Plag’s (2002 framework of acronym and compound; Jamet’s (2009 framework of clipping, and Algeo’s framework (1977 in Hosseinzadeh  (2014 for blending. Despite the  formula established in each respective framework,  there could be occurrences  of novelty and modification on how words are formed and  how meaning developed in  the newly formed words. The research shows that well accepted acronyms can become real words by taking lower case and affixation. Some acronyms initialized non-lexical words, used non initial letters, and used letters and numbers that pronounced the same with the words they represent. Compounding also includes numbers as the element member of the compound. The nominal nouns are likely to have metaphorical and idiomatic meanings. Some compounds evolve to new and more specific meaning. The study also finds that back-clipping is the most dominant clipping. In blending, the sub-category clipping of blending, the study finds out that when clipping takes place, the non-head element is back-clipped and the head is fore-clipped.

Modulation of motor-meaning congruity effects for valenced words

OpenAIRE

Brookshire, Geoffrey; Ivry, Richard; Casasanto, Daniel

2010-01-01

We investigated the extent to which emotionally valenced words automatically cue spatio-motor representations. Participants made speeded button presses, moving their hand upward or downward while viewing words with positive or negative valence. Only the color of the words was relevant to the response; on target trials, there was no requirement to read the words or process their meaning. In Experiment 1, upward responses were faster for positive words, and downward for negative words. This eff...

Affective Congruence between Sound and Meaning of Words Facilitates Semantic Decision.

Science.gov (United States)

Aryani, Arash; Jacobs, Arthur M

2018-05-31

A similarity between the form and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) may help language users to more readily access its meaning through direct form-meaning mapping. Previous work has supported this view by providing empirical evidence for this facilitatory effect in sign language, as well as for onomatopoetic words (e.g., cuckoo) and ideophones (e.g., zigzag). Thus, it remains largely unknown whether the beneficial role of iconicity in making semantic decisions can be considered a general feature in spoken language applying also to "ordinary" words in the lexicon. By capitalizing on the affective domain, and in particular arousal, we organized words in two distinctive groups of iconic vs. non-iconic based on the congruence vs. incongruence of their lexical (meaning) and sublexical (sound) arousal. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we asked participants to evaluate the arousal of printed words that were lexically either high or low arousing. In line with our hypothesis, iconic words were evaluated more quickly and more accurately than their non-iconic counterparts. These results indicate a processing advantage for iconic words, suggesting that language users are sensitive to sound-meaning mappings even when words are presented visually and read silently.

Teaching the Meaning of Words to Children with Visual Impairments

Science.gov (United States)

Vervloed, Mathijs P. J.; Loijens, Nancy E. A.; Waller, Sarah E.

2014-01-01

In the report presented here, the authors describe a pilot intervention study that was intended to teach children with visual impairments the meaning of far-away words, and that used their mothers as mediators. The aim was to teach both labels and deep word knowledge, which is the comprehension of the full meaning of words, illustrated through…

Learning new meanings for known words: Biphasic effects of prior knowledge

OpenAIRE

Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles; Stafura, Joseph

2016-01-01

In acquiring word meanings, learners are often confronted by a single word form that is mapped to two or more meanings. For example, long after how to roller-“skate”, one may learn that “skate” is also a kind of fish. Such learning of new meanings for familiar words involves two potentially contrasting processes, relative to new form-new meaning learning: 1) Form-based familiarity may facilitate learning a new meaning, and 2) meaning-based interference may inhibit learning a new meaning. We e...

Mapping Concrete and Abstract Meanings to New Words Using Verbal Contexts

Science.gov (United States)

Mestres-Missé, Anna; Münte, Thomas F.; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni

2014-01-01

In three experiments, we examine the effects of semantic context and word concreteness on the mapping of existing meanings to new words. We developed a new-word-learning paradigm in which participants were required to discover the meaning of a new-word form from a specific verbal context. The stimulus materials were manipulated according to word…

Multiple dimensions of relatedness among words: Conjoint effects of form and meaning in word recognition★

OpenAIRE

Pastizzo, Matthew John; Feldman, Laurie Beth

2009-01-01

Words can be similar with respect to form (viz., spelling, pronunciation), meaning, or both form and meaning. In three lexical decision experiments (48 ms forward masked, 116 ms, and 250 ms SOAs), targets (e.g., FLOAT) followed prime words related by form only (e.g., COAT), meaning only (e.g., SWIM), or form and meaning (e.g., BOAT). BOAT–FLOAT and SWIM–FLOAT type pairs showed reduced target decision latencies relative to unrelated controls when primes were unmasked, but not when they were ma...

7 CFR 58.605 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... for Plants Manufacturing, Processing and Packaging Frozen Desserts § 58.605 Meaning of words. For the... shall have the following meaning as applied to frozen desserts meeting FDA requirements and briefly... after freezing become a frozen dessert. [40 FR 47911, Oct. 10, 1975. Redesignated at 42 FR 32514, June...

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning.

Science.gov (United States)

Nygaard, Lynne C; Herold, Debora S; Namy, Laura L

2009-01-01

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

A joint model of word segmentation and meaning acquisition through cross-situational learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Räsänen, Okko; Rasilo, Heikki

2015-10-01

Human infants learn meanings for spoken words in complex interactions with other people, but the exact learning mechanisms are unknown. Among researchers, a widely studied learning mechanism is called cross-situational learning (XSL). In XSL, word meanings are learned when learners accumulate statistical information between spoken words and co-occurring objects or events, allowing the learner to overcome referential uncertainty after having sufficient experience with individually ambiguous scenarios. Existing models in this area have mainly assumed that the learner is capable of segmenting words from speech before grounding them to their referential meaning, while segmentation itself has been treated relatively independently of the meaning acquisition. In this article, we argue that XSL is not just a mechanism for word-to-meaning mapping, but that it provides strong cues for proto-lexical word segmentation. If a learner directly solves the correspondence problem between continuous speech input and the contextual referents being talked about, segmentation of the input into word-like units emerges as a by-product of the learning. We present a theoretical model for joint acquisition of proto-lexical segments and their meanings without assuming a priori knowledge of the language. We also investigate the behavior of the model using a computational implementation, making use of transition probability-based statistical learning. Results from simulations show that the model is not only capable of replicating behavioral data on word learning in artificial languages, but also shows effective learning of word segments and their meanings from continuous speech. Moreover, when augmented with a simple familiarity preference during learning, the model shows a good fit to human behavioral data in XSL tasks. These results support the idea of simultaneous segmentation and meaning acquisition and show that comprehensive models of early word segmentation should take referential word

The QWERTY effect: how typing shapes the meanings of words.

Science.gov (United States)

Jasmin, Kyle; Casasanto, Daniel

2012-06-01

The QWERTY keyboard mediates communication for millions of language users. Here, we investigated whether differences in the way words are typed correspond to differences in their meanings. Some words are spelled with more letters on the right side of the keyboard and others with more letters on the left. In three experiments, we tested whether asymmetries in the way people interact with keys on the right and left of the keyboard influence their evaluations of the emotional valence of the words. We found the predicted relationship between emotional valence and QWERTY key position across three languages (English, Spanish, and Dutch). Words with more right-side letters were rated as more positive in valence, on average, than words with more left-side letters: the QWERTY effect. This effect was strongest in new words coined after QWERTY was invented and was also found in pseudowords. Although these data are correlational, the discovery of a similar pattern across languages, which was strongest in neologisms, suggests that the QWERTY keyboard is shaping the meanings of words as people filter language through their fingers. Widespread typing introduces a new mechanism by which semantic changes in language can arise.

40 CFR 35.4015 - Do certain words in this subpart have specific meaning?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Do certain words in this subpart have....4015 Do certain words in this subpart have specific meaning? Yes, some words in this subpart have specific meanings that are described in§ 35.4270, Definitions. The first time these words are used they are...

Test-based age-of-acquisition norms for 44 thousand English word meanings.

Science.gov (United States)

Brysbaert, Marc; Biemiller, Andrew

2017-08-01

Age of acquisition (AoA) is an important variable in word recognition research. Up to now, nearly all psychology researchers examining the AoA effect have used ratings obtained from adult participants. An alternative basis for determining AoA is directly testing children's knowledge of word meanings at various ages. In educational research, scholars and teachers have tried to establish the grade at which particular words should be taught by examining the ages at which children know various word meanings. Such a list is available from Dale and O'Rourke's (1981) Living Word Vocabulary for nearly 44 thousand meanings coming from over 31 thousand unique word forms and multiword expressions. The present article relates these test-based AoA estimates to lexical decision times as well as to AoA adult ratings, and reports strong correlations between all of the measures. Therefore, test-based estimates of AoA can be used as an alternative measure.

9 CFR 156.1 - Meaning of words.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 9 Animals and Animal Products 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words. 156.1 Section 156.1 Animals and Animal Products ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE VOLUNTARY INSPECTION AND CERTIFICATION SERVICE VOLUNTARY INSPECTION AND CERTIFICATION SERVICE § 156.1...

Induced lexical categories enhance cross-situational learning of word meanings

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Alishahi, A.; Chrupala, Grzegorz

2014-01-01

In this paper we bring together two sources of information that have been proposed as clues used by children acquiring word meanings. One mechanism is cross-situational learning which exploits co-occurrences between words and their referents in perceptual context accompanying utterances. The other

Identify Web-page Content meaning using Knowledge based System for Dual Meaning Words

OpenAIRE

Sinha, Sukanta; Dattagupta, Rana; Mukhopadhyay, Debajyoti

2012-01-01

Meaning of Web-page content plays a big role while produced a search result from a search engine. Most of the cases Web-page meaning stored in title or meta-tag area but those meanings do not always match with Web-page content. To overcome this situation we need to go through the Web-page content to identify the Web-page meaning. In such cases, where Webpage content holds dual meaning words that time it is really difficult to identify the meaning of the Web-page. In this paper, we are introdu...

Effects of achievement contexts on the meaning structure of emotion words.

Science.gov (United States)

Gentsch, Kornelia; Loderer, Kristina; Soriano, Cristina; Fontaine, Johnny R J; Eid, Michael; Pekrun, Reinhard; Scherer, Klaus R

2018-03-01

Little is known about the impact of context on the meaning of emotion words. In the present study, we used a semantic profiling instrument (GRID) to investigate features representing five emotion components (appraisal, bodily reaction, expression, action tendencies, and feeling) of 11 emotion words in situational contexts involving success or failure. We compared these to the data from an earlier study in which participants evaluated the typicality of features out of context. Profile analyses identified features for which typicality changed as a function of context for all emotion words, except contentment, with appraisal features being most frequently affected. Those context effects occurred for both hypothesised basic and non-basic emotion words. Moreover, both data sets revealed a four-dimensional structure. The four dimensions were largely similar (valence, power, arousal, and novelty). The results suggest that context may not change the underlying dimensionality but affects facets of the meaning of emotion words.

Can the meaning of multiple words be integrated unconsciously?

Science.gov (United States)

van Gaal, Simon; Naccache, Lionel; Meuwese, Julia D I; van Loon, Anouk M; Leighton, Alexandra H; Cohen, Laurent; Dehaene, Stanislas

2014-05-05

What are the limits of unconscious language processing? Can language circuits process simple grammatical constructions unconsciously and integrate the meaning of several unseen words? Using behavioural priming and electroencephalography (EEG), we studied a specific rule-based linguistic operation traditionally thought to require conscious cognitive control: the negation of valence. In a masked priming paradigm, two masked words were successively (Experiment 1) or simultaneously presented (Experiment 2), a modifier ('not'/'very') and an adjective (e.g. 'good'/'bad'), followed by a visible target noun (e.g. 'peace'/'murder'). Subjects indicated whether the target noun had a positive or negative valence. The combination of these three words could either be contextually consistent (e.g. 'very bad - murder') or inconsistent (e.g. 'not bad - murder'). EEG recordings revealed that grammatical negations could unfold partly unconsciously, as reflected in similar occipito-parietal N400 effects for conscious and unconscious three-word sequences forming inconsistent combinations. However, only conscious word sequences elicited P600 effects, later in time. Overall, these results suggest that multiple unconscious words can be rapidly integrated and that an unconscious negation can automatically 'flip the sign' of an unconscious adjective. These findings not only extend the limits of subliminal combinatorial language processes, but also highlight how consciousness modulates the grammatical integration of multiple words.

Overestimation of Knowledge About Word Meanings: The “Misplaced Meaning” Effect

OpenAIRE

Kominsky, Jonathan F.; Keil, Frank C.

2014-01-01

Children and adults may not realize how much they depend on external sources in understanding word meanings. Four experiments investigated the existence and developmental course of a “Misplaced Meaning” (MM) effect, wherein children and adults overestimate their knowledge about the meanings of various words by underestimating how much they rely on outside sources to determine precise reference. Studies 1 & 2 demonstrate that children and adults show a highly consistent MM effect, and that it ...

The Effect of Word Meaning on Speech DysFluency in Adults with Developmental Stuttering

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elham Masumi

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Stuttering is one of the most prevalent speech and language disorders. Symptomology of stuttering has been surveyed from different aspects such as biological, developmental, environmental, emotional, learning and linguistic. Previous researches in English-speaking people have suggested that some linguistic features such as word meanings may play a role in the frequency of speech non-fluency in people who stutter. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of word meanings on the frequency of dysfluency in Persian-speaking adults with developmental stuttering. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study was performed on 14 adults who stuttered. Their average age was 25 years. The frequency of non-fluency instances was evaluated upon reading two lists containing 60 words and 60 non-words. The words were selected on the basis of common Persian syllable structures. ‘Kolmogoro-Smirnov one sample test’ and paired t-test was used to analyze data the significance level was set at P<0.05. Results:There was a significant difference between the dysfluency in word and non-word lists (P<0.05. Discussion: The findings of this study indicate a significant increase in the frequency of dysfluency on non-words than on real words. It seems that the phonological encodingprocess of non-word reading is much more complex than for word reading, because, in non-word reading, the component of semantic content retrieval (word meaning is missing when compared to word reading.

Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children's Lexical Processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Inkster, Michelle; Wellsby, Michele; Lloyd, Ellen; Pexman, Penny M

2016-01-01

Previous research showed an effect of words' rated body-object interaction (BOI) in children's visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (Wellsby and Pexman, 2014a). In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children's BOI experience (child-BOI). We examined effects of words' child-BOI and also words' imageability on children's responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6-7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children's auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.

Can the meaning of multiple words be integrated unconsciously?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Gaal, S.; Naccache, L.; Meuwese, J.D.I.; van Loon, A.M.; Leighton, A.H.; Cohen, L.; Dehaene, S.

2014-01-01

What are the limits of unconscious language processing? Can language circuits process simple grammatical constructions unconsciously and integrate the meaning of several unseen words? Using behavioural priming and electroencephalography (EEG), we studied a specific rule-based linguistic operation

7 CFR 160.91 - Meaning of words “pine” and “pine tree.”

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Meaning of words âpineâ and âpine tree.â 160.91... REGULATIONS AND STANDARDS FOR NAVAL STORES Labeling, Advertising and Packing § 160.91 Meaning of words “pine” and “pine tree.” The words “pine” or “pine tree,” when used to designate the source of spirits of...

Sound symbolism: the role of word sound in meaning.

Science.gov (United States)

Svantesson, Jan-Olof

2017-09-01

The question whether there is a natural connection between sound and meaning or if they are related only by convention has been debated since antiquity. In linguistics, it is usually taken for granted that 'the linguistic sign is arbitrary,' and exceptions like onomatopoeia have been regarded as marginal phenomena. However, it is becoming more and more clear that motivated relations between sound and meaning are more common and important than has been thought. There is now a large and rapidly growing literature on subjects as ideophones (or expressives), words that describe how a speaker perceives a situation with the senses, and phonaesthemes, units like English gl-, which occur in many words that share a meaning component (in this case 'light': gleam, glitter, etc.). Furthermore, psychological experiments have shown that sound symbolism in one language can be understood by speakers of other languages, suggesting that some kinds of sound symbolism are universal. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1441. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1441 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Body-specific representations of action word meanings in right and left handers

OpenAIRE

Daniel Casasanto

2007-01-01

If understanding action words involves mentally simulating our own actions, then the neurocognitive representation of word meanings must differ for people with different kinds of bodies, who perform actions in systematically different ways. In a test of the _Body-Specificity Hypothesis_, right- and left-handers were compared on two motor-meaning congruity tasks. Double dissociations in both action execution and recognition memory results showed that right and left handers form body-specific r...

Revisiting the'Duality of Meaning of some English Words: What's on ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The objective was to determine whether the students knew both the technical or scientific/engineering meanings and the normal meanings of the words, namely: elevation, surveying, function, sign, model, ... Thus, the majority of the students did not know both meanings, which pointed to students' vocabulary challenges.

Learning the Language of Locomotion: Do Children Use Biomechanical Structure to Constrain Hypotheses about Word Meaning?

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Malt, Barbara C.; White, Anne; Ameel, Eef; Storms, Gert

2016-01-01

Much has been said about children's strategies for mapping elements of meaning to words in toddlerhood. However, children continue to refine word meanings and patterns of word use into middle childhood and beyond, even for common words appearing in early vocabulary. We address where children past toddlerhood diverge from adults and where they more…

Word Meaning Frequencies Affect Negative Compatibility Effects In Masked Priming.

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Brocher, Andreas; Koenig, Jean-Pierre

2016-01-01

Negative compatibility effects (NCEs)-that is, slower responses to targets in related than unrelated prime-target pairs, have been observed in studies using stimulus-response (S-R) priming with stimuli like arrows and plus signs. Although there is no consensus on the underlying mechanism, explanations tend to locate NCEs within the motor-response system. A characteristic property of perceptuo-motor NCEs is a biphasic pattern of activation: A brief period in which very briefly presented (typically) masked primes facilitate processing of related targets is followed by a phase of target processing impairment. In this paper, we present data that suggest that NCEs are not restricted to S-R priming with low-level visual stimuli: The brief (50 ms), backward masked (250 ms) presentation of ambiguous words (bank) leads to slower responses than baseline to words related to the more frequent (rob) but not less frequent meaning (swim). Importantly, we found that slowed responses are preceded by a short phase of response facilitation, replicating the biphasic pattern reported for arrows and plus signs. The biphasic pattern of priming and the fact that the NCEs were found only for target words that are related to their prime word's more frequent meaning has strong implications for any theory of NCEs that locate these effects exclusively within the motor-response system.

The meaning of 'life' and other abstract words: Insights from neuropsychology.

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Hoffman, Paul

2016-09-01

There are a number of long-standing theories on how the cognitive processing of abstract words, like 'life', differs from that of concrete words, like 'knife'. This review considers current perspectives on this debate, focusing particularly on insights obtained from patients with language disorders and integrating these with evidence from functional neuroimaging studies. The evidence supports three distinct and mutually compatible hypotheses. (1) Concrete and abstract words differ in their representational substrates, with concrete words depending particularly on sensory experiences and abstract words on linguistic, emotional, and magnitude-based information. Differential dependence on visual versus verbal experience is supported by the evidence for graded specialization in the anterior temporal lobes for concrete versus abstract words. In addition, concrete words have richer representations, in line with better processing of these words in most aphasic patients and, in particular, patients with semantic dementia. (2) Abstract words place greater demands on executive regulation processes because they have variable meanings that change with context. This theory explains abstract word impairments in patients with semantic-executive deficits and is supported by neuroimaging studies showing greater response to abstract words in inferior prefrontal cortex. (3) The relationships between concrete words are governed primarily by conceptual similarity, while those of abstract words depend on association to a greater degree. This theory, based primarily on interference and priming effects in aphasic patients, is the most recent to emerge and the least well understood. I present analyses indicating that patterns of lexical co-occurrence may be important in understanding these effects. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Neuropsychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the British Psychological Society.

Accessing and Selecting Word Meaning in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Henderson, L. M.; Clarke, P. J.; Snowling, M. J.

2011-01-01

Background: Comprehension difficulties are commonly reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but the causes of these difficulties are poorly understood. This study investigates how children with ASD access and select meanings of ambiguous words to test four hypotheses regarding the nature of their comprehension difficulties: semantic deficit,…

7 CFR 15f.4 - What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean?

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2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? 15f.4 Section 15f.4 Agriculture Office of the Secretary of Agriculture ADJUDICATIONS UNDER....4 What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? Agency means the USDA agency, office...

Maximum Entropy, Word-Frequency, Chinese Characters, and Multiple Meanings

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Yan, Xiaoyong; Minnhagen, Petter

2015-01-01

The word-frequency distribution of a text written by an author is well accounted for by a maximum entropy distribution, the RGF (random group formation)-prediction. The RGF-distribution is completely determined by the a priori values of the total number of words in the text (M), the number of distinct words (N) and the number of repetitions of the most common word (kmax). It is here shown that this maximum entropy prediction also describes a text written in Chinese characters. In particular it is shown that although the same Chinese text written in words and Chinese characters have quite differently shaped distributions, they are nevertheless both well predicted by their respective three a priori characteristic values. It is pointed out that this is analogous to the change in the shape of the distribution when translating a given text to another language. Another consequence of the RGF-prediction is that taking a part of a long text will change the input parameters (M, N, kmax) and consequently also the shape of the frequency distribution. This is explicitly confirmed for texts written in Chinese characters. Since the RGF-prediction has no system-specific information beyond the three a priori values (M, N, kmax), any specific language characteristic has to be sought in systematic deviations from the RGF-prediction and the measured frequencies. One such systematic deviation is identified and, through a statistical information theoretical argument and an extended RGF-model, it is proposed that this deviation is caused by multiple meanings of Chinese characters. The effect is stronger for Chinese characters than for Chinese words. The relation between Zipf’s law, the Simon-model for texts and the present results are discussed. PMID:25955175

Accuracy Feedback Improves Word Learning from Context: Evidence from a Meaning-Generation Task

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Frishkoff, Gwen A.; Collins-Thompson, Kevyn; Hodges, Leslie; Crossley, Scott

2016-01-01

The present study asked whether accuracy feedback on a meaning generation task would lead to improved contextual word learning (CWL). Active generation can facilitate learning by increasing task engagement and memory retrieval, which strengthens new word representations. However, forced generation results in increased errors, which can be…

Overestimation of Knowledge About Word Meanings: The “Misplaced Meaning” Effect

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Kominsky, Jonathan F.; Keil, Frank C.

2014-01-01

Children and adults may not realize how much they depend on external sources in understanding word meanings. Four experiments investigated the existence and developmental course of a “Misplaced Meaning” (MM) effect, wherein children and adults overestimate their knowledge about the meanings of various words by underestimating how much they rely on outside sources to determine precise reference. Studies 1 & 2 demonstrate that children and adults show a highly consistent MM effect, and that it is stronger in young children. Study 3 demonstrates that adults are explicitly aware of the availability of outside knowledge, and that this awareness may be related to the strength of the MM effect. Study 4 rules out general overconfidence effects by examining a metalinguistic task in which adults are well-calibrated. PMID:24890038

What can a string of letters possibly mean when it is not a word? Speech sounds as one answer to the search for meaning in Finnegans Wake.

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Whissell, Cynthia

2015-02-01

In his last novel, Finnegans Wake, James Joyce attempted to redirect readers' search for meaning away from traditional paths by using many non-words (combinations, foreign words, neologisms, and onomatopoeic words). Words and non-words in the novel were analyzed in terms of the emotional meanings of their constituent sounds using the model developed by Whissell where motor responses involved in enunciating sounds are associated with their emotional meaning. Significant sound-emotion differences were identified among and within chapters. "Smiling" pleasant long e (as in "tee") was used at higher rates in successive chapters and "sighing" passive AO (as in "Shaun") was used at especially high rates in Chapters 8 ("Anna Livia Plurabelle") and 12 ("Mamalujo"). Sound emotionality is one of the alternative paths to meaning in the novel.

Revisiting the'Duality of Meaning of some English Words: What's on ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Michael

2017-12-02

Dec 2, 2017 ... A previous paper, published by me in 2015, studied the meanings of 12 English words, written ... that the students work harder, and also be exposed to the register of their .... engineering student's use of the English language,.

Origin, History, and Meanings of the Word Transmission.

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Villalba, Joaquín; Navarro, Fernando A; Cortés, Francisco

2017-12-01

The origin of the words transmit and transmission and their derivatives can be traced to the Latin transmittere , in turn formed by prefixing the preposition trans ("across or beyond") to the verb mittere ("to let go or to send"). From the times of Ancient Rome in the 3rd century b.c.e., the Latin word transmissio has been "transmitted" (through Romance languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese) to all the major languages of culture, English among them. And through English, the international language of biomedical science in the 21st century, the term transmission is increasingly present today in some of the most dynamic disciplines of modern natural science, including genomics, molecular microbiology, hospital epidemiology, molecular genetics, biotechnology, evolutionary biology, and systems biology.

Interpretation of Ukrainian and Polish Adverbial Word Equivalents Form and Meaning Interaction in National Explanatory Lexicography

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Alla Luchyk

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Interpretation of Ukrainian and Polish Adverbial Word Equivalents Form and Meaning Interaction in National Explanatory Lexicography The article proves the necessity and possibility of compiling dictionaries with intermediate existence status glossary units, to which the word equivalents belong. In order to form the Ukrainian-Polish dictionary glossary of this type the form and meaning analysis of Ukrainian and Polish word equivalents is done, the common and distinctive features of these language system elements are described, the compiling principles of such dictionary are clarified.

Development of Embodied Word Meanings: Sensorimotor Effects in Children’s Lexical Processing

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Michelle eInkster

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Previous research showed an effect of words’ rated body-object interaction (BOI in children’s visual word naming performance, but only in children 8 years of age or older (Wellsby & Pexman, 2014a. In that study, however, BOI was established using adult ratings. Here we collected ratings from a group of parents for children’s body-object interaction experience (child-BOI. We examined effects of words’ child-BOI and also words’ imageability on children’s responses in an auditory word naming task, which is suited to the lexical processing skills of younger children. We tested a group of 54 children aged 6-7 years and a comparison group of 25 adults. Results showed significant effects of both imageability and child-BOI on children’s auditory naming latencies. These results provide evidence that children younger than 8 years of age have richer semantic representations for high imageability and high child-BOI words, consistent with an embodied account of word meaning.

The Effect of Word Meaning Deriving Strategy Instruction: The Case of EFL Students in Taiwan

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Chin Min Lin

2008-01-01

Full Text Available This study intends to find out the effect of teaching word meaning deriving strategies to EFL Students in Taiwan. The subjects were one class of the first year students attending a junior college in Taiwan. They were given a pre-test, which contained a passage, 10 vocabulary test items and 10 strategy questions. The researchers then began a two-month experiment. During the experimental period, the researcher, who was the instructor of the subjects, taught word meaning deriving strategies to students. The post-test, which was exactly the same as the pre-test, was given at the end of the experimental period. The results show significant differences of students' correct guessing rates and the strategy choice between the pre-test and the post-test. This suggests that it is worthwhile teaching EFL students word meaning deriving strategies.

English words structure, history, usage

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Katamba, Francis

2015-01-01

How do we find the right word for the job? Where does that word come from? Why do we spell it like that? And how do we know what it means? Words are all around us - we use them every day to communicate our joys, fears, hopes, opinions, wishes and demands - but we don't often think about them too deeply. In this highly accessible introduction to English words, the reader will discover what the study of words can tell them about the extraordinary richness and complexity of our daily vocabulary and about the nature of language in general. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, the book covers a wide range of topics, including the structure of words, the meaning of words, how their spelling relates to pronunciation, how new words are manufactured or imported from other languages, and how the meaning of words changes with the passage of time. It also investigates how the mind deals with words by highlighting the amazing intellectual feat performed routinely when the right word is retrieved from the mental dic...

The Multisyllabic Word Dilemma: Helping Students Build Meaning, Spell, and Read "Big" Words.

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Cunningham, Patricia M.

1998-01-01

Looks at what is known about multisyllabic words, which is a lot more than educators knew when the previous generation of multisyllabic word instruction was created. Reviews the few studies that have carried out instructional approaches to increase students' ability to decode big words. Outlines a program of instruction, based on what is currently…

Word meaning in the ventral visual path: a perceptual to conceptual gradient of semantic coding.

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Borghesani, Valentina; Pedregosa, Fabian; Buiatti, Marco; Amadon, Alexis; Eger, Evelyn; Piazza, Manuela

2016-12-01

The meaning of words referring to concrete items is thought of as a multidimensional representation that includes both perceptual (e.g., average size, prototypical color) and conceptual (e.g., taxonomic class) dimensions. Are these different dimensions coded in different brain regions? In healthy human subjects, we tested the presence of a mapping between the implied real object size (a perceptual dimension) and the taxonomic categories at different levels of specificity (conceptual dimensions) of a series of words, and the patterns of brain activity recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging in six areas along the ventral occipito-temporal cortical path. Combining multivariate pattern classification and representational similarity analysis, we found that the real object size implied by a word appears to be primarily encoded in early visual regions, while the taxonomic category and sub-categorical cluster in more anterior temporal regions. This anteroposterior gradient of information content indicates that different areas along the ventral stream encode complementary dimensions of the semantic space. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

More than Words: Comics as a Means of Teaching Multiple Literacies

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Jacobs, Dale

2007-01-01

Historically, comics have been viewed as a "debased or simplified word-based literacy," explains Dale Jacobs, who considers comics to be complex, multimodal texts. Examining Ted Naifeh's "Polly and the Pirates," Jacobs shows how comics can engage students in multiple literacies, furthering meaning-making practices in the classroom and beyond.

Affective priming effects of musical sounds on the processing of word meaning.

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Steinbeis, Nikolaus; Koelsch, Stefan

2011-03-01

Recent studies have shown that music is capable of conveying semantically meaningful concepts. Several questions have subsequently arisen particularly with regard to the precise mechanisms underlying the communication of musical meaning as well as the role of specific musical features. The present article reports three studies investigating the role of affect expressed by various musical features in priming subsequent word processing at the semantic level. By means of an affective priming paradigm, it was shown that both musically trained and untrained participants evaluated emotional words congruous to the affect expressed by a preceding chord faster than words incongruous to the preceding chord. This behavioral effect was accompanied by an N400, an ERP typically linked with semantic processing, which was specifically modulated by the (mis)match between the prime and the target. This finding was shown for the musical parameter of consonance/dissonance (Experiment 1) and then extended to mode (major/minor) (Experiment 2) and timbre (Experiment 3). Seeing that the N400 is taken to reflect the processing of meaning, the present findings suggest that the emotional expression of single musical features is understood by listeners as such and is probably processed on a level akin to other affective communications (i.e., prosody or vocalizations) because it interferes with subsequent semantic processing. There were no group differences, suggesting that musical expertise does not have an influence on the processing of emotional expression in music and its semantic connotations.

Word and Nonword Processing without Meaning Support in Korean-Speaking Children with and without Hyperlexia

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Lee, Sung Hee; Hwang, Mina

2015-01-01

Hyperlexia is a syndrome of reading without meaning in individuals who otherwise have pronounced cognitive and language deficits. The present study investigated the quality of word representation and the effects of deficient semantic processing on word and nonword reading of Korean children with hyperlexia; their performances were compared to…

Say it like you mean it: mothers' use of prosody to convey word meaning.

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Herold, Debora S; Nygaard, Lynne C; Namy, Laura L

2012-09-01

Prosody plays a variety of roles in infants' communicative development, aiding in attention modulation, speech segmentation, and syntax acquisition. This study investigates the extent to which parents also spontaneously modulate prosodic aspects of infant directed speech in ways that distinguish semantic aspects of language. Fourteen mothers of two-year-old children read a picture book to their children in which they labeled pictures using dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, small, hot, cold). Recordings of the mothers' input to their children were analyzed acoustically and antonyms within each dimension were compared. Mothers modulated aspects of their prosody including amplitude and duration of target words and sentences to distinguish dimensional adjectives. Mothers appear to recruit prosody in the service of word learning.

Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

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Campione, Giovanna Cristina; De Stefani, Elisa; Innocenti, Alessandro; De Marco, Doriana; Gough, Patricia M; Buccino, Giovanni; Gentilucci, Maurizio

2014-02-01

The present study aimed at determining whether or not the comprehension of symbolic gestures, and corresponding-in-meaning words, makes use of cortical circuits involved in movement execution control. Participants were presented with videos of an actress producing meaningful or meaningless gestures, pronouncing corresponding-in-meaning words or pseudo-words; they were required to judge whether the signal was meaningful or meaningless. Single pulse TMS was applied to forearm primary motor cortex area 150-200 ms after the point when the stimulus meaning could be understood. MEPs were significantly greater when processing meaningless signals as compared to a baseline condition presenting a still-and-silent actress. In contrast, this was not the case for meaningful signals whose motor activation did not differ from that for the baseline stimulus. MEPs were significantly greater for meaningless than meaningful signals and no significant difference was found between gesture and speech. On the basis of these results, we hypothesized that the observation-of/listening-to meaningless signals recruits motor areas. In contrast, this did not occur when the signals were meaningful. Overall, the data suggest that the processes related to comprehension of symbolic gestures and communicative words do not involve primary motor area and probably use brain areas involved in semantics. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multiple Regions of a Cortical Network Commonly Encode the Meaning of Words in Multiple Grammatical Positions of Read Sentences.

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Anderson, Andrew James; Lalor, Edmund C; Lin, Feng; Binder, Jeffrey R; Fernandino, Leonardo; Humphries, Colin J; Conant, Lisa L; Raizada, Rajeev D S; Grimm, Scott; Wang, Xixi

2018-05-16

Deciphering how sentence meaning is represented in the brain remains a major challenge to science. Semantically related neural activity has recently been shown to arise concurrently in distributed brain regions as successive words in a sentence are read. However, what semantic content is represented by different regions, what is common across them, and how this relates to words in different grammatical positions of sentences is weakly understood. To address these questions, we apply a semantic model of word meaning to interpret brain activation patterns elicited in sentence reading. The model is based on human ratings of 65 sensory/motor/emotional and cognitive features of experience with words (and their referents). Through a process of mapping functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging activation back into model space we test: which brain regions semantically encode content words in different grammatical positions (e.g., subject/verb/object); and what semantic features are encoded by different regions. In left temporal, inferior parietal, and inferior/superior frontal regions we detect the semantic encoding of words in all grammatical positions tested and reveal multiple common components of semantic representation. This suggests that sentence comprehension involves a common core representation of multiple words' meaning being encoded in a network of regions distributed across the brain.

Biodiversity in Word and Meaning

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Slingsby, David

2010-01-01

This article argues that we need to abandon the word "biodiversity", to rediscover the biology that it obscures and to rethink how to introduce this biology to young people. We cannot go back to the systematics that once made up a large part of a biology A-level course (ages 16-18), so we need to find alternative ways of introducing the…

Words, Words, Words: English, Vocabulary.

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Lamb, Barbara

The Quinmester course on words gives the student the opportunity to increase his proficiency by investigating word origins, word histories, morphology, and phonology. The course includes the following: dictionary skills and familiarity with the "Oxford,""Webster's Third," and "American Heritage" dictionaries; word…

Learning word meanings: Overnight integration and study modality effects

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Ven, F. van der; Takashima, A.; Segers, P.C.J.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

2015-01-01

According to the complementary learning systems (CLS) account of word learning, novel words are rapidly acquired (learning system 1), but slowly integrated into the mental lexicon (learning system 2). This two-step learning process has been shown to apply to novel word forms. In this study, we

Words with Multiple Meanings in Authentic L2 Texts: An Analysis of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"

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Ozturk, Meral

2017-01-01

Dictionary studies have suggested that nearly half of the English lexicon have multiple meanings. It is not yet clear, however, if second language learners reading English texts will encounter words with multiple meanings to the same degree. This study investigates the use of words with multiple meanings in an authentic English novel. Two samples…

The Meaning of Meaning, Etc.

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Nilsen, Don L. F.

This paper attempts to dispel a number of misconceptions about the nature of meaning, namely that: (1) synonyms are words that have the same meanings, (2) antonyms are words that have opposite meanings, (3) homonyms are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings, (4) converses are antonyms rather than synonyms, (5)…

The brain's dorsal route for speech represents word meaning: evidence from gesture.

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Josse, Goulven; Joseph, Sabine; Bertasi, Eric; Giraud, Anne-Lise

2012-01-01

The dual-route model of speech processing includes a dorsal stream that maps auditory to motor features at the sublexical level rather than at the lexico-semantic level. However, the literature on gesture is an invitation to revise this model because it suggests that the premotor cortex of the dorsal route is a major site of lexico-semantic interaction. Here we investigated lexico-semantic mapping using word-gesture pairs that were either congruent or incongruent. Using fMRI-adaptation in 28 subjects, we found that temporo-parietal and premotor activity during auditory processing of single action words was modulated by the prior audiovisual context in which the words had been repeated. The BOLD signal was suppressed following repetition of the auditory word alone, and further suppressed following repetition of the word accompanied by a congruent gesture (e.g. ["grasp" + grasping gesture]). Conversely, repetition suppression was not observed when the same action word was accompanied by an incongruent gesture (e.g. ["grasp" + sprinkle]). We propose a simple model to explain these results: auditory and visual information converge onto premotor cortex where it is represented in a comparable format to determine (in)congruence between speech and gesture. This ability of the dorsal route to detect audiovisual semantic (in)congruence suggests that its function is not restricted to the sublexical level.

Some words on Word

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Janssen, Maarten; Visser, A.

In many disciplines, the notion of a word is of central importance. For instance, morphology studies le mot comme tel, pris isol´ement (Mel’ˇcuk, 1993 [74]). In the philosophy of language the word was often considered to be the primary bearer of meaning. Lexicography has as its fundamental role

Dynamic versus Static Dictionary with and without Printed Focal Words in e-Book Reading as Facilitator for Word Learning

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Korat, Ofra; Levin, Iris; Ben-Shabt, Anat; Shneor, Dafna; Bokovza, Limor

2014-01-01

We investigated the extent to which a dictionary embedded in an e-book with static or dynamic visuals with and without printed focal words affects word learning. A pretest-posttest design was used to measure gains of expressive words' meaning and their spelling. The participants included 250 Hebrew-speaking second graders from…

Semantic Change Type in Old Javanese Word and Sanskrit Loan Word to Modern Javanese

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Hendy Yuniarto

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This research aims to describe type classifier of semantic change and to explain the factors causing semantic change. This research was conducted with a qualitative-descriptive approach. The research method is conducted by comparing the meaning of words from the Old Javanese and Sanskrit loan wordto Modern Javanese. The collection data is done by looking for words that the meaning suspected change in Old Javanese dictionary. Words meaning determined precisely by tracing to the Old Javanese text. Furthermore, words meaning are compared to present time meaning through Modern Javanese dictionary. In addition, searching Modern Javanese meaning are also using Javanese news on the internet pages. The analysis of this research is to classify Old Javanese words and Sanskrit loan words meaning that undergo change to Modern Javanese. It’s also explained why the change in the word meaning can occur. The result shows that, semantic change of Old Javanese words and Sanskrit loan words to Modern Javanese can be classified into seven types, involving widening, narrowing, shifting, metaphor, metonymy, pejoration, and euphemism. In addition, the result shows that semantic change can occur because of some factors. Psychological factor concerning emotive and taboo, and polysemy. religion spreading, the growth of science and technology, the socio-political development, and the needs of a new name.   DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2013.160101

The x-word and its usage : Taboo words and swearwords in general, and x-words in newspapers

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Lindahl, Katarina

2008-01-01

All languages have words that are considered taboo – words that are not supposed to be said or used. Taboo words, or swearwords, can be used in many different ways and they can have different meanings depending on what context they appear in. Another aspect of taboo words is the euphemisms that are used in order to avoid obscene speech. This paper will focus on x-words, words like the f-word or the c-word, which replace the words fuck or cunt, but as the study will show they also have other m...

Not good enough? Further comments to the wording, meaning, and the conceptualization of Internet Gaming Disorder.

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Krossbakken, Elfrid; Pallesen, Ståle; Molde, Helge; Mentzoni, Rune Aune; Finserås, Turi Reiten

2017-06-01

In their commentary, Kuss, Griffiths, and Pontes (2016) criticize the use of the term "Internet" in the recently proposed diagnosis for Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and its use as one of the included diagnostic criteria. We agree with the exclusion of the term "Internet" in the diagnosis, but have some considerations to the comments regarding the nine criteria for IGD. Specifically, we discuss the meaning, the wording, and the importance of the criteria, as well as the importance of distress or functional impairment in the proposed diagnosis. We also address the possibility of categorizing IGD as a subtype of a general behavioral addiction diagnosis.

Accessing word meaning: Semantic word knowledge and reading comprehension in Dutch monolingual and bilingual fifth-graders

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Cremer, M.

2013-01-01

Word knowledge is one of the key elements in reading comprehension and by extension in school success. At the same time, it is not quite clear which components of lexical knowledge play a role in reading. Is it enough to recognize the words we read? Do we need an in-depth understanding of their

The Meaning of English Words across Cultures, with a Focus on Cameroon and Hong Kong

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Bobda, Augustin Simo

2009-01-01

A word, even when considered monosemic, generally has a cluster of meanings, depending on the mental representation of the referent by the speaker/writer or listener/reader. The variation is even more noticeable across cultures. This paper investigates the different ways in which cultural knowledge helps in the interpretation of English lexical…

Carving up Word Meaning: Portioning and Grinding

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Frisson, S.; Frazier, L.

2005-01-01

Two eye-tracking experiments investigated the processing of mass nouns used as count nouns and count nouns used as mass nouns. Following Copestake and Briscoe (1995), the basic or underived sense of a word was treated as the input to a derivational rule (''grinding'' or ''portioning'') which produced the derived sense as output. It was…

Hemispheric Asymmetries in Semantic Processing: Evidence from False Memories for Ambiguous Words

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Faust, Miriam; Ben-Artzi, Elisheva; Harel, Itay

2008-01-01

Previous research suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) focuses on strongly related word meanings; the right hemisphere (RH) may contribute uniquely to the processing of lexical ambiguity by activating and maintaining a wide range of meanings, including subordinate meanings. The present study used the word-lists false memory paradigm [Roediger,…

Universal Dimensions of Meaning Derived from Semantic Relations among Words and Senses: Mereological Completeness vs. Ontological Generality

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Alexei V. Samsonovich

2014-07-01

Full Text Available A key to semantic analysis is a precise and practically useful definition of meaning that is general for all domains of knowledge. We previously introduced the notion of weak semantic map: a metric space allocating concepts along their most general (universal semantic characteristics while at the same time ignoring other, domain-specific aspects of their meanings. Here we address questions of the number, quality, and mutual independence of the weak semantic dimensions. Specifically, we employ semantic relationships not previously used for weak semantic mapping, such as holonymy/meronymy (“is-part/member-of”, and we compare maps constructed from word senses to those constructed from words. We show that the “completeness” dimension derived from the holonym/meronym relation is independent of, and practically orthogonal to, the “abstractness” dimension derived from the hypernym-hyponym (“is-a” relation, while both dimensions are orthogonal to the maps derived from synonymy and antonymy. Interestingly, the choice of using relations among words vs. senses implies a non-trivial trade-off between rich and unambiguous information due to homonymy and polysemy. The practical utility of the new and prior dimensions is illustrated by the automated evaluation of different kinds of documents. Residual analysis of available linguistic resources, such as WordNet, suggests that the number of universal semantic dimensions representable in natural language may be finite. Their complete characterization, as well as the extension of results to non-linguistic materials, remains an open challenge.

Affective Meaning, Concreteness, and Subjective Frequency Norms for Indonesian Words

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Agnes Sianipar

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This study investigated the lexical-semantic space organized by the semantic and affective features of Indonesian words and their relationship with gender and cultural aspects. We recruited 1,402 participants who were native speakers of Indonesian to rate affective and lexico-semantic properties of 1,490 Indonesian words. Valence, Arousal, Dominance, Predictability, Subjective Frequency, and Concreteness ratings were collected for each word from at least 52 people. We explored cultural differences between American English ANEW, Spanish ANEW, and the new Indonesian inventory (called CEFI. We found functional relationships between the affective dimensions that were similar across languages, but also cultural differences dependent on gender.

Does "a picture is worth 1000 words" apply to iconic Chinese words? Relationship of Chinese words and pictures.

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Lo, Shih-Yu; Yeh, Su-Ling

2018-05-29

The meaning of a picture can be extracted rapidly, but the form-to-meaning relationship is less obvious for printed words. In contrast to English words that follow grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rule, the iconic nature of Chinese words might predispose them to activate their semantic representations more directly from their orthographies. By using the paradigm of repetition blindness (RB) that taps into the early level of word processing, we examined whether Chinese words activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do. RB refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of an item when it is presented twice in temporal proximity. Previous studies showed RB for semantically related pictures, suggesting that pictures activate their semantic representations directly from their shapes and thus two semantically related pictures are represented as repeated. However, this does not apply to English words since no RB was found for English synonyms. In this study, we replicated the semantic RB effect for pictures, and further showed the absence of semantic RB for Chinese synonyms. Based on our findings, it is suggested that Chinese words are processed like English words, which do not activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do.

Words vs. Pictures: Perceived Impact and Connotative Meaning

Science.gov (United States)

Culbertson, Hugh M.

1974-01-01

Results of two studies indicate that word messages carry more impact than pictures and an analysis of variance reveals that iconicity and sensationalism each related positively to both evaluative-ethical and interest-vitality ratings. (RB)

Word learning mechanisms.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Angela Xiaoxue; Arunachalam, Sudha

2017-07-01

How do children acquire the meanings of words? Many word learning mechanisms have been proposed to guide learners through this challenging task. Despite the availability of rich information in the learner's linguistic and extralinguistic input, the word-learning task is insurmountable without such mechanisms for filtering through and utilizing that information. Different kinds of words, such as nouns denoting object concepts and verbs denoting event concepts, require to some extent different kinds of information and, therefore, access to different kinds of mechanisms. We review some of these mechanisms to examine the relationship between the input that is available to learners and learners' intake of that input-that is, the organized, interpreted, and stored representations they form. We discuss how learners segment individual words from the speech stream and identify their grammatical categories, how they identify the concepts denoted by these words, and how they refine their initial representations of word meanings. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1435. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1435 This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Language. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Methods of defining ontologies, word disambiguation methods, computer systems, and articles of manufacture

Science.gov (United States)

Sanfilippo, Antonio P [Richland, WA; Tratz, Stephen C [Richland, WA; Gregory, Michelle L [Richland, WA; Chappell, Alan R [Seattle, WA; Whitney, Paul D [Richland, WA; Posse, Christian [Seattle, WA; Baddeley, Robert L [Richland, WA; Hohimer, Ryan E [West Richland, WA

2011-10-11

Methods of defining ontologies, word disambiguation methods, computer systems, and articles of manufacture are described according to some aspects. In one aspect, a word disambiguation method includes accessing textual content to be disambiguated, wherein the textual content comprises a plurality of words individually comprising a plurality of word senses, for an individual word of the textual content, identifying one of the word senses of the word as indicative of the meaning of the word in the textual content, for the individual word, selecting one of a plurality of event classes of a lexical database ontology using the identified word sense of the individual word, and for the individual word, associating the selected one of the event classes with the textual content to provide disambiguation of a meaning of the individual word in the textual content.

Representation Learning of Logic Words by an RNN: From Word Sequences to Robot Actions

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Tatsuro Yamada

2017-12-01

Full Text Available An important characteristic of human language is compositionality. We can efficiently express a wide variety of real-world situations, events, and behaviors by compositionally constructing the meaning of a complex expression from a finite number of elements. Previous studies have analyzed how machine-learning models, particularly neural networks, can learn from experience to represent compositional relationships between language and robot actions with the aim of understanding the symbol grounding structure and achieving intelligent communicative agents. Such studies have mainly dealt with the words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs that directly refer to real-world matters. In addition to these words, the current study deals with logic words, such as “not,” “and,” and “or” simultaneously. These words are not directly referring to the real world, but are logical operators that contribute to the construction of meaning in sentences. In human–robot communication, these words may be used often. The current study builds a recurrent neural network model with long short-term memory units and trains it to learn to translate sentences including logic words into robot actions. We investigate what kind of compositional representations, which mediate sentences and robot actions, emerge as the network's internal states via the learning process. Analysis after learning shows that referential words are merged with visual information and the robot's own current state, and the logical words are represented by the model in accordance with their functions as logical operators. Words such as “true,” “false,” and “not” work as non-linear transformations to encode orthogonal phrases into the same area in a memory cell state space. The word “and,” which required a robot to lift up both its hands, worked as if it was a universal quantifier. The word “or,” which required action generation that looked apparently random, was represented as an

An associative account of the development of word learning.

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Sloutsky, Vladimir M; Yim, Hyungwook; Yao, Xin; Dennis, Simon

2017-09-01

Word learning is a notoriously difficult induction problem because meaning is underdetermined by positive examples. How do children solve this problem? Some have argued that word learning is achieved by means of inference: young word learners rely on a number of assumptions that reduce the overall hypothesis space by favoring some meanings over others. However, these approaches have difficulty explaining how words are learned from conversations or text, without pointing or explicit instruction. In this research, we propose an associative mechanism that can account for such learning. In a series of experiments, 4-year-olds and adults were presented with sets of words that included a single nonsense word (e.g. dax). Some lists were taxonomic (i.,e., all items were members of a given category), some were associative (i.e., all items were associates of a given category, but not members), and some were mixed. Participants were asked to indicate whether the nonsense word was an animal or an artifact. Adults exhibited evidence of learning when lists consisted of either associatively or taxonomically related items. In contrast, children exhibited evidence of word learning only when lists consisted of associatively related items. These results present challenges to several extant models of word learning, and a new model based on the distinction between syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations is proposed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mirror Neurons, the Representation of Word meaning, and the Foot of the Third Left Frontal Convolution

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de Zubicaray, Greig; Postle, Natasha; McMahon, Katie; Meredith, Matthew; Ashton, Roderick

2010-01-01

Previous neuroimaging research has attempted to demonstrate a preferential involvement of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in the comprehension of effector-related action word (verb) meanings. These studies have assumed that Broca's area (or Brodmann's area 44) is the homologue of a monkey premotor area (F5) containing mouth and hand mirror…

The Study of Synonymous Word "Mistake"

OpenAIRE

Suwardi, Albertus

2016-01-01

This article discusses the synonymous word "mistake*.The discussion will also cover the meaning of 'word' itself. Words can be considered as form whether spoken or written, or alternatively as composite expression, which combine and meaning. Synonymous are different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings. The synonyms of mistake are error, fault, blunder, slip, slipup, gaffe and inaccuracy. The data is taken from a computer program. The procedure of data collection is...

Experience with compound words influences their processing: An eye movement investigation with English compound words.

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Juhasz, Barbara J

2016-11-14

Recording eye movements provides information on the time-course of word recognition during reading. Juhasz and Rayner [Juhasz, B. J., & Rayner, K. (2003). Investigating the effects of a set of intercorrelated variables on eye fixation durations in reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 29, 1312-1318] examined the impact of five word recognition variables, including familiarity and age-of-acquisition (AoA), on fixation durations. All variables impacted fixation durations, but the time-course differed. However, the study focused on relatively short, morphologically simple words. Eye movements are also informative for examining the processing of morphologically complex words such as compound words. The present study further examined the time-course of lexical and semantic variables during morphological processing. A total of 120 English compound words that varied in familiarity, AoA, semantic transparency, lexeme meaning dominance, sensory experience rating (SER), and imageability were selected. The impact of these variables on fixation durations was examined when length, word frequency, and lexeme frequencies were controlled in a regression model. The most robust effects were found for familiarity and AoA, indicating that a reader's experience with compound words significantly impacts compound recognition. These results provide insight into semantic processing of morphologically complex words during reading.

18 CFR 1.102 - Words denoting number, gender and so forth.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 18 Conservation of Power and Water Resources 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Words denoting number... Rules of Construction § 1.102 Words denoting number, gender and so forth. In determining the meaning of...) Words of one gender include the other gender. [Order 225, 47 FR 19022, May 3, 1982] ...

Word Frequency As a Cue For Identifying Function Words In Infancy

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Hochmann, Jean-Remy; Endress, Ansgar D.; Mehler, Jacques

2010-01-01

While content words (e.g., 'dog') tend to carry meaning, function words (e.g., 'the') mainly serve syntactic purposes. Here, we ask whether 17-month old infants can use one language-universal cue to identify function word candidates: their high frequency of occurrence. In Experiment 1, infants listened to a series of short, naturally recorded…

Analysis of Corporal Punishment of Children in the Family based on the Semantic Reading of Traditional Islamic Narratives including the Word “Dharb” [Hitting

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حمیدرضا بصیری

2016-06-01

Full Text Available There are various traditional Islamic narratives in relation to treating children. The common understanding of these narratives allows for the corporal punishment of children in the family, although some narratives forbid parents from such behavior. With reference to traditional Islamic texts, the word “hitting” (Arabic: dharb is the main and most frequently used word implying the permissibility of corporal punishment. An investigation of the use of the term “dharb” (Arabic: ضرب in the Quran, traditional Islamic narratives and the Arabic language reveals different instances of a general sense of “occurence” which can denote “doing or carrying out”. On this basis, a wide range of usages for this word in absolute terms (without preposition is conceivable with the meanings of protecting, financially supporting, guiding and nurturing children. It seems that limiting the meaning of dharb to corporal punishment in all traditional Islamic narratives without considering the other meanings has led to incorrect interpretations of such narratives.

What Does "Apple" Mean? Learning To Define Words.

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Marinellie, Sally A.

2001-01-01

This article discusses the importance of learning to define a word. It provides a brief background on the contribution of the definitional skills to communication and school success, information on children's development of definitions, and teacher and family strategies for enhancing young children's definitions in relation to other skills.…

No specific role for the manual motor system in processing the meanings of words related to the hand

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Natasha ePostle

2013-02-01

Full Text Available The present study explored whether semantic and motor systems are functionally interwoven via the use of a dual-task paradigm. According to embodied language accounts that propose an automatic and necessary involvement of the motor system in conceptual processing, concurrent processing of hand-related information should interfere more with hand movements than processing of unrelated body-part (i.e., foot, mouth information. Across three experiments, 100 right-handed participants performed left- or right-hand tapping movements while repeatedly reading action words related to different body-parts, or different body-part names, in both aloud and silent conditions. Concurrent reading of single words related to specific body-parts, or the same words embedded in sentences differing in syntactic and phonological complexity (to manipulate context-relevant processing, and reading while viewing videos of the actions and body-parts described by the target words (to elicit visuomotor associations all interfered with right-hand but not left-hand tapping rate. However, this motor interference was not affected differentially by hand-related stimuli. Thus, the results provide no support for proposals that body-part specific resources in cortical motor systems are shared between overt manual movements and meaning-related processing of words related to the hand.

To Introduce a Cultural Sense in Translation——A Brief Study of Non-equivalence in the Associated Meanings of English and Chinese Words

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2007-01-01

This paper attempts to demonstrate the importance of intrpdicomg cultural sense in translation practice,English to Chinese in particular,by examining the problem of non-equivalence at word level in associated meanings and to unveil the cultural aspects projected within.It is also argued that greater importance should be attached to the cultural perspectives.in translation and flexible strategies should be adopted in dealing with the problems of non-equivalence in the associated meanings of words of different cultures.

WORD FORMATION ON DRAGON NEST CHAT LANGUAGE

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Shavitri Cecillia Harsono

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Word formation is creation of new words, which sometimes changes a word’s meaning. Words can be formed from multi word phrases as well. In many cases vocabularies in language are formed from combination of words (Haspelmath 2010: 102. Word formation does not only involve changing physical form of the word itself, but also changing the meaning of said word. There are also instances where the physical form retain its original form while the meaning changes. The phenomenon is called semantic change (Stockwell-Minkova 2001:149. In this thesis the research proposed that the said phenomenon occur in virtual environment, such as in MMORPG. Multiplayer online games that feature fantasy setting virtual environment. For the purpose of this research, Dragon Nest South East Asia server was chosen as data source. The samples are taken from players perusing [World] communication channel. The result of the data analysis has shown that the phenomenon of word formation could occur in a virtual environment of MMORPG, specifcally in Dragon Nest SEA. There are two word formation processes found: processes that involve physical changes and processes that do not involve physical changes but rather innate meaning. It is done by both processing daily language vocabulary both physically and changing its innate meaning to create new words that suits the said virtual environment context. This fnding may influence future research on a fresh perspective and untilled feld.

Independence of early speech processing from word meaning.

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Travis, Katherine E; Leonard, Matthew K; Chan, Alexander M; Torres, Christina; Sizemore, Marisa L; Qu, Zhe; Eskandar, Emad; Dale, Anders M; Elman, Jeffrey L; Cash, Sydney S; Halgren, Eric

2013-10-01

We combined magnetoencephalography (MEG) with magnetic resonance imaging and electrocorticography to separate in anatomy and latency 2 fundamental stages underlying speech comprehension. The first acoustic-phonetic stage is selective for words relative to control stimuli individually matched on acoustic properties. It begins ∼60 ms after stimulus onset and is localized to middle superior temporal cortex. It was replicated in another experiment, but is strongly dissociated from the response to tones in the same subjects. Within the same task, semantic priming of the same words by a related picture modulates cortical processing in a broader network, but this does not begin until ∼217 ms. The earlier onset of acoustic-phonetic processing compared with lexico-semantic modulation was significant in each individual subject. The MEG source estimates were confirmed with intracranial local field potential and high gamma power responses acquired in 2 additional subjects performing the same task. These recordings further identified sites within superior temporal cortex that responded only to the acoustic-phonetic contrast at short latencies, or the lexico-semantic at long. The independence of the early acoustic-phonetic response from semantic context suggests a limited role for lexical feedback in early speech perception.

WORD-ATTACK SKILLS FOR INDONESIAN LEARNERS

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Joko Pranowo

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The typical drawbacks that affect most Indonesian learners studying English as the target language concern the strategies in dealing with new dictions. The rule of thumb is that the learners are usually tempted to directly look up the meaning in a dictionary when other ways such as guessing the meaning from the context or by dissecting the words into smaller units so that they are able to get a hint from the base word cannot be engineered. As a result of this activity then, they miss crucial points in the realm of word enrichment. This article will shed some light on how to deal with new words and claim that it is not the meaning of a new word that should be the first priority.

Distinctive Features Hold a Privileged Status in the Computation of Word Meaning: Implications for Theories of Semantic Memory

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Cree, George S.; McNorgan, Chris; McRae, Ken

2006-01-01

The authors present data from 2 feature verification experiments designed to determine whether distinctive features have a privileged status in the computation of word meaning. They use an attractor-based connectionist model of semantic memory to derive predictions for the experiments. Contrary to central predictions of the conceptual structure…

Brain activation during word identification and word recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jernigan, Terry L.; Ostergaard, Arne L.; Law, Ian

1998-01-01

Previous memory research has suggested that the effects of prior study observed in priming tasks are functionally, and neurobiologically, distinct phenomena from the kind of memory expressed in conventional (explicit) memory tests. Evidence for this position comes from observed dissociations...... between memory scores obtained with the two kinds of tasks. However, there is continuing controversy about the meaning of these dissociations. In recent studies, Ostergaard (1998a, Memory Cognit. 26:40-60; 1998b, J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc., in press) showed that simply degrading visual word stimuli can...... dramatically alter the degree to which word priming shows a dissociation from word recognition; i.e., effects of a number of factors on priming paralleled their effects on recognition memory tests when the words were degraded at test. In the present study, cerebral blood flow changes were measured while...

Culture-Bound Words of the Danube Basin Countries: Translation into English

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Chetverikova Olena

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Any course in linguistic country study or popular text translation is impossible without adequate understanding and presentation of culture-bound elements, which present one of the most difficult topics to deal with, especially in multicultural countries. Our investigation aims to show the problems, which appear when we deal with equivalent-lacking words related to culture. Sometimes equivalent-lacking words are associated with culture-bound words, the Ukrainian equivalent for them is “реалії” (derived from Latin realis, pl. realia. However, the term “culture-bound word” is of narrower meaning than the term “equivalent-lacking word”. A culture-bound word names an object peculiar to this or that ethnic culture. Equivalent-lacking words include, along with culture-bound words, neologisms, i.e. newly coined forms, dialect words, slang, taboo-words, foreign (third language terms, proper names, misspellings, archaisms. Comparison of languages and cultures reveals the various types of culture-bound words. Reasons for using them can be extralinguistic, lexical or stylistic. When translating culture-bound words a translator should be aware of the receptor’s potential problems, take into account his background knowledge and choose the best means of translation.

Effects of word width and word length on optimal character size for reading of horizontally scrolling Japanese words

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Wataru eTeramoto

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The present study investigated whether word width and length affect the optimal character size for reading of horizontally scrolling Japanese words, using reading speed as a measure. In Experiment 1, three Japanese words, each consisting of 4 Hiragana characters, sequentially scrolled on a display screen from right to left. Participants, all Japanese native speakers, were instructed to read the words aloud as accurately as possible, irrespective of their order within the sequence. To quantitatively measure their reading performance, we used rapid serial visual presentation paradigm, where the scrolling rate was increased until the participants began to make mistakes. Thus, the highest scrolling rate at which the participants’ performance exceeded 88.9% correct rate was calculated for each character size (0.3, 0.6, 1.0, and 3.0° and scroll window size (5 or 10 character spaces. Results showed that the reading performance was highest in the range of 0.6° to 1.0°, irrespective of the scroll window size. Experiment 2 investigated whether the optimal character size observed in Experiment 1 was applicable for any word width and word length (i.e., the number of characters in a word. Results showed that reading speeds were slower for longer than shorter words and the word width of 3.6° was optimal among the word lengths tested (3, 4, and 6 character words. Considering that character size varied depending on word width and word length in the present study, this means that the optimal character size can be changed by word width and word length.

Effects of Word Width and Word Length on Optimal Character Size for Reading of Horizontally Scrolling Japanese Words.

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Teramoto, Wataru; Nakazaki, Takuyuki; Sekiyama, Kaoru; Mori, Shuji

2016-01-01

The present study investigated, whether word width and length affect the optimal character size for reading of horizontally scrolling Japanese words, using reading speed as a measure. In Experiment 1, three Japanese words, each consisting of four Hiragana characters, sequentially scrolled on a display screen from right to left. Participants, all Japanese native speakers, were instructed to read the words aloud as accurately as possible, irrespective of their order within the sequence. To quantitatively measure their reading performance, we used rapid serial visual presentation paradigm, where the scrolling rate was increased until the participants began to make mistakes. Thus, the highest scrolling rate at which the participants' performance exceeded 88.9% correct rate was calculated for each character size (0.3°, 0.6°, 1.0°, and 3.0°) and scroll window size (5 or 10 character spaces). Results showed that the reading performance was highest in the range of 0.6° to 1.0°, irrespective of the scroll window size. Experiment 2 investigated whether the optimal character size observed in Experiment 1 was applicable for any word width and word length (i.e., the number of characters in a word). Results showed that reading speeds were slower for longer than shorter words and the word width of 3.6° was optimal among the word lengths tested (three, four, and six character words). Considering that character size varied depending on word width and word length in the present study, this means that the optimal character size can be changed by word width and word length in scrolling Japanese words.

The location-, word-, and arrow-based Simon effects: An ex-Gaussian analysis.

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Luo, Chunming; Proctor, Robert W

2018-04-01

Task-irrelevant spatial information, conveyed by stimulus location, location word, or arrow direction, can influence the response to task-relevant attributes, generating the location-, word-, and arrow-based Simon effects. We examined whether different mechanisms are involved in the generation of these Simon effects by fitting a mathematical ex-Gaussian function to empirical response time (RT) distributions. Specifically, we tested whether which ex-Gaussian parameters (μ, σ, and τ) show Simon effects and whether the location-, word, and arrow-based effects are on different parameters. Results show that the location-based Simon effect occurred on mean RT and μ but not on τ, and a reverse Simon effect occurred on σ. In contrast, a positive word-based Simon effect was obtained on all these measures (including σ), and a positive arrow-based Simon effect was evident on mean RT, σ, and τ but not μ. The arrow-based Simon effect was not different from the word-based Simon effect on τ or σ but was on μ and mean RT. These distinct results on mean RT and ex-Gaussian parameters provide evidence that spatial information conveyed by the various location modes are different in the time-course of activation.

From Word Alignment to Word Senses, via Multilingual Wordnets

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Dan Tufis

2006-05-01

Full Text Available Most of the successful commercial applications in language processing (text and/or speech dispense with any explicit concern on semantics, with the usual motivations stemming from the computational high costs required for dealing with semantics, in case of large volumes of data. With recent advances in corpus linguistics and statistical-based methods in NLP, revealing useful semantic features of linguistic data is becoming cheaper and cheaper and the accuracy of this process is steadily improving. Lately, there seems to be a growing acceptance of the idea that multilingual lexical ontologisms might be the key towards aligning different views on the semantic atomic units to be used in characterizing the general meaning of various and multilingual documents. Depending on the granularity at which semantic distinctions are necessary, the accuracy of the basic semantic processing (such as word sense disambiguation can be very high with relatively low complexity computing. The paper substantiates this statement by presenting a statistical/based system for word alignment and word sense disambiguation in parallel corpora. We describe a word alignment platform which ensures text pre-processing (tokenization, POS-tagging, lemmatization, chunking, sentence and word alignment as required by an accurate word sense disambiguation.

Usage of the word 'ether'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Duffy, M.C.

1980-01-01

Confusion has been caused by scientists using the one word 'ether' to classify models differing from each other in important respects. Major roles assigned to the word are examined, and the nature of modern ether theories surveyed. The part played by the several meanings attached to the word, in the ether concept, is outlined. (author)

Dynamics of Semantic and Word-Formation Subsystems of the Russian Language: Historical Dynamics of the Word Family

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Olga Ivanovna Dmitrieva

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The article provides comprehensive justification of the principles and methods of the synchronic and diachronic research of word-formation subsystems of the Russian language. The authors also study the ways of analyzing historical dynamics of word family as the main macro-unit of word-formation system. In the field of analysis there is a family of words with the stem 'ход-' (the meaning of 'motion', word-formation of which is investigated in different periods of the Russian literary language. Significance of motion-verbs in the process of forming a language picture of the world determined the character and the structure of this word family as one of the biggest in the history of the Russian language. In the article a structural and semantic dynamics of the word family 'ход-' is depicted. The results of the study show that in the ancient period the prefixes of verbal derivatives were formed, which became the apex-branched derivational paradigms existing in modern Russian. The old Russian period of language development is characterized by the appearance of words with connotative meaning (with suffixes -ishk-, -ichn-, as well as the words with possessive semantics (with suffixes –ev-, -sk-. In this period the verbs with the postfix -cz also supplement the analyzed word family. The period of formation of the National Russian language was marked by the loss of a large number of abstract nouns and the appearance of neologisms from some old Russian abstract nouns. The studied family in the modern Russian language is characterized by the following processes: the appearance of terms, the active semantic derivation, the weakening of word-formation variability, the semantic differentiation of duplicate units, the development of subsystem of words with connotative meanings, and the preservation of derivatives in all functional styles.

Vocabulary Word Instruction for Students Who Read Braille

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Savaiano, Mackenzie E.; Compton, Donald L.; Hatton, Deborah D.; Lloyd, Blair P.

2016-01-01

The association made between the meaning, spelling, and pronunciation of a word has been shown to help children remember the meanings of words. The present study addressed whether the presence of a target word in Braille during instruction facilitated vocabulary learning more efficiently than an auditory-only instructional condition. The authors…

Picturing words? Sensorimotor cortex activation for printed words in child and adult readers

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Dekker, Tessa M.; Mareschal, Denis; Johnson, Mark H.; Sereno, Martin I.

2014-01-01

Learning to read involves associating abstract visual shapes with familiar meanings. Embodiment theories suggest that word meaning is at least partially represented in distributed sensorimotor networks in the brain (Barsalou, 2008; Pulvermueller, 2013). We explored how reading comprehension develops by tracking when and how printed words start activating these “semantic” sensorimotor representations as children learn to read. Adults and children aged 7–10 years showed clear category-specific cortical specialization for tool versus animal pictures during a one-back categorisation task. Thus, sensorimotor representations for these categories were in place at all ages. However, co-activation of these same brain regions by the visual objects’ written names was only present in adults, even though all children could read and comprehend all presented words, showed adult-like task performance, and older children were proficient readers. It thus takes years of training and expert reading skill before spontaneous processing of printed words’ sensorimotor meanings develops in childhood. PMID:25463817

Transcript for Understanding Medical Words: A Tutorial

Science.gov (United States)

... medlineplus.gov/medicalwordstranscript.html Transcript for Understanding Medical Words: A Tutorial To use the sharing features on ... get to what those mean in a minute. Word Roots Word Roots. Let's begin with body parts. ...

Smashing WordPress Themes Making WordPress Beautiful

CERN Document Server

Hedengren, Thord Daniel

2011-01-01

The ultimate guide to WordPress Themes - one of the hottest topics on the web today WordPress is so much more than a blogging platform, and Smashing WordPress Themes teaches readers how to make it look any way they like - from a corporate site, to a photography gallery and moreWordPress is one of the hottest tools on the web today and is used by sites including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, flickr, CNN, NASA and of course Smashing MagazineBeautiful full colour throughout - web designers expect nothing lessSmashing Magazine will fully support this book by by promoting it through their webs

The Inhibitory Mechanism in Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language.

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Lu, Yao; Wu, Junjie; Dunlap, Susan; Chen, Baoguo

2017-01-01

Ambiguous words are hard to learn, yet little is known about what causes this difficulty. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the representations of new and prior meanings of ambiguous words in second language (L2) learning, and to explore the function of inhibitory control on L2 ambiguous word learning at the initial stage of learning. During a 4-day learning phase, Chinese-English bilinguals learned 30 novel English words for 30 min per day using bilingual flashcards. Half of the words to be learned were unambiguous (had one meaning) and half were ambiguous (had two semantically unrelated meanings learned in sequence). Inhibitory control was introduced as a subject variable measured by a Stroop task. The semantic representations established for the studied items were probed using a cross-language semantic relatedness judgment task, in which the learned English words served as the prime, and the targets were either semantically related or unrelated to the prime. Results showed that response latencies for the second meaning of ambiguous words were slower than for the first meaning and for unambiguous words, and that performance on only the second meaning of ambiguous words was predicted by inhibitory control ability. These results suggest that, at the initial stage of L2 ambiguous word learning, the representation of the second meaning is weak, probably interfered with by the representation of the prior learned meaning. Moreover, inhibitory control may modulate learning of the new meanings, such that individuals with better inhibitory control may more effectively suppress interference from the first meaning, and thus learn the new meaning more quickly.

The Inhibitory Mechanism in Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language

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Baoguo Chen

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Ambiguous words are hard to learn, yet little is known about what causes this difficulty. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the representations of new and prior meanings of ambiguous words in second language (L2 learning, and to explore the function of inhibitory control on L2 ambiguous word learning at the initial stage of learning. During a 4-day learning phase, Chinese–English bilinguals learned 30 novel English words for 30 min per day using bilingual flashcards. Half of the words to be learned were unambiguous (had one meaning and half were ambiguous (had two semantically unrelated meanings learned in sequence. Inhibitory control was introduced as a subject variable measured by a Stroop task. The semantic representations established for the studied items were probed using a cross-language semantic relatedness judgment task, in which the learned English words served as the prime, and the targets were either semantically related or unrelated to the prime. Results showed that response latencies for the second meaning of ambiguous words were slower than for the first meaning and for unambiguous words, and that performance on only the second meaning of ambiguous words was predicted by inhibitory control ability. These results suggest that, at the initial stage of L2 ambiguous word learning, the representation of the second meaning is weak, probably interfered with by the representation of the prior learned meaning. Moreover, inhibitory control may modulate learning of the new meanings, such that individuals with better inhibitory control may more effectively suppress interference from the first meaning, and thus learn the new meaning more quickly.

Word encoding during sleep is suggested by correlations between word-evoked up-states and post-sleep semantic priming

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Simon eRuch

2014-11-01

Full Text Available To test whether humans can encode words during sleep we played everyday words to men while they were napping and assessed priming from sleep-played words following waking. Words were presented during non-rapid eye movement (NREM sleep. Priming was assessed using a semantic and a perceptual priming test. These tests measured differences in the processing of words that had been or had not been played during sleep. Synonyms to sleep-played words were the targets in the semantic priming test that tapped the meaning of sleep-played words. All men responded to sleep-played words by producing up-states in their electroencephalogram. Up-states are NREM sleep-specific phases of briefly increased neuronal excitability. The word-evoked up-states might have promoted word processing during sleep. Yet, the mean performance in the priming tests administered following sleep was at chance level, which suggests that participants as a group failed to show priming following sleep. However, performance in the two priming tests was positively correlated to each other and to the magnitude of the word-evoked up-states. Hence, the larger a participant’s word-evoked up-states, the larger his perceptual and semantic priming. Those participants who scored high on all variables must have encoded words during sleep. We conclude that some humans are able to encode words during sleep, but more research is needed to pin down the factors that modulate this ability.

"Poetry Does Really Educate": An Interview with Spoken Word Poet Luka Lesson

Science.gov (United States)

Xerri, Daniel

2016-01-01

Spoken word poetry is a means of engaging young people with a genre that has often been much maligned in classrooms all over the world. This interview with the Australian spoken word poet Luka Lesson explores issues that are of pressing concern to poetry education. These include the idea that engagement with poetry in schools can be enhanced by…

Positive words or negative words: whose valence strength are we more sensitive to?

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Yang, Jiemin; Zeng, Jing; Meng, Xianxin; Zhu, Liping; Yuan, Jiajin; Li, Hong; Yusoff, Nasir

2013-10-02

The present study investigates the human brains' sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250-350 ms) and P3 (350-500 ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cross-situational statistically based word learning intervention for late-talking toddlers.

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Alt, Mary; Meyers, Christina; Oglivie, Trianna; Nicholas, Katrina; Arizmendi, Genesis

2014-01-01

To explore the efficacy of a word learning intervention for late-talking toddlers that is based on principles of cross-situational statistical learning. Four late-talking toddlers were individually provided with 7-10 weeks of bi-weekly word learning intervention that incorporated principles of cross-situational statistical learning. Treatment was input-based meaning that, aside from initial probes, children were not asked to produce any language during the sessions. Pre-intervention data included parent-reported measures of productive vocabulary and language samples. Data collected during intervention included production on probes, spontaneous production during treatment, and parent report of words used spontaneously at home. Data were analyzed for number of target words learned relative to control words, effect sizes, and pre-post treatment vocabulary measures. All children learned more target words than control words and, on average, showed a large treatment effect size. Children made pre-post vocabulary gains, increasing their percentile scores on the MCDI, and demonstrated a rate of word learning that was faster than rates found in the literature. Cross-situational statistically based word learning intervention has the potential to improve vocabulary learning in late-talking toddlers. Limitations on interpretation are also discussed. Readers will describe what cross-situational learning is and how it might apply to treatment. They will identify how including lexical and contextual variability in a word learning intervention for toddlers affected treatment outcomes. They will also recognize evidence of improved rate of vocabulary learning following treatment. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Processing and Representation of Ambiguous Words in Chinese Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements.

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Shen, Wei; Li, Xingshan

2016-01-01

In the current study, we used eye tracking to investigate whether senses of polysemous words and meanings of homonymous words are represented and processed similarly or differently in Chinese reading. Readers read sentences containing target words which was either homonymous words or polysemous words. The contexts of text preceding the target words were manipulated to bias the participants toward reading the ambiguous words according to their dominant, subordinate, or neutral meanings. Similarly, disambiguating regions following the target words were also manipulated to favor either the dominant or subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. The results showed that there were similar eye movement patterns when Chinese participants read sentences containing homonymous and polysemous words. The study also found that participants took longer to read the target word and the disambiguating text following it when the prior context and disambiguating regions favored divergent meanings rather than the same meaning. These results suggested that homonymy and polysemy are represented similarly in the mental lexicon when a particular meaning (sense) is fully specified by disambiguating information. Furthermore, multiple meanings (senses) are represented as separate entries in the mental lexicon.

Word Reading Aloud Skills: Their Positive Redefinition through Ageing

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Chapleau, Marianne; Wilson, Maximiliano A.; Potvin, Karel; Harvey-Langton, Alexandra; Montembeault, Maxime; Brambati, Simona M.

2017-01-01

Background: Successful reading can be achieved by means of two different procedures: sub-word processes for the pronunciation of words without semantics or pseudowords (PW) and whole-word processes that recruit word-specific information regarding the pronunciation of words with atypical orthography-to-phonology mappings (exception words, EW).…

Is there pain in champagne? Semantic involvement of words within words during sense-making

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Alphen, P.M.; van Berkum, J.J.A.

2010-01-01

In an ERP experiment, we examined whether listeners, when making sense of spoken utterances, take into account the meaning of spurious words that are embedded in longer words, either at their onsets (e.g., pie in pirate) or at their offsets (e.g., pain in champagne). In the experiment, Dutch

THE SPECIAL STATUS OF EXOGENOUS WORD-FORMATION WITHIN THE GERMAN WORD-FORMATION SYSTEM

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Zhilyuk Sergey Aleksandrovich

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The article presents the properties of exogenous word-formation system taking into account the existence of two word-formation systems in modern German. On the basis of foreign research which reveal modern trends in German word-formation connected with the internationalization and the development of new European Latin language. The author defines key features of exogenous word-formation, i.e. foreign origin of wordformation units, unmotivated units, unmotivated interchange in base and affixes as well as limited distribution rules in combination with German word-formation. The article analyzes various approaches to word-division, as well as motivated and unmotivated interchange of consonants in bases and in affixes. Unmotivated interchange showcases a special status of the exogenous word-formation within German. Another item covered by the article is the issue of confix. The article has opinions of researchers about correctness of its separation and a list of its features. The author presents his definition of confix: a confix is a bound exogenous word-formation unit with a certain lexical and semantic meaning and joining other units directly or indirectly (through linking morpheme -o-, which is able to make a base. Moreover, some confixes are able to participate at word-combination and have unlimited distribution. So far, confix showcases the integration of exogenous word-formation and traditional German word-formation. The research proves the special status of exogenous word-formation in German. Its results can be used as a base for further analysis of co-existing word-formation systems in German and determination of their characteristic features.

English and Afrikaans Loan-words in isiXhosa

African Journals Online (AJOL)

rbr

guages, which is strongly influenced by foreign words, especially English and Afrikaans, and .... meaning one does not know, it matters little whether the word is a foreign or a ... From the point of economy, foreign words have some disadvantages. ... extensively uses foreign loan-words for the news in the African languages.

Gamification for Word Sense Labeling

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Venhuizen, Noortje; Basile, Valerio; Evang, Kilian; Bos, Johan; Erk, Kartin; Koller, Alexander

2013-01-01

Obtaining gold standard data for word sense disambiguation is important but costly. We show how it can be done using a “Game with a Purpose” (GWAP) called Wordrobe. This game consists of a large set of multiple-choice questions on word senses generated from the Groningen Meaning Bank. The players

Word form Encoding in Chinese Word Naming and Word Typing

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Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Li, Cheng-Yi

2011-01-01

The process of word form encoding was investigated in primed word naming and word typing with Chinese monosyllabic words. The target words shared or did not share the onset consonants with the prime words. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 100 ms or 300 ms. Typing required the participants to enter the phonetic letters of the target word,…

Modality dependency of familiarity ratings of Japanese words.

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Amano, S; Kondo, T; Kakehi, K

1995-07-01

Familiarity ratings for a large number of aurally and visually presented Japanese words wer measured for 11 subjects, in order to investigate the modality dependency of familiarity. The correlation coefficient between auditory and visual ratings was .808, which is lower than that observed for English words, suggesting that a substantial portion of the mental lexicon is modality dependent. It was shown that the modality dependency is greater for low-familiarity words than it is for medium- or high-familiarity words. This difference between the low- and the medium- or high-familiarity words has a relationship to orthography. That is, the dependency is larger in words consisting only of kanji, which may have multiple pronunciations and usually represent meaning, than it is in words consisting only of hiragana or katakana, which have a single pronunciation and usually do not represent meaning. These results indicate that the idiosyncratic characteristics of Japanese orthography contribute to the modality dependency.

On the Awareness of English Polysemous Words by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

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Sulafah Abdul Salam Alnamer

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This study measures the extent to which Arabic-speaking EFL learners are aware of polysemy in English. It also investigates whether the English proficiency level of Arabic-speaking EFL learners plays a role in their ability to distinguish between the various meanings of English polysemous words, and whether they face problems when they encounter these words in unusual contexts (i.e. the contexts that employ the extended meanings of the target polysemous words. To these ends, a translation test in which the participants were asked to give full Arabic translation for fifteen English sentences was designed. The words open, run, and make were the target polysemous words in this study. The Results show that Arabic-speaking EFL learners have little awareness of polysemy in English, and their English proficiency level does play a role in their ability to distinguish between the different meanings of English polysemous words. It was also found that Arabic-speaking EFL learners have no problems guessing the primary meaning of the English polysemous words. However, they face difficulty guessing the extended meanings of polysemous words in unusual contexts. Moreover, some Arabic-speaking EFL learners can guess the extended meanings of the polysemous words they encounter in familiar contexts, or when they understand some cues provided to disambiguate these words. This study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further studies.

Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning during Spoken Word Processing

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Devereux, Barry J.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Randall, Billi; Geertzen, Jeroen; Tyler, Lorraine K.

2016-01-01

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

Wording in international law

NARCIS (Netherlands)

d' Aspremont, J.

2012-01-01

Since the demise of philosophical foundationalism and that of the Aristotelian idea of an inner meaning of words, scholarship about international law is no longer perceived as a mining activity geared towards the extraction of pre-existing meaning. Rather, international legal scholarship is in a

Learning the language of time: Children's acquisition of duration words.

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Tillman, Katharine A; Barner, David

2015-05-01

Children use time words like minute and hour early in development, but take years to acquire their precise meanings. Here we investigate whether children assign meaning to these early usages, and if so, how. To do this, we test their interpretation of seven time words: second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. We find that preschoolers infer the orderings of time words (e.g., hour>minute), but have little to no knowledge of the absolute durations they encode. Knowledge of absolute duration is learned much later in development - many years after children first start using time words in speech - and in many children does not emerge until they have acquired formal definitions for the words. We conclude that associating words with the perception of duration does not come naturally to children, and that early intuitive meanings of time words are instead rooted in relative orderings, which children may infer from their use in speech. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Orthographic Neighborhood Density and Word Frequency on Visual Word Recognition: Insights from RT Distributional Analyses

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Stephen Wee Hun eLim

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The effects of orthographic neighborhood density and word frequency in visual word recognition were investigated using distributional analyses of response latencies in visual lexical decision. Main effects of density and frequency were observed in mean latencies. Distributional analyses, in addition, revealed a density x frequency interaction: for low-frequency words, density effects were mediated predominantly by distributional shifting whereas for high-frequency words, density effects were absent except at the slower RTs, implicating distributional skewing. The present findings suggest that density effects in low-frequency words reflect processes involved in early lexical access, while the effects observed in high-frequency words reflect late postlexical checking processes.

Comparing different kinds of words and word-word relations to test an habituation model of priming.

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Rieth, Cory A; Huber, David E

2017-06-01

Huber and O'Reilly (2003) proposed that neural habituation exists to solve a temporal parsing problem, minimizing blending between one word and the next when words are visually presented in rapid succession. They developed a neural dynamics habituation model, explaining the finding that short duration primes produce positive priming whereas long duration primes produce negative repetition priming. The model contains three layers of processing, including a visual input layer, an orthographic layer, and a lexical-semantic layer. The predicted effect of prime duration depends both on this assumed representational hierarchy and the assumption that synaptic depression underlies habituation. The current study tested these assumptions by comparing different kinds of words (e.g., words versus non-words) and different kinds of word-word relations (e.g., associative versus repetition). For each experiment, the predictions of the original model were compared to an alternative model with different representational assumptions. Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction that non-words and inverted words require longer prime durations to eliminate positive repetition priming (i.e., a slower transition from positive to negative priming). Experiment 2 confirmed the prediction that associative priming increases and then decreases with increasing prime duration, but remains positive even with long duration primes. Experiment 3 replicated the effects of repetition and associative priming using a within-subjects design and combined these effects by examining target words that were expected to repeat (e.g., viewing the target word 'BACK' after the prime phrase 'back to'). These results support the originally assumed representational hierarchy and more generally the role of habituation in temporal parsing and priming. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Essential words for the TOEFL

CERN Document Server

Matthiesen, Steven J

2017-01-01

This revised book is specifically designed for ESL students preparing to take the TOEFL. Includes new words and phrases, a section on purpose words, a list of vocabulary words with definitions, sample sentences, practice exercises for 500 need-to-know words, practice test with answer key, and more.

The Effect of Known-and-Unknown Word Combinations on Intentional Vocabulary Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Kasahara, Kiwamu

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine whether learning a known-and-unknown word combination is superior in terms of retention and retrieval of meaning to learning a single unknown word. The term "combination" in this study means a two-word collocation of a familiar word and a word that is new to the participants. Following the results of…

Wording in International Law

NARCIS (Netherlands)

d' Aspremont, J.

2012-01-01

Since the demise of philosophical foundationalism and that of the Aristotelian idea of an inner meaning of words, the scholarship about international law is no longer perceived as a mining activity geared towards the extraction of pre-existing meaning. Rather, international legal scholarship is in a

Learning Words through Multimedia Application

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

2007-01-01

  This study explores the relevance of multimedia application in relation to vocabulary acquisition in the classroom of Chinese as a foreign language. The herein depicted application refers to the computer-assisted implicit word-learning, wherein the Danish students built hypertexts to acquire...... meanings of unknown words aiming to research and to enlarging Chinese vocabulary.  ...

Computing meaning v.4

CERN Document Server

Bunt, Harry; Pulman, Stephen

2013-01-01

This book is a collection of papers by leading researchers in computational semantics. It presents a state-of-the-art overview of recent and current research in computational semantics, including descriptions of new methods for constructing and improving resources for semantic computation, such as WordNet, VerbNet, and semantically annotated corpora. It also presents new statistical methods in semantic computation, such as the application of distributional semantics in the compositional calculation of sentence meanings. Computing the meaning of sentences, texts, and spoken or texted dialogue i

When Meaning Is Not Enough: Distributional and Semantic Cues to Word Categorization in Child Directed Speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Feijoo, Sara; Muñoz, Carmen; Amadó, Anna; Serrat, Elisabet

2017-01-01

One of the most important tasks in first language development is assigning words to their grammatical category. The Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis postulates that, in order to accomplish this task, children are guided by a neat correspondence between semantic and grammatical categories, since nouns typically refer to objects and verbs to actions. It is this correspondence that guides children's initial word categorization. Other approaches, on the other hand, suggest that children might make use of distributional cues and word contexts to accomplish the word categorization task. According to such approaches, the Semantic Bootstrapping assumption offers an important limitation, as it might not be true that all the nouns that children hear refer to specific objects or people. In order to explore that, we carried out two studies based on analyses of children's linguistic input. We analyzed child-directed speech addressed to four children under the age of 2;6, taken from the CHILDES database. The corpora were selected from the Manchester corpus. The corpora from the four selected children contained a total of 10,681 word types and 364,196 word tokens. In our first study, discriminant analyses were performed using semantic cues alone. The results show that many of the nouns found in parents' speech do not relate to specific objects and that semantic information alone might not be sufficient for successful word categorization. Given that there must be an additional source of information which, alongside with semantics, might assist young learners in word categorization, our second study explores the availability of both distributional and semantic cues in child-directed speech. Our results confirm that this combination might yield better results for word categorization. These results are in line with theories that suggest the need for an integration of multiple cues from different sources in language development.

Fast Brain Plasticity during Word Learning in Musically-Trained Children.

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Dittinger, Eva; Chobert, Julie; Ziegler, Johannes C; Besson, Mireille

2017-01-01

Children learn new words every day and this ability requires auditory perception, phoneme discrimination, attention, associative learning and semantic memory. Based on previous results showing that some of these functions are enhanced by music training, we investigated learning of novel words through picture-word associations in musically-trained and control children (8-12 year-old) to determine whether music training would positively influence word learning. Results showed that musically-trained children outperformed controls in a learning paradigm that included picture-sound matching and semantic associations. Moreover, the differences between unexpected and expected learned words, as reflected by the N200 and N400 effects, were larger in children with music training compared to controls after only 3 min of learning the meaning of novel words. In line with previous results in adults, these findings clearly demonstrate a correlation between music training and better word learning. It is argued that these benefits reflect both bottom-up and top-down influences. The present learning paradigm might provide a useful dynamic diagnostic tool to determine which perceptive and cognitive functions are impaired in children with learning difficulties.

Fast Brain Plasticity during Word Learning in Musically-Trained Children

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Eva Dittinger

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Children learn new words every day and this ability requires auditory perception, phoneme discrimination, attention, associative learning and semantic memory. Based on previous results showing that some of these functions are enhanced by music training, we investigated learning of novel words through picture-word associations in musically-trained and control children (8–12 year-old to determine whether music training would positively influence word learning. Results showed that musically-trained children outperformed controls in a learning paradigm that included picture-sound matching and semantic associations. Moreover, the differences between unexpected and expected learned words, as reflected by the N200 and N400 effects, were larger in children with music training compared to controls after only 3 min of learning the meaning of novel words. In line with previous results in adults, these findings clearly demonstrate a correlation between music training and better word learning. It is argued that these benefits reflect both bottom-up and top-down influences. The present learning paradigm might provide a useful dynamic diagnostic tool to determine which perceptive and cognitive functions are impaired in children with learning difficulties.

Hearing taboo words can result in early talker effects in word recognition for female listeners.

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Tuft, Samantha E; MᶜLennan, Conor T; Krestar, Maura L

2018-02-01

Previous spoken word recognition research using the long-term repetition-priming paradigm found performance costs for stimuli mismatching in talker identity. That is, when words were repeated across the two blocks, and the identity of the talker changed reaction times (RTs) were slower than when the repeated words were spoken by the same talker. Such performance costs, or talker effects, followed a time course, occurring only when processing was relatively slow. More recent research suggests that increased explicit and implicit attention towards the talkers can result in talker effects even during relatively fast processing. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether word meaning would influence the pattern of talker effects in an easy lexical decision task and, if so, whether results would differ depending on whether the presentation of neutral and taboo words was mixed or blocked. Regardless of presentation, participants responded to taboo words faster than neutral words. Furthermore, talker effects for the female talker emerged when participants heard both taboo and neutral words (consistent with an attention-based hypothesis), but not for participants that heard only taboo or only neutral words (consistent with the time-course hypothesis). These findings have important implications for theoretical models of spoken word recognition.

The Separability of Morphological Processes from Semantic Meaning and Syntactic Class in Production of Single Words: Evidence from the Hebrew Root Morpheme

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Deutsch, Avital

2016-01-01

In the present study we investigated to what extent the morphological facilitation effect induced by the derivational root morpheme in Hebrew is independent of semantic meaning and grammatical information of the part of speech involved. Using the picture-word interference paradigm with auditorily presented distractors, Experiment 1 compared the…

Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English.

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Sóskuthy, Márton; Hay, Jennifer

2017-09-01

This paper investigates the emergence of lexicalized effects of word usage on word duration by looking at parallel changes in usage and duration over 130years in New Zealand English. Previous research has found that frequent words are shorter, informative words are longer, and words in utterance-final position are also longer. It has also been argued that some of these patterns are not simply online adjustments, but are incorporated into lexical representations. While these studies tend to focus on the synchronic aspects of such patterns, our corpus shows that word-usage patterns and word durations are not static over time. Many words change in duration and also change with respect to frequency, informativity and likelihood of occurring utterance-finally. Analysis of changing word durations over this time period shows substantial patterns of co-adaptation between word usage and word durations. Words that are increasing in frequency are becoming shorter. Words that are increasing/decreasing in informativity show a change in the same direction in duration (e.g. increasing informativity is associated with increasing duration). And words that are increasingly appearing utterance-finally are lengthening. These effects exist independently of the local effects of the predictors. For example, words that are increasing utterance-finally lengthen in all positions, including utterance-medially. We show that these results are compatible with a number of different views about lexical representations, but they cannot be explained without reference to a production-perception loop that allows speakers to update their representations dynamically on the basis of their experience. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neurophysiological evidence for the interplay of speech segmentation and word-referent mapping during novel word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

François, Clément; Cunillera, Toni; Garcia, Enara; Laine, Matti; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni

2017-04-01

Learning a new language requires the identification of word units from continuous speech (the speech segmentation problem) and mapping them onto conceptual representation (the word to world mapping problem). Recent behavioral studies have revealed that the statistical properties found within and across modalities can serve as cues for both processes. However, segmentation and mapping have been largely studied separately, and thus it remains unclear whether both processes can be accomplished at the same time and if they share common neurophysiological features. To address this question, we recorded EEG of 20 adult participants during both an audio alone speech segmentation task and an audiovisual word-to-picture association task. The participants were tested for both the implicit detection of online mismatches (structural auditory and visual semantic violations) as well as for the explicit recognition of words and word-to-picture associations. The ERP results from the learning phase revealed a delayed learning-related fronto-central negativity (FN400) in the audiovisual condition compared to the audio alone condition. Interestingly, while online structural auditory violations elicited clear MMN/N200 components in the audio alone condition, visual-semantic violations induced meaning-related N400 modulations in the audiovisual condition. The present results support the idea that speech segmentation and meaning mapping can take place in parallel and act in synergy to enhance novel word learning. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Affix Meaning Knowledge in First Through Third Grade Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Apel, Kenn; Henbest, Victoria Suzanne

2016-04-01

We examined grade-level differences in 1st- through 3rd-grade students' performance on an experimenter-developed affix meaning task (AMT) and determined whether AMT performance explained unique variance in word-level reading and reading comprehension, beyond other known contributors to reading development. Forty students at each grade level completed an assessment battery that included measures of phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, reading comprehension, and affix meaning knowledge. On the AMT, 1st-grade students were significantly less accurate than 2nd- and 3rd-grade students; there was no significant difference in performance between the 2nd- and 3rd-grade students. Regression analyses revealed that the AMT accounted for 8% unique variance of students' performance on word-level reading measures and 6% unique variance of students' performance on the reading comprehension measure, after age, phonological awareness, and receptive vocabulary were explained. These results provide initial information on the development of affix meaning knowledge via an explicit measure in 1st- through 3rd-grade students and demonstrate that affix meaning knowledge uniquely contributes to the development of reading abilities above other known literacy predictors. These findings provide empirical support for how students might use morphological problem solving to read unknown multimorphemic words successfully.

How Elementary-Age Children Read Polysyllabic Polymorphemic Words

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Kearns, Devin M.

2015-01-01

Developing readers of English appear to favor phonograms over grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) to read unknown words. For polysyllabic polymorphemic (PSPM) words, the morphophonemic nature of English means elementary-age children may focus on roots and affixes. Does developing readers' PSPM word reading accuracy relate to the morphological…

Word classes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rijkhoff, Jan

2007-01-01

in grammatical descriptions of some 50 languages, which together constitute a representative sample of the world’s languages (Hengeveld et al. 2004: 529). It appears that there are both quantitative and qualitative differences between word class systems of individual languages. Whereas some languages employ...... a parts-of-speech system that includes the categories Verb, Noun, Adjective and Adverb, other languages may use only a subset of these four lexical categories. Furthermore, quite a few languages have a major word class whose members cannot be classified in terms of the categories Verb – Noun – Adjective...... – Adverb, because they have properties that are strongly associated with at least two of these four traditional word classes (e.g. Adjective and Adverb). Finally, this article discusses some of the ways in which word class distinctions interact with other grammatical domains, such as syntax and morphology....

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...

Ciceronas apie vertimą. Ką mums atskleidžia žodžių reikšmės | Cicero about Translation: Exploring the Meaning of Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Audronė Kučinskienė

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The author of the article reveals Cicero’s attitude towards translation, exploring some passages from his rhetorical and philosophical treatises which deal with translation from Greek to Latin, and paying most attention to the usage of words with the mean­ing “translate, translator”.To conclude, the regular Latin verb for “to trans­late” (convertere in Cicero’s usage implies neither the accuracy or literalism of translation. For a close literal translation he uses interpretari or such ex­pressions as ad verbum (verbum de verbo verbum e verbo, ad verbum exprimere, verbum pro verbo reddere. The verbs exprimere, explicare, reddere are used more or less metaphorically to express various aspects of translation from Greek, which includes also a free interpretation of the original and borrow­ing some elements from the original. According to our observations, Fin. I. 7 is the only case in Cicero’s extant scripts, as well as the first in Latin literature, when the verb transferre, while meaning “to trans­fer, to borrow, to use in context” comes closest to vertere. By contrast, the authors of I–II AD, such as Seneca, Pliny the Elder and the Younger, Quintilian use the word transferre with the meaning of transla­tion quite regularly.We argue that when Cicero calls himself not in­terpres, sed orator, he tries to indicate first of all not the closeness or freedom of translation, but rather the rhetorical power of his text. He is not afraid to use a word in not a very common sense, or two words for one in the original, or to create a new one if necessary, which may seem too bold for the interpretes indiserti not so skilled and well-trained in rhetorics. Cicero approached his work of translation without any pre­conceived rules, and the main standard referred to is his own taste based on the ruling principle of rhetor­ics – decorum, aptum, prepon – i.e. appropriateness. Cicero, as a translator as well as an orator, matches every

Is the motor system necessary for processing action and abstract emotion words? Evidence from focal brain lesions

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Felix R. Dreyer

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Neuroimaging and neuropsychological experiments suggest that modality-preferential cortices, including motor- and somatosensory areas contribute to the semantic processing of action related concrete words. In contrast, a possible role of modality-preferential – including sensorimotor – areas in processing abstract meaning remains under debate. However, recent fMRI studies indicate an involvement of the left sensorimotor cortex in the processing of abstract-emotional words (e.g. love. But are these areas indeed necessary for processing action-related and abstract words? The current study now investigates word processing in two patients suffering from focal brain lesion in the left frontocentral motor system. A speeded lexical decision task (LDT on meticulously matched word groups showed that the recognition of nouns from different semantic categories – related to food, animals, tools and abstract-emotional concepts – was differentially affected. Whereas patient HS with a lesion in dorsolateral central sensorimotor cortex next to the hand area showed a category-specific deficit in recognizing tool words, patient CA suffering from lesion centered in the left SMA was primarily impaired in abstract-emotional word processing. These results point to a causal role of the motor cortex in the semantic processing of both action-related object concepts and abstract-emotional concepts and therefore suggest that the motor areas previously found active in action-related and abstract word processing can serve a meaning-specific necessary role in word recognition. The category-specific nature of the observed dissociations is difficult to reconcile with the idea that sensorimotor systems are somehow peripheral or ‘epiphenomenal’ to meaning and concept processing. Rather, our results are consistent with the claim that cognition is grounded in action and perception and based on distributed action perception circuits reaching into sensorimotor areas.

iWordNet: A New Approach to Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

OpenAIRE

Chang, Mark; Chang, Monica

2017-01-01

One of the main challenges in artificial intelligence or computational linguistics is understanding the meaning of a word or concept. We argue that the connotation of the term “understanding,” or the meaning of the word “meaning,” is merely a word mapping game due to unavoidable circular definitions. These circular definitions arise when an individual defines a concept, the concepts in its definition, and so on, eventually forming a personalized network of concepts, which we call an iWordNet....

Aging effects on ERP correlates of emotional word discrimination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Molnar, M.; Toth, B.; Boha, R.; Gaal, Z.A.; Kardos, Z.; File, B.; Stam, C.J.

2013-01-01

ObjectiveTo explore age-, and valence specific ERP-characteristics of word-discrimination processes. Methods: A group of young (mean age: 21.26. yrs) and elderly (mean age: 65.73. yrs) individuals participated. The task was to respond to a word (target) with valence (neutral, negative, positive) and

Children value informativity over logic in word learning.

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Ramscar, Michael; Dye, Melody; Klein, Joseph

2013-06-01

The question of how children learn the meanings of words has long puzzled philosophers and psychologists. As Quine famously pointed out, simply hearing a word in context reveals next to nothing about its meaning. How then do children learn to understand and use words correctly? Here, we show how learning theory can offer an elegant solution to this seemingly intractable puzzle in language acquisition. From it, we derived formal predictions about word learning in situations of Quinean ambiguity, and subsequently tested our predictions on toddlers, undergraduates, and developmental psychologists. The toddlers' performance was consistent both with our predictions and with the workings of implicit mechanisms that can facilitate the learning of meaningful lexical systems. Adults adopted a markedly different and likely suboptimal strategy. These results suggest one explanation for why early word learning can appear baffling: Adult intuitions may be a poor source of insight into how children learn.

Comprehension of derivational morphemes in words and pseudo-words in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia

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Noémie Auclair-Ouellet

2014-04-01

The results of the word condition alone cannot rule out the possibility that errors in the svPPA group were caused by difficulty in understanding words rather than in processing derivational morphemes. However, the lexical context provided in this condition did not speed-up the performance of svPPA individuals as it did in the control group. Most importantly, results from the pseudo-word condition showed that in the svPPA group, the association between the morpheme and its meaning was not performed as readily and reliably as in the control group. These results support the involvement of semantic memory in morphological processing.

Semantic Neighborhood Effects for Abstract versus Concrete Words.

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Danguecan, Ashley N; Buchanan, Lori

2016-01-01

Studies show that semantic effects may be task-specific, and thus, that semantic representations are flexible and dynamic. Such findings are critical to the development of a comprehensive theory of semantic processing in visual word recognition, which should arguably account for how semantic effects may vary by task. It has been suggested that semantic effects are more directly examined using tasks that explicitly require meaning processing relative to those for which meaning processing is not necessary (e.g., lexical decision task). The purpose of the present study was to chart the processing of concrete versus abstract words in the context of a global co-occurrence variable, semantic neighborhood density (SND), by comparing word recognition response times (RTs) across four tasks varying in explicit semantic demands: standard lexical decision task (with non-pronounceable non-words), go/no-go lexical decision task (with pronounceable non-words), progressive demasking task, and sentence relatedness task. The same experimental stimulus set was used across experiments and consisted of 44 concrete and 44 abstract words, with half of these being low SND, and half being high SND. In this way, concreteness and SND were manipulated in a factorial design using a number of visual word recognition tasks. A consistent RT pattern emerged across tasks, in which SND effects were found for abstract (but not necessarily concrete) words. Ultimately, these findings highlight the importance of studying interactive effects in word recognition, and suggest that linguistic associative information is particularly important for abstract words.

Evidence for Morphological Recomposition in Compound Words using MEG

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Teon Lamont Brooks

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic and electrophysiological studies of lexical processing show convergent evidence for morpheme-based lexical access for morphologically complex words that involves early decomposition into their constituent morphemes followed by some combinatorial operation. Considering that both semantically transparent (e.g., sailboat and semantically opaque (e.g., bootleg compounds undergo morphological decomposition during the earlier stages of lexical processing, subsequent combinatorial operations should account for the difference in the contribution of the constituent morphemes to the meaning of these different word types. In this study we use magnetoencephalography (MEG to pinpoint the neural bases of this combinatorial stage in English compound word recognition. MEG data were acquired while participants performed a word naming task in which three word types, transparent compounds (e.g., roadside, opaque compounds (e.g., butterfly, and morphologically simple words (e.g., brothel were contrasted in a partial-repetition priming paradigm where the word of interest was primed by one of its constituent morphemes. Analysis of onset latency revealed shorter latencies to name compound words than simplex words when primed, further supporting a stage of morphological decomposition in lexical access. An analysis of the associated MEG activity uncovered a region of interest implicated in morphological composition, the Left Anterior Temporal Lobe (LATL. Only transparent compounds showed increased activity in this area from 250 to 470 ms. Previous studies using sentences and phrases have highlighted the role of LATL in performing computations for basic combinatorial operations. Results are in tune with decomposition models for morpheme accessibility early in processing and suggest that semantics play a role in combining the meanings of morphemes when their composition is transparent to the overall word meaning.

Large-corpus phoneme and word recognition and the generality of lexical context in CVC word perception.

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Gelfand, Jessica T; Christie, Robert E; Gelfand, Stanley A

2014-02-01

Speech recognition may be analyzed in terms of recognition probabilities for perceptual wholes (e.g., words) and parts (e.g., phonemes), where j or the j-factor reveals the number of independent perceptual units required for recognition of the whole (Boothroyd, 1968b; Boothroyd & Nittrouer, 1988; Nittrouer & Boothroyd, 1990). For consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense syllables, j ∼ 3 because all 3 phonemes are needed to identify the syllable, but j ∼ 2.5 for real-word CVCs (revealing ∼2.5 independent perceptual units) because higher level contributions such as lexical knowledge enable word recognition even if less than 3 phonemes are accurately received. These findings were almost exclusively determined with the 120-word corpus of the isophonemic word lists (Boothroyd, 1968a; Boothroyd & Nittrouer, 1988), presented one word at a time. It is therefore possible that its generality or applicability may be limited. This study thus determined j by using a much larger and less restricted corpus of real-word CVCs presented in 3-word groups as well as whether j is influenced by test size. The j-factor for real-word CVCs was derived from the recognition performance of 223 individuals with a broad range of hearing sensitivity by using the Tri-Word Test (Gelfand, 1998), which involves 50 three-word presentations and a corpus of 450 words. The influence of test size was determined from a subsample of 96 participants with separate scores for the first 10, 20, and 25 (and all 50) presentation sets of the full test. The mean value of j was 2.48 with a 95% confidence interval of 2.44-2.53, which is in good agreement with values obtained with isophonemic word lists, although its value varies among individuals. A significant correlation was found between percent-correct scores and j, but it was small and accounted for only 12.4% of the variance in j for phoneme scores ≥60%. Mean j-factors for the 10-, 20-, 25-, and 50-set test sizes were between 2.49 and 2.53 and were not

When Cues Collide: Children's Sensitivity to Letter-and Meaning-Patterns in Spelling Words in English

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Deacon, S. H.; LeBlanc, D.; Sabourin, C.

2011-01-01

In many learning situations, we need to determine to which cues to attend, particularly in cases when these cues conflict. These conflicts appear often in English orthography. In two experiments, we asked children to spell two-syllable words that varied on two dimensions: morphological and orthographic structure. In one set of these words, the two…

WordPress 3 Cookbook

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Shreves, Ric

2011-01-01

This is a Packt Cookbook, which means it contains step-by-step instructions to achieve a particular goal or solve a particular problem. There are plenty of screenshots and explained practical tasks to make comprehension quick and easy. This book is not specifically for developers or programmers; rather it can be used by anyone who wants to get more out of their WordPress blog by following step-by-step instructions. A basic knowledge of PHP/XHTML/CSS/WordPress is desirable but not necessary.

Electrodermal responses to words in chronic low back pain patients: a comparison between pain descriptors, other emotional words, and neutral words.

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Bonnet, Adeline; Naveteur, Janick

2006-10-01

This study examines the electrodermal reactivity of chronic sufferers to emotional words. The hypothesis that patients are over-sensitive to pain descriptors is tested. Electrodermal activity was recorded in 12 chronic low back pain patients and 12 healthy controls during passive viewing of words on a video monitor. These words were pain descriptors, other emotional words, and neutral words, in a pseudo-randomized order. A jingle was associated with the word occurrence. In chronic low back pain patients, skin conductance responses (SCRs) induced by pain descriptors or other emotional words were larger than SCRs induced by neutral words but they did not differ from each other. Patients presented SCRs, which were both larger and faster than those of controls, including following neutral words. There was no significant effect of word type in controls. Skin conductance level and the number of nonspecific fluctuations were larger in patients as compared with controls. The present electrodermal study suggests that chronic pain is linked to an increased reactivity to a wide range of stimuli. Emotional load amplifies the effect. This leads to recommend broad therapeutic management in chronic sufferers. Contrary to expectation derived from classical conditioning, patients did not prove over-sensitive to pain descriptors. This negative finding is discussed at methodologic, physiologic, and psychologic levels.

Investigating the Effects of Word Games on Iranian EFL Learners’ Application of the Words in Writing Paragraph Essays

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Fatemeh Rezapanah

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In Iran, learning vocabulary has been considered a boring subject for a long time and the traditional way of learning vocabulary by mere copying and remembering has shown to be less than effective. Meanwhile, games are also seen as a time-filling activity in most English classrooms. The current research sought to explore the effectiveness of using word games on Iranian EFL intermediate students’ application of the words in writing one paragraph essay. It was carried out at Jahad Sharif English Institute among 60 intermediate male and female learners with the age range of 17-30 through a quasi-experimental research design. The researcher administered a PET test to determine the homogeneity of the participants regarding their general English language proficiency level. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups. After coming up with the conclusion that the two groups were homogeneous, during 16 sessions of treatment, the experimental group was taught using different techniques of word games while the control group received no special treatment. At the end of the treatment, both groups participated in the word game writing test of the word game questions available in Top Notch series the post-test. A t-test was used to compare the mean scores of the two groups, the result of which showed that the learners’ mean score in the experimental group was significantly higher than the learners’ mean score in the control group. In conclusion, the result of this study suggests that foreign language pedagogy, especially for young adult English learners, would benefit from applying word games in their vocabulary instruction and writing.

Manipulating Objects and Telling Words: A Study on Concrete and Abstract Words Acquisition

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Borghi, Anna M.; Flumini, Andrea; Cimatti, Felice; Marocco, Davide; Scorolli, Claudia

2011-01-01

Four experiments (E1–E2–E3–E4) investigated whether different acquisition modalities lead to the emergence of differences typically found between concrete and abstract words, as argued by the words as tools (WAT) proposal. To mimic the acquisition of concrete and abstract concepts, participants either manipulated novel objects or observed groups of objects interacting in novel ways (Training 1). In TEST 1 participants decided whether two elements belonged to the same category. Later they read the category labels (Training 2); labels could be accompanied by an explanation of their meaning. Then participants observed previously seen exemplars and other elements, and were asked which of them could be named with a given label (TEST 2). Across the experiments, it was more difficult to form abstract than concrete categories (TEST 1); even when adding labels, abstract words remained more difficult than concrete words (TEST 2). TEST 3 differed across the experiments. In E1 participants performed a feature production task. Crucially, the associations produced with the novel words reflected the pattern evoked by existing concrete and abstract words, as the first evoked more perceptual properties. In E2–E3–E4, TEST 3 consisted of a color verification task with manual/verbal (keyboard–microphone) responses. Results showed the microphone use to have an advantage over keyboard use for abstract words, especially in the explanation condition. This supports WAT: due to their acquisition modality, concrete words evoke more manual information; abstract words elicit more verbal information. This advantage was not present when linguistic information contrasted with perceptual one. Implications for theories and computational models of language grounding are discussed. PMID:21716582

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.

Every Word Is on Trial: Six-Word Memoirs in the Classroom

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Saunders, Jane M.; Smith, Emily E.

2014-01-01

Six-word memoirs are readily available through books, magazine articles, and on the Internet. This teaching tip explores how to use six-word memoirs to guide students through the writing process steps from developing and revising a concise memoir, to employing technology and imagery, to publishing final versions of their work online. Included in…

Identification of vowel length, word stress and compound words and phrases by postlingually-deafened cochlear implant listeners

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Morris, David Jackson; Magnusson, Lennart; Faulkner, Andrew

2013-01-01

Background: The accurate perception of prosody assists a listener in deriving meaning from natural speech. Few studies have addressed the ability of cochlear implant (CI) listeners to perceive the brief duration prosodic cues involved in contrastive vowel length, word stress, and compound word...... word stress, vowel length, and compound words or phrases all of which were presented with minimal-pair response choices. Tests were performed in quiet and in speech-spectrum shaped noise at a 10 dB signal- to-noise ratio. Also, discrimination thresholds for four acoustic properties of a synthetic vowel...... recipients’ ability to perceive brief prosodic cues. This is of interest in the preparation of rehabilitation materials used in training and in developing realistic expectations for potential CI candidates. Key Words: Cochlear implants, speech acoustics, speech intelligibility...

Complex word reading in Dutch deaf children and adults.

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van Hoogmoed, Anne H; Knoors, Harry; Schreuder, Robert; Verhoeven, Ludo

2013-03-01

Children who are deaf are often delayed in reading comprehension. This delay could be due to problems in morphological processing during word reading. In this study, we investigated whether 6th grade deaf children and adults are delayed in comparison to their hearing peers in reading complex derivational words and compounds compared to monomorphemic words. The results show that deaf children are delayed in reading both derivational words and compounds as compared to hearing children, while both deaf and hearing adults performed equally well on a lexical decision task. However, deaf adults generally showed slower reaction times than hearing adults. For both deaf and hearing children, derivational words were more difficult than compounds, as reflected in hearing children's slower reaction times and in deaf children's lower accuracy scores. This finding likely reflects deaf children's lack of familiarity with the meaning of the bound morphemes attached to the stems in derivational words. Therefore, it might be beneficial to teach deaf children the meaning of bound morphemes and to train them to use morphology in word reading. Moreover, these findings imply that it is important to focus on both monomorphemic and polymorphemic words when assessing word reading ability in deaf children. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Meaning and Theme in Indian Style

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Mojahed Gholami

2016-12-01

With a glimpse on what was said and a pause on the poems of Saeb Tabrizi, as one of the most seasoned poets in Indian style, it demonstrates part of his art and also illuminates the relation among word, meaning and theme in his poetry and viewpoint. He established multiple proportions among the concepts in his poem: sometimes he expressed a semantic unit as a content with diversities in word, or in some occasions, he expressed a semantic unit by different contents, with similar or dissimilar content maker elements, or even sometimes he use content maker elements for expressing multiple meanings and so on. Also it is necessary to be noted that when Saeb and the other poets of Indian style, measure the meaning by words, their meant is subjective matter and if the meaning comes with adjectives such as unfamiliar, narrow, distant, and so on, these words have used mainly in order to replace theme.

Development and Validation of a Persian Version of Dichotic Emotional Word Test

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Atefe Davudazde

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Emotional words in comparison with neutral words have different hemispheric specialization. It is assumed that the right hemisphere has a role in processing every kind of emotional word. The objective of the present study was the development of a Persian version of the dichotic emotional word test and evaluate its validation among adult Persian speakers.   Materials and Methods: The present study was done on 60 adults, with the age ranging from 18-30 years for both genders, who had no history of neurological disorders with normal hearing. The developed test included eight main lists; each had several dichotic emotional/ neutral pairs of words. Participants were asked to recall as many words in each list as they could after they listened to them. A content validity index was used to analyze the validity of the test.   Results: The mean content validity index score was 0.94. The findings showed that in the left ear, emotional words were remembered more than neutral ones (P=0.007. While in the right ear, neutral words were remembered more (P=0.009. There were no significant differences in male and female scores.   Conclusion:  Dichotic emotional word test has a high content validity. The ability to remember emotional words better in the left ear supports the dominant role of the right hemisphere in emotional word perception.

Prophetic sensing of Yahweh’s word

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Wilhelm J. Wessels

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This article focuses on Jeremiah 23:18, which implies that the prophet stood in the council of Yahweh (sôd to see and hear the word of Yahweh. In this verse, it seems that the senses of the prophet played a role in receiving Yahweh’s words. Verse 18 forms part of 23:16–22 in which Jeremiah warned the people of Judah not to listen to prophets who mislead them with optimistic messages. In this article, attention is given to the question whether standing in the council of Yahweh is a deciding criterion for receiving true words from Yahweh. The motif of the divine council is also investigated. An argument is presented that ‘sensing’ should be understood in the double sense of the word, namely sensory experience as well as the intellectual activity of understanding. It is argued that both meanings of the word sensing are necessary to determine the truth of Yahweh’s word.

Empowering Students with Word-Learning Strategies: Teach a Child to Fish

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Graves, Michael F.; Schneider, Steven; Ringstaff, Cathy

2018-01-01

This article on word-learning strategies describes a theory- and research-based set of procedures for teaching students to use word-learning strategies--word parts, context clues, the dictionary, and a combined strategy--to infer the meanings of unknown words. The article begins with a rationale for teaching word-learning strategies, particularly…

Memory for emotional words in sentences: the importance of emotional contrast.

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Schmidt, Stephen R

2012-01-01

Numerous researchers have demonstrated that emotional words are remembered better than neutral words. However, the effect has been attributed to factors other than emotion because it is somewhat fragile and influenced by variables such as the experimental designs employed. To investigate the role of emotion per se in memory for emotional words, negative-affect but low arousal emotional words were placed in sentence contexts that either activated high emotional meanings of the words (Shane died in his car last night.), or low emotional meanings of the words (Shane's old car died last night). The high-emotional contexts led to better memory than the low-emotional contexts, but only in mixed lists of emotional and neutral words. Additionally, the traditional emotional memory effect was also limited to mixed lists. The results are consistent with the idea that an emotional contrast is responsible for the emotional memory effect with low arousal emotional words.

Enrichment Effects of Gestures and Pictures on Abstract Words in a Second Language.

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Repetto, Claudia; Pedroli, Elisa; Macedonia, Manuela

2017-01-01

Laboratory research has demonstrated that multisensory enrichment promotes verbal learning in a foreign language (L2). Enrichment can be done in various ways, e.g., by adding a picture that illustrates the L2 word's meaning or by the learner performing a gesture to the word (enactment). Most studies have tested enrichment on concrete but not on abstract words. Unlike concrete words, the representation of abstract words is deprived of sensory-motor features. This has been addressed as one of the reasons why abstract words are difficult to remember. Here, we ask whether a brief enrichment training by means of pictures and by self-performed gestures also enhances the memorability of abstract words in L2. Further, we explore which of these two enrichment strategies is more effective. Twenty young adults learned 30 novel abstract words in L2 according to three encoding conditions: (1) reading, (2) reading and pairing the novel word to a picture, and (3) reading and enacting the word by means of a gesture. We measured memory performance in free and cued recall tests, as well as in a visual recognition task. Words encoded with gestures were better remembered in the free recall in the native language (L1). When recognizing the novel words, participants made less errors for words encoded with gestures compared to words encoded with pictures. The reaction times in the recognition task did not differ across conditions. The present findings support, even if only partially, the idea that enactment promotes learning of abstract words and that it is superior to enrichment by means of pictures even after short training.

Crossmodal Activation of Visual Object Regions for Auditorily Presented Concrete Words

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Jasper J F van den Bosch

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1986 postulates that the human mind represents objects not just with an analogous, or semantic code, but with a perceptual representation as well. Previous studies (eg, Fiebach & Friederici, 2004 indicated that the modality of this representation is not necessarily the one that triggers the representation. The human visual cortex contains several regions, such as the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC, that respond specifically to object stimuli. To investigate whether these principally visual representations regions are also recruited for auditory stimuli, we presented subjects with spoken words with specific, concrete meanings (‘car’ as well as words with abstract meanings (‘hope’. Their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Whole-brain contrasts showed overlap between regions differentially activated by words for concrete objects compared to words for abstract concepts with visual regions activated by a contrast of object versus non-object visual stimuli. We functionally localized LOC for individual subjects and a preliminary analysis showed a trend for a concreteness effect in this region-of-interest on the group level. Appropriate further analysis might include connectivity and classification measures. These results can shed light on the role of crossmodal representations in cognition.

Scientific word, Version 1.0

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Semen Köksal

1993-01-01

Full Text Available Scientific Word is the first fully integrated mathematical word processor in the Windows 3.1 environment, which uses the TEX typesetting language for output. It runs as a Microsoft Windows application program and has two-way interface to TEX. The Scientific Word is an object-oriented WYSIWYG word processor for virtually all users who need typesetting scientific books, manuals and papers. It includes automatic equation numbering, spell checking, and LATEX and DVI previewer.

Attentional Processing and Recall of Emotional Words

OpenAIRE

Fraga Carou, Isabel; Redondo, Jaime; Piñeiro, Ana; Padrón, Isabel; Fernández-Rey, José; Alcaraz, Miguel

2011-01-01

Three experiments were carried out in order to evaluate the attention paid to words of different emotional value. A dual-task experimental paradigm was employed, registering response times to acoustic tones which were presented during the reading of words. The recall was also evaluated by means of an intentional immediate recall test. The results reveal that neither the emotional valence nor the arousal of words on their own affected the attention paid by participants. Only in the third exper...

Combinatorics on words Christoffel words and repetitions in words

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Berstel, Jean; Reutenauer, Christophe; Saliola, Franco V

2008-01-01

The two parts of this text are based on two series of lectures delivered by Jean Berstel and Christophe Reutenauer in March 2007 at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montréal, Canada. Part I represents the first modern and comprehensive exposition of the theory of Christoffel words. Part II presents numerous combinatorial and algorithmic aspects of repetition-free words stemming from the work of Axel Thue-a pioneer in the theory of combinatorics on words. A beginner to the theory of combinatorics on words will be motivated by the numerous examples, and the large variety of exercises, which make the book unique at this level of exposition. The clean and streamlined exposition and the extensive bibliography will also be appreciated. After reading this book, beginners should be ready to read modern research papers in this rapidly growing field and contribute their own research to its development. Experienced readers will be interested in the finitary approach to Sturmian words that Christoffel words offe...

Predictive coding accelerates word recognition and learning in the early stages of language development.

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Ylinen, Sari; Bosseler, Alexis; Junttila, Katja; Huotilainen, Minna

2017-11-01

The ability to predict future events in the environment and learn from them is a fundamental component of adaptive behavior across species. Here we propose that inferring predictions facilitates speech processing and word learning in the early stages of language development. Twelve- and 24-month olds' electrophysiological brain responses to heard syllables are faster and more robust when the preceding word context predicts the ending of a familiar word. For unfamiliar, novel word forms, however, word-expectancy violation generates a prediction error response, the strength of which significantly correlates with children's vocabulary scores at 12 months. These results suggest that predictive coding may accelerate word recognition and support early learning of novel words, including not only the learning of heard word forms but also their mapping to meanings. Prediction error may mediate learning via attention, since infants' attention allocation to the entire learning situation in natural environments could account for the link between prediction error and the understanding of word meanings. On the whole, the present results on predictive coding support the view that principles of brain function reported across domains in humans and non-human animals apply to language and its development in the infant brain. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://hy.fi/unitube/video/e1cbb495-41d8-462e-8660-0864a1abd02c. [Correction added on 27 January 2017, after first online publication: The video abstract link was added.]. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Accessing word meaning in beginning second language learners: Lexical or conceptual mediation?

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Poarch, G.J.; Hell, J.G. van; Kroll, J.F.

2015-01-01

We tested the predictions of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) to examine how children map novel words to concepts during early stages of L2 learning. Fifth grade Dutch L2 learners with 8 months of English instruction performed a translation recognition task followed by

Phonological and Semantic Knowledge Are Causal Influences on Learning to Read Words in Chinese

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Zhou, Lulin; Duff, Fiona J.; Hulme, Charles

2015-01-01

We report a training study that assesses whether teaching the pronunciation and meaning of spoken words improves Chinese children's subsequent attempts to learn to read the words. Teaching the pronunciations of words helps children to learn to read those same words, and teaching the pronunciations and meanings improves learning still further.…

Automatic Identification of Nutritious Contexts for Learning Vocabulary Words

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Mostow, Jack; Gates, Donna; Ellison, Ross; Goutam, Rahul

2015-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is crucial to literacy development and academic success. Previous research has shown learning the meaning of a word requires encountering it in diverse informative contexts. In this work, we try to identify "nutritious" contexts for a word--contexts that help students build a rich mental representation of the word's…

Enrichment Effects of Gestures and Pictures on Abstract Words in a Second Language

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Claudia Repetto

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Laboratory research has demonstrated that multisensory enrichment promotes verbal learning in a foreign language (L2. Enrichment can be done in various ways, e.g., by adding a picture that illustrates the L2 word’s meaning or by the learner performing a gesture to the word (enactment. Most studies have tested enrichment on concrete but not on abstract words. Unlike concrete words, the representation of abstract words is deprived of sensory-motor features. This has been addressed as one of the reasons why abstract words are difficult to remember. Here, we ask whether a brief enrichment training by means of pictures and by self-performed gestures also enhances the memorability of abstract words in L2. Further, we explore which of these two enrichment strategies is more effective. Twenty young adults learned 30 novel abstract words in L2 according to three encoding conditions: (1 reading, (2 reading and pairing the novel word to a picture, and (3 reading and enacting the word by means of a gesture. We measured memory performance in free and cued recall tests, as well as in a visual recognition task. Words encoded with gestures were better remembered in the free recall in the native language (L1. When recognizing the novel words, participants made less errors for words encoded with gestures compared to words encoded with pictures. The reaction times in the recognition task did not differ across conditions. The present findings support, even if only partially, the idea that enactment promotes learning of abstract words and that it is superior to enrichment by means of pictures even after short training.

Divineness regarding the words of the Holy Qur'an

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Sheibani Muhammad

2014-01-01

Full Text Available One of the many questions concerning the words of the Holy Qur'an is whether their content and meaning were truly a divine revelation or they were revealed to the Prophet from God and then transferred into the form of words. In this regard, there are two perspectives. First, as all Muslims believe, the words of the Qur'an are the result of a divine revelation, where­as the second viewpoint is that the words of the Qur'an are written by a human and not God. According to this latter perspective, the words of the Qur'an are sayings of the Prophet of which only the contents are based on a divine revelation. The theory of the words of the Qur'an not being a divine revelation has been an abandoned and rejected one throughout the Islamic history. This is the reason it has not been the subject of any pertinent discussions. How can the words of the Qur'an be created by Muhammad or Gabriel even though it is believed that the Qur'an is a miracle? This article first defines the concept of revelation and then analyzes various viewpoints and opinions regarding this topic in order to conclude (with evidence that the Qur'an is the word of God and not the word of the Prophet. If he had composed the words of the Qur'an and expressed the meaning of the revelation in his own words, then the Qur'an would not be the word of God. In this case, the term 'word of God' indicates that the concept of the 'word' should be considered. Thus, it is clear that the words of the Qur'an are divine and they can be referred and attributed to God.

The paca that roared: Immediate cumulative semantic interference among newly acquired words.

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Oppenheim, Gary M

2018-08-01

With 40,000 words in the average vocabulary, how can speakers find the specific words that they want so quickly and easily? Cumulative semantic interference in language production provides a clue: when naming a large series of pictures, with a few mammals sprinkled about, naming each subsequent mammal becomes slower and more error-prone. Such interference mirrors predictions from an incremental learning algorithm applied to meaning-driven retrieval from an established vocabulary, suggesting retrieval benefits from a constant, implicit, re-optimization process (Oppenheim et al., 2010). But how quickly would a new mammal (e.g. paca) engage in this re-optimization? In this experiment, 18 participants studied 3 novel and 3 familiar exemplars from each of six semantic categories, and immediately performed a timed picture-naming task. Consistent with the learning model's predictions, naming latencies revealed immediate cumulative semantic interference in all directions: from new words to new words, from new words to old words, from old words to new words, and from old words to old words. Repeating the procedure several days later produced similar-magnitude effects, demonstrating that newly acquired words can be immediately semantically integrated, at least to the extent necessary to produce typical cumulative semantic interference. These findings extend the Dark Side model's scope to include novel word production, and are considered in terms of mechanisms for lexical selection. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Relationships among Cognitive Correlates and Irregular Word, Non-Word, and Word Reading

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Abu-Hamour, Bashir; University, Mu'tah; Urso, Annmarie; Mather, Nancy

2012-01-01

This study explored four hypotheses: (a) the relationships among rapid automatized naming (RAN) and processing speed (PS) to irregular word, non-word, and word reading; (b) the predictive power of various RAN and PS measures, (c) the cognitive correlates that best predicted irregular word, non-word, and word reading, and (d) reading performance of…

Peculiarities of Grammatical Properties in Nominal Word Combinations

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Irina B. Klienkova

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The article examines some peculiarities if grammatical properties of nominal word combinations based on the study of German-speaking Swiss press. The accumulated experience of linguists is analyzed and certain factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in nominal word combinations with quantitative meaning are researched. It has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in such word combinations is determined by functional style, semantics and grammatical features of nouns - first or second components in a word combination. The aforementioned factors influencing the choice of syntactic relations in quantitative nominal word combinations are studied on the material of Germanspeaking Swiss press. The research revealed a number of peculiarities. First of all, German-speaking Swiss press uses such syntactic relation as genitive subordination quite often, not only on "special occasion" and unlike its use in Germany does not produce a magniloquent, pompous impression. Secondly, it has been established that the choice of syntactic relations in word combinations of the above-mentioned type of word combinations greatly depends on the semantic meaning of the noun - the first component of the word combination - and does not always coincide with the grammatical properties in nominal combinations in Germany. Thirdly, a clear dependence of syntactic relations choice is observed. Moreover, the article highlights the importance of grammatical features of the second component. These are such features as gender, number, case accompanied by noun declension. All the afore-mentioned features help to define the type of syntactic relations, which nominal quantitative word combinations may be connected by. The results of the comparisons of grammatical properties of quantitative nominal word combinations in German and Swiss press are demonstrated in a table below.

Flooding Vocabulary Gaps to Accelerate Word Learning

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Brabham, Edna; Buskist, Connie; Henderson, Shannon Coman; Paleologos, Timon; Baugh, Nikki

2012-01-01

Students entering school with limited vocabularies are at a disadvantage compared to classmates with robust knowledge of words and meanings. Teaching a few unrelated words at a time is insufficient for catching these students up with peers and preparing them to comprehend texts they will encounter across the grades. This article presents…

Word Domain Disambiguation via Word Sense Disambiguation

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Sanfilippo, Antonio P.; Tratz, Stephen C.; Gregory, Michelle L.

2006-06-04

Word subject domains have been widely used to improve the perform-ance of word sense disambiguation al-gorithms. However, comparatively little effort has been devoted so far to the disambiguation of word subject do-mains. The few existing approaches have focused on the development of al-gorithms specific to word domain dis-ambiguation. In this paper we explore an alternative approach where word domain disambiguation is achieved via word sense disambiguation. Our study shows that this approach yields very strong results, suggesting that word domain disambiguation can be ad-dressed in terms of word sense disam-biguation with no need for special purpose algorithms.

Word-embeddings Italian semantic spaces: A semantic model for psycholinguistic research

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Marelli Marco

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Distributional semantics has been for long a source of successful models in psycholinguistics, permitting to obtain semantic estimates for a large number of words in an automatic and fast way. However, resources in this respect remain scarce or limitedly accessible for languages different from English. The present paper describes WEISS (Word-Embeddings Italian Semantic Space, a distributional semantic model based on Italian. WEISS includes models of semantic representations that are trained adopting state-of-the-art word-embeddings methods, applying neural networks to induce distributed representations for lexical meanings. The resource is evaluated against two test sets, demonstrating that WEISS obtains a better performance with respect to a baseline encoding word associations. Moreover, an extensive qualitative analysis of the WEISS output provides examples of the model potentialities in capturing several semantic phenomena. Two variants of WEISS are released and made easily accessible via web through the SNAUT graphic interface.

N400 Response Indexes Word Learning from Linguistic Context in Children

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Abel, Alyson D.; Schneider, Julie; Maguire, Mandy J

2018-01-01

Word learning from linguistic context is essential for vocabulary growth from grade school onward; however, little is known about the mechanisms underlying successful word learning in children. Current methods for studying word learning development require children to identify the meaning of the word after each exposure, a method that interacts…

Personality correlates of reporting Chinese words from the Deutsch “high-low” word illusion by Chinese-speaking people

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You Xu; Junpeng Zhu; Wanzhen Chen; Hao Chai; Wei He; Wei Wang

2012-01-01

[Objective] When English-speaking people listen to the Deutseh “high-low” word illusion,they report hearing English words.Whether Chinese-speaking people report Chinese words when listening to the illusion,or whether any reported words might be correlated with personality traits as previous investigations have demonstrated for listening to music in other cultures,is open to question.The present study aimed to address this.[Methods] A total of 308 right-handed,healthy volunteers (177 women and 131 men) were given the illusion test and asked to answer the Zuckerman-Kuhlman personality questionnaire (ZKPQ).Their depressive tendency was measured by the Plutchik-van Praag depression inventory (PVP).[Results] There was no gender effect regarding either the PVP score or the number of reported Chinese words from the illusion.Women scored higher on ZKPQ neuroticism-anxiety than men.The number of meaningful Chinese words reported was correlated with the ZKPQ impulsive sensation-seeking,aggression-hostility,and activity scores.Some words reported by participants who scored higher on these three traits were related in meaning to those scales.[[Conclusion

Computing with Words Principal Concepts and Ideas

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Zadeh, Lotfi A

2012-01-01

In essence, Computing with Words (CWW) is a system of computation in which the objects of computation are predominantly words, phrases and propositions drawn from a natural language. CWW is based on fuzzy logic. In science there is a deep-seated tradition of according much more respect to numbers than to words. In a fundamental way, CWW is a challenge to this tradition. What is not widely recognized is that, today, words are used in place of numbers in a wide variety of applications ranging from digital cameras and household appliances to fraud detection systems, biomedical instrumentation and subway trains.  CWW offers a unique capability—the capability to precisiate natural language. Unprecisiated (raw) natural language cannot be computed with. A key concept which underlies precisiation of meaning is that of the meaning postulate: A proposition, p, is a restriction on the values which a variable, X—a variable which is implicit in p—is allowed to take. CWW has an important ramification for mathema...

Tracking the time course of word-frequency effects in auditory word recognition with event-related potentials.

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Dufour, Sophie; Brunellière, Angèle; Frauenfelder, Ulrich H

2013-04-01

Although the word-frequency effect is one of the most established findings in spoken-word recognition, the precise processing locus of this effect is still a topic of debate. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to track the time course of the word-frequency effect. In addition, the neighborhood density effect, which is known to reflect mechanisms involved in word identification, was also examined. The ERP data showed a clear frequency effect as early as 350 ms from word onset on the P350, followed by a later effect at word offset on the late N400. A neighborhood density effect was also found at an early stage of spoken-word processing on the PMN, and at word offset on the late N400. Overall, our ERP differences for word frequency suggest that frequency affects the core processes of word identification starting from the initial phase of lexical activation and including target word selection. They thus rule out any interpretation of the word frequency effect that is limited to a purely decisional locus after word identification has been completed. Copyright © 2012 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Forehearing words: Pre-activation of word endings at word onset.

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Roll, Mikael; Söderström, Pelle; Frid, Johan; Mannfolk, Peter; Horne, Merle

2017-09-29

Occurring at rates up to 6-7 syllables per second, speech perception and understanding involves rapid identification of speech sounds and pre-activation of morphemes and words. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the time-course and neural sources of pre-activation of word endings as participants heard the beginning of unfolding words. ERPs showed a pre-activation negativity (PrAN) for word beginnings (first two segmental phonemes) with few possible completions. PrAN increased gradually as the number of possible completions of word onsets decreased and the lexical frequency of the completions increased. The early brain potential effect for few possible word completions was associated with a blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast increase in Broca's area (pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus) and angular gyrus of the left parietal lobe. We suggest early involvement of the left prefrontal cortex in inhibiting irrelevant left parietal activation during lexical selection. The results further our understanding of the importance of Broca's area in rapid online pre-activation of words. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Words can slow down category learning.

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Brojde, Chandra L; Porter, Chelsea; Colunga, Eliana

2011-08-01

Words have been shown to influence many cognitive tasks, including category learning. Most demonstrations of these effects have focused on instances in which words facilitate performance. One possibility is that words augment representations, predicting an across the-board benefit of words during category learning. We propose that words shift attention to dimensions that have been historically predictive in similar contexts. Under this account, there should be cases in which words are detrimental to performance. The results from two experiments show that words impair learning of object categories under some conditions. Experiment 1 shows that words hurt performance when learning to categorize by texture. Experiment 2 shows that words also hurt when learning to categorize by brightness, leading to selectively attending to shape when both shape and hue could be used to correctly categorize stimuli. We suggest that both the positive and negative effects of words have developmental origins in the history of word usage while learning categories. [corrected

Verbal Reports of Proficient Readers In Coping With Unfamiliar Words

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Kusumarasdyati Kusumarasdyati

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The present study reports the actual strategy use of good readers when they face hindrance in the form of unfamiliar words. Eight undergraduates majoring in English at Surabaya State University performed think-aloud while reading two texts to find out how they coped with such difficulties. The verbal protocol indicated that half of the participants mainly relied on a bilingual (English-Indonesian dictionary to attack unfamiliar words, and only one of them preferred to use a monolingual (English-English one. Two of them employed context cues to infer the meaning of the words, while one participant combined the use of context cues and a monolingual dictionary as the major strategy. All but one of the participants skipped some of lexical items whose meaning was unknown to them, especially when these words did not have a key contribution to the meaning of the whole text.

Differential activity in left inferior frontal gyrus for pseudo and real words: an event-related functional MRI study on auditory lexical decision

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xiao Zhuangwei; Xu Weixiong; Zhang Xuexin; Wang Xiaoyi; Weng Xuchu; Wu Renhua; Wu Xiaoping

2006-01-01

Objective: To study lexical processing of pseudo words and real words by using a fast event-related functional MRI (ER-fMRI) design. Methods: Participants did an auditory lexical decision task on a list of pseudo-randomly intermixed real and pseudo Chinese two-character (or two-syllable) words. Pseudo words were constructed by recombining constituent characters of the real words to control for sublexical codes properties. Results: The behavioral performance of fourteen participants indicated that response to pseudowords was significantly slower and less accurate than to real words (mean error rate: 9.9% versus 3.9%, mean reaction time: 1618 ms versus 1143 ms). Processing of pseudo words and real words activated a highly comparable network of brain regions, including bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, superior, middle temporal gyrus, calcarine and lingual gyrus, and left supramarginal gyrus. Mirroring a behavioral lexical effect, left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was significantly more activated for pseudo words than for real words. Conclusion: The results indicate that the processing of left inferior frontal gyrus in judging pseudo words and real words is not related to grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, but rather to making positive versus negative responses in decision making. (authors)

Paraphrasensuche mittels word2vec und der Word Mover’s Distance im Altgriechischen

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Marcus Pöckelmann

2017-12-01

Full Text Available To find receptions of Plato‘s work within the ancient Greek literature, automatic methods would be a useful assistance. Unfortunately, such methods are often knowledge-based and thus restricted to extensively annotated texts, which are not available to a sufficient extent for ancient Greek. In this article, we describe an approach that is based on the distributional hypotheses instead, to overcome the problem of missing annotations. This approach uses word2vec and the related Word Mover‘s Distance to determine phrases with similar meaning. Despite its experimental state, the method produces some meaningful results as shown in three examples.

Situational Variability of Means of Expression of Positive Emotions in Modern English

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Alina K. Kisil

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The article investigates situational variability of means of expression of positive emotions in Modern English. This problem is topical for linguistics of emotions, pragma- and sociolinguistics. The author analyzes verbal, paraverbal and nonverbal means of expressing positive emotions of joy and surprise in three communicative registers: official, neutral and unofficial. These registers are singled out on the basis of situational context and participants of the situation. The investigation gave the author the opportunity to come to the conclusion that in the official register emotions are controlled and very often are subject to strategic purposes. They implement the upgrading strategy the aim of which is to give a high evaluation of the addressee and of everything what is happening. It stipulates the use of corresponding expressive words and word combinations, exclamatory sentences, repetitions and rhetorical questions. Paraverbal means include only light laughter and nonverbal – a smile, the expression of the eyes, nods and tangled breath. The range of the means in question is wider in the neutral register where the speaker can use such verbal means as interjections with long sounds, expletives, pauses, descriptions of own emotions. Such paraverbal means as the emotional color of the voice and its volume, intonation, different kinds of laughter and such nonverbal means as different kinds of smile, the expression of the face, gestures and movements are also used. Unofficial register is especially rich in means of expressing positive emotions. Besides means typical of other registers such verbal means as obscene lexicon, phrasal words and graphical means are used here. Paraverbal means include numerous verbs reflecting the volume of voice and nonverbal – rich mimic, friendly hugs and kisses.

Periodic words connected with the Fibonacci words

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G. M. Barabash

2016-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper we introduce two families of periodic words (FLP-words of type 1 and FLP-words of type 2 that are connected with the Fibonacci words and investigated their properties.

Utilizing 'hot words' in ParaConc to verify lexical simplification ...

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Lexical simplification strategies investigated are: using a superordinate or more general word, using a general word with extended meaning and using more familiar or common synonyms. The analysis gives the reader an idea about how some general words are used to translate technical language. It also displays that 'hot ...

Whole Word Measures in Bilingual Children with Speech Sound Disorders

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Burrows, Lauren; Goldstein, Brian A.

2010-01-01

Phonological acquisition traditionally has been measured using constructs that focus on segments rather than the whole words. Findings from recent research have suggested whole-word productions be evaluated using measures such as phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU) and the proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP). These measures have been…

Erotic, Sexual Words and Meanings in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in Albanian translation

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Fatmir Ramadani

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The Albanian reading public had to wait for three hundred years to be introduced to the works of one of the greatest writers of English literature, William Shakespeare, in their mother tongue. The translation of Shakespeare’s works into Albanian started in the second decade of the 20th century. We distinguish three periods of the Albanian translation of Shakespeare’s plays. The first phase, from 1915 to 1928, is known for the translation of Bishop Fan Noli, the head of Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Boston, USA. The second phase from 1955 until 1982, during the totalitarian regime world literature was strictly censored by communist propaganda, with only three official translators of Shakespeare’s works, Skënder Luarasi, Vedat Kokona, and Alqi Kristo. Third period, from 1990 to the present, with an increasing number of translators of Shakespeare’s works, such as Refik Kadija, Perikli Jorgoni, Qezar Kurti, Mihal Hanxhari, Napolon Tasi, Pashko Gjeçi, Kristaq Traja etc. William Shakespeare has made frequent use of erotic and sexual words, meanings and connotations in his tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Most of them are missing in the first Albanian translation. But the second translator has noted all of them in the footnotes of his translation. In this paper I will focus on these sexual and erotic words and references in the “Romeo and Juliet” and their translation in Albanian language by two translators, the first translation of Alqi Kristo some 70 years ago, and the second translation by Refik Kadija in 2014. Political influences, evolution of Albanian language over the last decades, are some of the main reasons to suggest that Refik Kadija’s translation should be used as more complete and better translation of Shakespeare’s tragedy in Albanian language.

Smashing WordPress Beyond the Blog

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Hedengren, Thord Daniel

2011-01-01

Smashing WordPress shows you how to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, and provides a creative spark to help you build WordPress-powered sites that go beyond the obvious. The second edition of Smashing WordPress has been updated for WordPress 3.1+, which includes internal, custom post types, the admin bar, and lots of other useful new features. You will learn the core concepts used to post types, the admin bar, and lots of other useful new features. You will learn the core concepts used to build just about anything in WordPress, resulting in fast deployments and greater design flexib

N400 elicited by incongruent ending words of Chinese idioms in healthy adults.

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Chen, Xing-shi; Tang, Yun-xiang; Xiao, Ze-ping; Wang, Ji-jun; Zhang, Ming-dao; Zhang, Zai-fu; Hu, Zhen-yu; Lou, Fei-ying; Chen, Chong; Zhang, Tian-hong

2010-03-20

Prior research about N400 has been mainly based on English stimuli, while the cognitive processing of Chinese characters is still unclear. The aim of the present study was to further investigate the semantic processing of Chinese idioms. Event related potentials (ERP) component N400 was elicited by 38 pairs of matching (congruent) and mismatching (incongruent) ended Chinese idioms: ending words with same phoneme but different shape and meaning (sPdSdM), with similar shape but different phoneme and meaning (sSdPdM), with same meaning but different phoneme and shape (sMdPdS), and words with different phoneme, shape and meaning (dPdSdM) and recorded by Guangzhou Runjie WJ-1 ERP instruments. In 62 right-handed healthy adults (age 19 - 50 years), N400 amplitudes and latencies were compared between matching and mismatching conditions at Fz, Cz and Pz. N400 showed a midline distribution and could be elicited in electrodes Fz, Cz and Pz. The mean values of N400 latencies and amplitudes were obtained for matching and mismatching ending words in healthy adults. Significant differences were found in N400 latencies and amplitudes in matching and mismatching ending-words idioms in healthy adults (P idioms, N400 latencies were prolonged and the amplitudes were increased in mismatching ones. N400s elicited by different types of stimuli showed different latencies and amplitudes, and longest N400 latency and largest N400 amplitude were elicited by ending-words with dPdSdM. No gender difference was found of N400 latency and amplitude in this study (P > 0.05). Compared with English stimuli, Chinese ideographic words could provide more flexible stimuli for N400 research in that the words have 3-dimension changes - phoneme, shape and meaning. Features of N400 elicited by matching and mismatching ending words in Chinese idioms are mainly determined by the meaning of the word. Some issues of N400 elicited by Chinese characters deserve further research.

Focus on Meaning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun; Wang Jingjing, Jenny

recognizing new vocabulary (two-, three and four-character words) in a series of simple meaning recognition tests administered by the authors over three weeks. The test sets consist of vocabulary with target words that were given semantic and conceptual explanation by the authors in the previous week......Abstract This study examines the effect of mapping between the semantic and conceptual representation of target words 房，堂，屋, and 厅on Chinese (L2) vocabulary learning at a university class. Students (N=25) were the 2nd-year Chinese –major students at one university in Denmark. They were given tests...... of Chinese (L2) words can have a measurable effect on students’ efficacy of (Nation 2011) vocabulary learning in the classroom. The findings also reveal that conceptual representation of Chinese (L2) words reinforce the students’ reliance on L 1 by building a link between L 1semantic representations and L 2...

The Influence of Prosodic Input in the Second Language Classroom: Does It Stimulate Child Acquisition of Word Order and Function Words?

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Campfield, Dorota E.; Murphy, Victoria A.

2017-01-01

This paper reports on an intervention study with young Polish beginners (mean age: 8 years, 3 months) learning English at school. It seeks to identify whether exposure to rhythmic input improves knowledge of word order and function words. The "prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis", relevant in developmental psycholinguistics, provided the…

ROMANCE LOAN WORDS IN HRELJIĆ BEDROOM

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Lina Pliško

2016-01-01

�pikijera (only in Roverian dialects and kovaltur (in Medulin, the Roverian dialects and Boljun. Six words were not attested in all of the dictionaries we consulted: paljarica/pajarica are not attested in Grobnik and Novalja; koltra can only be found in Kukljica, žveljarin only in Kukljica and some of the dialects of Hvar, komo in Labin and Grobnik, bonagracija in Boljun, Grobnik, Kukljica, Labin and Novalja. In Hreljići the word for ‘clothes hanger’ (‘vješalica’ in standard Croatian is pikerin/pikarin, i.e. the same as in Labin, Medulin and the Roverian dialects. In the dialects of Boljun, in Grobnik and on the island of Brač the word used is pikabit. In the dictionaries of Kukljica, Novalja and Hvar we found no attestations of any of these forms. Two words (kašetin ‘drawer’ and škabelić ‘commode’ have different variants and meanings that differ from those in Hreljići: 1. ‘drawer’ kašetin (Medulin, Roverian dialects, Labin, škafetin (Hvar and škabelin (Grobnik, Boljun, Brač and Roverian dialects and 2. ‘commode’ škabelić (Boljun, Roverian dialects, Medulin, škabel (Novalja, Medulin, škabelin (Kukljica, komodin (Labin, Grobnik, Kukljica, komoncin (Hvar. There are two words for which the Croatian and Venetian variants are used: špegalj : zrcalo (‘mirror’ (Novalja, Kukljica, Grobnik, Brač; bukalin : vrčina/varčina (‘jug’ (Novalja, Grobnik, Kukljica, Medulin, Hvar. In conclusion, what can be stated is that the lexical heritage from the period of the Venetian Republic pertaining to the semantic field of bedroom furniture, bed parts, bed linen, as well as the decorations and various objects fond in the bedroom included here, as a result of cultural and intimate borrowing, has been well preserved and can still be found in the organic idioms from Istria to Hvar, as our research has demonstrated.

Functional Neuroanatomy of Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words

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Mestres-Misse, Anna; Munte, Thomas F.; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni

2009-01-01

The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish…

16 CFR 23.19 - Misuse of the word “pearl.”

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 16 Commercial Practices 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Misuse of the word âpearl.â 23.19 Section 23... JEWELRY, PRECIOUS METALS, AND PEWTER INDUSTRIES § 23.19 Misuse of the word “pearl.” (a) It is unfair or deceptive to use the unqualified word “pearl” or any other word or phrase of like meaning to describe...

Why 'piss' is ruder than 'pee'? The role of sound in affective meaning making.

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Arash Aryani

Full Text Available Most language users agree that some words sound harsh (e.g. grotesque whereas others sound soft and pleasing (e.g. lagoon. While this prominent feature of human language has always been creatively deployed in art and poetry, it is still largely unknown whether the sound of a word in itself makes any contribution to the word's meaning as perceived and interpreted by the listener. In a large-scale lexicon analysis, we focused on the affective substrates of words' meaning (i.e. affective meaning and words' sound (i.e. affective sound; both being measured on a two-dimensional space of valence (ranging from pleasant to unpleasant and arousal (ranging from calm to excited. We tested the hypothesis that the sound of a word possesses affective iconic characteristics that can implicitly influence listeners when evaluating the affective meaning of that word. The results show that a significant portion of the variance in affective meaning ratings of printed words depends on a number of spectral and temporal acoustic features extracted from these words after converting them to their spoken form (study1. In order to test the affective nature of this effect, we independently assessed the affective sound of these words using two different methods: through direct rating (study2a, and through acoustic models that we implemented based on pseudoword materials (study2b. In line with our hypothesis, the estimated contribution of words' sound to ratings of words' affective meaning was indeed associated with the affective sound of these words; with a stronger effect for arousal than for valence. Further analyses revealed crucial phonetic features potentially causing the effect of sound on meaning: For instance, words with short vowels, voiceless consonants, and hissing sibilants (as in 'piss' feel more arousing and negative. Our findings suggest that the process of meaning making is not solely determined by arbitrary mappings between formal aspects of words and

Why 'piss' is ruder than 'pee'? The role of sound in affective meaning making.

Science.gov (United States)

Aryani, Arash; Conrad, Markus; Schmidtke, David; Jacobs, Arthur

2018-01-01

Most language users agree that some words sound harsh (e.g. grotesque) whereas others sound soft and pleasing (e.g. lagoon). While this prominent feature of human language has always been creatively deployed in art and poetry, it is still largely unknown whether the sound of a word in itself makes any contribution to the word's meaning as perceived and interpreted by the listener. In a large-scale lexicon analysis, we focused on the affective substrates of words' meaning (i.e. affective meaning) and words' sound (i.e. affective sound); both being measured on a two-dimensional space of valence (ranging from pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (ranging from calm to excited). We tested the hypothesis that the sound of a word possesses affective iconic characteristics that can implicitly influence listeners when evaluating the affective meaning of that word. The results show that a significant portion of the variance in affective meaning ratings of printed words depends on a number of spectral and temporal acoustic features extracted from these words after converting them to their spoken form (study1). In order to test the affective nature of this effect, we independently assessed the affective sound of these words using two different methods: through direct rating (study2a), and through acoustic models that we implemented based on pseudoword materials (study2b). In line with our hypothesis, the estimated contribution of words' sound to ratings of words' affective meaning was indeed associated with the affective sound of these words; with a stronger effect for arousal than for valence. Further analyses revealed crucial phonetic features potentially causing the effect of sound on meaning: For instance, words with short vowels, voiceless consonants, and hissing sibilants (as in 'piss') feel more arousing and negative. Our findings suggest that the process of meaning making is not solely determined by arbitrary mappings between formal aspects of words and concepts they

Word Sorts for General Music Classes

Science.gov (United States)

Cardany, Audrey Berger

2015-01-01

Word sorts are standard practice for aiding children in acquiring skills in English language arts. When included in the general music classroom, word sorts may aid students in acquiring a working knowledge of music vocabulary. The author shares a word sort activity drawn from vocabulary in John Lithgow's children's book "Never Play…

The problem of polysemy in the first thousand words of the General Service List: A corpus study of secondary chemistry texts

Science.gov (United States)

Clemmons, Karina

Vocabulary in a second language is an indispensable building block of all comprehension (Folse, 2006; Nation, 2006). Teachers in content area classes such as science, math, and social studies frequently teach content specific vocabulary, but are not aware of the obstacles that can occur when students do not know the basic words. Word lists such as the General Service List (GSL) were created to assist students and teachers (West, 1953). The GSL does not adequately take into account the high level of polysemy of many common English words, nor has it been updated by genre to reflect specific content domains encountered by secondary science students in today's high stakes classes such as chemistry. This study examines how many words of the first 1000 words of the GSL occurred in the secondary chemistry textbooks sampled, how often the first 1000 words of the GSL were polysemous, and specifically which multiple meanings occurred. A discussion of results includes word tables that list multiple meanings present, example phrases that illustrate the context surrounding the target words, suggestions for a GSL that is genre specific to secondary chemistry textbooks and that is ranked by meaning as well as type, and implications for both vocabulary materials and classroom instruction for ELLs in secondary chemistry classes. Findings are essential to second language (L2) researchers, materials developers, publishers, and teachers.

Event-related potential evidence of form and meaning coding during online speech recognition.

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Friedrich, Claudia K; Kotz, Sonja A

2007-04-01

It is still a matter of debate whether initial analysis of speech is independent of contextual influences or whether meaning can modulate word activation directly. Utilizing event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we tested the neural correlates of speech recognition by presenting sentences that ended with incomplete words, such as To light up the dark she needed her can-. Immediately following the incomplete words, subjects saw visual words that (i) matched form and meaning, such as candle; (ii) matched meaning but not form, such as lantern; (iii) matched form but not meaning, such as candy; or (iv) mismatched form and meaning, such as number. We report ERP evidence for two distinct cohorts of lexical tokens: (a) a left-lateralized effect, the P250, differentiates form-matching words (i, iii) and form-mismatching words (ii, iv); (b) a right-lateralized effect, the P220, differentiates words that match in form and/or meaning (i, ii, iii) from mismatching words (iv). Lastly, fully matching words (i) reduce the amplitude of the N400. These results accommodate bottom-up and top-down accounts of human speech recognition. They suggest that neural representations of form and meaning are activated independently early on and are integrated at a later stage during sentence comprehension.

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network

OpenAIRE

Ding, Jinfeng; Liu, Wenjuan; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP) technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was eithe...

Slow Mapping: Color Word Learning as a Gradual Inductive Process

Science.gov (United States)

Wagner, Katie; Dobkins, Karen; Barner, David

2013-01-01

Most current accounts of color word acquisition propose that the delay between children's first production of color words and adult-like understanding is due to problems abstracting color as a domain of meaning. Here we present evidence against this hypothesis, and show that, from the time children produce color words in a labeling task they use…

Orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: Evidence from Chinese.

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Qu, Qingqing; Damian, Markus F

2017-06-01

Extensive evidence from alphabetic languages demonstrates a role of orthography in the processing of spoken words. Because alphabetic systems explicitly code speech sounds, such effects are perhaps not surprising. However, it is less clear whether orthographic codes are involuntarily accessed from spoken words in languages with non-alphabetic systems, in which the sound-spelling correspondence is largely arbitrary. We investigated the role of orthography via a semantic relatedness judgment task: native Mandarin speakers judged whether or not spoken word pairs were related in meaning. Word pairs were either semantically related, orthographically related, or unrelated. Results showed that relatedness judgments were made faster for word pairs that were semantically related than for unrelated word pairs. Critically, orthographic overlap on semantically unrelated word pairs induced a significant increase in response latencies. These findings indicate that orthographic information is involuntarily accessed in spoken-word recognition, even in a non-alphabetic language such as Chinese.

the syntax of multi-word expressions in yorulish code-mixing

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Dr. Obadele Kambon

posively sampled from standard dictionaries and textbooks on English and ... Multi-word expressions (MWEs) are words that are usually collocated every- .... The expressions with deep/embedded meaning as opposed to those with literal ...

Distributional and Knowledge-Based Approaches for Computing Portuguese Word Similarity

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Hugo Gonçalo Oliveira

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Identifying similar and related words is not only key in natural language understanding but also a suitable task for assessing the quality of computational resources that organise words and meanings of a language, compiled by different means. This paper, which aims to be a reference for those interested in computing word similarity in Portuguese, presents several approaches for this task and is motivated by the recent availability of state-of-the-art distributional models of Portuguese words, which add to several lexical knowledge bases (LKBs for this language, available for a longer time. The previous resources were exploited to answer word similarity tests, which also became recently available for Portuguese. We conclude that there are several valid approaches for this task, but not one that outperforms all the others in every single test. Distributional models seem to capture relatedness better, while LKBs are better suited for computing genuine similarity, but, in general, better results are obtained when knowledge from different sources is combined.

Meaning Construction and Integration in Children with Hydrocephalus

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Barnes, Marcia A.; Faulkner, Heather; Wilkinson, Margaret; Dennis, Maureen

2004-01-01

Text comprehension processes were investigated in children with hydrocephalus, a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with good word decoding, but deficient reading comprehension. In Experiment 1, hydrocephalus and control groups were similar in processes related to activating word meanings and using context to enhance meaning. The hydrocephalus…

Actual Arabic loan-words of religious content (on the material of modern foreign words

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Al Shammari Majid Jamil Ashur

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Application of thematic classification of actual vocabulary as a whole to the formation of loan words allows to see the uniqueness of seperate groups of the vocabulary. English loan words prevail relating to the sphere of economy, science and technology, loan words from Arabic dominate from the religious vocabulary. Application of field approach to the analysis of actual religious Arabisms revealed both nuclear and peripheral components of the field. At the core of the field there are such Arabisms as Allah and Islam, which can be characterized as key words. However, in unifying the features of these words vary at a number of parameters. The word Allah has zero derivation productivity and at lexicographical description (as opposed to functioning in the language of the media is free of connotations. Arabism, Islam, by contrast, has a high derivation productivity and derived words can express evaluation. Lexicographic description of the Arabism Islam is also quite diverse stylistically and in contents. The core of the field “Muslim religion” also includes a number of words fixed in most modern dictionaries of foreign words. At the periphery of the field there are Arabisms that do not have high levels of frequency, but at the same time as an indicator of dominant Arabisms of religious content among topical Arabisms.

Stroop Color-Word Interference Test: Normative data for Spanish-speaking pediatric population.

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Rivera, D; Morlett-Paredes, A; Peñalver Guia, A I; Irías Escher, M J; Soto-Añari, M; Aguayo Arelis, A; Rute-Pérez, S; Rodríguez-Lorenzana, A; Rodríguez-Agudelo, Y; Albaladejo-Blázquez, N; García de la Cadena, C; Ibáñez-Alfonso, J A; Rodriguez-Irizarry, W; García-Guerrero, C E; Delgado-Mejía, I D; Padilla-López, A; Vergara-Moragues, E; Barrios Nevado, M D; Saracostti Schwartzman, M; Arango-Lasprilla, J C

2017-01-01

To generate normative data for the Stroop Word-Color Interference test in Spanish-speaking pediatric populations. The sample consisted of 4,373 healthy children from nine countries in Latin America (Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Puerto Rico) and Spain. Each participant was administered the Stroop Word-Color Interference test as part of a larger neuropsychological battery. The Stroop Word, Stroop Color, Stroop Word-Color, and Stroop Interference scores were normed using multiple linear regressions and standard deviations of residual values. Age, age2, sex, and mean level of parental education (MLPE) were included as predictors in the analyses. The final multiple linear regression models showed main effects for age on all scores, except on Stroop Interference for Guatemala, such that scores increased linearly as a function of age. Age2 affected Stroop Word scores for all countries, Stroop Color scores for Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Spain; Stroop Word-Color scores for Ecuador, Mexico, and Paraguay; and Stroop Interference scores for Cuba, Guatemala, and Spain. MLPE affected Stroop Word scores for Chile, Mexico, and Puerto Rico; Stroop Color scores for Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Spain; Stroop Word-Color scores for Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain; and Stroop-Interference scores for Ecuador, Mexico, and Spain. Sex affected Stroop Word scores for Spain, Stroop Color scores for Mexico, and Stroop Interference for Honduras. This is the largest Spanish-speaking pediatric normative study in the world, and it will allow neuropsychologists from these countries to have a more accurate approach to interpret the Stroop Word-Color Interference test in pediatric populations.

The word-length effect and disyllabic words.

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Lovatt, P; Avons, S E; Masterson, J

2000-02-01

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.

Spelling and Meaning of Compounds in the Early School Years through Classroom Games: An Intervention Study.

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Tsesmeli, Styliani N

2017-01-01

The study aimed to evaluate the intervention effects on spelling and meaning of compounds by Greek students via group board games in classroom settings. The sample consisted of 60 pupils, who were attending the first and second grade of two primary schools in Greece. Each grade-class was divided into an intervention ( N = 29 children) and a control group ( N = 31 children). Before intervention, groups were evaluated by standardized tests of reading words/pseudowords, spelling words, and vocabulary. Students were also assessed on compound knowledge by a word analogy task, a meaning task and a spelling task. The experimental design of the intervention included a pre-test, a training program, and a post-test. The pre- and post-assessments consisted of the spelling and the meaning tasks entailing equally morphologically transparent and opaque compounds. The training program was based on word families ( N = 10 word families, 56 trained items, 5 sessions) and aimed to offer instruction of morphological decomposition and meaning of words. The findings showed that training was effective in enhancing the spelling and most notably the meaning of compounds. A closer inspection of intervention data in terms of morphological transparency, revealed that training group of first graders improved significantly both on transparent and opaque compounds, while the degree of gains was larger on opaque items for the second graders. These findings are consistent with the experimental literature and particularly optimistic for the literacy enhancement of typically developing children in regular classrooms.

Professional Music Training and Novel Word Learning: From Faster Semantic Encoding to Longer-lasting Word Representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Dittinger, Eva; Barbaroux, Mylène; D'Imperio, Mariapaola; Jäncke, Lutz; Elmer, Stefan; Besson, Mireille

2016-10-01

On the basis of previous results showing that music training positively influences different aspects of speech perception and cognition, the aim of this series of experiments was to test the hypothesis that adult professional musicians would learn the meaning of novel words through picture-word associations more efficiently than controls without music training (i.e., fewer errors and faster RTs). We also expected musicians to show faster changes in brain electrical activity than controls, in particular regarding the N400 component that develops with word learning. In line with these hypotheses, musicians outperformed controls in the most difficult semantic task. Moreover, although a frontally distributed N400 component developed in both groups of participants after only a few minutes of novel word learning, in musicians this frontal distribution rapidly shifted to parietal scalp sites, as typically found for the N400 elicited by known words. Finally, musicians showed evidence for better long-term memory for novel words 5 months after the main experimental session. Results are discussed in terms of cascading effects from enhanced perception to memory as well as in terms of multifaceted improvements of cognitive processing due to music training. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing that music training influences semantic aspects of language processing in adults. These results open new perspectives for education in showing that early music training can facilitate later foreign language learning. Moreover, the design used in the present experiment can help to specify the stages of word learning that are impaired in children and adults with word learning difficulties.

Do handwritten words magnify lexical effects in visual word recognition?

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Perea, Manuel; Gil-López, Cristina; Beléndez, Victoria; Carreiras, Manuel

2016-01-01

An examination of how the word recognition system is able to process handwritten words is fundamental to formulate a comprehensive model of visual word recognition. Previous research has revealed that the magnitude of lexical effects (e.g., the word-frequency effect) is greater with handwritten words than with printed words. In the present lexical decision experiments, we examined whether the quality of handwritten words moderates the recruitment of top-down feedback, as reflected in word-frequency effects. Results showed a reading cost for difficult-to-read and easy-to-read handwritten words relative to printed words. But the critical finding was that difficult-to-read handwritten words, but not easy-to-read handwritten words, showed a greater word-frequency effect than printed words. Therefore, the inherent physical variability of handwritten words does not necessarily boost the magnitude of lexical effects.

Influence of affective meaning on memory for contextual information.

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D'Argembeau, Arnaud; Van der Linden, Martial

2004-06-01

In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the influence of the affective meaning of words on memory for 2 kinds of contextual features that differ in the amount of effortful processes they require to be encoded in memory (i.e., color and spatial location). The main results showed that memory for color, in which words were typed, was better for emotional than for neutral words, but only when color information was learned incidentally. In contrast, spatial location of the words was better remembered for emotional than for neutral words whatever the encoding conditions (intentional vs. incidental). It is suggested that the influence of affective meaning on context memory may involve an automatic attraction of attention to contextual features associated with emotional words. Copyright 2004 American Psychological Association

Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death

Science.gov (United States)

Petersen, Alexander M.; Tenenbaum, Joel; Havlin, Shlomo; Stanley, H. Eugene

2012-03-01

We analyze the dynamic properties of 107 words recorded in English, Spanish and Hebrew over the period 1800-2008 in order to gain insight into the coevolution of language and culture. We report language independent patterns useful as benchmarks for theoretical models of language evolution. A significantly decreasing (increasing) trend in the birth (death) rate of words indicates a recent shift in the selection laws governing word use. For new words, we observe a peak in the growth-rate fluctuations around 40 years after introduction, consistent with the typical entry time into standard dictionaries and the human generational timescale. Pronounced changes in the dynamics of language during periods of war shows that word correlations, occurring across time and between words, are largely influenced by coevolutionary social, technological, and political factors. We quantify cultural memory by analyzing the long-term correlations in the use of individual words using detrended fluctuation analysis.

Cluster analysis of word frequency dynamics

Science.gov (United States)

Maslennikova, Yu S.; Bochkarev, V. V.; Belashova, I. A.

2015-01-01

This paper describes the analysis and modelling of word usage frequency time series. During one of previous studies, an assumption was put forward that all word usage frequencies have uniform dynamics approaching the shape of a Gaussian function. This assumption can be checked using the frequency dictionaries of the Google Books Ngram database. This database includes 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. The corpus contains over 500 billion words in American English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and Chinese. We clustered time series of word usage frequencies using a Kohonen neural network. The similarity between input vectors was estimated using several algorithms. As a result of the neural network training procedure, more than ten different forms of time series were found. They describe the dynamics of word usage frequencies from birth to death of individual words. Different groups of word forms were found to have different dynamics of word usage frequency variations.

Cluster analysis of word frequency dynamics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maslennikova, Yu S; Bochkarev, V V; Belashova, I A

2015-01-01

This paper describes the analysis and modelling of word usage frequency time series. During one of previous studies, an assumption was put forward that all word usage frequencies have uniform dynamics approaching the shape of a Gaussian function. This assumption can be checked using the frequency dictionaries of the Google Books Ngram database. This database includes 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. The corpus contains over 500 billion words in American English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and Chinese. We clustered time series of word usage frequencies using a Kohonen neural network. The similarity between input vectors was estimated using several algorithms. As a result of the neural network training procedure, more than ten different forms of time series were found. They describe the dynamics of word usage frequencies from birth to death of individual words. Different groups of word forms were found to have different dynamics of word usage frequency variations

Defining a Conceptual Topography of Word Concreteness: Clustering Properties of Emotion, Sensation, and Magnitude among 750 English Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joshua Troche

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Cognitive science has a longstanding interest in the ways that people acquire and use abstract vs. concrete words (e.g., truth vs. piano. One dominant theory holds that abstract and concrete words are subserved by two parallel semantic systems. We recently proposed an alternative account of abstract-concrete word representation premised upon a unitary, high dimensional semantic space wherein word meaning is nested. We hypothesize that a range of cognitive and perceptual dimensions (e.g., emotion, time, space, color, size, visual form bound this space, forming a conceptual topography. Here we report a normative study where we examined the clustering properties of a sample of English words (N = 750 spanning a spectrum of concreteness in a continuous manner from highly abstract to highly concrete. Participants (N = 328 rated each target word on a range of 14 cognitive dimensions (e.g., color, emotion, valence, polarity, motion, space. The dimensions reduced to three factors: Endogenous factor, Exogenous factor, and Magnitude factor. Concepts were plotted in a unified, multimodal space with concrete and abstract concepts along a continuous continuum. We discuss theoretical implications and practical applications of this dataset. These word norms are freely available for download and use at http://www.reilly-coglab.com/data/.

Defining a Conceptual Topography of Word Concreteness: Clustering Properties of Emotion, Sensation, and Magnitude among 750 English Words.

Science.gov (United States)

Troche, Joshua; Crutch, Sebastian J; Reilly, Jamie

2017-01-01

Cognitive science has a longstanding interest in the ways that people acquire and use abstract vs. concrete words (e.g., truth vs. piano). One dominant theory holds that abstract and concrete words are subserved by two parallel semantic systems. We recently proposed an alternative account of abstract-concrete word representation premised upon a unitary, high dimensional semantic space wherein word meaning is nested. We hypothesize that a range of cognitive and perceptual dimensions (e.g., emotion, time, space, color, size, visual form) bound this space, forming a conceptual topography. Here we report a normative study where we examined the clustering properties of a sample of English words ( N = 750) spanning a spectrum of concreteness in a continuous manner from highly abstract to highly concrete. Participants ( N = 328) rated each target word on a range of 14 cognitive dimensions (e.g., color, emotion, valence, polarity, motion, space). The dimensions reduced to three factors: Endogenous factor, Exogenous factor, and Magnitude factor. Concepts were plotted in a unified, multimodal space with concrete and abstract concepts along a continuous continuum. We discuss theoretical implications and practical applications of this dataset. These word norms are freely available for download and use at http://www.reilly-coglab.com/data/.

Emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words: storage or retrieval advantage?

Science.gov (United States)

Nadarevic, Lena

2017-12-01

People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word-word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes.

Word wheels

CERN Document Server

Clark, Kathryn

2013-01-01

Targeting the specific problems learners have with language structure, these multi-sensory exercises appeal to all age groups including adults. Exercises use sight, sound and touch and are also suitable for English as an Additional Lanaguage and Basic Skills students.Word Wheels includes off-the-shelf resources including lesson plans and photocopiable worksheets, an interactive CD with practice exercises, and support material for the busy teacher or non-specialist staff, as well as homework activities.

Universal Cycles of Restricted Classes of Words

OpenAIRE

Leitner, Arielle; Godbole, Anant

2008-01-01

It is well known that Universal Cycles of $k$-letter words on an $n$-letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. In this paper, we prove that Universal Cycles exist for restricted classes of words, including: non-bijections, equitable words (under suitable restrictions), ranked permutations, and "passwords".

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition.

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Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster ) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham ). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham ) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster ), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions.

The assessment of deep word knowledge in young first and second language learners

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schoonen, R.; Verhallen-van Ling, M.

2008-01-01

The assessment of so-called depth of word knowledge has been the focus of research for some years now. In this article the construct of deep word knowledge is further specified as the decontextualized knowledge of word meanings and word associations. Most studies so far have involved adolescent and

WORD LEVEL DISCRIMINATIVE TRAINING FOR HANDWRITTEN WORD RECOGNITION

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chen, W.; Gader, P.

2004-01-01

Word level training refers to the process of learning the parameters of a word recognition system based on word level criteria functions. Previously, researchers trained lexicon­driven handwritten word recognition systems at the character level individually. These systems generally use statistical

Learning Words from Context and Dictionaries: An Experimental Comparison.

Science.gov (United States)

Fischer, Ute

1994-01-01

Investigated the independent and interactive effects of contextual and definitional information on vocabulary learning. German students of English received either a text with unfamiliar English words or their monolingual English dictionary entries. A third group received both. Information about word context is crucial to understanding meaning. (44…

The lateralization of motor cortex activation to action words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olaf eHauk

2011-11-01

Full Text Available What determines the laterality of activation in motor cortex for words whose meaning is related to bodily actions? It has been suggested that the neuronal representation of the meaning of action-words is shaped by individual experience. However, core language functions are left-lateralized in the majority of both right- and left-handers. It is still an open question to what degree connections between left-hemispheric core language areas and right-hemispheric motor areas can play a role in semantics. We investigated laterality of brain activation using fMRI in right- and left-handed participants in response to visually presented hand-related action-words, namely uni- and bi-manual actions (such as "throw" and "clap". These stimulus groups were matched with respect to general (hand-action-relatedness, but differed with respect to whether they are usually performed with the dominant hand or both hands. We may expect generally more left-hemispheric motor-cortex activation for hand-related words in both handedness groups, with possibly more bilateral activation for bimanual words as well as left-handers. In our study, both participant groups activated motor cortex bilaterally for bi-manual words. Interestingly, both groups also showed a left-lateralized activation pattern to uni-manual words. We argue that this reflects the effect of left-hemispheric language dominance on the formation of semantic brain circuits on the basis of Hebbian correlation learning.

The Pragmatic Functions and Cultural Differences of Color Words

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

陈俊屹

2015-01-01

Color relates to people very closely; with the development of society and culture, people’s understanding of color is not confided to the visual characteristics of color itself, besides, people give color cultural connotation and actual meanings. In language, the unique glamour that the color words demonstrate makes people regard them with special esteem. Color words describe colors of nature with different cultural implications. They have unique linguistic functions and symbolic connotations. Colors play an indispensable part in our life and it's an effective way to learn the different culture. There is an increase in mis-understanding and communicative barriers because of frequent cross-cultural communication. Chinese and English color words possess different cultural meanings and connotation due to the difference in customs and habits, history and traditions, religions and beliefs, geographic locations, national psychology and ways of thinking. Thus, it’s easy to make mistakes on understanding and comprehension. The methods used in the research procedure are like this: collect some representative color words both from Chinese and English and take them as samples, then make a comparison between cultural connotations. According to the comparison, make a summary about the differences of color words between China and England. This thesis brings a discussion of cultural differences between English and Chinese color words. Color words in learning English is very important. It can help us t make a better understanding of the culture difference of both nations, and achieve the effective cross-culture communication.

Stroop effects from newly learned color words: effects of memory consolidation and episodic context.

Science.gov (United States)

Geukes, Sebastian; Gaskell, M Gareth; Zwitserlood, Pienie

2015-01-01

The Stroop task is an excellent tool to test whether reading a word automatically activates its associated meaning, and it has been widely used in mono- and bilingual contexts. Despite of its ubiquity, the task has not yet been employed to test the automaticity of recently established word-concept links in novel-word-learning studies, under strict experimental control of learning and testing conditions. In three experiments, we thus paired novel words with native language (German) color words via lexical association and subsequently tested these words in a manual version of the Stroop task. Two crucial findings emerged: When novel word Stroop trials appeared intermixed among native-word trials, the novel-word Stroop effect was observed immediately after the learning phase. If no native color words were present in a Stroop block, the novel-word Stroop effect only emerged 24 h later. These results suggest that the automatic availability of a novel word's meaning depends either on supportive context from the learning episode and/or on sufficient time for memory consolidation. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the complementary learning systems account of word learning.

Stroop effects from newly learned color words: effects of memory consolidation and episodic context

Science.gov (United States)

Geukes, Sebastian; Gaskell, M. Gareth; Zwitserlood, Pienie

2015-01-01

The Stroop task is an excellent tool to test whether reading a word automatically activates its associated meaning, and it has been widely used in mono- and bilingual contexts. Despite of its ubiquity, the task has not yet been employed to test the automaticity of recently established word-concept links in novel-word-learning studies, under strict experimental control of learning and testing conditions. In three experiments, we thus paired novel words with native language (German) color words via lexical association and subsequently tested these words in a manual version of the Stroop task. Two crucial findings emerged: When novel word Stroop trials appeared intermixed among native-word trials, the novel-word Stroop effect was observed immediately after the learning phase. If no native color words were present in a Stroop block, the novel-word Stroop effect only emerged 24 h later. These results suggest that the automatic availability of a novel word's meaning depends either on supportive context from the learning episode and/or on sufficient time for memory consolidation. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the complementary learning systems account of word learning. PMID:25814973

Tone of voice guides word learning in informative referential contexts.

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Reinisch, Eva; Jesse, Alexandra; Nygaard, Lynne C

2013-06-01

Listeners infer which object in a visual scene a speaker refers to from the systematic variation of the speaker's tone of voice (ToV). We examined whether ToV also guides word learning. During exposure, participants heard novel adjectives (e.g., "daxen") spoken with a ToV representing hot, cold, strong, weak, big, or small while viewing picture pairs representing the meaning of the adjective and its antonym (e.g., elephant-ant for big-small). Eye fixations were recorded to monitor referent detection and learning. During test, participants heard the adjectives spoken with a neutral ToV, while selecting referents from familiar and unfamiliar picture pairs. Participants were able to learn the adjectives' meanings, and, even in the absence of informative ToV, generalize them to new referents. A second experiment addressed whether ToV provides sufficient information to infer the adjectival meaning or needs to operate within a referential context providing information about the relevant semantic dimension. Participants who saw printed versions of the novel words during exposure performed at chance during test. ToV, in conjunction with the referential context, thus serves as a cue to word meaning. ToV establishes relations between labels and referents for listeners to exploit in word learning.

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition

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Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G.

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions. PMID:25593407

The Dilemma of Word Processing

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Kidwell, Richard

1977-01-01

Word processing is a system of communicating which suggests heavy dependence on the use of transcribing machines rather than manual shorthand. The pros and cons of this system are noted, including suggestions for changes in the business education curriculum relevant to the need for shorthand and/or word processing skill development. (SH)

Semantic context effects and priming in word association.

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Zeelenberg, René; Pecher, Diane; Shiffrin, Richard M; Raaijmakers, Jeroen G W

2003-09-01

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.

Discrete versus multiple word displays: A re-analysis of studies comparing dyslexic and typically developing children

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Pierluigi eZoccolotti

2015-10-01

Full Text Available The study examines whether impairments in reading a text can be explained by a deficit in word decoding or an additional deficit in the processes governing the integration of reading subcomponents (including eye movement programming and pronunciation should also be postulated. We report a re-analysis of data from eleven previous experiments conducted in our lab where the reading performance on single, discrete word displays as well multiple displays (texts, and in few cases also word lists was investigated in groups of dyslexic children and typically developing readers. The analysis focuses on measures of time and not accuracy.Across experiments, dyslexic children are slower and more variable than typically developing readers in reading texts as well as vocal RTs to singly presented words; the dis-homogeneity in variability between groups points to the inappropriateness of standard measures of size effect (such as Cohen’s d, and suggests the use of the ratio between groups’ performance. The mean ratio for text reading is 1.95 across experiments. Mean ratio for vocal RTs for singly presented words is considerably smaller (1.52. Furthermore, this latter value is probably an overestimation as considering total reading times (i.e., a measure including also the pronunciation component considerably reduces the group difference in vocal RTs (1.19 according to Martelli et al., 2014. The ratio difference between single and multiple displays does not depend upon the presence of a semantic context in the case of texts as large ratios are also observed with lists of unrelated words (though studies testing this aspect were few.We conclude that, if care is taken in using appropriate comparisons, the deficit in reading texts or lists of words is appreciably greater than that revealed with discrete word presentations. Thus, reading multiple stimuli present a specific, additional challenge to dyslexic children indicating that models of reading should

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.

Stroop effects from newly learned color words: Effects of memory consolidation and episodic context

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Sebastian eGeukes

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The Stroop task is an excellent tool to test whether reading a word automatically activates its associated meaning, and it has been widely used in mono- and bilingual contexts. Despite of its ubiquity, the task has not yet been employed to test the automaticity of recently established word-concept links in novel-word-learning studies, under strict experimental control of learning and testing conditions. In three experiments, we thus paired novel words with native language (German color words via lexical association and subsequently tested these words in a manual version of the Stroop task. Two crucial findings emerged: When novel word Stroop trials appeared intermixed among native-word trials, the novel-word Stroop effect was observed immediately after the learning phase. If no native color words were present in a Stroop block, the novel-word Stroop effect only emerged 24 hours later. These results suggest that the automatic availability of a novel word’s meaning depends either on supportive context from the learning episode and/or on sufficient time for memory consolidation. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the complementary learning systems account of word learning.

The Word Frequency Effect on Second Language Vocabulary Learning

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Koirala, Cesar

2015-01-01

This study examines several linguistic factors as possible contributors to perceived word difficulty in second language learners in an experimental setting. The investigated factors include: (1) frequency of word usage in the first language, (2) word length, (3) number of syllables in a word, and (4) number of consonant clusters in a word. Word…

Adapting the Freiburg monosyllabic word test for Slovenian

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Tatjana Marvin

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Speech audiometry is one of the standard methods used to diagnose the type of hearing loss and to assess the communication function of the patient by determining the level of the patient’s ability to understand and repeat words presented to him or her in a hearing test. For this purpose, the Slovenian adaptation of the German tests developed by Hahlbrock (1953, 1960 – the Freiburg Monosyllabic Word Test and the Freiburg Number Test – are used in Slovenia (adapted in 1968 by Pompe. In this paper we focus on the Freiburg Monosyllabic Word Test for Slovenian, which has been criticized by patients as well as in the literature for the unequal difficulty and frequency of the words, with many of these being extremely rare or even obsolete. As part of the patient’s communication function is retrieving the meaning of individual words by guessing, the less frequent and consequently less familiar words do not contribute to reliable testing results. We therefore adapt the test by identifying and removing such words and supplement them with phonetically similar words to preserve the phonetic balance of the list. The words used for replacement are extracted from the written corpus of Slovenian Gigafida and the spoken corpus of Slovenian GOS, while the optimal combinations of words are established by using computational algorithms.

ERP correlates of unexpected word forms in a picture–word study of infants and adults

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Duta, M.D.; Styles, S.J.; Plunkett, K.

2012-01-01

We tested 14-month-olds and adults in an event-related potentials (ERPs) study in which pictures of familiar objects generated expectations about upcoming word forms. Expected word forms labelled the picture (word condition), while unexpected word forms mismatched by either a small deviation in word medial vowel height (mispronunciation condition) or a large deviation from the onset of the first speech segment (pseudoword condition). Both infants and adults showed sensitivity to both types of unexpected word form. Adults showed a chain of discrete effects: positivity over the N1 wave, negativity over the P2 wave (PMN effect) and negativity over the N2 wave (N400 effect). Infants showed a similar pattern, including a robust effect similar to the adult P2 effect. These observations were underpinned by a novel visualisation method which shows the dynamics of the ERP within bands of the scalp over time. The results demonstrate shared processing mechanisms across development, as even subtle deviations from expected word forms were indexed in both age groups by a reduction in the amplitude of characteristic waves in the early auditory evoked potential. PMID:22483072

Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels.

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El Aissati, Abder; McQueen, James M; Cutler, Anne

2012-07-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in certain languages that allow stand-alone vowelless open-class words. One such language is Berber (where t is indeed a word). Berber listeners here detected words affixed to nonsense contexts with or without vowels. Length effects seen in other languages replicated in Berber, but in contrast to prior findings, word detection was not hindered by vowelless contexts. When words can be vowelless, otherwise universal constraints disfavoring vowelless words do not feature in spoken-word recognition. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Encoding in the visual word form area: an fMRI adaptation study of words versus handwriting.

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Barton, Jason J S; Fox, Christopher J; Sekunova, Alla; Iaria, Giuseppe

2010-08-01

Written texts are not just words but complex multidimensional stimuli, including aspects such as case, font, and handwriting style, for example. Neuropsychological reports suggest that left fusiform lesions can impair the reading of text for word (lexical) content, being associated with alexia, whereas right-sided lesions may impair handwriting recognition. We used fMRI adaptation in 13 healthy participants to determine if repetition-suppression occurred for words but not handwriting in the left visual word form area (VWFA) and the reverse in the right fusiform gyrus. Contrary to these expectations, we found adaptation for handwriting but not for words in both the left VWFA and the right VWFA homologue. A trend to adaptation for words but not handwriting was seen only in the left middle temporal gyrus. An analysis of anterior and posterior subdivisions of the left VWFA also failed to show any adaptation for words. We conclude that the right and the left fusiform gyri show similar patterns of adaptation for handwriting, consistent with a predominantly perceptual contribution to text processing.

Ontological Annotation with WordNet

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Sanfilippo, Antonio P.; Tratz, Stephen C.; Gregory, Michelle L.; Chappell, Alan R.; Whitney, Paul D.; Posse, Christian; Paulson, Patrick R.; Baddeley, Bob; Hohimer, Ryan E.; White, Amanda M.

2006-06-06

Semantic Web applications require robust and accurate annotation tools that are capable of automating the assignment of ontological classes to words in naturally occurring text (ontological annotation). Most current ontologies do not include rich lexical databases and are therefore not easily integrated with word sense disambiguation algorithms that are needed to automate ontological annotation. WordNet provides a potentially ideal solution to this problem as it offers a highly structured lexical conceptual representation that has been extensively used to develop word sense disambiguation algorithms. However, WordNet has not been designed as an ontology, and while it can be easily turned into one, the result of doing this would present users with serious practical limitations due to the great number of concepts (synonym sets) it contains. Moreover, mapping WordNet to an existing ontology may be difficult and requires substantial labor. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing an analytical platform that (1) provides a WordNet-based ontology offering a manageable and yet comprehensive set of concept classes, (2) leverages the lexical richness of WordNet to give an extensive characterization of concept class in terms of lexical instances, and (3) integrates a class recognition algorithm that automates the assignment of concept classes to words in naturally occurring text. The ensuing framework makes available an ontological annotation platform that can be effectively integrated with intelligence analysis systems to facilitate evidence marshaling and sustain the creation and validation of inference models.

Novel-word learning deficits in Mandarin-speaking preschool children with specific language impairments.

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Chen, Yuchun; Liu, Huei-Mei

2014-01-01

Children with SLI exhibit overall deficits in novel word learning compared to their age-matched peers. However, the manifestation of the word learning difficulty in SLI was not consistent across tasks and the factors affecting the learning performance were not yet determined. Our aim is to examine the extent of word learning difficulties in Mandarin-speaking preschool children with SLI, and to explore the potent influence of existing lexical knowledge on to the word learning process. Preschool children with SLI (n=37) and typical language development (n=33) were exposed to novel words for unfamiliar objects embedded in stories. Word learning tasks including the initial mapping and short-term repetitive learning were designed. Results revealed that Mandarin-speaking preschool children with SLI performed as well as their age-peers in the initial form-meaning mapping task. Their word learning difficulty was only evidently shown in the short-term repetitive learning task under a production demand, and their learning speed was slower than the control group. Children with SLI learned the novel words with a semantic head better in both the initial mapping and repetitive learning tasks. Moderate correlations between stand word learning performances and scores on standardized vocabulary were found after controlling for children's age and nonverbal IQ. The results suggested that the word learning difficulty in children with SLI occurred in the process of establishing a robust phonological representation at the beginning stage of word learning. Also, implicit compound knowledge is applied to aid word learning process for children with and without SLI. We also provide the empirical data to validate the relationship between preschool children's word learning performance and their existing receptive vocabulary ability. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social interaction facilitates word learning in preverbal infants: Word-object mapping and word segmentation.

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Hakuno, Yoko; Omori, Takahide; Yamamoto, Jun-Ichi; Minagawa, Yasuyo

2017-08-01

In natural settings, infants learn spoken language with the aid of a caregiver who explicitly provides social signals. Although previous studies have demonstrated that young infants are sensitive to these signals that facilitate language development, the impact of real-life interactions on early word segmentation and word-object mapping remains elusive. We tested whether infants aged 5-6 months and 9-10 months could segment a word from continuous speech and acquire a word-object relation in an ecologically valid setting. In Experiment 1, infants were exposed to a live tutor, while in Experiment 2, another group of infants were exposed to a televised tutor. Results indicate that both younger and older infants were capable of segmenting a word and learning a word-object association only when the stimuli were derived from a live tutor in a natural manner, suggesting that real-life interaction enhances the learning of spoken words in preverbal infants. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ONE MEANING OF A WORD IN THE BOOK OF DEDE KORKUT: KAZAVAT/KARAVAT DEDE KORKUT’TA BİR KELİME BİR ANLAM: KAZAVAT/KARAVAT

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Muammer Mete TAŞLIOVA

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Dede Korkut Stories are among the important sources of Turkish culture. Poetry and story come together. Many publications have been made about the book in Turkey and abroad. Samples were prepared versions of novels and tales. There are also examples of opera and theater. New experiments are made in the form of television series. Considered the source of the classic Turkish folk storytelling. Turkish culture and literature is the source of the important issues. But musicality aspect is not dealt with yet sufficiently because the music needs to be considered poems. Word structure varies as. Different dialect, a combination of features. But this harmony is a factor that. The oldest written text to be read some words in different ways. This article focuses on a word. There are different readings of the word “kazavat, karavat”. About the different meanings of the word have been suggested. This article will focus on the meanings. In addition, the proposal will be a new meaning. Dede Korkut Hikâyeleri Türk kültürünün önemli kaynakları arasındadır. Şiir ve hikâye bir aradadır. Türkiye'de ve yurt dışında kitap hakkında birçok yayın yapılmıştır. Roman ve masal versiyonları hazırlanmıştır. Opera ve tiyatro örnekleri de bulunmaktadır. Televizyon dizisi biçiminde yeni denemeler de yapılmaktadır. Klasik Türk halk hikâyeciliğinin de kaynağı sayılır. Türk kültürüne ve edebiyatına ait önemli konulara kaynaklık etmektedir. Fakat müzikalite yönüyle henüz yeterince ele alınmamıştır oysa şiiri müzikle düşünmek gerekmektedir. Kelime yapısı olarak da çeşitlilik gösterir. Farklı lehçe özellikleri bir aradadır. Fakat bu ahengi sağlayan bir unsurdur. Arap alfabesi ile yazılmış metin olduğu için bazı kelimeler farklı biçimlerde okunmuştur. Bu makalede bir kelime üzerinde durulmaktadır. Kelimenin “kazavat, karavat” farklı okunuşları bulunmaktadır. Kelime hakkında farklı anlamlar

Task modulation of disyllabic spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: a unimodal ERP study.

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Huang, Xianjun; Yang, Jin-Chen; Chang, Ruohan; Guo, Chunyan

2016-05-16

Using unimodal auditory tasks of word-matching and meaning-matching, this study investigated how the phonological and semantic processes in Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition are modulated by top-down mechanism induced by experimental tasks. Both semantic similarity and word-initial phonological similarity between the primes and targets were manipulated. Results showed that at early stage of recognition (~150-250 ms), an enhanced P2 was elicited by the word-initial phonological mismatch in both tasks. In ~300-500 ms, a fronto-central negative component was elicited by word-initial phonological similarities in the word-matching task, while a parietal negativity was elicited by semantically unrelated primes in the meaning-matching task, indicating that both the semantic and phonological processes can be involved in this time window, depending on the task requirements. In the late stage (~500-700 ms), a centro-parietal Late N400 was elicited in both tasks, but with a larger effect in the meaning-matching task than in the word-matching task. This finding suggests that the semantic representation of the spoken words can be activated automatically in the late stage of recognition, even when semantic processing is not required. However, the magnitude of the semantic activation is modulated by task requirements.

Blending Words Found In Social Media

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Giyatmi Giyatmi

2017-12-01

Full Text Available There are many new words from the social media such as Netizen, Trentop, and Delcon. Those words include in blending. Blending is one of word formations combining two clipped words to form a brand new word. The researchers are interested in analyzing blend words used in the social media such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Blackberry Messenger. This research aims at (1 finding blend words used in the social media (2 describing kinds of blend words used in social media (3 describing the process of blend word formation used in the social media. This research uses some theories dealing with definition of blending and kinds of blending. This research belongs to descriptive qualitative research. Data of the research are English blend words used in social media. Data sources of this research are websites consisting of some English words used in social media and some social media users as the informant. Techniques of data collecting in this research are observation and simak catat. Observation is by observing some websites consisting of some English words used in social media. Simak catat is done by taking some notes on the data and encoding in symbols such as No/Blend words/Kinds of Blending. The researchers use source triangulation to check the data from the researchers with the informant and theory triangulation to determine kinds of blending and blend word formation in social media. There are115 data of blend words. Those data consists of 65 data of Instagram, 47 data of Twitter, 1 datum of Facebook, and 2 data of Blackberry Messenger. There are 2 types of blending used in social media;108 data of blending with clipping and 7 data of blending with overlapping. There are 10 ways of blend word formation found in this research.

Contextual Richness and Word Learning: Context Enhances Comprehension but Retrieval Enhances Retention

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van den Broek, Gesa S. E.; Takashima, Atsuko; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2018-01-01

Learning new vocabulary from context typically requires multiple encounters during which word meaning can be retrieved from memory or inferred from context. We compared the effect of memory retrieval and context inferences on short- and long-term retention in three experiments. Participants studied novel words and then practiced the words either…

Additive and Interactive Effects on Response Time Distributions in Visual Word Recognition

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Yap, Melvin J.; Balota, David A.

2007-01-01

Across 3 different word recognition tasks, distributional analyses were used to examine the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency on underlying response time distributions. Consistent with the extant literature, stimulus quality and word frequency produced additive effects in lexical decision, not only in the means but also in the…

Summarization of meetings using word clouds

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de Hollander, G.; Marx, M.

2011-01-01

In this study parsimonious language models were used to construct word clouds of the proceedings of the European Parliament. Multiple design choices had to be made and are discussed. Important features are stemming during tokenization, including bigrams into the word cloud and multilingualism. Also,

A Few Words about Words | Poster

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By Ken Michaels, Guest Writer In Shakepeare’s play “Hamlet,” Polonius inquires of the prince, “What do you read, my lord?” Not at all pleased with what he’s reading, Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words.”1 I have previously described the communication model in which a sender encodes a message and then sends it via some channel (or medium) to a receiver, who decodes the message

When does word frequency influence written production?

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Baus, Cristina; Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing) and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution) underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard) the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: (1) first keystroke latency and (2) keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analyzed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals). The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution.

When does word frequency influence written production?

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Cristina eBaus

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: 1 first keystroke latency and 2 keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analysed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals. The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution.

On the origin and meaning of the German word Luft and some meteorological terms concerning atmospheric water, especially fog

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Möller, Detlev

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The English and French word “air” is derived from the Latin aer, which comes from the Greek άήρ. In contrast, the German word “Luft” is a common Proto-Germanic word; in Old English “ lift” and “ lyft”. The word Luft (also Danish, Swedish and Norwegian is associated with brightness; the German Licht (light, an air (in an atmospheric sense without fog or clouds. Air and water were originally “elements” in ancient Greek and were transmutable; they represented two kinds of the “ layer of mist” (atmosphere. Dark or thick air was mist or cloud, hiding the gods (who lived in the upper air or sky; the aether. Different terms are presented that describe fog and clouds in connection with the history of the process of understanding. Finally, the word Luft (air as a term for gaseous chemical compounds (“kinds of gases” is discussed. In addition to the German, all terms are given in Greek, Latin, English and French .

How does of initial inaccuracy benefit cross-situational word learning?

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Grimmick, C.; Kachergis, G.E.; Gureckis, T.; Gunzelmann, G.; Howes, A.; Tenbrink, T.; Davelaar, E.

2017-01-01

Both children and adults are able to extract several intended word-referent mappings from a series of scenes containing multiple words and objects. Known as cross-situational learning, this ability is thought to be an important means of acquiring language. Proposed models of this ability range from

Words of foreign origin in political discourse

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Sabina Zorčič

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses the use of words of foreign origin in Slovenian political discourse. At the outset, this usage is broken down into four groups: the first contains specific phrases and terminology inherent to the political domain; the second contains words of foreign origin generally present in the Slovene language (because of their high frequency of nonexclusivistic use, these words are not of interest to the scope of this investigation; the third contains various words of foreign origin used as affectional packaging for messages with the aim of stimulating the desired interpretation (framing reality; the fourth group, which is the most interesting for our research, is made up of words of foreign origin which could have a marker: + marked, + not necessary, + unwanted, but only if we accept the logic of purism. All the words in this group could be replaced - without any loss of meaning - with their Slovene equivalents. The speakerʼs motivation for using the foreign word is crucial to our discussion. In the framework of Pierre Bourdieuʼs poststructural theory as well as Austinʼs and Searleʼs speech act theory, statistical data is analysed to observe how usage frequency varies in correlation with selected factors which manifest the speakerʼs habitus. We argue that words of foreign origin represent symbolic cultural capital, a kind of added value which functions as credit and as such is an important form of the accumulation of capital.

Teach yourself visually Word 2013

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Marmel, Elaine

2013-01-01

Get up to speed on the newest version of Word with visual instruction Microsoft Word is the standard for word processing programs, and the newest version offers additional functionality you'll want to use. Get up to speed quickly and easily with the step-by-step instructions and full-color screen shots in this popular guide! You'll see how to perform dozens of tasks, including how to set up and format documents and text; work with diagrams, charts, and pictures; use Mail Merge; post documents online; and much more. Easy-to-follow, two-page lessons make learning a snap.Full-

Words from spontaneous conversational speech can be recognized with human-like accuracy by an error-driven learning algorithm that discriminates between meanings straight from smart acoustic features, bypassing the phoneme as recognition unit.

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Arnold, Denis; Tomaschek, Fabian; Sering, Konstantin; Lopez, Florence; Baayen, R Harald

2017-01-01

Sound units play a pivotal role in cognitive models of auditory comprehension. The general consensus is that during perception listeners break down speech into auditory words and subsequently phones. Indeed, cognitive speech recognition is typically taken to be computationally intractable without phones. Here we present a computational model trained on 20 hours of conversational speech that recognizes word meanings within the range of human performance (model 25%, native speakers 20-44%), without making use of phone or word form representations. Our model also generates successfully predictions about the speed and accuracy of human auditory comprehension. At the heart of the model is a 'wide' yet sparse two-layer artificial neural network with some hundred thousand input units representing summaries of changes in acoustic frequency bands, and proxies for lexical meanings as output units. We believe that our model holds promise for resolving longstanding theoretical problems surrounding the notion of the phone in linguistic theory.

Words and possible words in early language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Marchetto, Erika; Bonatti, Luca L

2013-11-01

In order to acquire language, infants must extract its building blocks-words-and master the rules governing their legal combinations from speech. These two problems are not independent, however: words also have internal structure. Thus, infants must extract two kinds of information from the same speech input. They must find the actual words of their language. Furthermore, they must identify its possible words, that is, the sequences of sounds that, being morphologically well formed, could be words. Here, we show that infants' sensitivity to possible words appears to be more primitive and fundamental than their ability to find actual words. We expose 12- and 18-month-old infants to an artificial language containing a conflict between statistically coherent and structurally coherent items. We show that 18-month-olds can extract possible words when the familiarization stream contains marks of segmentation, but cannot do so when the stream is continuous. Yet, they can find actual words from a continuous stream by computing statistical relationships among syllables. By contrast, 12-month-olds can find possible words when familiarized with a segmented stream, but seem unable to extract statistically coherent items from a continuous stream that contains minimal conflicts between statistical and structural information. These results suggest that sensitivity to word structure is in place earlier than the ability to analyze distributional information. The ability to compute nontrivial statistical relationships becomes fully effective relatively late in development, when infants have already acquired a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge. Thus, mechanisms for structure extraction that do not rely on extensive sampling of the input are likely to have a much larger role in language acquisition than general-purpose statistical abilities. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Corticospinal excitability during the processing of handwritten and typed words and non-words.

Science.gov (United States)

Gordon, Chelsea L; Spivey, Michael J; Balasubramaniam, Ramesh

2017-06-09

A number of studies have suggested that perception of actions is accompanied by motor simulation of those actions. To further explore this proposal, we applied Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the left primary motor cortex during the observation of handwritten and typed language stimuli, including words and non-word consonant clusters. We recorded motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) from the right first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle to measure cortico-spinal excitability during written text perception. We observed a facilitation in MEPs for handwritten stimuli, regardless of whether the stimuli were words or non-words, suggesting potential motor simulation during observation. We did not observe a similar facilitation for the typed stimuli, suggesting that motor simulation was not occurring during observation of typed text. By demonstrating potential simulation of written language text during observation, these findings add to a growing literature suggesting that the motor system plays a strong role in the perception of written language. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Generating descriptive visual words and visual phrases for large-scale image applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Shiliang; Tian, Qi; Hua, Gang; Huang, Qingming; Gao, Wen

2011-09-01

Bag-of-visual Words (BoWs) representation has been applied for various problems in the fields of multimedia and computer vision. The basic idea is to represent images as visual documents composed of repeatable and distinctive visual elements, which are comparable to the text words. Notwithstanding its great success and wide adoption, visual vocabulary created from single-image local descriptors is often shown to be not as effective as desired. In this paper, descriptive visual words (DVWs) and descriptive visual phrases (DVPs) are proposed as the visual correspondences to text words and phrases, where visual phrases refer to the frequently co-occurring visual word pairs. Since images are the carriers of visual objects and scenes, a descriptive visual element set can be composed by the visual words and their combinations which are effective in representing certain visual objects or scenes. Based on this idea, a general framework is proposed for generating DVWs and DVPs for image applications. In a large-scale image database containing 1506 object and scene categories, the visual words and visual word pairs descriptive to certain objects or scenes are identified and collected as the DVWs and DVPs. Experiments show that the DVWs and DVPs are informative and descriptive and, thus, are more comparable with the text words than the classic visual words. We apply the identified DVWs and DVPs in several applications including large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval, image search re-ranking, and object recognition. The combination of DVW and DVP performs better than the state of the art in large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval in terms of accuracy, efficiency and memory consumption. The proposed image search re-ranking algorithm: DWPRank outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm by 12.4% in mean average precision and about 11 times faster in efficiency.

Third-Party Social Interaction and Word Learning from Video

Science.gov (United States)

O'Doherty, Katherine; Troseth, Georgene L.; Shimpi, Priya M.; Goldenberg, Elizabeth; Akhtar, Nameera; Saylor, Megan M.

2011-01-01

In previous studies, very young children have learned words while "overhearing" a conversation, yet they have had trouble learning words from a person on video. In Study 1, 64 toddlers (mean age = 29.8 months) viewed an object-labeling demonstration in 1 of 4 conditions. In 2, the speaker (present or on video) directly addressed the child, and in…

Principles of nuclear safety and words for defining them

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Alonso, A.

1997-01-01

The principles on which nuclear safety is based may be formulated accurately but, however, the words and expressions used often determine the public's perception of what it is desired to convey. The author of this article reflects on the meaning of words which must be suitably explained to achieve effectiveness and clarity in transmitting a message. (Author)

Imageability and age of acquisition effects in disyllabic word recognition.

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Cortese, Michael J; Schock, Jocelyn

2013-01-01

Imageability and age of acquisition (AoA) effects, as well as key interactions between these variables and frequency and consistency, were examined via multiple regression analyses for 1,936 disyllabic words, using reaction time and accuracy measures from the English Lexicon Project. Both imageability and AoA accounted for unique variance in lexical decision and naming reaction time performance. In addition, across both tasks, AoA and imageability effects were larger for low-frequency words than high-frequency words, and imageability effects were larger for later acquired than earlier acquired words. In reading aloud, consistency effects in reaction time were larger for later acquired words than earlier acquired words, but consistency did not interact with imageability in the reaction time analysis. These results provide further evidence that multisyllabic word recognition is similar to monosyllabic word recognition and indicate that AoA and imageability are valid predictors of word recognition performance. In addition, the results indicate that meaning exerts a larger influence in the reading aloud of multisyllabic words than monosyllabic words. Finally, parallel-distributed-processing approaches provide a useful theoretical framework to explain the main effects and interactions.

Eye movements when reading sentences with handwritten words.

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Perea, Manuel; Marcet, Ana; Uixera, Beatriz; Vergara-Martínez, Marta

2016-10-17

The examination of how we read handwritten words (i.e., the original form of writing) has typically been disregarded in the literature on reading. Previous research using word recognition tasks has shown that lexical effects (e.g., the word-frequency effect) are magnified when reading difficult handwritten words. To examine this issue in a more ecological scenario, we registered the participants' eye movements when reading handwritten sentences that varied in the degree of legibility (i.e., sentences composed of words in easy vs. difficult handwritten style). For comparison purposes, we included a condition with printed sentences. Results showed a larger reading cost for sentences with difficult handwritten words than for sentences with easy handwritten words, which in turn showed a reading cost relative to the sentences with printed words. Critically, the effect of word frequency was greater for difficult handwritten words than for easy handwritten words or printed words in the total times on a target word, but not on first-fixation durations or gaze durations. We examine the implications of these findings for models of eye movement control in reading.

Visual attention shift to printed words during spoken word recognition in Chinese: The role of phonological information.

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Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Tong, Xiuhong

2018-05-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which phonological information mediates the visual attention shift to printed Chinese words in spoken word recognition by using an eye-movement technique with a printed-word paradigm. In this paradigm, participants are visually presented with four printed words on a computer screen, which include a target word, a phonological competitor, and two distractors. Participants are then required to select the target word using a computer mouse, and the eye movements are recorded. In Experiment 1, phonological information was manipulated at the full-phonological overlap; in Experiment 2, phonological information at the partial-phonological overlap was manipulated; and in Experiment 3, the phonological competitors were manipulated to share either fulloverlap or partial-overlap with targets directly. Results of the three experiments showed that the phonological competitor effects were observed at both the full-phonological overlap and partial-phonological overlap conditions. That is, phonological competitors attracted more fixations than distractors, which suggested that phonological information mediates the visual attention shift during spoken word recognition. More importantly, we found that the mediating role of phonological information varies as a function of the phonological similarity between target words and phonological competitors.

The LAMBADA dataset: Word prediction requiring a broad discourse context

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Paperno, D.; Kruszewski, G.; Lazaridou, A.; Pham, Q.N.; Bernardi, R.; Pezzelle, S.; Baroni, M.; Boleda, G.; Fernández, R.; Erk, K.; Smith, N.A.

2016-01-01

We introduce LAMBADA, a dataset to evaluate the capabilities of computational models for text understanding by means of a word prediction task. LAMBADA is a collection of narrative passages sharing the characteristic that human subjects are able to guess their last word if they are exposed to the

Development of Morphophonemic Segments in Children's Mental Representations of Words.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Noel K.

This study explores children's development of dual-level phonological processing posited by generative theory for adult language users. Evidence suggesting 6-year-olds' utilization of morphophonemic segments was obtained by asking children to imitate complex words, omit specified portions, and discuss the meaning of the resulting word-parts. The…

Measuring, Predicting and Visualizing Short-Term Change in Word Representation and Usage in VKontakte Social Network

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Stewart, Ian B.; Arendt, Dustin L.; Bell, Eric B.; Volkova, Svitlana

2017-05-17

Language in social media is extremely dynamic: new words emerge, trend and disappear, while the meaning of existing words can fluctuate over time. This work addresses several important tasks of visualizing and predicting short term text representation shift, i.e. the change in a word’s contextual semantics. We study the relationship between short-term concept drift and representation shift on a large social media corpus – VKontakte collected during the Russia-Ukraine crisis in 2014 – 2015. We visualize short-term representation shift for example keywords and build predictive models to forecast short-term shifts in meaning from previous meaning as well as from concept drift. We show that short-term representation shift can be accurately predicted up to several weeks in advance and that visualization provides insight into meaning change. Our approach can be used to explore and characterize specific aspects of the streaming corpus during crisis events and potentially improve other downstream classification tasks including real-time event forecasting in social media.

Motivating Students' Learning Using Word Association Test and Concept Maps

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Z. Kostova

2010-06-01

Full Text Available The paper presents the effect of a free word association test, content analysis and concept mapping on students’ achievements in human biology. The free word association test was used for revealing the scientific conceptual structures of 8th grade and 12th grade students, around a stimulus word – human being – and for motivating them to study human biology. The stimulus word retrieved a cluster of associations most of which were based on science education and experience. Associations with the stimulus word were analyzed and classified according to predetermined criteria and structured by means of a concept map. The stimulus word ‘human being’ was quantitatively assessed in order to find out the balance between the associations with its different aspects. On the basis of the results some connections between biology and other sciences studying the human being, were worked out. Each new topic in human biology was studied by using content analysis of the textbook and concept mapping as study tools and thus maintaining students’ motivation. Achievements of students were assessed by means of tests, observation and concept maps evaluation. The obtained data was also valuable in clarifying the complex nature of the human being, and confirming the statement that biology cannot answer all questions, concerning human nature. Inferences were made about the word association test combined with content analysis and concept map construction as an educational strategy.

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.

Unsupervised Learning of Word-Sequence Representations from Scratch via Convolutional Tensor Decomposition

OpenAIRE

Huang, Furong; Anandkumar, Animashree

2016-01-01

Unsupervised text embeddings extraction is crucial for text understanding in machine learning. Word2Vec and its variants have received substantial success in mapping words with similar syntactic or semantic meaning to vectors close to each other. However, extracting context-aware word-sequence embedding remains a challenging task. Training over large corpus is difficult as labels are difficult to get. More importantly, it is challenging for pre-trained models to obtain word-...

The role of reference in cross-situational word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Felix Hao; Mintz, Toben H

2018-01-01

Word learning involves massive ambiguity, since in a particular encounter with a novel word, there are an unlimited number of potential referents. One proposal for how learners surmount the problem of ambiguity is that learners use cross-situational statistics to constrain the ambiguity: When a word and its referent co-occur across multiple situations, learners will associate the word with the correct referent. Yu and Smith (2007) propose that these co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mapping. Alternative accounts hold that co-occurrence statistics alone are insufficient to support learning, and that learners are further guided by knowledge that words are referential (e.g., Waxman & Gelman, 2009). However, no behavioral word learning studies we are aware of explicitly manipulate subjects' prior assumptions about the role of the words in the experiments in order to test the influence of these assumptions. In this study, we directly test whether, when faced with referential ambiguity, co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mappings in adult word-learners. Across a series of cross-situational learning experiments, we varied the degree to which there was support for the notion that the words were referential. At the same time, the statistical information about the words' meanings was held constant. When we overrode support for the notion that words were referential, subjects failed to learn the word-to-referent mappings, but otherwise they succeeded. Thus, cross-situational statistics were useful only when learners had the goal of discovering mappings between words and referents. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of word learning in children's language acquisition. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Moved by words: Affective ratings for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferré, Pilar; Guasch, Marc; Martínez-García, Natalia; Fraga, Isabel; Hinojosa, José Antonio

2017-06-01

The two main theoretical accounts of the human affective space are the dimensional perspective and the discrete-emotion approach. In recent years, several affective norms have been developed from a dimensional perspective, including ratings for valence and arousal. In contrast, the number of published datasets relying on the discrete-emotion approach is much lower. There is a need to fill this gap, considering that discrete emotions have an effect on word processing above and beyond those of valence and arousal. In the present study, we present ratings from 1,380 participants for a set of 2,266 Spanish words in five discrete emotion categories: happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. This will be the largest dataset published to date containing ratings for discrete emotions. We also present, for the first time, a fine-grained analysis of the distribution of words into the five emotion categories. This analysis reveals that happiness words are the most consistently related to a single, discrete emotion category. In contrast, there is a tendency for many negative words to belong to more than one discrete emotion. The only exception is disgust words, which overlap least with the other negative emotions. Normative valence and arousal data already exist for all of the words included in this corpus. Thus, the present database will allow researchers to design studies to contrast the predictions of the two most influential theoretical perspectives in this field. These studies will undoubtedly contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of emotion on word processing.

The embodied mind extended: Using words as social tools

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Anna M Borghi

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The extended mind view and the embodied-grounded view of cognition and language are typically considered as rather independent perspectives. In this paper we propose a possible integration of the two views and support it proposing the idea of ''Words As social Tools' (WAT'. In this respect, we will propose that words, also due to their social and public character, can be conceived as quasi-external devices that extend our cognition. Moreover, words function like tools in that they enlarge the bodily space of action thus modifying our sense of body. To support our proposal, we review the relevant literature on tool use and on words as tools and report recent evidence indicating that word use leads to an extension of space close to the body. In addition, we outline a model of the neural processes that may underpin bodily space extension via word use and may reflect possible effects on cognition of the use of words as external means. We also discuss how reconciling the two perspectives can help to overcome the limitations they encounter if considered independently.

Jointly learning word embeddings using a corpus and a knowledge base

Science.gov (United States)

Bollegala, Danushka; Maehara, Takanori; Kawarabayashi, Ken-ichi

2018-01-01

Methods for representing the meaning of words in vector spaces purely using the information distributed in text corpora have proved to be very valuable in various text mining and natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, these methods still disregard the valuable semantic relational structure between words in co-occurring contexts. These beneficial semantic relational structures are contained in manually-created knowledge bases (KBs) such as ontologies and semantic lexicons, where the meanings of words are represented by defining the various relationships that exist among those words. We combine the knowledge in both a corpus and a KB to learn better word embeddings. Specifically, we propose a joint word representation learning method that uses the knowledge in the KBs, and simultaneously predicts the co-occurrences of two words in a corpus context. In particular, we use the corpus to define our objective function subject to the relational constrains derived from the KB. We further utilise the corpus co-occurrence statistics to propose two novel approaches, Nearest Neighbour Expansion (NNE) and Hedged Nearest Neighbour Expansion (HNE), that dynamically expand the KB and therefore derive more constraints that guide the optimisation process. Our experimental results over a wide-range of benchmark tasks demonstrate that the proposed method statistically significantly improves the accuracy of the word embeddings learnt. It outperforms a corpus-only baseline and reports an improvement of a number of previously proposed methods that incorporate corpora and KBs in both semantic similarity prediction and word analogy detection tasks. PMID:29529052

7 CFR 56.1 - Meaning of words and terms defined.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Marketing Service or AMS means the Agricultural Marketing Service of the Department. Ambient temperature means the air temperature maintained in an egg storage facility or transport vehicle. Applicant means... standards means the official U.S. standards grades, and weight classes for shell eggs maintained by and...

Functional Anatomy of Recognition of Chinese Multi-Character Words: Convergent Evidence from Effects of Transposable Nonwords, Lexicality, and Word Frequency.

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Nan; Yu, Xi; Zhao, Ying; Zhang, Mingxia

2016-01-01

This fMRI study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the recognition of Chinese multi-character words by partialling out the confounding effect of reaction time (RT). For this purpose, a special type of nonword-transposable nonword-was created by reversing the character orders of real words. These nonwords were included in a lexical decision task along with regular (non-transposable) nonwords and real words. Through conjunction analysis on the contrasts of transposable nonwords versus regular nonwords and words versus regular nonwords, the confounding effect of RT was eliminated, and the regions involved in word recognition were reliably identified. The word-frequency effect was also examined in emerged regions to further assess their functional roles in word processing. Results showed significant conjunctional effect and positive word-frequency effect in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas only conjunctional effect was found in the anterior cingulate cortex. The roles of these brain regions in recognition of Chinese multi-character words were discussed.

Recurrent Partial Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francine Blanchet-Sadri

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Partial words are sequences over a finite alphabet that may contain wildcard symbols, called holes, which match or are compatible with all letters; partial words without holes are said to be full words (or simply words. Given an infinite partial word w, the number of distinct full words over the alphabet that are compatible with factors of w of length n, called subwords of w, refers to a measure of complexity of infinite partial words so-called subword complexity. This measure is of particular interest because we can construct partial words with subword complexities not achievable by full words. In this paper, we consider the notion of recurrence over infinite partial words, that is, we study whether all of the finite subwords of a given infinite partial word appear infinitely often, and we establish connections between subword complexity and recurrence in this more general framework.

Elevating Baseline Activation Does Not Facilitate Reading of Unattended Words

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Lien, Mei-Ching; Kouchi, Scott; Ruthruff, Eric; Lachter, Joel B.

2009-01-01

Previous studies have disagreed the extent to which people extract meaning from words presented outside the focus of spatial attention. The present study, examined a possible explanation for such discrepancies, inspired by attenuation theory: unattended words can be read more automatically when they have a high baseline level of activation (e.g., due to frequent repetition or due to being expected in a given context). We presented a brief prime word in lowercase, followed by a target word in uppercase. Participants indicated whether the target word belonged to a particular category (e.g., "sport"). When we drew attention to the prime word using a visual cue, the prime produced substantial priming effects on target responses (i.e., faster responses when the prime and target words were identical or from the same category than when they belonged to different categories). When prime words were not attended, however, they produced no priming effects. This finding replicated even when there were only 4 words, each repeated 160 times during the experiment. Even with a very high baseline level of activation, it appears that very little word processing is possible without spatial attention.

Infinite permutations vs. infinite words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anna E. Frid

2011-08-01

Full Text Available I am going to compare well-known properties of infinite words with those of infinite permutations, a new object studied since middle 2000s. Basically, it was Sergey Avgustinovich who invented this notion, although in an early study by Davis et al. permutations appear in a very similar framework as early as in 1977. I am going to tell about periodicity of permutations, their complexity according to several definitions and their automatic properties, that is, about usual parameters of words, now extended to permutations and behaving sometimes similarly to those for words, sometimes not. Another series of results concerns permutations generated by infinite words and their properties. Although this direction of research is young, many people, including two other speakers of this meeting, have participated in it, and I believe that several more topics for further study are really promising.

Abelian primitive words

OpenAIRE

Domaratzki, Michael; Rampersad, Narad

2011-01-01

We investigate Abelian primitive words, which are words that are not Abelian powers. We show that unlike classical primitive words, the set of Abelian primitive words is not context-free. We can determine whether a word is Abelian primitive in linear time. Also different from classical primitive words, we find that a word may have more than one Abelian root. We also consider enumeration problems and the relation to the theory of codes. Peer reviewed

Microsoft Word 2013 for law firms

CERN Document Server

Group, The Payne

2014-01-01

Focusing only on those features of Microsoft Word 2013 that are relevant to the legal community, this updated edition of the Payne Group's market-leading guide to Word provides industry-specific information about the computer program that will help legal professionals operate effectively and efficiently in their environment. A companion website also includes customized legal templates and documents, hands-on exercises, and practice files, among many other services. Whether they are using Word for the first time or simply updating to the most recent version, readers will find all of the information they'll need to increase their productivity and make the most out of Microsoft's word processing program in this expert manual.

Document image retrieval through word shape coding.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Shijian; Li, Linlin; Tan, Chew Lim

2008-11-01

This paper presents a document retrieval technique that is capable of searching document images without OCR (optical character recognition). The proposed technique retrieves document images by a new word shape coding scheme, which captures the document content through annotating each word image by a word shape code. In particular, we annotate word images by using a set of topological shape features including character ascenders/descenders, character holes, and character water reservoirs. With the annotated word shape codes, document images can be retrieved by either query keywords or a query document image. Experimental results show that the proposed document image retrieval technique is fast, efficient, and tolerant to various types of document degradation.

Words of foreign origin in political discourse

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Sabina Zorčič

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses the use of words of foreign origin in Slovenian political discourse. At the outset, this usage is broken down into four groups: the first contains specific phrases and terminology inherent to the political domain; the second contains words of foreign origin generally present in the Slovene language (because of their high frequency of nonexclusivistic use, these words are not of interest to the scope of this investigation; the third contains various words of foreign origin used as affectional packaging for messages with the aim of stimulating the desired interpretation (framing reality; the fourth group, which is the most interesting for our research, is made up of words of foreign origin which could have a marker: + marked, + not necessary, + unwanted, but only if we accept the logic of purism. All the words in this group could be replaced - without any loss of meaning - with their Slovene equivalents. The speakerʼs motivation for using the foreign word is crucial to our discussion. In the framework of Pierre Bourdieuʼs poststructural theory as well as Austinʼs and Searleʼs speech act theory, statistical data is analysed to observe how usage frequency varies in correlation with selected factors which manifest the speakerʼs habitus. We argue that words of foreign origin represent symbolic cultural capital, a kind of added value which functions as credit and as such is an important form of the accumulation of capital.       

Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Ehri, Linnea C.

2014-01-01

Orthographic mapping (OM) involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory. It explains how children learn to read words by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print. This development is portrayed by Ehri (2005a) as a sequence of…

Surviving Blind Decomposition: A Distributional Analysis of the Time-Course of Complex Word Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Schmidtke, Daniel; Matsuki, Kazunaga; Kuperman, Victor

2017-01-01

The current study addresses a discrepancy in the psycholinguistic literature about the chronology of information processing during the visual recognition of morphologically complex words. "Form-then-meaning" accounts of complex word recognition claim that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings,…

Evidence for simultaneous syntactic processing of multiple words during reading.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joshua Snell

Full Text Available A hotly debated issue in reading research concerns the extent to which readers process parafoveal words, and how parafoveal information might influence foveal word recognition. We investigated syntactic word processing both in sentence reading and in reading isolated foveal words when these were flanked by parafoveal words. In Experiment 1 we found a syntactic parafoveal preview benefit in sentence reading, meaning that fixation durations on target words were decreased when there was a syntactically congruent preview word at the target location (n during the fixation on the pre-target (n-1. In Experiment 2 we used a flanker paradigm in which participants had to classify foveal target words as either noun or verb, when those targets were flanked by syntactically congruent or incongruent words (stimulus on-time 170 ms. Lower response times and error rates in the congruent condition suggested that higher-order (syntactic information can be integrated across foveal and parafoveal words. Although higher-order parafoveal-on-foveal effects have been elusive in sentence reading, results from our flanker paradigm show that the reading system can extract higher-order information from multiple words in a single glance. We propose a model of reading to account for the present findings.

Word Problem Wizardry.

Science.gov (United States)

Cassidy, Jack

1991-01-01

Presents suggestions for teaching math word problems to elementary students. The strategies take into consideration differences between reading in math and reading in other areas. A problem-prediction game and four self-checking activities are included along with a magic password challenge. (SM)

Does length or neighborhood size cause the word length effect?

Science.gov (United States)

Jalbert, Annie; Neath, Ian; Surprenant, Aimée M

2011-10-01

Jalbert, Neath, Bireta, and Surprenant (2011) suggested that past demonstrations of the word length effect, the finding that words with fewer syllables are recalled better than words with more syllables, included a confound: The short words had more orthographic neighbors than the long words. The experiments reported here test two predictions that would follow if neighborhood size is a more important factor than word length. In Experiment 1, we found that concurrent articulation removed the effect of neighborhood size, just as it removes the effect of word length. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this pattern is also found with nonwords. For Experiment 3, we factorially manipulated length and neighborhood size, and found only effects of the latter. These results are problematic for any theory of memory that includes decay offset by rehearsal, but they are consistent with accounts that include a redintegrative stage that is susceptible to disruption by noise. The results also confirm the importance of lexical and linguistic factors on memory tasks thought to tap short-term memory.

Universal Lyndon Words

OpenAIRE

Carpi, Arturo; Fici, Gabriele; Holub, Stepan; Oprsal, Jakub; Sciortino, Marinella

2014-01-01

A word $w$ over an alphabet $\\Sigma$ is a Lyndon word if there exists an order defined on $\\Sigma$ for which $w$ is lexicographically smaller than all of its conjugates (other than itself). We introduce and study \\emph{universal Lyndon words}, which are words over an $n$-letter alphabet that have length $n!$ and such that all the conjugates are Lyndon words. We show that universal Lyndon words exist for every $n$ and exhibit combinatorial and structural properties of these words. We then defi...

Word skipping: effects of word length, predictability, spelling and reading skill.

Science.gov (United States)

Slattery, Timothy J; Yates, Mark

2017-08-31

Readers eyes often skip over words as they read. Skipping rates are largely determined by word length; short words are skipped more than long words. However, the predictability of a word in context also impacts skipping rates. Rayner, Slattery, Drieghe and Liversedge (2011) reported an effect of predictability on word skipping for even long words (10-13 characters) that extend beyond the word identification span. Recent research suggests that better readers and spellers have an enhanced perceptual span (Veldre & Andrews, 2014). We explored whether reading and spelling skill interact with word length and predictability to impact word skipping rates in a large sample (N=92) of average and poor adult readers. Participants read the items from Rayner et al. (2011) while their eye movements were recorded. Spelling skill (zSpell) was assessed using the dictation and recognition tasks developed by Sally Andrews and colleagues. Reading skill (zRead) was assessed from reading speed (words per minute) and accuracy of three 120 word passages each with 10 comprehension questions. We fit linear mixed models to the target gaze duration data and generalized linear mixed models to the target word skipping data. Target word gaze durations were significantly predicted by zRead while, the skipping likelihoods were significantly predicted by zSpell. Additionally, for gaze durations, zRead significantly interacted with word predictability as better readers relied less on context to support word processing. These effects are discussed in relation to the lexical quality hypothesis and eye movement models of reading.

Learning during processing Word learning doesn’t wait for word recognition to finish

Science.gov (United States)

Apfelbaum, Keith S.; McMurray, Bob

2017-01-01

Previous research on associative learning has uncovered detailed aspects of the process, including what types of things are learned, how they are learned, and where in the brain such learning occurs. However, perceptual processes, such as stimulus recognition and identification, take time to unfold. Previous studies of learning have not addressed when, during the course of these dynamic recognition processes, learned representations are formed and updated. If learned representations are formed and updated while recognition is ongoing, the result of learning may incorporate spurious, partial information. For example, during word recognition, words take time to be identified, and competing words are often active in parallel. If learning proceeds before this competition resolves, representations may be influenced by the preliminary activations present at the time of learning. In three experiments using word learning as a model domain, we provide evidence that learning reflects the ongoing dynamics of auditory and visual processing during a learning event. These results show that learning can occur before stimulus recognition processes are complete; learning does not wait for ongoing perceptual processing to complete. PMID:27471082

Signal Words

Science.gov (United States)

SIGNAL WORDS TOPIC FACT SHEET NPIC fact sheets are designed to answer questions that are commonly asked by the ... making decisions about pesticide use. What are Signal Words? Signal words are found on pesticide product labels, ...

What Drives Word of Mouth: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verlegh, Peeter W J; Moldovan, Sarit

2008-01-01

The article presents abstracts on word-of-mouth advertising-related topics which include the different roles of product originality and usefulness in generating word of mouth, understanding the way consumers deal with the tension between authenticity and commercialism in seeded word of mouth

Wording effects in moral judgments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ross E. O'Hara

2010-12-01

Full Text Available As the study of moral judgments grows, it becomes imperative to compare results across studies in order to create unified theories within the field. These efforts are potentially undermined, however, by variations in wording used by different researchers. The current study sought to determine whether, when, and how variations in wording influence moral judgments. Online participants responded to 15 different moral vignettes (e.g., the trolley problem using 1 of 4 adjectives: ``wrong'', ``inappropriate'', ``forbidden'', or ``blameworthy''. For half of the sample, these adjectives were preceded by the adverb ``morally''. Results indicated that people were more apt to judge an act as wrong or inappropriate than forbidden or blameworthy, and that disgusting acts were rated as more acceptable when ``morally'' was included. Although some wording differences emerged, effects sizes were small and suggest that studies of moral judgment with different wordings can legitimately be compared.

Abstract Word Definition in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Soo Ryon; Baek, Min Jae; Kim, HyangHee

2015-01-01

The aims of this study were to investigate concrete and abstract word definition ability (1) between patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and normal adults and (2) between the aMCI subtypes (i.e., amnestic single-domain MCI and amnestic multidomain MCI; asMCI and amMCI) and normal controls. The 68 patients with aMCI (29 asMCI and 39 amMCI) and 93 age- and education-matched normal adults performed word definition tasks composed of five concrete (e.g., train) and five abstract nouns (e.g., jealousy). Task performances were analyzed on total score, number of core meanings, and number of supplementary meanings. The results were as follows. First, the aMCI patients scored significantly poorer than the normal controls in only abstract word definition. Second, both subtypes of aMCI performed worse than the controls in only abstract word definition. In conclusion, a definition task of abstract rather than concrete concepts may provide richer information to show semantic impairment of aMCI. PMID:26347214

Abstract Word Definition in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Soo Ryon Kim

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The aims of this study were to investigate concrete and abstract word definition ability (1 between patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI and normal adults and (2 between the aMCI subtypes (i.e., amnestic single-domain MCI and amnestic multidomain MCI; asMCI and amMCI and normal controls. The 68 patients with aMCI (29 asMCI and 39 amMCI and 93 age- and education-matched normal adults performed word definition tasks composed of five concrete (e.g., train and five abstract nouns (e.g., jealousy. Task performances were analyzed on total score, number of core meanings, and number of supplementary meanings. The results were as follows. First, the aMCI patients scored significantly poorer than the normal controls in only abstract word definition. Second, both subtypes of aMCI performed worse than the controls in only abstract word definition. In conclusion, a definition task of abstract rather than concrete concepts may provide richer information to show semantic impairment of aMCI.

All-but-the-Top: Simple and Effective Postprocessing for Word Representations

OpenAIRE

Mu, Jiaqi; Bhat, Suma; Viswanath, Pramod

2017-01-01

Real-valued word representations have transformed NLP applications; popular examples are word2vec and GloVe, recognized for their ability to capture linguistic regularities. In this paper, we demonstrate a {\\em very simple}, and yet counter-intuitive, postprocessing technique -- eliminate the common mean vector and a few top dominating directions from the word vectors -- that renders off-the-shelf representations {\\em even stronger}. The postprocessing is empirically validated on a variety of...

Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English

African Journals Online (AJOL)

R.B. Ruthven

data of the corpus and includes more formal audio material (lectures, TV and ... meticulous word-class tagging of nouns, adjectives, verbs etc., this book is not limited to word ... Fréquences d'utilisation des mots en français écrit contemporain.

Influence of cue word perceptual information on metamemory accuracy in judgement of learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Xiao; Liu, Zhaomin; Li, Tongtong; Luo, Liang

2016-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that perceptual information regarding to-be-remembered words in the study phase affects the accuracy of judgement of learning (JOL). However, few have investigated whether the perceptual information in the JOL phase influences JOL accuracy. This study examined the influence of cue word perceptual information in the JOL phase on immediate and delayed JOL accuracy through changes in cue word font size. In Experiment 1, large-cue word pairs had significantly higher mean JOL magnitude than small-cue word pairs in immediate JOLs and higher relative accuracy than small-cue pairs in delayed JOLs, but font size had no influence on recall performance. Experiment 2 increased the JOL time, and mean JOL magnitude did not reliably differ for large-cue compared with small-cue pairs in immediate JOLs. However, the influence on relative accuracy still existed in delayed JOLs. Experiment 3 increased the familiarity of small-cue words in the delayed JOL phase by adding a lexical decision task. The results indicated that cue word font size no longer affected relative accuracy in delayed JOLs. The three experiments in our study indicated that the perceptual information regarding cue words in the JOL phase affects immediate and delayed JOLs in different ways.

Probe train including a flaw detector and a radiation responsive recording means with alignment means having a natural curved cast

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stone, R.M.

1975-01-01

An inspection system for a multitube steam generator comprising a probe train for insertion in a tube to be inspected is described. The probe train includes, in series, directional probe means, such as an eddy current probe, for indicating the longitudinal and angular location of an irregularity at or in the wall of the tube, and radiation responsive recording means nonrotatable relative to the eddy current probe during operation and in substantially close longitudinal relationship thereto for receiving an image of the irregularity when laterally adjacent thereto; elongated alignment means joined to at least one end of the probe train against rotation relative thereto and insertable in the tube for controlling or determining the angular orientation of the probe train within the tube; means for propelling the probe train longitudinally within the tube; and a source of radiation insertable in another tube of the steam generator to a position therealong laterally adjacent the indicated irregularity for irradiation of the irregularity to project said image on the recording means. The directional probe means may preferably be an eddy current probe and the radiation responsive recording means may preferably be a film bearing cassette probe. The alignment means may be provided by a resilient naturally curved plastic cable, which cable might also be used to propel the probe train. (auth)

Automating Ontological Annotation with WordNet

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sanfilippo, Antonio P.; Tratz, Stephen C.; Gregory, Michelle L.; Chappell, Alan R.; Whitney, Paul D.; Posse, Christian; Paulson, Patrick R.; Baddeley, Bob L.; Hohimer, Ryan E.; White, Amanda M.

2006-01-22

Semantic Web applications require robust and accurate annotation tools that are capable of automating the assignment of ontological classes to words in naturally occurring text (ontological annotation). Most current ontologies do not include rich lexical databases and are therefore not easily integrated with word sense disambiguation algorithms that are needed to automate ontological annotation. WordNet provides a potentially ideal solution to this problem as it offers a highly structured lexical conceptual representation that has been extensively used to develop word sense disambiguation algorithms. However, WordNet has not been designed as an ontology, and while it can be easily turned into one, the result of doing this would present users with serious practical limitations due to the great number of concepts (synonym sets) it contains. Moreover, mapping WordNet to an existing ontology may be difficult and requires substantial labor. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing an analytical platform that (1) provides a WordNet-based ontology offering a manageable and yet comprehensive set of concept classes, (2) leverages the lexical richness of WordNet to give an extensive characterization of concept class in terms of lexical instances, and (3) integrates a class recognition algorithm that automates the assignment of concept classes to words in naturally occurring text. The ensuing framework makes available an ontological annotation platform that can be effectively integrated with intelligence analysis systems to facilitate evidence marshaling and sustain the creation and validation of inference models.

Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels

NARCIS (Netherlands)

El Aissati, A.; McQueen, J.M.; Cutler, A.

2012-01-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the

Data Mining of Web-Based Documents on Social Networking Sites That Included Suicide-Related Words Among Korean Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Juyoung; Song, Tae Min; Seo, Dong-Chul; Jin, Jae Hyun

2016-12-01

To investigate online search activity of suicide-related words in South Korean adolescents through data mining of social media Web sites as the suicide rate in South Korea is one of the highest in the world. Out of more than 2.35 billion posts for 2 years from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012 on 163 social media Web sites in South Korea, 99,693 suicide-related documents were retrieved by Crawler and analyzed using text mining and opinion mining. These data were further combined with monthly employment rate, monthly rental prices index, monthly youth suicide rate, and monthly number of reported bully victims to fit multilevel models as well as structural equation models. The link from grade pressure to suicide risk showed the largest standardized path coefficient (beta = .357, p < .001) in structural models and a significant random effect (p < .01) in multilevel models. Depression was a partial mediator between suicide risk and grade pressure, low body image, victims of bullying, and concerns about disease. The largest total effect was observed in the grade pressure to depression to suicide risk. The multilevel models indicate about 27% of the variance in the daily suicide-related word search activity is explained by month-to-month variations. A lower employment rate, a higher rental prices index, and more bullying were associated with an increased suicide-related word search activity. Academic pressure appears to be the biggest contributor to Korean adolescents' suicide risk. Real-time suicide-related word search activity monitoring and response system needs to be developed. Copyright © 2016 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantic projection: recovering human knowledge of multiple, distinct object features from word embeddings

OpenAIRE

Grand, Gabriel; Blank, Idan Asher; Pereira, Francisco; Fedorenko, Evelina

2018-01-01

The words of a language reflect the structure of the human mind, allowing us to transmit thoughts between individuals. However, language can represent only a subset of our rich and detailed cognitive architecture. Here, we ask what kinds of common knowledge (semantic memory) are captured by word meanings (lexical semantics). We examine a prominent computational model that represents words as vectors in a multidimensional space, such that proximity between word-vectors approximates semantic re...

Young toddlers' word comprehension is flexible and efficient.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elika Bergelson

Full Text Available Much of what is known about word recognition in toddlers comes from eyetracking studies. Here we show that the speed and facility with which children recognize words, as revealed in such studies, cannot be attributed to a task-specific, closed-set strategy; rather, children's gaze to referents of spoken nouns reflects successful search of the lexicon. Toddlers' spoken word comprehension was examined in the context of pictures that had two possible names (such as a cup of juice which could be called "cup" or "juice" and pictures that had only one likely name for toddlers (such as "apple", using a visual world eye-tracking task and a picture-labeling task (n = 77, mean age, 21 months. Toddlers were just as fast and accurate in fixating named pictures with two likely names as pictures with one. If toddlers do name pictures to themselves, the name provides no apparent benefit in word recognition, because there is no cost to understanding an alternative lexical construal of the picture. In toddlers, as in adults, spoken words rapidly evoke their referents.

Word formation is aware of morpheme family size.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniela Barbara Keller

Full Text Available Words are built from smaller meaning bearing parts, called morphemes. As one word can contain multiple morphemes, one morpheme can be present in different words. The number of distinct words a morpheme can be found in is its family size. Here we used Birth-Death-Innovation Models (BDIMs to analyze the distribution of morpheme family sizes in English and German vocabulary over the last 200 years. Rather than just fitting to a probability distribution, these mechanistic models allow for the direct interpretation of identified parameters. Despite the complexity of language change, we indeed found that a specific variant of this pure stochastic model, the second order linear balanced BDIM, significantly fitted the observed distributions. In this model, birth and death rates are increased for smaller morpheme families. This finding indicates an influence of morpheme family sizes on vocabulary changes. This could be an effect of word formation, perception or both. On a more general level, we give an example on how mechanistic models can enable the identification of statistical trends in language change usually hidden by cultural influences.

Don’t words come easy?A psychophysical exploration of word superiority

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Randi eStarrfelt

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Words are made of letters, and yet sometimes it is easier to identify a word than a single letter. This word superiority effect (WSE has been observed when written stimuli are presented very briefly or degraded by visual noise. We compare performance with letters and words in three experiments, to explore the extents and limits of the WSE. Using a carefully controlled list of three letter words, we show that a word superiority effect can be revealed in vocal reaction times even to undegraded stimuli. With a novel combination of psychophysics and mathematical modelling, we further show that the typical WSE is specifically reflected in perceptual processing speed: single words are simply processed faster than single letters. Intriguingly, when multiple stimuli are presented simultaneously, letters are perceived more easily than words, and this is reflected both in perceptual processing speed and visual short term memory capacity. So, even if single words come easy, there is a limit to the word superiority effect.

Effects of Auditory and Visual Priming on the Identification of Spoken Words.

Science.gov (United States)

Shigeno, Sumi

2017-04-01

This study examined the effects of preceding contextual stimuli, either auditory or visual, on the identification of spoken target words. Fifty-one participants (29% males, 71% females; mean age = 24.5 years, SD = 8.5) were divided into three groups: no context, auditory context, and visual context. All target stimuli were spoken words masked with white noise. The relationships between the context and target stimuli were as follows: identical word, similar word, and unrelated word. Participants presented with context experienced a sequence of six context stimuli in the form of either spoken words or photographs. Auditory and visual context conditions produced similar results, but the auditory context aided word identification more than the visual context in the similar word relationship. We discuss these results in the light of top-down processing, motor theory, and the phonological system of language.

Early prefrontal brain responses to the Hedonic quality of emotional words--a simultaneous EEG and MEG study.

Science.gov (United States)

Keuper, Kati; Zwitserlood, Pienie; Rehbein, Maimu A; Eden, Annuschka S; Laeger, Inga; Junghöfer, Markus; Zwanzger, Peter; Dobel, Christian

2013-01-01

The hedonic meaning of words affects word recognition, as shown by behavioral, functional imaging, and event-related potential (ERP) studies. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics and cognitive functions behind are elusive, partly due to methodological limitations of previous studies. Here, we account for these difficulties by computing combined electro-magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) source localization techniques. Participants covertly read emotionally high-arousing positive and negative nouns, while EEG and MEG were recorded simultaneously. Combined EEG/MEG current-density reconstructions for the P1 (80-120 ms), P2 (150-190 ms) and EPN component (200-300 ms) were computed using realistic individual head models, with a cortical constraint. Relative to negative words, the P1 to positive words predominantly involved language-related structures (left middle temporal and inferior frontal regions), and posterior structures related to directed attention (occipital and parietal regions). Effects shifted to the right hemisphere in the P2 component. By contrast, negative words received more activation in the P1 time-range only, recruiting prefrontal regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Effects in the EPN were not statistically significant. These findings show that different neuronal networks are active when positive versus negative words are processed. We account for these effects in terms of an "emotional tagging" of word forms during language acquisition. These tags then give rise to different processing strategies, including enhanced lexical processing of positive words and a very fast language-independent alert response to negative words. The valence-specific recruitment of different networks might underlie fast adaptive responses to both approach- and withdrawal-related stimuli, be they acquired or biological.

Don't words come easy? A psychophysical exploration of word superiority

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Starrfelt, Randi; Petersen, Anders; Vangkilde, Signe Allerup

2013-01-01

Words are made of letters, and yet sometimes it is easier to identify a word than a single letter. This word superiority effect (WSE) has been observed when written stimuli are presented very briefly or degraded by visual noise. We compare performance with letters and words in three experiments, ...... and visual short term memory capacity. So, even if single words come easy, there is a limit to the word superiority effect....

Telephone word-list recall tested in the rural aging and memory study: two parallel versions for the TICS-M.

Science.gov (United States)

Hogervorst, Eva; Bandelow, Stephan; Hart, John; Henderson, Victor W

2004-09-01

Parallel versions of memory tasks are useful in clinical and research settings to reduce practice effects engendered by multiple administrations. We aimed to investigate the usefulness of three parallel versions of ten-item word list recall tasks administered by telephone. A population based telephone survey of middle-aged and elderly residents of Bradley County, Arkansas was carried out as part of the Rural Aging and Memory Study (RAMS). Participants in the study were 1845 persons aged 40 to 95 years. Word lists included that used in the telephone interview of cognitive status (TICS) as a criterion standard and two newly developed lists. The mean age of participants was 61.05 (SD 12.44) years; 39.5% were over age 65. 78% of the participants had completed high school, 66% were women and 21% were African-American. There was no difference in demographic characteristics between groups receiving different word list versions, and performances on the three versions were equivalent for both immediate (mean 4.22, SD 1.53) and delayed (mean 2.35 SD 1.75) recall trials. The total memory score (immediate+delayed recall) was negatively associated with older age (beta = -0.41, 95%CI=-0.11 to -0.04), lower education (beta = 0.24, 95%CI = 0.36 to 0.51), male gender (beta = -0.18, 95%CI = -1.39 to -0.90) and African-American race (beta = -0.15, 95%CI = -1.41 to -0.82). The two RAMS word recall lists and the TICS word recall list can be used interchangeably in telephone assessment of memory of middle-aged and elderly persons. This finding is important for future studies where parallel versions of a word-list memory task are needed. (250 words).

Stroop effects from newly learned color words : effects of memory consolidation and episodic context

OpenAIRE

Geukes, Sebastian; Gaskell, M Gareth; Zwitserlood, Pienie

2015-01-01

The Stroop task is an excellent tool to test whether reading a word automatically activates its associated meaning, and it has been widely used in mono- and bilingual contexts. Despite of its ubiquity, the task has not yet been employed to test the automaticity of recently established word-concept links in novel-word-learning studies, under strict experimental control of learning and testing conditions. In three experiments, we thus paired novel words with native language (German) color words...

A WORD-OF-MOUSE APPROACH FOR WORD-OF-MOUTH MEASUREMENT

OpenAIRE

Andreia Gabriela ANDREI

2012-01-01

Despite of the fact that word-of-mouth phenomenon gained unseen dimensions, only few studies have focused on its measurement and only three of them developed a word-of-mouth construct. Our study develops a bi-dimensional scale which assigns usual word-of-mouth mechanisms available in online networking sites (eg: Recommend, Share, Like, Comment) into the WOM (+) - positive word-of-mouth valence dimension - respectively into the WOM (-) - negative word-of-mouth valence dimension. We adapted e-W...

A Finnic holy word and its subsequent history

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mauno Koski

1990-01-01

Full Text Available This article concentrates on a specific ancient holy word in Finnish and its subsequent development, hiisi. In the Finnish language region hiisi appears as an element in place names in over 230 villages established by the end of the thirteenth century, and at least a majority of these must have existed since prehistoric times. In Finland as well as in Estonia it is possible to demonstrate an earlier sacral function in places which contain hiisi as a component of their name, partly with the help of archeological discoveries, and partly with the help of oral folk tradition. It is particularly among the earliest settlement areas of Southwest Finland, Satakunta and Häme that hiisi features in the names of sacrificial sites or trees, in other words in the same areas where it features in the names of burial grounds. Names in which the hiisi element precedes a word meaning a lake, pond, or other water formation, occur particularly in the eastern Finnish dialect regions, as well as in the regions of Karelian, Olonets, Lydian, and Vepsian. In addition to its factual meaning of cult place, the Finnish word hiisi has come to denote a supernatural entity both in terms of its reference to a place and in terms of its reference to a being.

Attentional Requirements for the Selection of Words from Different Grammatical Categories

Science.gov (United States)

Ayora, Pauline; Janssen, Niels; Dell'Acqua, Roberto; Alario, F.-Xavier

2009-01-01

Two grammatical classes are commonly distinguished in psycholinguistic research. The open-class includes content words such as nouns, whereas the closed-class includes function words such as determiners. A standing issue is to identify whether these words are retrieved through similar or distinct selection mechanisms. We report a comparative…

Word/sub-word lattices decomposition and combination for speech recognition

OpenAIRE

Le , Viet-Bac; Seng , Sopheap; Besacier , Laurent; Bigi , Brigitte

2008-01-01

International audience; This paper presents the benefit of using multiple lexical units in the post-processing stage of an ASR system. Since the use of sub-word units can reduce the high out-of-vocabulary rate and improve the lack of text resources in statistical language modeling, we propose several methods to decompose, normalize and combine word and sub-word lattices generated from different ASR systems. By using a sub-word information table, every word in a lattice can be decomposed into ...

Uninformative contexts support word learning for high-skill spellers.

Science.gov (United States)

Eskenazi, Michael A; Swischuk, Natascha K; Folk, Jocelyn R; Abraham, Ashley N

2018-04-30

The current study investigated how high-skill spellers and low-skill spellers incidentally learn words during reading. The purpose of the study was to determine whether readers can use uninformative contexts to support word learning after forming a lexical representation for a novel word, consistent with instance-based resonance processes. Previous research has found that uninformative contexts damage word learning; however, there may have been insufficient exposure to informative contexts (only one) prior to exposure to uninformative contexts (Webb, 2007; Webb, 2008). In Experiment 1, participants read sentences with one novel word (i.e., blaph, clurge) embedded in them in three different conditions: Informative (six informative contexts to support word learning), Mixed (three informative contexts followed by three uninformative contexts), and Uninformative (six uninformative contexts). Experiment 2 added a new condition with only three informative contexts to further clarify the conclusions of Experiment 1. Results indicated that uninformative contexts can support word learning, but only for high-skill spellers. Further, when participants learned the spelling of the novel word, they were more likely to learn the meaning of that word. This effect was much larger for high-skill spellers than for low-skill spellers. Results are consistent with the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) in that high-skill spellers form stronger orthographic representations which support word learning (Perfetti, 2007). Results also support an instance-based resonance process of word learning in that prior informative contexts can be reactivated to support word learning in future contexts (Bolger, Balass, Landen, & Perfetti, 2008; Balass, Nelson, & Perfetti, 2010; Reichle & Perfetti, 2003). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Right word making sense of the words that confuse

CERN Document Server

Morrison, Elizabeth

2012-01-01

'Affect' or 'effect'? 'Right', 'write' or 'rite'? English can certainly be a confusing language, whether you're a native speaker or learning it as a second language. 'The Right Word' is the essential reference to help people master its subtleties and avoid making mistakes. Divided into three sections, it first examines homophones - those tricky words that sound the same but are spelled differently - then looks at words that often confuse before providing a list of commonly misspelled words.

The company objects keep: Linking referents together during cross-situational word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Zettersten, Martin; Wojcik, Erica; Benitez, Viridiana L; Saffran, Jenny

2018-04-01

Learning the meanings of words involves not only linking individual words to referents but also building a network of connections among entities in the world, concepts, and words. Previous studies reveal that infants and adults track the statistical co-occurrence of labels and objects across multiple ambiguous training instances to learn words. However, it is less clear whether, given distributional or attentional cues, learners also encode associations amongst the novel objects. We investigated the consequences of two types of cues that highlighted object-object links in a cross-situational word learning task: distributional structure - how frequently the referents of novel words occurred together - and visual context - whether the referents were seen on matching backgrounds. Across three experiments, we found that in addition to learning novel words, adults formed connections between frequently co-occurring objects. These findings indicate that learners exploit statistical regularities to form multiple types of associations during word learning.

Numerical morphology supports early number word learning: Evidence from a comparison of young Mandarin and English learners

Science.gov (United States)

Corre, Mathieu Le; Li, Peggy; Huang, Becky H.; Jia, Gisela; Carey, Susan

2016-01-01

Previous studies showed that children learning a language with an obligatory singular/plural distinction (Russian and English) learn the meaning of the number word for one earlier than children learning Japanese, a language without obligatory number morphology (Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Sarnecka, Kamenskaya, Yamana, Ogura, & Yudovina, 2007). This can be explained by differences in number morphology, but it can also be explained by many other differences between the languages and the environments of the children who were compared. The present study tests the hypothesis that the morphological singular/plural distinction supports the early acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one by comparing young English learners to age and SES matched young Mandarin Chinese learners. Mandarin does not have obligatory number morphology but is more similar to English than Japanese in many crucial respects. Corpus analyses show that, compared to English learners, Mandarin learners hear number words more frequently, are more likely to hear number words followed by a noun, and are more likely to hear number words in contexts where they denote a cardinal value. Two tasks show that, despite these advantages, Mandarin learners learn the meaning of the number word for one three to six months later than do English learners. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that prior knowledge of the numerical meaning of the distinction between singular and plural supports the acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one. PMID:27423486

Numerical morphology supports early number word learning: Evidence from a comparison of young Mandarin and English learners.

Science.gov (United States)

Le Corre, Mathieu; Li, Peggy; Huang, Becky H; Jia, Gisela; Carey, Susan

2016-08-01

Previous studies showed that children learning a language with an obligatory singular/plural distinction (Russian and English) learn the meaning of the number word for one earlier than children learning Japanese, a language without obligatory number morphology (Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Sarnecka, Kamenskaya, Yamana, Ogura, & Yudovina, 2007). This can be explained by differences in number morphology, but it can also be explained by many other differences between the languages and the environments of the children who were compared. The present study tests the hypothesis that the morphological singular/plural distinction supports the early acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one by comparing young English learners to age and SES matched young Mandarin Chinese learners. Mandarin does not have obligatory number morphology but is more similar to English than Japanese in many crucial respects. Corpus analyses show that, compared to English learners, Mandarin learners hear number words more frequently, are more likely to hear number words followed by a noun, and are more likely to hear number words in contexts where they denote a cardinal value. Two tasks show that, despite these advantages, Mandarin learners learn the meaning of the number word for one three to six months later than do English learners. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that prior knowledge of the numerical meaning of the distinction between singular and plural supports the acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

A multiresolutional approach to fuzzy text meaning: A first attempt

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Mehler, A.

1996-12-31

The present paper focuses on the connotative meaning aspect of language signs especially above the level of words. In this context the view is taken that texts can be defined as a kind of supersign, to which-in the same way as to other signs-a meaning can be assigned. A text can therefore be described as the result of a sign articulation which connects the material text sign with a corresponding meaning. For the constitution of the structural text meaning a kind of a semiotic composition principle is responsible, which leads to the emergence of interlocked levels of language units, demonstrating different grades of resolution. Starting on the level of words, and going through the level of sentences this principle reaches finally the level of texts by aggregating step by step the meaning of a unit on a higher level out of the meanings of all components one level below, which occur within this unit. Besides, this article will elaborate the hypothesis that the meaning constitution as a two-stage process, corresponding to the syntagmatic and paradigmatic restrictions of language elements among each other, obtains equally on the level of texts. On text level this two-levelledness leads to the constitution of the connotative text meaning, whose constituents are determined on word level by the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of the words. The formalization of the text meaning representation occurs with the help of fuzzy set theory.

Fascinating Children with Words through Tradebooks.

Science.gov (United States)

Burke, Eileen M.

Through careful selection of trade books, teachers can promote children's awareness of language. This paper cites numerous trade books that may be used to help children develop appreciation of alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and rhyme, and it recommends a number of alphabet books, animal stories, and books in which word meanings, interesting…

Defining the Medical Intensive Care Unit in the Words of Patients and Their Family Members: A Freelisting Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Auriemma, Catherine L; Lyon, Sarah M; Strelec, Lauren E; Kent, Saida; Barg, Frances K; Halpern, Scott D

2015-07-01

No validated conceptual framework exists for understanding the outcomes of patient- and family-centered care in critical care. To explore the meaning of intensive care unit among patients and their families by using freelisting. The phrase intensive care unit was used to prompt freelisting among intensive care unit patients and patients' family members. Freelisting is an anthropological technique in which individuals define a domain by listing all words that come to mind in response to a topic. Salience scores, derived from the frequency with which a word was mentioned, the order in which it was mentioned, and the length of each list, were calculated and analyzed. Among the 45 participants, many words were salient to both patients and patients' family members. Words salient solely for patients included consciousness, getting better, noisy, and personal care. Words salient solely for family members included sadness, busy, professional, and hope. The words suffering, busy, and team were salient solely for family members of patients who lived, whereas sadness, professionals, and hope were salient solely for family members of patients who died. The words caring and death were salient for both groups. Intensive care unit patients and their families define intensive care unit by using words to describe sickness, caring, medical staff, emotional states, and physical qualities of the unit. The results validate the importance of these topics among patients and their families in the intensive care unit and illustrate the usefulness of freelisting in critical care research. ©2015 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

Auditory word recognition is not more sensitive to word-initial than to word-final stimulus information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vlugt, van der M.J.; Nooteboom, S.G.

1986-01-01

Several accounts of human recognition of spoken words a.!!llign special importance to stimulus-word onsets. The experiment described here was d~igned to find out whether such a word-beginning superiority effect, which ill supported by experimental evidence of various kinds, is due to a special

Words, Concepts, and the Geometry of Analogy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stephen McGregor

2016-08-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a geometric approach to the problem of modelling the relationship between words and concepts, focusing in particular on analogical phenomena in language and cognition. Grounded in recent theories regarding geometric conceptual spaces, we begin with an analysis of existing static distributional semantic models and move on to an exploration of a dynamic approach to using high dimensional spaces of word meaning to project subspaces where analogies can potentially be solved in an online, contextualised way. The crucial element of this analysis is the positioning of statistics in a geometric environment replete with opportunities for interpretation.

Effect of word familiarity on visually evoked magnetic fields.

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Harada, N; Iwaki, S; Nakagawa, S; Yamaguchi, M; Tonoike, M

2004-11-30

This study investigated the effect of word familiarity of visual stimuli on the word recognizing function of the human brain. Word familiarity is an index of the relative ease of word perception, and is characterized by facilitation and accuracy on word recognition. We studied the effect of word familiarity, using "Hiragana" (phonetic characters in Japanese orthography) characters as visual stimuli, on the elicitation of visually evoked magnetic fields with a word-naming task. The words were selected from a database of lexical properties of Japanese. The four "Hiragana" characters used were grouped and presented in 4 classes of degree of familiarity. The three components were observed in averaged waveforms of the root mean square (RMS) value on latencies at about 100 ms, 150 ms and 220 ms. The RMS value of the 220 ms component showed a significant positive correlation (F=(3/36); 5.501; p=0.035) with the value of familiarity. ECDs of the 220 ms component were observed in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Increments in the RMS value of the 220 ms component, which might reflect ideographical word recognition, retrieving "as a whole" were enhanced with increments of the value of familiarity. The interaction of characters, which increased with the value of familiarity, might function "as a large symbol"; and enhance a "pop-out" function with an escaping character inhibiting other characters and enhancing the segmentation of the character (as a figure) from the ground.

Effects of providing word sounds during printed word learning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Reitsma, P.; Dongen, van A.J.N.; Custers, E.

1984-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the availability of the spoken sound of words along with the printed forms during reading practice. Firstgrade children from two normal elementary schools practised reading several unfamiliar words in print. For half of the printed words the

On Not Remembering/Knowing the Right Words: The Reverse Dictionary under Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dušan Gabrovšek

2005-06-01

Full Text Available The paper focuses on the onomasiological situation in monolingual dictionary consultation: When the reference need is not the typical one of looking up the meaning of an unfamiliar word or sense, but one of knowing what you want to say/write but cannot think of or do not know the right word(s. There are several English-language reference sources available that attempt to meet this kind of reference need, notably several “reverse” dictionaries, the Longman Lexicon, the Language Activator, the Superthesaurus, and a few more, including one online reference. Such sources are typically hybrid works, in the sense that they try to provide several kinds of lexical information that we normally expect to find selectively in different sources (general dictionaries, thesauruses, dictionaries of quotations, etc.. The work analyzed in some detail is the American Flip Dictionary (Kipfer 2000, designed “for when you know what you want to say but can’t think of the word” (cover subtitle. User perspective in particular is highlighted.

Affective norms for 720 French words rated by children and adolescents (FANchild).

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Monnier, Catherine; Syssau, Arielle

2017-10-01

FANchild (French Affective Norms for Children) provides norms of valence and arousal for a large corpus of French words (N = 720) rated by 908 French children and adolescents (ages 7, 9, 11, and 13). The ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). Because it combines evaluations of arousal and valence and includes ratings provided by 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-olds, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. Good response reliability was observed in each of the four age groups. Despite a significant level of consensus, we found age differences in both the valence and arousal ratings: Seven- and 9-year-old children gave higher mean valence and arousal ratings than did the other age groups. Moreover, the tendency to judge words positively (i.e., positive bias) decreased with age. This age- and sex-related database will enable French-speaking researchers to study how the emotional character of words influences their cognitive processing, and how this influence evolves with age. FANchild is available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Catherine_Monnier/contributions .

Enrichment Effects of Gestures and Pictures on Abstract Words in a Second Language

OpenAIRE

Claudia Repetto; Elisa Pedroli; Manuela Macedonia; Manuela Macedonia

2017-01-01

Laboratory research has demonstrated that multisensory enrichment promotes verbal learning in a foreign language (L2). Enrichment can be done in various ways, e.g., by adding a picture that illustrates the L2 word’s meaning or by the learner performing a gesture to the word (enactment). Most studies have tested enrichment on concrete but not on abstract words. Unlike concrete words, the representation of abstract words is deprived of sensory-motor features. This has been addressed as one of t...

Early Prefrontal Brain Responses to the Hedonic Quality of Emotional Words – A Simultaneous EEG and MEG Study

Science.gov (United States)

Keuper, Kati; Zwitserlood, Pienie; Rehbein, Maimu A.; Eden, Annuschka S.; Laeger, Inga; Junghöfer, Markus; Zwanzger, Peter; Dobel, Christian

2013-01-01

The hedonic meaning of words affects word recognition, as shown by behavioral, functional imaging, and event-related potential (ERP) studies. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics and cognitive functions behind are elusive, partly due to methodological limitations of previous studies. Here, we account for these difficulties by computing combined electro-magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) source localization techniques. Participants covertly read emotionally high-arousing positive and negative nouns, while EEG and MEG were recorded simultaneously. Combined EEG/MEG current-density reconstructions for the P1 (80–120 ms), P2 (150–190 ms) and EPN component (200–300 ms) were computed using realistic individual head models, with a cortical constraint. Relative to negative words, the P1 to positive words predominantly involved language-related structures (left middle temporal and inferior frontal regions), and posterior structures related to directed attention (occipital and parietal regions). Effects shifted to the right hemisphere in the P2 component. By contrast, negative words received more activation in the P1 time-range only, recruiting prefrontal regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Effects in the EPN were not statistically significant. These findings show that different neuronal networks are active when positive versus negative words are processed. We account for these effects in terms of an “emotional tagging” of word forms during language acquisition. These tags then give rise to different processing strategies, including enhanced lexical processing of positive words and a very fast language-independent alert response to negative words. The valence-specific recruitment of different networks might underlie fast adaptive responses to both approach- and withdrawal-related stimuli, be they acquired or biological. PMID:23940642

Sound-Symbolism Boosts Novel Word Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Lockwood, Gwilym; Dingemanse, Mark; Hagoort, Peter

2016-01-01

The existence of sound-symbolism (or a non-arbitrary link between form and meaning) is well-attested. However, sound-symbolism has mostly been investigated with nonwords in forced choice tasks, neither of which are representative of natural language. This study uses ideophones, which are naturally occurring sound-symbolic words that depict sensory…

Interaction between episodic and semantic memory networks in the acquisition and consolidation of novel spoken words.

Science.gov (United States)

Takashima, Atsuko; Bakker, Iske; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2017-04-01

When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and again after a delay of one week. Words learned with meanings were remembered better than those learned without meanings. Both episodic (hippocampus-dependent) and semantic (dependent on distributed neocortical areas) memory systems were utilised during recognition of the novel words. The extent to which the two systems were involved changed as a function of time and the amount of associated information, with more involvement of both systems for the meaningful words than for the form-only words after the one-week delay. These results suggest that the reason the meaningful words were remembered better is that their retrieval can benefit more from these two complementary memory systems. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spelling Pronunciations Help College Students Remember How to Spell Difficult Words

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Ocal, Turkan; Ehri, Linnea C.

2017-01-01

Studies have shown that children benefit from a spelling pronunciation strategy in remembering the spellings of words. The current study determined whether this strategy also helps adults learn to spell commonly misspelled words. Participants were native English speaking college students (N = 42), mean age 22.5 years (SD = 7.87). An experimental…

Psychometrically equivalent bisyllabic words for speech recognition threshold testing in Vietnamese.

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Richard W; McPherson, David L; Hanson, Claire M; Eggett, Dennis L

2017-08-01

This study identified, digitally recorded, edited and evaluated 89 bisyllabic Vietnamese words with the goal of identifying homogeneous words that could be used to measure the speech recognition threshold (SRT) in native talkers of Vietnamese. Native male and female talker productions of 89 Vietnamese bisyllabic words were recorded, edited and then presented at intensities ranging from -10 to 20 dBHL. Logistic regression was used to identify the best words for measuring the SRT. Forty-eight words were selected and digitally edited to have 50% intelligibility at a level equal to the mean pure-tone average (PTA) for normally hearing participants (5.2 dBHL). Twenty normally hearing native Vietnamese participants listened to and repeated bisyllabic Vietnamese words at intensities ranging from -10 to 20 dBHL. A total of 48 male and female talker recordings of bisyllabic words with steep psychometric functions (>9.0%/dB) were chosen for the final bisyllabic SRT list. Only words homogeneous with respect to threshold audibility with steep psychometric function slopes were chosen for the final list. Digital recordings of bisyllabic Vietnamese words are now available for use in measuring the SRT for patients whose native language is Vietnamese.

Brain activation during direct and indirect processing of positive and negative words.

Science.gov (United States)

Straube, Thomas; Sauer, Andreas; Miltner, Wolfgang H R

2011-09-12

The effects of task conditions on brain activation to emotional stimuli are poorly understood. In this event-related fMRI study, brain activation to negative and positive words (matched for arousal) and neutral words was investigated under two task conditions. Subjects either had to attend to the emotional meaning (direct task) or to non-emotional features of the words (indirect task). Regardless of task, positive vs. negative words led to increased activation in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, while negative vs. positive words induced increased activation of the insula. Compared to neutral words, all emotional words were associated with increased activation of the amygdala. Finally, the direct condition, as compared to the indirect condition, led to enhanced activation to emotional vs. neutral words in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. These results suggest valence and arousal dependent brain activation patterns that are partially modulated by participants' processing mode of the emotional stimuli. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Infants Track Word Forms in Early Word-Object Associations

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Zamuner, Tania S.; Fais, Laurel; Werker, Janet F.

2014-01-01

A central component of language development is word learning. One characterization of this process is that language learners discover objects and then look for word forms to associate with these objects (Mcnamara, 1984; Smith, 2000). Another possibility is that word forms themselves are also important, such that once learned, hearing a familiar…

Vocabulary knowledge mediates the link between socioeconomic status and word learning in grade school.

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Maguire, Mandy J; Schneider, Julie M; Middleton, Anna E; Ralph, Yvonne; Lopez, Michael; Ackerman, Robert A; Abel, Alyson D

2018-02-01

The relationship between children's slow vocabulary growth and the family's low socioeconomic status (SES) has been well documented. However, previous studies have often focused on infants or preschoolers and primarily used static measures of vocabulary at multiple time points. To date, there is no research investigating whether SES predicts a child's word learning abilities in grade school and, if so, what mediates this relationship. In this study, 68 children aged 8-15 years performed a written word learning from context task that required using the surrounding text to identify the meaning of an unknown word. Results revealed that vocabulary knowledge significantly mediated the relationship between SES (as measured by maternal education) and word learning. This was true despite the fact that the words in the linguistic context surrounding the target word are typically acquired well before 8 years of age. When controlling for vocabulary, word learning from written context was not predicted by differences in reading comprehension, decoding, or working memory. These findings reveal that differences in vocabulary growth between grade school children from low and higher SES homes are likely related to differences in the process of word learning more than knowledge of surrounding words or reading skills. Specifically, children from lower SES homes are not as effective at using known vocabulary to build a robust semantic representation of incoming text to identify the meaning of an unknown word. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Standard deviation and standard error of the mean.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Dong Kyu; In, Junyong; Lee, Sangseok

2015-06-01

In most clinical and experimental studies, the standard deviation (SD) and the estimated standard error of the mean (SEM) are used to present the characteristics of sample data and to explain statistical analysis results. However, some authors occasionally muddle the distinctive usage between the SD and SEM in medical literature. Because the process of calculating the SD and SEM includes different statistical inferences, each of them has its own meaning. SD is the dispersion of data in a normal distribution. In other words, SD indicates how accurately the mean represents sample data. However the meaning of SEM includes statistical inference based on the sampling distribution. SEM is the SD of the theoretical distribution of the sample means (the sampling distribution). While either SD or SEM can be applied to describe data and statistical results, one should be aware of reasonable methods with which to use SD and SEM. We aim to elucidate the distinctions between SD and SEM and to provide proper usage guidelines for both, which summarize data and describe statistical results.

[Interdisciplinarity in action: "trap-words" in interdisciplinary research].

Science.gov (United States)

Villeval, Mélanie; Ginsbourger, Thomas; Bidault, Elsa; Alias, François; Delpierre, Cyrille; Gaborit, Emilie; Kelly-Irving, Michelle; Manuello, Pascale; Grosclaude, Pascale; Lang, Thierry

2014-01-01

Interdisciplinary work is essential to understand and address Social Inequalities in Health (SIH), but involves a number of practical difficulties. The AAPRISS programme, comprises project leaders and researchers from various disciplines in order to co-construct the reorientation of prevention projects, in order to more effectively reduce SIH. Certain challenges emerged during this project concerning the interdisciplinary work, especially misunderstanding of certain terms with different meanings according to various disciplines, within the same discipline, or even between British and US English. The objective is to identify these "trap-words" in order to create a glossary clearly explaining the various meanings, rather than rigidly defining a unique correct definition. The words leading to misunderstandings were identified and several definitions were provided by participating researchers and literature searches. Five sets of words were defined: "politique, programme, projet et intervention"; "impact"; "ressortissant, public cible, population cible, bénéficiaire, et communauté"; "inégalités sociales de santé, disparités et iniquités"; and "protocole". Issues raised by the construction of this glossary, designed to support co-construction between researchers from different disciplines, allow reflection on the richness and difficulties of interdisciplinary research.

What do we mean by the word “Shock”?

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Runnels, Scott Robert [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

2015-08-24

From one vantage point, a shock is a continuous but drastic change in state variables that occurs over very small time and length scales. These scales and associated changes in state variables can be measured experimentally. From another vantage point, a shock is a mathematical singularity consisting of instantaneous changes in state variables. This more mathematical view gives rise to analytical solutions to idealized problems. And from a third vantage point, a shock is a structure in a hydrocode prediction. Its width depends on the simulation’s grid resolution and artificial viscosity. These three vantage points can be in conflict when ideas from the associated fields are combined, and yet combining them is an important goal of an integrated modeling program. This presentation explores an example of how models for real materials in the presence of real shocks react to a hydrocode’s numerical shocks of finite width. The presentation will include an introduction to plasticity for the novice, an historical view of plasticity algorithms, a demonstration of how pursuing the meaning of “shock” has resulted in hydrocode improvements, and will conclude by answering some of the questions that arise from that pursuit. After the technical part of the presentation, a few slides advertising LANL’s Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop will be shown.

Embodiment and second-language: automatic activation of motor responses during processing spatially associated L2 words and emotion L2 words in a vertical Stroop paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Dudschig, Carolin; de la Vega, Irmgard; Kaup, Barbara

2014-05-01

Converging evidence suggests that understanding our first-language (L1) results in reactivation of experiential sensorimotor traces in the brain. Surprisingly, little is known regarding the involvement of these processes during second-language (L2) processing. Participants saw L1 or L2 words referring to entities with a typical location (e.g., star, mole) (Experiment 1 & 2) or to an emotion (e.g., happy, sad) (Experiment 3). Participants responded to the words' ink color with an upward or downward arm movement. Despite word meaning being fully task-irrelevant, L2 automatically activated motor responses similar to L1 even when L2 was acquired rather late in life (age >11). Specifically, words such as star facilitated upward, and words such as root facilitated downward responses. Additionally, words referring to positive emotions facilitated upward, and words referring to negative emotions facilitated downward responses. In summary our study suggests that reactivation of experiential traces is not limited to L1 processing. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Towards new information resources for public health--from WordNet to MedicalWordNet.

Science.gov (United States)

Fellbaum, Christiane; Hahn, Udo; Smith, Barry

2006-06-01

In the last two decades, WordNet has evolved as the most comprehensive computational lexicon of general English. In this article, we discuss its potential for supporting the creation of an entirely new kind of information resource for public health, viz. MedicalWordNet. This resource is not to be conceived merely as a lexical extension of the original WordNet to medical terminology; indeed, there is already a considerable degree of overlap between WordNet and the vocabulary of medicine. Instead, we propose a new type of repository, consisting of three large collections of (1) medically relevant word forms, structured along the lines of the existing Princeton WordNet; (2) medically validated propositions, referred to here as medical facts, which will constitute what we shall call MedicalFactNet; and (3) propositions reflecting laypersons' medical beliefs, which will constitute what we shall call the MedicalBeliefNet. We introduce a methodology for setting up the MedicalWordNet. We then turn to the discussion of research challenges that have to be met to build this new type of information resource. We build a database of sentences relevant to the medical domain. The sentences are generated from WordNet via its relations as well as from medical statements broken down into elementary propositions. Two subcorpora of sentences are distinguished, MedicalBeliefNet and MedicalFactNet. The former is rated for assent by laypersons; the latter for correctness by medical experts. The sentence corpora will be valuable for a variety of applications in information retrieval as well as in research in linguistics and psychology with respect to the study of expert and non-expert beliefs and their linguistic expressions. Our work has to meet several considerable challenges. These include accounting for the distinction between medical experts and laypersons, the social issues of expert-layperson communication in different media, the linguistic aspects of encoding medical knowledge, and

Morpho-phonemic analysis boosts word reading for adult struggling readers.

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Susan H; Ehri, Linnea C; Locke, John L

2018-01-01

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar words on standardized tests of word reading, including word attack and word recognition. Findings support theories of word learning and literacy that promote explicit instruction in word analysis to increase poor readers' linguistic awareness by revealing connections between morphological, phonological, and orthographic structures within words.

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

Science.gov (United States)

Benitez, Viridiana L.; Yurovsky, Daniel; Smith, Linda B.

2016-01-01

Three experiments investigated competition between word-object pairings in a cross-situational word-learning paradigm. Adults were presented with One-Word pairings, where a single word labeled a single object, and Two-Word pairings, where two words labeled a single object. In addition to measuring learning of these two pairing types, we measured competition between words that refer to the same object. When the word-object co-occurrences were presented intermixed in training (Experiment 1), we found evidence for direct competition between words that label the same referent. Separating the two words for an object in time eliminated any evidence for this competition (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that adding a linguistic cue to the second label for a referent led to different competition effects between adults who self-reported different language learning histories, suggesting both distinctiveness and language learning history affect competition. Finally, in all experiments, competition effects were unrelated to participants’ explicit judgments of learning, suggesting that competition reflects the operating characteristics of implicit learning processes. Together, these results demonstrate that the role of competition between overlapping associations in statistical word-referent learning depends on time, the distinctiveness of word-object pairings, and language learning history. PMID:27087742

Cross-Language Transfer of Word Reading Accuracy and Word Reading Fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals: Script-Universal and Script-Specific Processes

Science.gov (United States)

Pasquarella, Adrian; Chen, Xi; Gottardo, Alexandra; Geva, Esther

2015-01-01

This study examined cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 51 Spanish-English and 64 Chinese-English bilinguals. Both groups of children completed parallel measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy,…

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network.

Science.gov (United States)

Ding, Jinfeng; Liu, Wenjuan; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP) technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC) than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended) dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization.

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jinfeng Ding

2017-12-01

Full Text Available On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization.

BioWord: A sequence manipulation suite for Microsoft Word

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anzaldi Laura J

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The ability to manipulate, edit and process DNA and protein sequences has rapidly become a necessary skill for practicing biologists across a wide swath of disciplines. In spite of this, most everyday sequence manipulation tools are distributed across several programs and web servers, sometimes requiring installation and typically involving frequent switching between applications. To address this problem, here we have developed BioWord, a macro-enabled self-installing template for Microsoft Word documents that integrates an extensive suite of DNA and protein sequence manipulation tools. Results BioWord is distributed as a single macro-enabled template that self-installs with a single click. After installation, BioWord will open as a tab in the Office ribbon. Biologists can then easily manipulate DNA and protein sequences using a familiar interface and minimize the need to switch between applications. Beyond simple sequence manipulation, BioWord integrates functionality ranging from dyad search and consensus logos to motif discovery and pair-wise alignment. Written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA as an open source, object-oriented project, BioWord allows users with varying programming experience to expand and customize the program to better meet their own needs. Conclusions BioWord integrates a powerful set of tools for biological sequence manipulation within a handy, user-friendly tab in a widely used word processing software package. The use of a simple scripting language and an object-oriented scheme facilitates customization by users and provides a very accessible educational platform for introducing students to basic bioinformatics algorithms.

BioWord: A sequence manipulation suite for Microsoft Word

Science.gov (United States)

2012-01-01

Background The ability to manipulate, edit and process DNA and protein sequences has rapidly become a necessary skill for practicing biologists across a wide swath of disciplines. In spite of this, most everyday sequence manipulation tools are distributed across several programs and web servers, sometimes requiring installation and typically involving frequent switching between applications. To address this problem, here we have developed BioWord, a macro-enabled self-installing template for Microsoft Word documents that integrates an extensive suite of DNA and protein sequence manipulation tools. Results BioWord is distributed as a single macro-enabled template that self-installs with a single click. After installation, BioWord will open as a tab in the Office ribbon. Biologists can then easily manipulate DNA and protein sequences using a familiar interface and minimize the need to switch between applications. Beyond simple sequence manipulation, BioWord integrates functionality ranging from dyad search and consensus logos to motif discovery and pair-wise alignment. Written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as an open source, object-oriented project, BioWord allows users with varying programming experience to expand and customize the program to better meet their own needs. Conclusions BioWord integrates a powerful set of tools for biological sequence manipulation within a handy, user-friendly tab in a widely used word processing software package. The use of a simple scripting language and an object-oriented scheme facilitates customization by users and provides a very accessible educational platform for introducing students to basic bioinformatics algorithms. PMID:22676326

BioWord: a sequence manipulation suite for Microsoft Word.

Science.gov (United States)

Anzaldi, Laura J; Muñoz-Fernández, Daniel; Erill, Ivan

2012-06-07

The ability to manipulate, edit and process DNA and protein sequences has rapidly become a necessary skill for practicing biologists across a wide swath of disciplines. In spite of this, most everyday sequence manipulation tools are distributed across several programs and web servers, sometimes requiring installation and typically involving frequent switching between applications. To address this problem, here we have developed BioWord, a macro-enabled self-installing template for Microsoft Word documents that integrates an extensive suite of DNA and protein sequence manipulation tools. BioWord is distributed as a single macro-enabled template that self-installs with a single click. After installation, BioWord will open as a tab in the Office ribbon. Biologists can then easily manipulate DNA and protein sequences using a familiar interface and minimize the need to switch between applications. Beyond simple sequence manipulation, BioWord integrates functionality ranging from dyad search and consensus logos to motif discovery and pair-wise alignment. Written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as an open source, object-oriented project, BioWord allows users with varying programming experience to expand and customize the program to better meet their own needs. BioWord integrates a powerful set of tools for biological sequence manipulation within a handy, user-friendly tab in a widely used word processing software package. The use of a simple scripting language and an object-oriented scheme facilitates customization by users and provides a very accessible educational platform for introducing students to basic bioinformatics algorithms.

Eye movements and word skipping during reading: Effects of word length and predictability

Science.gov (United States)

Rayner, Keith; Slattery, Timothy J.; Drieghe, Denis; Liversedge, Simon P.

2012-01-01

The extent to which target words were predictable from prior context was varied: half of the target words were predictable and the other half were unpredictable. In addition, the length of the target word varied: the target words were short (4–6 letters), medium (7–9 letters), or long (10–12 letters). Length and predictability both yielded strong effects on the probability of skipping the target words and on the amount of time readers fixated the target words (when they were not skipped). However, there was no interaction in any of the measures examined for either skipping or fixation time. The results demonstrate that word predictability (due to contextual constraint) and word length have strong and independent influences on word skipping and fixation durations. Furthermore, since the long words extended beyond the word identification span, the data indicate that skipping can occur on the basis of partial information in relation to word identity. PMID:21463086

Word Pocket Guide

CERN Document Server

Glenn, Walter

2004-01-01

Millions of people use Microsoft Word every day and, chances are, you're one of them. Like most Word users, you've attained a certain level of proficiency--enough to get by, with a few extra tricks and tips--but don't get the opportunity to probe much further into the real power of Word. And Word is so rich in features that regardless of your level of expertise, there's always more to master. If you've ever wanted a quick answer to a nagging question or had the thought that there must be a better way, then this second edition of Word Pocket Guide is just what you need. Updated for Word 2003

Affective Norms for 362 Persian Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahdi Bagheri

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Background: During the past two decades, a great deal of research has been conducted on developing affective norms for words in various languages, showing that there is an urgent need to create such norms in Persian language, too. The present study intended to develop a set of 362 Persian words rated according to their emotional valence, arousal, imageability, and familiarity so as to prepare the ground for further research on emotional word processing. This was the first attempt to set affective norms for Persian words in the realm of emotion.  Methods: Prior to the study, a multitude of words were selected from Persian dictionary and academic books in Persian literature. Secondly, three independent proficient experts in the Persian literature were asked to extract the suitable words from the list and to choose the best (defined as grammatically correct and most often used. The database normalization process was based on the ratings by a total of 88 participants using a 9-point Likert scale. Each participant evaluated about 120 words on four different scales.  Results: There were significant relationships between affective dimensions and some psycholinguistic variables. Also, further analyses were carried out to investigate the possible relationship between different features of valences (positive, negative, and neutral and other variables included in the dataset.  Conclusion: These affective norms for Persian words create a useful and valid dataset which will provide researchers with applying standard verbal materials as well as materials applied in other languages, e.g. English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, etc.

Principal semantic components of language and the measurement of meaning.

Science.gov (United States)

Samsonovich, Alexei V; Samsonovic, Alexei V; Ascoli, Giorgio A

2010-06-11

Metric systems for semantics, or semantic cognitive maps, are allocations of words or other representations in a metric space based on their meaning. Existing methods for semantic mapping, such as Latent Semantic Analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation, are based on paradigms involving dissimilarity metrics. They typically do not take into account relations of antonymy and yield a large number of domain-specific semantic dimensions. Here, using a novel self-organization approach, we construct a low-dimensional, context-independent semantic map of natural language that represents simultaneously synonymy and antonymy. Emergent semantics of the map principal components are clearly identifiable: the first three correspond to the meanings of "good/bad" (valence), "calm/excited" (arousal), and "open/closed" (freedom), respectively. The semantic map is sufficiently robust to allow the automated extraction of synonyms and antonyms not originally in the dictionaries used to construct the map and to predict connotation from their coordinates. The map geometric characteristics include a limited number ( approximately 4) of statistically significant dimensions, a bimodal distribution of the first component, increasing kurtosis of subsequent (unimodal) components, and a U-shaped maximum-spread planar projection. Both the semantic content and the main geometric features of the map are consistent between dictionaries (Microsoft Word and Princeton's WordNet), among Western languages (English, French, German, and Spanish), and with previously established psychometric measures. By defining the semantics of its dimensions, the constructed map provides a foundational metric system for the quantitative analysis of word meaning. Language can be viewed as a cumulative product of human experiences. Therefore, the extracted principal semantic dimensions may be useful to characterize the general semantic dimensions of the content of mental states. This is a fundamental step toward a

Principal semantic components of language and the measurement of meaning.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexei V Samsonovich

Full Text Available Metric systems for semantics, or semantic cognitive maps, are allocations of words or other representations in a metric space based on their meaning. Existing methods for semantic mapping, such as Latent Semantic Analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation, are based on paradigms involving dissimilarity metrics. They typically do not take into account relations of antonymy and yield a large number of domain-specific semantic dimensions. Here, using a novel self-organization approach, we construct a low-dimensional, context-independent semantic map of natural language that represents simultaneously synonymy and antonymy. Emergent semantics of the map principal components are clearly identifiable: the first three correspond to the meanings of "good/bad" (valence, "calm/excited" (arousal, and "open/closed" (freedom, respectively. The semantic map is sufficiently robust to allow the automated extraction of synonyms and antonyms not originally in the dictionaries used to construct the map and to predict connotation from their coordinates. The map geometric characteristics include a limited number ( approximately 4 of statistically significant dimensions, a bimodal distribution of the first component, increasing kurtosis of subsequent (unimodal components, and a U-shaped maximum-spread planar projection. Both the semantic content and the main geometric features of the map are consistent between dictionaries (Microsoft Word and Princeton's WordNet, among Western languages (English, French, German, and Spanish, and with previously established psychometric measures. By defining the semantics of its dimensions, the constructed map provides a foundational metric system for the quantitative analysis of word meaning. Language can be viewed as a cumulative product of human experiences. Therefore, the extracted principal semantic dimensions may be useful to characterize the general semantic dimensions of the content of mental states. This is a fundamental step