Search results for: minority languages

Authors: T. O. Adekunle, R. L. Makhubu, C. N. Ngwane

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This research was designed to assess the validity of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis in relation to the linguistic and cultural notions of the Yoruba and Zulu language speakers’ via the evaluation of the culture enriched dramatic text The Lion and The Jewel by Wole Soyinka. The study queried both the hypothesis’ strong version, (language governs thought: linguistic classifications restrain and influence mental classifications); and its weak version, (linguistic classifications and their use influence thought as well as some other classes of non-linguistic activities) and their possible reliability. Participants were purposively selected and their ages ranged from 16-46 years old. The participants amounted to 38 (18 Yoruba and 20 Zulu) students of DUT who all speak both English and Zulu (Zulu participants) and English and Yoruba (Yoruba participants) and the mixed methods approach was used. Thus with the use of questionnaire and interviews the research questions were answered and the findings provided support for validity of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, languages indeed influence thought. The findings also revealed that linguistic influence on cognition is not limited to different language users alone, but also same language speakers per level of exposure to other languages and concepts.

Keywords: culture, cognition, DUT, language, linguistic relativity hypothesis, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, The Lion and The Jewel, thought, Wole Soyinka, Yoruba, Zulu

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Authors: Methawee Yuttapongtada

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Intensifier is the linguistic term and device that is generally found in different languages in order to enhance and give additional quantity, quality or emotion to the words of each language. In fact, each language in the world has both of the similar and dissimilar intensifying device. More specially, the wide variety of intensifying device is used for Thai language and one of those is usage of the impolite word or the word that used to mean something negative as intensifier. The data collection in this study was done throughout the spoken language style by collecting from intensifiers regarded as impolite words because these words as employed in the other contexts will be held as the rude, swear words or the words with negative meaning. Then, backward study to the past was done in order to consider the historical change. Explanation of the original meaning and the contexts of words use from the past till the present time were done by use of both textual documents and dictionaries available in different periods. It was found that regarding the semantics and pragmatic aspects, subjectification also is the significant motivation that changed the impolite words to intensifiers. At last, it can explain pathway of the semantic change of these very words undoubtedly. Moreover, it is found that use tendency in the impolite word or the word that used to mean something negative will more be increased and this phenomenon is commonly found in many languages in the world and results of this research may support to the belief that human language in the world is universal and the same still reflected that human has the fundamental thought as the same to each other basically.

Keywords: impolite word, intensifier, Thai, semantic change

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Authors: Franklin Thambi Jose.S

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Computational Linguistics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with the computer and linguistic levels. It is also said, as a branch of language studies which applies computer techniques to linguistics field. In Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing plays an important role. This came to exist because of the invention of Information Technology. In computational syntax, the syntactic analyser breaks a sentence into phrases and clauses and identifies the sentence with the syntactic information. Tamil is one of the major Dravidian languages, which has a very long written history of more than 2000 years. It is mainly spoken in Tamilnadu (in India), Srilanka, Malaysia and Singapore. It is an official language in Tamilnadu (in India), Srilanka, Malaysia and Singapore. In Malaysia Tamil speaking people are considered as an ethnic group. In Tamil syntax, the sentences in Tamil are classified into four for this research, namely: 1. Main Sentence 2. Interrogative Sentence 3. Equational Sentence 4. Elliptical Sentence. In computational syntax, the first step is to provide required information regarding the head and its constituent of each sentence. This information will be incorporated to the system using programming languages. Now the system can easily analyse a given sentence with the criteria or mechanisms given to it. Providing needful criteria or mechanisms to the computer to identify the basic types of sentences using Syntactic parser in Tamil language is the major objective of this paper.

Keywords: tamil, syntax, criteria, sentences, parser

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Authors: Renáta Nagy, Alexandra Csongor, Vilmos Warta

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The presentation aims at eliciting insight into the results of ongoing research regarding evolving trends and attitudes towards online assessment of English and other languages. The focus pinpoints online as one of the most trending forms available during the global pandemic. The study was first initiated in 2019 in which its main target was to reveal the intriguing question of students’ and assessors’ attitudes towards online assessment. The research questions the attitudes towards the latest trends, possible online task types, and their advantages and disadvantages through an in-depth experimental process currently undergoing implementation. Material and methods include surveys, needs and wants analysis, and thorough investigations regarding candidates’ and assessors’ attitudes towards online tests in the field of languages. Over 400 respondents from more than 28 countries participated in the survey, which gives us an international and intercultural insight into how students with different cultural and educational background deal with the evolving online world. The results show the pandemic’s impact, which brought the slumbering online world of assessing roaring alive, fully operational, and now bears phenomenal relevance in today’s global education. Undeniably, the results can be used as a perspective in a vast array of contents. The survey hypothesized the generation of the 21st century expect everything readily available online, however, questions whether they are ready for this challenge are lurking in the background.

Keywords: assessment, english, intercultural, international, online, testing

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Authors: Aji Budi Rinekso, Revika Niza Artiyana, Lisa Widayanti

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English is one of the international languages in the world. People use this language to communicate with each other in the international forums, international events or international organizations. As same as other languages, English has a rule which is called grammar. Grammar is the part of english which has a role as the language systems. In grammar, there are tenses which provide a time period system for past, present and future. Sometimes it is difficult for some English learner to remember all of the tenses completely. Especially for those with special needs or exceptional children with vision restrictiveness. The aims of this research are 1) To know the design of Special Grammar Circle (Spegraci) as the media for blind people to learn english grammar. 2) To know the work of Special Gramar Circle (Spegraci) as the media for blind people to learn english grammar. 3) To know the function of this device in increasing tenses ability for blind people. The method of this research is Research and Development which consists of several testing and revision of this device. The implementation of Special Grammar Circle (Spegraci) is to make blind people easily to learn the tenses. This device is easy to use. Users only roll this device and find out the tense formula and match to the name of the formula in braille. In addition, this device also enables to be used by normal people because normal written texts are also provided.

Keywords: blind people, media innovation, spegraci, tenses

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Authors: Janet Ige, Paul Pilkington, Selena Gray, Jane Powell

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Older adults from socially disadvantaged groups and Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups experience a higher burden of physical inactivity. Physical inactivity among BME groups is associated with the disproportionately higher level of health inequalities. People from minority ethnic groups encounter more barriers to physical activity. However, this is not often reported. There is very limited review-level evidence on the barriers and facilitators of physical activity among older adults from BME groups in the UK. This study aims to answer the following research question: what are the barriers and facilitators of physical activity participation among adults and older adults from BME background in the UK? To address this, we conducted a review of qualitative studies investigating the barriers and opportunities for physical activity among of BME adults and older adults in the UK. Method: This study is nested in an interpretive paradigm of meta-ethnography. A structured search for published literature was conducted on 6 electronic databases (MEDLINE, PsychINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Allied and Complementary Medicine) from January 2007 to July 2017. Hand searching of the reference list of publications was performed in addition to a search conducted on Google Scholar to identify grey literature. Studies were eligible provided they employed any qualitative method and included participants identified as being BME, aged 50 and above, living in any community within the UK. In total, 1036 studies were identified from the structured search for literature, 718 studies were screened by titles after duplicates were removed. On applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final selection of 10 studies was considered eligible for synthesis. Quality assessment was performed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool. Logic maps were used to show the relationship between factors that impact on physical activity participation among adults and older adults Result: Six key themes emerged from the data: awareness of the links between physical activity and health, interaction, and engagement with health professionals, cultural expectations and social responsibilities, appropriate environment, religious fatalism and practical challenges. Findings also showed that the barriers and facilitators of physical activity exist at the individual, community, and socio-economic, cultural and environmental level. There was a substantial gap in research among Black African groups. Findings from the review also informed the design of an ongoing survey investigating the experience and attitude of adults from Somali backgrounds towards physical activity in the UK. Conclusion: Identifying the barriers and facilitators of physical activity among BME groups is a crucial step in addressing the widening inequality gap. Findings from this study highlight the importance of engaging local BME residents in the design of exercise facilities within the community. This will ensure that cultural and social concerns are recognized and properly addressed.

Keywords: BME, UK, meta-ethnographic, adults

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Authors: Sankalp Devanand, Prateek Agasimani, Shamith V. S., Rohith Neeraje

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Machine translation has witnessed significant advancements in recent years, but the translation of languages with distinct linguistic characteristics, such as English and Sanskrit, remains a challenging task. This research presents the development of a dedicated English-to-Sanskrit machine translation model, aiming to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between these two languages. Using a variety of natural language processing (NLP) approaches, including FastText embeddings, this research proposes a thorough method to improve word meaning retrieval. Data preparation, part-of-speech tagging, dictionary searches, and transliteration are all included in the methodology. The study also addresses the implementation of an interpreter pattern and uses a word similarity task to assess the quality of word embeddings. The experimental outcomes show how the suggested approach may be used to enhance word meaning retrieval tasks with greater efficacy, accuracy, and adaptability. Evaluation of the model's performance is conducted through rigorous testing, comparing its output against existing machine translation systems. The assessment includes quantitative metrics such as BLEU scores, METEOR scores, Jaccard Similarity, etc.

Keywords: machine translation, English to Sanskrit, natural language processing, word meaning retrieval, fastText embeddings

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Authors: Shams Ul Hussain Zaheer, Bibi Alia, Shehla Shams

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With the creation of human beings, almost all of them are blessed with the award of the power of expression, and this series starts from the life of Adam (A.S) in Paradise when he was blesses with language and knowledge and given priority upon the Angels. Later on, when the population spread and many other languages came into being, the method of the different people of different regions remained various. And when the Arabic was formed as a language after Ismail (A.S) and his sons spread in the gulf area, the words adopted from other gulf languages also became a part of this new language with it immense. Beside this, the tone of expression in other areas of the word was different, but the incidents, norms of bad and good, parameters for like and dislike, thinking styles, and rules of good and bad governance with social values remained round about the same. People practiced their lives according to the set norms everywhere in the world. Especially the two built, i.e., Hijaz and Khurasan, wherein Arabs and Pashtun accordingly were dwelling; it seems that their social values were much closed to each other. These norms reflect in various kinds of literature of both of the nations, but this article deals in with their proverbs specifically. This article discusses the intellectual telepathic between them in a research way. And put the defined similarities and dissimilarities between both in the proverb. And it also draws a sketch in front of readers that how the thinking and expression styles remains same in humans. As it belongs to a comparative analysis of the proverbs so, the same methodology has been adopted in the articles.

Keywords: intellectual telepathy, hijaz, arab, khurasan, pashtun, proverbs, comparison

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Authors: Pranav Gunhal

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This paper presents an analysis of sentiment on Twitter towards the Karnataka elections held in 2023, utilizing transformer-based models specifically designed for sentiment analysis in Indic languages. Through an innovative data collection approach involving a combination of novel methods of data augmentation, online data preceding the election was analyzed. The study focuses on sentiment classification, effectively distinguishing between positive, negative, and neutral posts while specifically targeting the sentiment regarding the loss of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the win of the Indian National Congress (INC). Leveraging high-performing transformer architectures, specifically IndicBERT, coupled with specifically fine-tuned hyperparameters, the AI models employed in this study achieved remarkable accuracy in predicting the INC’s victory in the election. The findings shed new light on the potential of cutting-edge transformer-based models in capturing and analyzing sentiment dynamics within the Indian political landscape. The implications of this research are far-reaching, providing invaluable insights to political parties for informed decision-making and strategic planning in preparation for the forthcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the nation.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, twitter, Karnataka elections, congress, BJP, transformers, Indic languages, AI, novel architectures, IndicBERT, lok sabha elections

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Authors: Anna Kesoyan

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The present paper deals with the syntax-related problems of translation from English into Armenian. Although Syntax is a part of grammar, syntax-related problems of translation are studied separately during the process of translation. Translation from one language to another is widely accepted as a challenging problem. This becomes even more challenging when the source and target languages are widely different in structure and style, as is the case with English and Armenian. Syntax-related problems of translation from English into Armenian are mainly connected with the syntactical structures of these languages, and particularly, with the word order of the sentence. The word order of the sentence of the Armenian language, which is a synthetic language, is usually characterized as “rather free”, and the word order of the English language, which is an analytical language, is characterized “fixed”. The following research examines the main translation means, particularly, syntactical transformations as the translator has to take real steps while trying to solve certain syntax-related problems. Most of the means of translation are based on the transformation of grammatical components of the sentence, without changing the main information of the text. There are several transformations that occur during translation such as word order of the sentence, transformations of certain grammatical constructions like Infinitive participial construction, Nominative with the Infinitive and Elliptical constructions which have been covered in the following research.

Keywords: elliptical constructions, nominative with the infinitive constructions, fixed and free word order, syntactic structures

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Authors: Walter Beck

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Jharkhand is newly constituted 28th State in the eastern part of India which is known for the oldest settlement of the indigenous people. In the State of Jharkhand in which broadly three language family are found namely, Austric, Dravidian, and Indo-European. Ex-Mundari, kharia, Ho Santali come from the Austric Language family. Kurukh, Malto under Dravidian language family and Nagpuri Khorta etc. under Indo-European language family. There are 32 Indigenous Communities identified as Scheduled Tribe in the State of Jharkhand. Santhal, Munda, Kahria, Ho and Oraons are some of the major Tribe of the Jharkhand state. Jharkhand has a Rich Cultural heritage which includes Folk art, folklore, Folk Dance, Folk Music, Folk Songs for which diversity can been seen from place to place, season to season and all traditional Culture and practices. The languages as well as the songs are vulnerable to dominant culture and hence needed to be protected. The collection and documentation of these songs in their natural setting adds significant contribution to the conservation and propagation of the cultural elements. This paper reflects to bring out the Originality of the Collected Songs from remote areas of the plateau of Sothern Jharkhand as a rich intangible Cultural heritage of the Country. The research was done through participatory observation. In this research project more than 100 songs which were never documented before.

Keywords: cultural heritage, India, indigenous people, songs, languages

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Authors: Abdel Rahman Altakhaineh

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This paper has analysed the conceptual relations between the elements of NN compounds in Arabic and compared them to those found in English based on the framework of Conceptual Semantics and a modified version of Parallel Architecture referred to as Relational Morphology. The analysis revealed that the repertoire of possible semantic relations between the two nouns in Arabic NN compounds reproduces that in English NN compounds and that, therefore, the main difference is in headedness (right-headed in English, left-headed in Arabic). Adopting RM allows productive and idiosyncratic elements to interweave with each other naturally. Semantically transparent compounds can be stored in memory or produced and understood online, while compounds with different degrees of semantic idiosyncrasy are stored in memory. Furthermore, the predictable parts of idiosyncratic compounds are captured by general schemas. In compounds, such schemas pick out the range of possible semantic relations between the two nouns. Finally, conducting a cross-linguistic study of the systematic patterns of possible conceptual relationships between compound elements is an area worthy of further exploration. In addition, comparing and contrasting compounding in Arabic and Hebrew, especially as they are both Semitic languages, is another area that needs to be investigated thoroughly. It will help morphologists understand the extent to which Jackendoff’s repertoire of semantic relations in compounds is universal. That is, if a language as distant from English as Arabic displays a similar range of cases, this is evidence for a (relatively) universal set of relations from which individual languages may pick and choose.

Keywords: conceptual semantics, morphology, compounds, arabic, english

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Authors: Shierwin Agagen Cabunilas

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The unitary form of Philippine government has built a tradition of bureaucracy that strengthened oligarch and clientele politics. Consequently, the Philippines is lagged behind development. There is so much poverty, unemployment, and inadequate social services. In addition, it seems that the rights of national ethnic minority groups like the Igorots to develop their political and economic interests, linguistic and cultural heritage are neglected. Given these circumstances, a paradigm shift is inevitable. The author advocates a transition from a unitary to a federal system of government. Contrary to the notion that a unitary system facilitates better governance, it actually stifles it. As a unitary government, the Philippines seems (a) to exhibit incompetence in delivering efficient, necessary services to the people and (b) to exclude the minority from political participation and policy making. This shows that Philippine unitary system is highly centralized and operates from a top-bottom scheme. However, a federal system encourages decentralization, plurality and political participation. In my view, federalism is beneficial to the Philippine society and congenial to the Igorot indigenous peoples insofar as participative decision-making and development goals are concerned. This research employs critical and constructive analyses. The former interprets some complex practices of Philippine politics while the latter investigates how theories of federalism can be appropriated to deal with political deficits, ethnic diversity, and indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination. The topic is developed accordingly: First, the author briefly examines the unitary structure of the Philippines and its impact on inter-governmental affairs and processes, asserting that bureaucracy and corruption, for example, are counterproductive to a participative political life, to economic development and to the recognition of national ethnic minorities. Second, he scrutinizes why federalism might transform this. Here, he assesses various opposing philosophical contentions on federal system in managing ethnically diverse society, like the Philippines, and argue that decentralization of political power, economic and cultural developments are reasons to exit from unitary government. Third, he suggests that federalism can be instrumental to Igorots self-determination. Self-determination is neither opposed to national development nor to the ideals of democracy – liberty, justice, solidarity. For example, as others have already noted, a politics in the vernacular facilitates greater participation among the people. Hence, there is a greater chance to arrive at policies that serve the interest of the people. Some may wary that decentralization disintegrates a nation. According to the author, however, the recognition of minority rights which includes self-determination may promote filial devotion to the state. If Igorot indigenous peoples have access to suitable institutions to determine their political life, economic goals, social needs, i.e., education, culture, language, chances are it moves the country forward to development fostering national unity. Remarkably, federal system thus best responds to the Philippines’s democratic and development deficits. Federalism can also significantly rectify the practices that oppress and dislocate national ethnic minorities as it ensures the creation of localized institutions for optimum political, economic, cultural determination and maximizes representation in the public sphere.

Keywords: federalism, Igorot, indigenous peoples, self-determination

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Authors: Leila Najeh Bel'Kiry

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Artificial intelligence (AI) brought about many language robots, with ChatGPT being the most sophisticated thanks to its human-like linguistic capabilities. This aspect raises the idea of using ChatGPT in learning foreign languages. Starting from the premise that positions ChatGPT as a mediator between the language and the leaner, functioning as a “ghost teacher" offering a peaceful and secure learning space, this study aims to explore the attitudes of Tunisian students of English towards ChatGPT as a “Foreign Language Teacher” . Forty-five students, in their third year of fundamental English at Tunisian universities and high institutes, completed a Likert scale questionnaire consisting of thirty-two items and covering various aspects of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics). A scale ranging from 'Strongly Disagree,' 'Disagree,' 'Undecided,' 'Agree,' to 'Strongly Agree.' is used to assess the attitudes of the participants towards the integration of ChaGPTin learning a foreign language. Results indicate generally positive attitudes towards the reliance on ChatGPT in learning foreign languages, particularly some compounds of language like syntax, phonology, and morphology. However, learners show insecurity towards ChatGPT when it comes to pragmatics and semantics, where the artificial model may fail when dealing with deeper contextual and nuanced language levels.

Keywords: artificial language model, attitudes, foreign language learning, ChatGPT, linguistic capabilities, Tunisian English language learners

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Authors: John Mambambo

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Debates on the link between Bantu languages are often epitomized by animated theoretical critiques, including the language zoning and groupings. This evaluative, qualitative inquiry hovers above theoretical critiques to offer the sparsely studied ChiShona and isiXhosa code-switching nexus, a yawning gap in scholarship. Using interviews, questionnaires and observations, data germane to the study were collected from a purposively selected group of Shona speakers who had resided in Xhosa-speaking communities for not less than a year. Deploying Myers-Scotton’s Markedness theory, the paper gazes into the pragmatic linguistic affinity that is affirmed through the Shona-Xhosa code-switching in Cape Town. The assorted social variables motivating bilingual speakers to code-switch in Cape Town are also explored in this study. The study unveils that Shona speakers are motivated to code-switch by the linguistic affinity between ChiShona and isiXhosa. Other socio-political justifications also give an impetus to this phenomenon. The Matrix Language Frame Model affirms that ChiShona is the base while isiXhosa is the embedded language during code-switching. This paper is a momentous advancement of the extant literature on code-switching. It is a unique contribution to the nexus between ChiShona and isiXhosa languages, providing fresh insights into the discourse on African language comparison studies.

Keywords: code-switching, chishona, isiXhosa, bilingualism

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Authors: Zhangquan Zhou, Guilin Qi

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Materialization is an important reasoning service for applications built on the Web Ontology Language (OWL). To make materialization efficient in practice, current research focuses on deciding tractability of an ontology language and designing parallel reasoning algorithms. However, some well-known large-scale ontologies, such as YAGO, have been shown to have good performance for parallel reasoning, but they are expressed in ontology languages that are not parallelly tractable, i.e., the reasoning is inherently sequential in the worst case. This motivates us to study the problem of parallel tractability of ontology materialization from a theoretical perspective. That is we aim to identify the ontologies for which materialization is parallelly tractable, i.e., in the NC complexity. Since the NC complexity is defined based on Boolean circuit that is widely used to investigate parallel computing problems, we first transform the problem of materialization to evaluation of Boolean circuits, and then study the problem of parallel tractability based on circuits. In this work, we focus on datalog rewritable ontology languages. We use Boolean circuits to identify two classes of datalog rewritable ontologies (called parallelly tractable classes) such that materialization over them is parallelly tractable. We further investigate the parallel tractability of materialization of a datalog rewritable OWL fragment DHL (Description Horn Logic). Based on the above results, we analyze real-world datasets and show that many ontologies expressed in DHL belong to the parallelly tractable classes.

Keywords: ontology materialization, parallel reasoning, datalog, Boolean circuit

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Authors: Marta Tryzna, Shahd Al Shammari

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Though Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the only official language in GCC states, including Kuwait, and traditionally the preferred vehicle for literacy in the Arab countries, recent studies in Qatar and the UAE observe a growing role of English, particularly in literacy and knowledge transmission contexts. The present study examines the attitudes to Arabic and English and the use of both languages in literacy-related domains based on a sample of bilingual Arabic-English undergraduates (N=522) at a private university with EMI in Kuwait. The results indicate that Arabic (Kuwaiti dialect) is associated with familial interactions, Arabic-English bilingualism predominates in interactions with classmates, friends, on social media and at work, while English is prevalent in literacy-related contexts such as reading books, magazines, or online material, domains traditionally associated with MSA. Attitudes towards Arabic and English are equally positive according to the majority of the respondents, who report being comfortable expressing themselves and projecting their identity in both languages. No statistically significant differences were found comparing the importance of Arabic and English in the sample. Future trends were identified based on high agreement on the importance of speaking English with children and low agreement on speaking only Arabic at home. The study corroborates recently observed trends in the GCC favoring bilingualism across personal, academic and professional domains, with English becoming the preferred language of literacy among young bilingual Kuwaitis.

Keywords: bilingual, English, Arabic, EMI, identity

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Authors: Vered Holzmann, Ramzi Halabi

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The current research investigates motivators and barriers to high-tech entrepreneurship in the Israeli-Arab Community. With the aim to exploit the capacity of Israel as a 'start-up nation', we identify the most important aspects to promote integration of Israeli-Arab entrepreneurs in high-tech startups and business companies, thus impact the socio-economic status of the Arab community in Israel. We reviewed the literature on the role of high-tech and entrepreneurship in the Israeli economy, the profile of the Israeli-Arab community with regard to education and employability, and the characteristics of minority entrepreneurship to understand entrepreneurs' intentions, their incentives to choose the entrepreneurial route on one hand and the obstacles that they face on the other hand. Based on the literature review, we conducted an integrated study that included a survey among 73 Israeli-Arabs involved in high-tech entrepreneurship and 16 semi-structured interviews with Israeli-Arab and Jewish entrepreneurs and leaders in the high-tech industry. We analyzed the data to explore personal and social motivating factors to entrepreneurship as well as educational and socio-economical barriers for entrepreneurship. Three major elements were found to be the most influential on Arab high-tech entrepreneurship in Israel: education, financial resources, and strategic-institutional support. The relationship between education and employability that is well-known with regard to general education, requires two additional aspects in the field of high-tech entrepreneurship: education of technology and engineering, and education of business and entrepreneurship. The study findings reveal that the main motivation factors for entrepreneurship are development of creative ideas and improvement of the socio-economic status, while financial-related factors and lack of institutional and governmental support are perceived as impediments to entrepreneurial activities. Financing difficulties are mainly derived from discriminating financial environment and lack of professional networking. The relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth seems to be clear and simple; thus it is a national interest to encourage entrepreneurship among the Arab community, and especially high-tech entrepreneurship which has a significant role in the economic growth of Israel.

Keywords: high-tech industry, innovation management, Israeli-Arab community, minority entrepreneurship, motivating factors and barriers

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Authors: Madhukar Kasarla, Sumit Fogla, Kiran Panuganti, Gaurav Jain, Abhijit Ramanujam, Astha Jain, Shashank Kraleti, Sharat Musham, Arun Chaudhury

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Patients have often chosen to travel for care — making pilgrimages to academic meccas and state-of-the-art hospitals for sophisticated surgery. This culture is still persistent in the landscape of US healthcare, with hundred thousand of visitors coming to the shores of United States to seek the high quality of medical care. One of the major challenges in this form of medical tourism has been the language barrier. Thus, an Iraqi patient, with immediate needs of communicating the healthcare needs to the treating team in the hospital, may face huge barrier in effective patient-doctor communication, delaying care and even at times reducing the quality. To circumvent these challenges, we are proposing the use of a state-of-the-art tool, Talk2All, which can translate nearly one hundred international languages (and even sign language) in real time. The tool is an easy to download app and highly user friendly. It builds on machine learning principles to decode different languages in real time. We suggest that the use of Talk2All will tremendously enhance communication in the hospital setting, effectively breaking the language barrier. We propose that vigorous incorporation of Talk2All shall overcome practical challenges in international medical and surgical tourism.

Keywords: language translation, communication, machine learning, medical tourism

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Authors: Medina Adulyarat

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Like many other countries, Thailand is experiencing an increase in its proportion of older adults. However, the political, social, and religious climates of the various regions of Thailand are very diverse and the life experiences of older Thai citizens can vary greatly by region. For more than a decade, the southernmost provinces, namely Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, have experienced social and political unrest, often characterized by violence in the form of bombings and shootings, which has impacted the older adults residing in these regions. While, Muslims are considered a minority in Thailand, the majority of individuals in southernmost regions are Muslims, causing these regions to be different in terms of culture and beliefs. Using a phenomenological approach, this study examines older adults’ perceptions of successful aging within the context of violent social and political unrest. This research aims to 1) understand how older adults living in these areas perceive successful aging in relation to Rowe and Kahn’s successful ageing model, and 2) describe the experiences of older adults living in areas of violent social and political unrest. Data were collected using in-depth interviews with eight older adults living in the unrest area, composing of four males and four females aged between 55-75. Content analysis was used to investigate older adults’ perception of successful aging. Older adults living their life amidst the violence did not view the situation as a threat to their life for they viewed that they are not the targets of the unrest situation. Additionally, participants identified their religious beliefs and a strong sense of community belonging as coping strategies employed to deal with social and political unrest. Thus, according to them, the violence did not affect their perception of successful aging. While the participants’ perceptions of successful aging were generally consistent with aspects identified in the successful aging model proposed by Rowe and Kahn, a theme of “financial stability” emerged. The results can be divided into four interrelated themes, which are; 1) engaging with others; 2) religiosity; 3) financial stability; and 4) health. Understanding the older persons’ view of successful aging in vulnerable situations should add more depth and enhance the conceptualization of the successful aging concept.

Keywords: cultural gerontology, minority population, successful aging, unrest situation

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Authors: Uliana Morozovskaia

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Immigrants in any country undergo an acculturation process which, in other words, means adaptation to other cultures. It can be divided into four strategies: integration (when an immigrant support home and host culture and language), assimilation (supporting only host culture and language), separation (supporting only home culture and language), and marginalization (an immigrant has no interest in supporting none of the cultures or languages). Canada has experienced a rise in the number of Russian speakers who are immigrating to Canada in the last couple of years. Although there are some studies on Russian-speaking immigrants, a small percentage of them have been focusing on their immigration experience in Canada. This is why the present study aimed to analyze the acculturation experience that Russian-speaking immigrants have when they move to Canada. One hundred participants have been surveyed on SurveyMonkey. They have been asked to share their life experience and opinion about their adaptation process, self-identity in terms of language use and cultural feelings, language preferences, and others. The results showed that Russian-speaking immigrants can successfully adapt to Canadian culture and society, and many of them feel at home being in their host country. Interestingly, such feelings have appeared after they spent some years in Canada. The study also found out that after the immigration, participants were more likely to focus on Canada’s official languages (English and/or French). However, when they became comfortable with the lifestyle and the language, they switched their attention to Russian language maintenance and home culture preservation.

Keywords: acculturation, Russian-speaking immigrants, adaptation, Canada, immigration, mother tongue preservation

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Authors: Sharjeel Saleem

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The glass ceiling has been a burning issue for many researchers. In this research, we examine gender of the BOD, training and development, workforce diversity, positive attitude towards women, and employee acts as antecedents of glass ceiling. Furthermore, we also look for effects of glass ceiling on likelihood of female selection and promotion and on female effectiveness. Multiple linear regression conducted on data drawn from different public and private sector organizations support our hypotheses. The research, however, is limited to Faisalabad city and only females from minority group are targeted here.

Keywords: glass ceiling, stereotype attitudes, female effectiveness

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Authors: Mayuko Matsuoka

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This presentation reports the relationships among EFL(English as a Foreign Language) students’ story comprehension in reading a story written in English and Japanese and empathic reactions. The main focus is put on their self-reflection on past study experiences, one of the empathic reactions after reading a story. One hundred fifty-five first-year university students in Japan read three SRL-themed stories written in English (their foreign language) and those written in Japanese (their mother tongue). The levels of the stories are equivalent, at CEFR(Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) B2 level. The result of categorical correlation analysis shows significant moderate correlations among three empathic reactions in a group reading English versions: having similar emotions as a protagonist, reflecting on their past study experiences, and getting lessons from a story. In addition, the result of logistic regression analysis for the data in a group reading English versions shows the chance of getting lessons from a story significantly approximately doubles if participants’ scores of a comprehension test increases by one, while it approximately triples if participants’ self-reflection occurs. These results do not appear in a group reading Japanese versions. The findings imply that self-reflection may support their comprehension of the English texts and leads to the participants’ getting lessons about SRL.

Keywords: comprehension, lesson, self-reflection, SRL

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Authors: Jun Gao

Abstract:

This paper combines the corpus-based and contrastive approaches, seeking to provide a systematic account of cataphora in English and Chinese natural conversations. Based on spoken corpus data, the first part of the paper examines a range of characteristics of cataphora in the two languages, including frequency of occurrence, patterns, and syntactic features. On the basis of this exploration, cataphora in the two languages are contrasted in a structured way. The analysis shows that English and Chinese share a similar distribution of cataphora in natural conversations in terms of frequency of occurrence, with repeat identification cataphora higher than first mention cataphora and intra-sentential cataphora much higher than inter-sentential cataphora. In terms of patterns, three types are identified in English, i.e. P+N, Ø+N, and it+Clause, while in Chinese, two types are identified, i.e., P+N and Ø+N. English and Chinese are similar in terms of syntactic features, i.e., cataphor and postcedent in the intra-sentential cataphora mainly occur in the initial subject position of the same clause, with postcedent immediately followed or delayed, and cataphor and postcedent are mostly in adjacent sentences in inter-sentential cataphora. In the second part of the paper, the motivations of cataphora are investigated. It is found that cataphora is primarily motivated by the speaker and hearer’s different knowledge states with regard to the referent. Other factors are also involved, such as interference, word search, and the tension between the principles of Economy and Clarity.

Keywords: cataphora, contrastive study, motivation, pattern, syntactic features

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Authors: Shehroz Mukhtar, Maqsood Ahmed, Abdullah Mukhtar, Choudhry Shahid, Waqar Javaid

Abstract:

Code switching is a common phenomenon, generally observed in multilingual communities across the globe. A critical look at code switching literature reveals that mostly code switching has been studied in classroom in learning and teaching context while code switching outside classroom in settings such as café, hostel and so on have been the least explored areas. Current research investigated the reasons for code switching in the interactive practices of students and their perceptions regarding the same outside the classroom settings. This paper is the study of the common practice that prevails in the Universities of Sialkot that bilinguals mix two languages when they speak in different class room situations. In Pakistani classrooms where Multilingual are in abundance i.e. they can speak two or more than two languages at the same time, the code switching or language combination is very common. The teachers of Sialkot switch from one language to another consciously or unconsciously while teaching English in the class rooms. This phenomenon has not been explored in the Sialkot’s teaching context. In Sialkot private educational institutes does not encourage code-switching whereas the public or government institutes use it frequently. The crux of this research is to investigate and identify the importance of code switching by taking its users in consideration. Survey research method and survey questionnaire will be used to get exact data from teachers and students. We will try to highlight the functions and importance of code switching in foreign language classrooms of Sialkot and will explore why this trend is emerging in Sialkot.

Keywords: code switching, bilingual context, L1, L2

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Authors: Shehroz Mukhtar, Maqsood Ahmed, Abdullah Mukhtar, Choudhry Shahid, Waqar Javaid

Abstract:

Code switching is a common phenomenon, generally observed in multilingual communities across the globe. A critical look at code-switching literature reveals that mostly code-switching has been studied in the classrooms in learning and teaching contexts, while code-switching outside the classroom in settings such as café, hostels and so on has been the least explored areas. The current research investigated the reasons for code-switching in the interactive practices of students and their perceptions regarding the same outside the classroom settings. This paper is the study of the common practice that prevails in the Universities of Sialkot that bilinguals mix two languages when they speak in different classroom situations. In Pakistani classrooms where Multilingual is in abundance, i.e. they can speak two or more two languages at the same time, code-switching or language combination is very common. The teachers of Sialkot switch from one language to another consciously or unconsciously while teaching English in the classrooms. This phenomenon has not been explored in Sialkot’s teaching context. In Sialkot, private educational institutes do not encourage code-switching, whereas public or government institutes use it frequently. The crux of this research is to investigate and identify the importance of code-switching by taking its users into consideration. The survey research method and survey questionnaire will be used to get exact data from teachers and students. We will try to highlight the functions and importance of code switching in foreign language classrooms of Sialkot and will explore why this trend is emerging in Sialkot.

Keywords: code switching, foreign language classrooms, bilingual context, use of L1, importance of L2.

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Authors: Boitumelo Ditshwane, Zelda Janse van Rensburg, Wanda Jacobs,

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Health literacy is defined as competencies and skills that individuals need to find, comprehend, evaluate, and use to make knowledgeable choices to improve their health and well-being. Low health literacy has been found to affect people’s ability to take care of their own health. Incomprehension of health education and health care instructions due to low health literacy is often due to information given at a level that is above the patient’s level of understanding. The study aimed to test the health literacy levels of South African PHC patients using a previously developed health literacy assessment tool. Determining health literacy levels may assist PHC nurses in providing health education and health care instructions to the patient on the patient’s level of understanding and, therefore, ensuring positive health outcomes for the patient. A health literacy assessment tool, translated into ten official South African languages, was used to quantitatively determine the health literacy levels of 400 PHC patients in five clinics in Gauteng, South Africa. Patients’ health literacy levels were tested in English, and nine other official languages spoken in South Africa and were compared. The results revealed that patients understand information better when given in their preferred language. Giving health education in a language and level that is better understood by the patient may lead to better health outcomes and prevent adverse health. Patients may better understand instructions provided, be more likely to follow the correct route of medication, honor appointments, comply with medication, and thus have better treatment outcomes.

Keywords: health literacy, primary health care, South Africa, patients

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Authors: Sharon Truter, Ann B. Shuttleworth-Edwards

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South Africa is a developing country with significant diversity in languages spoken and quality of education available, creating challenges for fair and accurate neuropsychological assessments when most available neuropsychological tests are obtained from English-speaking developed countries. The aim of this research was to compare normative data on a spectrum of commonly used neuropsychological tests for English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans with relatively high quality of education and South Africans with relatively low quality of education who speak Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa or Zulu. The participants were all healthy adults aged 18-60 years, with 8-12 years of education. All the participants were tested in their first language on the following tests: two non-verbal tests (Rey Osterrieth Complex Figure Test and Bell Cancellation Test), four verbal fluency tests (category, phonemic, verb and 'any words'), one verbal learning test (Rey Auditory Verbal Leaning Test) and three tests that have a verbal component (Trail Making Test A & B; Symbol Digit Modalities Test and Digit Span). Descriptive comparisons of mean scores and standard deviations across the language groups and between the groups with relatively high versus low quality of education highlight the importance of using normative data that takes into account language and quality of education.

Keywords: cross-cultural, language, multi-lingual, neuropsychological testing, quality of education

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Authors: Jana Beresova

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The paper presents a study carried out in 2015-2016 within the national scheme of research - VEGA 1/0106/15 based on theoretical research and empirical verification of the concept of intercultural communicative competence. It focuses on the current conception concerning target languages teaching compatible with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Our research had revealed how the concept of intercultural communicative competence had been perceived by secondary-school teachers of English in Slovakia before they were intensively trained. Intensive workshops were based on the use of both authentic and instructional materials with the goal to support interculturally oriented language teaching aimed at challenging thinking. The former concept that supported the development of the students´ linguistic knowledge and the use of a target language to obtain information about the culture of the country whose language learners were learning was expanded by the meaning-making framework which views language as a typical means by which culture is mediated. The goal of the workshop was to influence English teachers to better understand the concept of intercultural communicative competence, combining theory and practice optimally. The results of the study will be presented and analysed, providing particular recommendations for language teachers and suggesting some changes in the National Educational Programme from which English learners should benefit in their future studies or professional careers.

Keywords: authentic materials, English language teaching, instructional materials, intercultural communicative competence

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Authors: L. Korpinen, T. Kava, I. Salmi

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This study aimed to describe the operating model of obstructive sleep apnea. Due to the large number of patients, the role of nurses in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea was important. Pulmonary physicians met only a minority of the patients. The sleep apnea study in 2018 included about 800 patients, of which about 28% were normal and 180 patients were classified as severe (apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] over 30). The operating model has proven to be workable and appropriate. The patients understand well that they may not be referred to a pulmonary doctor. However, specialized medical follow-up on professional drivers continues every year.

Keywords: sleep, apnea patient, operating model, hospital

Procedia PDF Downloads 119