Search results for: psycho linguistics

Authors: Yanmeng Liu

Abstract:

This article analyzes and compares the linguistic differences between machine translation and manual translation, through a case study of the book Gone with the Wind. As an important carrier of human feeling and thinking, the literature translation poses a huge difficulty for machine translation, and it is supposed to expose distinct translation features apart from manual translation. In order to display linguistic features objectively, tentative uses of computerized and statistical evidence to the systematic investigation of large scale translation corpora by using quantitative methods have been deployed. This study compiles bilingual corpus with four versions of Chinese translations of the book Gone with the Wind, namely, Piao by Chunhai Fan, Piao by Huairen Huang, translations by Google Translation and Baidu Translation. After processing the corpus with the software of Stanford Segmenter, Stanford Postagger, and AntConc, etc., the study analyzes linguistic data and answers the following questions: 1. How does the machine translation differ from manual translation linguistically? 2. Why do these deviances happen? This paper combines translation study with the knowledge of corpus linguistics, and concretes divergent linguistic dimensions in translated text analysis, in order to present linguistic deviances in manual and machine translation. Consequently, this study provides a more accurate and more fine-grained understanding of machine translation products, and it also proposes several suggestions for machine translation development in the future.

Keywords: corpus-based analysis, linguistic deviances, machine translation, statistical evidence

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Authors: Dorit Olenik-Shemesh, Tali Heiman

Abstract:

Aggressive peer behaviors, particularly bullying and cyberbullying (CB) victimization during adolescence, are strongly and consistently linked to decreased levels of subjective well-being, potentially hindering a healthy and consistent developmental process. These negative effects might be expressed in emotional, physical, and behavioral difficulties. Adolescents victims of bullying/CB present more depressive moods, more loneliness, and more suicidal thoughts, while adolescents who had never been victims of bullying and CB acts present higher levels of well-being. These difficulties in their lives may be both a consequence of and a partial explanation for bullying/CB victimization. Interpersonal behavior styles and psychosocial factors may interact to create a vicious cycle in which adolescents place themselves at risk, which might explain the reduced well-being reported among victims. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, almost no study has examined the effect of two key variables in adolescents' lives, resilience and self-concept, in the relationship between bullying/CB victimization and low levels of psychological well-being among adolescents. Resilience is defined as the individual's capacity of maintaining stable functioning and make adjustments in the face of adversity; a capacity that promotes efficiently coping with environmental stressors and protects from psycho-social difficulties when facing various challenges. Self-concept relates to the way we perceive ourselves, influenced by many forces, including our interactions with the surroundings; a collection of beliefs about oneself. Accordingly, the current study has examined the possible mediating effect of these two main positive personal variables, resilience, and self-concept, through a mediation model analysis. 507 middle school students aged 11–16 (53% boys, 47% girls) completed questionnaires regarding bullying and CB behaviors, psychological well-being, resilience, and self-concept. A mediation model analysis was performed, whereas the hypothesized mediation model was accepted in full. More specifically, it was found that both self-concept and resilience mediated the relationship between bullying/CB victimization and a sense of well-being. High levels of both variables might buffer against a potential decrease in well-being associated with youth bullying/CB victimization. No gender differences were found, except a small stronger effect of resilience on well-being for boys. The study results suggest focusing on specific personal positive variables when developing youth intervention programs, creating an infrastructure for new programs that address increasing resilience and self-concept in schools and family-school contexts. Such revamped programs could diminish bullying/CB acts and the harmful negative implications for youth well-being. Future studies that will incorporate longitudinal data may further deepen the understanding of these examined relationships.

Keywords: adolescents, well being, bullying/CB victimization, resilience, self-concept

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Authors: Meral Huri, Sedef Şahin

Abstract:

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by psychiatric symptoms and triggered by a terrifying experience which may immediately effect cognitive, affective, behavioral and social skills of the individual. One of the most common noncutaneous cancer among men is prostate cancer. The incidence of psychological stress is quite common in men with prostate cancer. The aim of the study was to explore the PTSD frequency among prostate cancer and define the relationship between occupational participation, coping skills and level of perceived social support among patients with prostate cancer. Forty patients diagnosed with prostate cancer were included in the study. After dividing the patients into two groups ( study/ control) according to type of tumor, we recorded their characteristics and evaluations differences. We evaluated the demographic information form, Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID- I)- Clinical Version for PTSD, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Styles of Coping Inventory and Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) before and after 1 month from surgery. The mean age of the study group (n:18) was 65.85.6 years (range: 61-79 years). The mean age of the control group (n: 22) was a little bit higher than the study group with mean age 71.3±6.9 years (range: 60-85 years). There was no statistically significant difference between the groups for age and the other characteristics. According to the results of the study, statistically significant difference was found between the level of PTSD of study and the control group. 22% of study group showed PTSD while 13% of the control group showed PTSD (r: 0.02, p<0.001). The scores of study group and control group showed statistically significant difference in five sub-categories of Styles of Coping Inventory. Patients with prostate cancer showed decreased scores in optimistic, seeking social supports and self-confident approach, while increased scores in helpless and submissive sub-categories than the control group (p<0.001). The scores of Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Supports of study group and control group showed statistically significant difference. The total perceived social supports score of the study group was 71.34 ± 0.75 while it was 75.34 ± 0.64 for the control group. Total and the sub-category scores of study group were statistically significant lower than the control group. According to COPM, mean scores of occupational participation of study group for occupational performance were 4.32±2.24 and 7.01±1.52 for the control group, respectively). Mean Satisfaction scores were 3,22±2.31 and 7.45±1.74 for the study and control group, respectively. The patients with prostate cancer and benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) did not show any statistically difference in activity performance (r:0.87) while patients with prostate cancer showed statistically lower scores than the patients with BPH in activity satisfaction (r:0.02, p<0.001).Psycho-social occupational therapy interventions might help to decrease the prevalence of PTSD by increasing associated factors such as the social support perception, using coping skills and activity participation of patients with prostate cancer.

Keywords: activity performance, occupational therapy, posttraumatic stress disorder, prostate cancer

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Authors: Lukman Omobola Adisa

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Spelling is rule bound in a written discourse. It, however, calls into question, when such convention is grossly contravened in a formal setting revered as citadel of learning, despite availability of computer spell-checker, human knowledge, and lexicon. The foregoing reveals the extent of decadence pervading education sector in Nigeria. It is on this premise that this study reviews the effect of spelling on communicative competence of the University of Ibadan Registry Staff. The theoretical framework basically evaluates diverse scholars’ views on communicative competence and how spelling influences the intended meaning of a word/ sentence as a result of undue infringement on grammatical (spelling) rule. Newsletter, bulletin, memo, and letter are four print materials purposively selected while the methodology adopted is content analysis. Similarly, five categories, though not limited to, through which spelling blunders are committed are considered: effect of spelling (omission, addition, and substitution); sound ( homophone); transposition (heading/body: content) and ambiguity (capitalisation, space, and acronym). Subsequently, the analyses, findings, and recommendations are equally looked into. Summarily, the study x-rays effective role(s) plays by spelling in enhancing communicative competence through appropriate usage of linguistic registers.

Keywords: communicative competence, content analysis, effect of spelling, linguistics registers

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Authors: Amina Babou

Abstract:

Gender and language is a moot and miscellaneous arena in the sphere of sociolinguistics, which has been proliferated so widely and rapidly in recent years. The dawn of research on gender and foreign language education was against the feminist researchers who allowed space for the bustling concourse of voices and perspectives in the arena of gender and language differences, in the early to the mid-1970. The objective of this scrutiny is to explore to what extent teaching gender and language in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom plays a pivotal role in learning language information and skills. And the gist of this paper is to investigate how EFL students in Algeria conflate their gender identities with the linguistic practices and scholastic expertise. To grapple with the full range of issues about the EFL students’ awareness about the negotiation of meanings in the classroom, we opt for observing, interviewing, and questioning later to check using ‘how-do-you do’ procedure. The analysis of the EFL classroom discourse, from five Algerian universities, reveals that speaking strategies such as the manners students make an abrupt topic shifts, respond spontaneously to the teacher, ask more questions, interrupt others to seize control of conversations and monopolize the speaking floor through denying what others have said, do not sit very lightly on 80.4% of female students’ shoulders. The data indicate that female students display the assertive style as a strategy of learning to subvert the norms of femininity, especially in the speaking module.

Keywords: gender identities, EFL students, classroom discourse, linguistics

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Authors: Luzia Dominguez

Abstract:

This paper explores the concept of ‘translanguaging’ and the relevance of its pedagogical application in the context of foreign language education in a multilingual urban environment. We review relevant literature discussing this theoretical concept, its scope, potential, and limitations when applied to the teaching of foreign languages. We then discuss its possible practical application in Welsh secondary schools, particularly in the most diverse areas of the Welsh capital, Cardiff (United Kingdom). The concept of translanguaging has evolved in scope, from its initial application in the teaching of Welsh and English in the Welsh bilingual context to finding a relevant space not only in the international arena of Sociolinguistics and language pedagogy but also being present in current Welsh educational policies and, presumably, practices. However, it is important to consider the actual pedagogical relevance of incorporating this concept into these policies, particularly in the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages. Additionally, it is important to examine any social factors that may influence the effectiveness of its application in the social context, in our case, a multilingual, ethnically diverse urban context. By analyzing these issues, we aim to explore possible teaching practices that could be pedagogically effective in applying the concept in Cardiff secondary schools.

Keywords: pedagogy, modern foreign languages, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics

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Authors: Henry R. Troy

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Corpora are becoming more prevalent in the language classroom, especially in the development of dictionaries and course materials. Nevertheless, corpora are still perceived by many educators as difficult to use directly in the classroom, a process which is also known as “data-driven learning” (DDL). Action research has been identified as a method by which DDL’s efficiency can be increased, but it is also an approach few studies on DDL have employed. Studies into the effectiveness of DDL in language education in Japan are also rare, and investigations focused more on student and teacher reactions rather than pre and post-test scores are rarer still. This study investigates the student and teacher reactions to the use of SkELL, a free online corpus designed to be user-friendly, for vocabulary learning at a university in Japan. Action research is utilized to refine the teaching methodology, with changes to the method based on student and teacher feedback received via surveys submitted after each of the four implementations of DDL. After some training, the students used tablets to study the target vocabulary autonomously in pairs and groups, with the teacher acting as facilitator. The results show that the students enjoyed using SkELL and felt it was effective for vocabulary learning, while the teaching methodology grew in efficiency throughout the course. These findings suggest that action research can be a successful method for increasing the efficacy of DDL in the language classroom, especially with teachers and students who are new to the practice.

Keywords: action research, corpus linguistics, data-driven learning, vocabulary learning

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Authors: Ekaterina G. Lipatova

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The developing potential of a video task in teaching foreign languages involves the opportunities to improve four aspects of speech production process: listening, reading, speaking and writing. A video represents the sequence of actions, realized in the pictures logically connected and verbalized speech flow that simplifies and stimulates the process of perception. In this connection listening skills of students are developed effectively as well as their intellectual properties such as synthesizing, analyzing and generalizing the information. In terms of teaching capacity, a video task, in our opinion, is more stimulating than a traditional listening, since it involves the student into the plot of the communicative situation, emotional background and potentially makes them react to the gist in the cognitive and communicative ways. To be an effective method of teaching the video task should be structured in the way of psycho-linguistic characteristics of speech production process, in other words, should include three phases: before-watching, while-watching and after-watching. The system of tasks provided to each phase might involve the situations on reflecting to the video content in the forms of filling-the-gap tasks, multiple choice, True-or-False tasks (reading skills), exercises on expressing the opinion, project fulfilling (writing and speaking skills). In the before-watching phase we offer the students to adjust their perception mechanism to the topic and the problem of the chosen video by such task as “what do you know about such a problem?”, “is it new for you?”, “have you ever faced the situation of…?”. Then we proceed with the lexical and grammatical analysis of language units that form the body of a speech sample to lessen the perception and develop the student’s lexicon. The goal of while-watching phase is to build the student’s awareness about the problem presented in the video and challenge their inner attitude towards what they have seen by identifying the mistakes in the statements about the video content or making the summary, justifying their understanding. Finally, we move on to development of their speech skills within the communicative situation they observed and learnt by stimulating them to search the similar ideas in their backgrounds and represent them orally or in the written form or express their own opinion on the problem. It is compulsory to highlight, that a video task should contain the urgent, valid and interesting event related to the future profession of the student, since it will help to activate cognitive, emotional, verbal and ethic capacity of students. Also, logically structured video tasks are easily integrated into the system of e-learning and can provide the opportunity for the students to work with the foreign language on their own.

Keywords: communicative situation, perception mechanism, speech production process, speech skills

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Authors: Margarida Porfírio Tomás, Paula Pereira, José Manuel Palma Oliveira

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The decline in employment rates across sectors like industry and construction is exacerbated by an aging workforce. This has far-reaching implications for the economy, including skills gaps, labour shortages, productivity challenges due to physical limitations, and workplace safety concerns. To sustain the workforce and pension systems, technology plays a pivotal role. Robots provide valuable support to human workers, and effective human-robot interaction is essential. FORTIS, a Horizon project, aims to address these challenges by creating a comprehensive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) solution. This solution focuses on multi-modal communication and multi-aspect interaction, with a primary goal of maintaining a human-centric approach. By meeting the needs of both human workers and robots, FORTIS aims to facilitate efficient and safe collaboration. The project encompasses three key activities: 1) A Human-Centric Approach involving data collection, annotation, understanding human behavioural cognition, and contextual human-robot information exchange. 2) A Robotic-Centric Focus addressing the unique requirements of robots during the perception and evaluation of human behaviour. 3) Ensuring Human-Robot Trustworthiness through measures such as human-robot digital twins, safety protocols, and resource allocation. Factor Social, a project partner, will analyse psycho-physiological signals that influence human factors, particularly in hazardous working conditions. The analysis will be conducted using a combination of case studies, structured interviews, questionnaires, and a comprehensive literature review. However, the adoption of novel technologies, particularly those involving human-robot interaction, often faces hurdles related to acceptance. To address this challenge, FORTIS will draw upon insights from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), including risk perception and technology acceptance models. Throughout its lifecycle, FORTIS will uphold a human-centric approach, leveraging SSH methodologies to inform the design and development of solutions. This project received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement No 101135707 (FORTIS).

Keywords: skills gaps, productivity challenges, workplace safety, human-robot interaction, human-centric approach, social sciences and humanities, risk perception

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Authors: Benjamen Nathaniel, Eludiora Safiriyu Ijiyemi, Egume Oneme Lucky

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A review on machine translation systems shows that a lot of computational artefacts has been carried out to translate written or spoken texts from a source language to Yorùbá language through Machine Translation systems. However, there are no work on French to Yorùbá language machine translation system; hence, the study investigated the process involved in the translation of French-to-Yorùbá language equivalent with the view to adopting a rule- based MT approach to build a Machine Translation framework from simple sentences administered through questionnaire. Articles and relevant textbooks were reviewed with key speakers of both languages interviewed to find out the processes involved in the translation of French language and their equivalent in Yorùbálanguage simple sentences using home domain terminologies. Achieving this, a model was formulated using phrase grammar structure, re-write rule, parse tree, automata theory- based techniques, designed and implemented respectively with unified modeling language (UML) and python programming language. Analysing the result, it was observed when carrying out the result that, the Machine Translation system performed 18.45% above Experimental Subject Respondent and 2.7% below Linguistics Expert when analysed with word orthography, sentence syntax and semantic correctness of the sentences. And, when compared with Google Machine Translation system, it was noticed that the developed system performed better on lexicons of the target language.

Keywords: machine translation (MT), rule-based, French language, Yoru`ba´ language

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Authors: Sresha Yadav, Ishwar Kumar

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Second language learning is an important area of research in the language and linguistic domains. Literature suggests that several factors impact second language learning, including age, motivation, objectives, teacher, instructional material, classroom interaction, intelligence and previous background, previous linguistic experience, other student characteristics. Previous researchers have also highlighted that classroom atmospherics has a significant impact on learning as well as on the performance of students. However, the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning is still not known in the existing literature. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore whether classroom atmospherics has an impact on second language learning or not? And if it does, it would be worthwhile to explore the nature of such relationship. The present study aims to explore the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning by dwelling into the existing literature to explore factors which impact second language learning, classroom atmospherics which impact language learning and the metrics through which such learning impacts could be measured. Based on the findings of literature review, the researchers have adopted a clustering approach for categorization and positioning of various measures of second language learning. Based on the clustering approach, the researchers have approach for measuring the impact of classroom atmospherics on second language learning by drawing a student sample consisting of 80 respondents. The results of the study uncover various basic premises of second language learning, especially with regard to classroom atmospherics. The present study is important not only from the point of view of language learning but implications could be drawn with regard to the design of classroom atmospherics, environmental psychology, anthropometrics, etc as well.

Keywords: classroom atmospherics, cluster analysis, linguistics, second language learning

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Authors: Adnan Z. Mkhelif

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Grammatical collocations (GCs) are word combinations containing a preposition or a grammatical structure, such as an infinitive (e.g. smile at, interested in, easy to learn, etc.). Such collocations tend to be difficult for Iraqi EFL university students (IUS) to master. To help address this problem, it is important to identify the factors causing it. This study aims at investigating the effects of L2 proficiency, frequency of GCs and their transparency on IUSs’ productive knowledge of GCs. The study involves 112 undergraduate participants with different proficiency levels, learning English in formal contexts in Iraq. The data collection instruments include (but not limited to) a productive knowledge test (designed by the researcher using the British National Corpus (BNC)), as well as the grammar part of the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The study findings have shown that all the above-mentioned factors have significant effects on IUSs’ productive knowledge of GCs. In addition to establishing evidence of which factors of L2 learning might be relevant to learning GCs, it is hoped that the findings of the present study will contribute to more effective methods of teaching that can better address and help overcome the problems IUSs encounter in learning GCs. The study is thus hoped to have significant theoretical and pedagogical implications for researchers, syllabus designers as well as teachers of English as a foreign/second language.

Keywords: corpus linguistics, frequency, grammatical collocations, L2 vocabulary learning, productive knowledge, proficiency, transparency

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Authors: Lorraine Ramos

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The question of heritage language learners in foreign language classrooms has been widely debated in second language education, especially with Spanish in a U.S. Instructors of Spanish as a foreign language have brought pedagogical focus to Spanish heritage language students in order to retain, develop and maintain their first language. This paper proposes a thorough examination of the use of conceptual metaphors within autobiographical linguistic narratives as a key indicator of the writing development of advanced Spanish-language students. By pairing genre theory from Systemic Functional Linguistics with metaphor theory, this paper will examine the metaphors used by 3rd and 4th year university Spanish students within the narrative genre from a corpus of 16, 091 words. The investigation has found that heritage language students use a variety of bicultural metaphors, transferred from both languages to conceptualize their linguistic development, in addition to using metaphor in specific narrative stages as a literary strategy. Since it has been found that the metaphors used were transcultural, the use of conceptual metaphors in heritage language learners can be further examined to help these students achieve their linguistic and academic goals in the Spanish by transferring from their knowledge in English. In conclusion, by closely examining the function of student discourse through their multicultural metaphoric competence, this study provides important insights on how to enable instructors to best further their students’ writing development in the target language.

Keywords: academic writing development, heritage language learners, language attitudes and ideologies, metaphor

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Authors: McKenzie S. Braley, Lesley Jessiman

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If language reveals internal psychological processing, then it is also likely that language use in autobiographical memory transcripts may be used as a window into attachment style and related personality features. The current study, therefore, examined the possible associations between attachment style, negative affectivity, social inhibition, and linguistic features extracted from autobiographical memory transcripts. Young adult participants (n = 61) filled out attachment and personality questionnaires, and orally reported a relationship-related memory. Memories were audio-recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Using a computerized linguistic extraction tool, positive affect words, negative affect words, and cognition words were extracted. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients revealed that attachment anxiety was negatively correlated with cognition words (r2 = -0.26, p = 0.047) and that negative affectivity was negatively correlated with positive affect words (r2 = -0.32, p = 0.012). The findings suggest that attachment style and personality are associated with speech styles indicative of both emotionality and depth of processing. Because attachment styles, negative affectivity, and social inhibition are associated with poor mental health outcomes, analyses of key linguistics features in autobiographical memory narratives may provide reliable screening tools for mental wellbeing.

Keywords: attachment style, autobiographical memory, language, negative affectivity, social inhibition

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Authors: Sree Sanyal

Abstract:

Research in ageing often highlights the age-related health dimension more than the psycho-social characteristics of the elderly, which also influences and challenges the health outcomes. Multimorbidity is defined as the person having more than one chronic non-communicable diseases and their prevalence increases with ageing. The study aims to evaluate the influence of social ties on self-reported prevalence of multimorbidity (selected chronic non-communicable diseases) among the selected states of elderly population in India. The data is accessed from Building Knowledge Base on Population Ageing in India (BKPAI), collected in 2011 covering the self-reported chronic non-communicable diseases like arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, lung disease with asthma, hypertension, cataract, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer. The data of the above diseases were taken together and categorized as: ‘no disease’, ‘one disease’ and ‘multimorbidity’. The predicted variables were demographic, socio-economic, residential types, and the variable of social ties includes social support, social engagement, perceived support, connectedness, and importance of the elderly. Predicted probability for multiple logistic regression was used to determine the background characteristics of the old in association with chronic morbidities showing multimorbidity. The finding suggests that 24.35% of the elderly are suffering from multimorbidity. Research shows that with reference to ‘no disease’, according to the socio-economic characteristics of the old, the female oldest old (80+) from others in caste and religion, widowed, never had any formal education, ever worked in their life, coming from the second wealth quintile standard, from rural Maharashtra are more prone with ‘one disease’. From the social ties background, the elderly who perceives they are important to the family, after getting older their decision-making status has been changed, prefer to stay with son and spouse only, satisfied with the communication from their children are more likely to have less single morbidity and the results are significant. Again, with respect to ‘no disease’, the female oldest old (80+), who are others in caste, Christian in religion, widowed, having less than 5 years of education completed, ever worked, from highest wealth quintile, residing in urban Kerala are more associated with multimorbidity. The elderly population who are more socially connected through family visits, public gatherings, gets support in decision making, who prefers to spend their later years with son and spouse only but stays alone shows lesser prevalence of multimorbidity. In conclusion, received and perceived social integration and support from associated neighborhood in the older days, knowing about their own needs in life facilitates better health and wellbeing of the elderly population in selected states of India.

Keywords: morbidity, multi-morbidity, prevalence, social ties

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Authors: Amina Babou

Abstract:

Gender and language is a moot and miscellaneous arena in the sphere of socio-linguistics, which has been proliferated so widely and rapidly in recent years. The dawn of research on gender and foreign language education was against the feminist researchers who allowed space for the bustling concourse of voices and perspectives in the arena of gender and language differences, in the early to the mid-1970. The objective of this scrutiny is to explore to what extent teaching gender and language in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom plays a pivotal role in learning language information and skills. Moreover, the gist of this paper is to investigate how EFL students in Algeria conflate their gender identities with the linguistic practices and scholastic expertise. To grapple with the full range of issues about the EFL students’ awareness about the negotiation of meanings in the classroom, we opt for observing, interviewing, and questioning later to check using ‘how-do-you do’ procedure. The analysis of the EFL classroom discourse, from five Algerian universities, reveals that speaking strategies such as the manners students make an abrupt topic shifts, respond spontaneously to the teacher, ask more questions, interrupt others to seize control of conversations and monopolize the speaking floor through denying what others have said, do not sit very lightly on 80.4% of female students’ shoulders. The data indicate that female students display the assertive style as a strategy of learning to subvert the norms of femininity, especially in the speaking module.

Keywords: EFL students, gender identity, linguistic styles, foreign language

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Authors: Zixi You

Abstract:

There are a number of verbal prefixes in Old Japanese. However, the selection or the compatibility of verbs and verbal prefixes is among the least investigated topics on Old Japanese language. Unlike other types of prefixes, verbal prefixes in dictionaries are more often than not listed with very brief information such as ‘unknown meaning’ or ‘rhythmic function only’. To fill in a part of this knowledge gap, this paper presents an exhaustive investigation based on the newly developed ‘Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese’ (OCOJ), which included nearly all existing resource of Old Japanese language, with detailed linguistics information in TEI-XML tags. In this paper, we propose the possibility that the following three prefixes, i-, sa-, ta- (with ta- being considered as a variation of sa-), are relevant to split intransitivity in Old Japanese, with evidence that unergative verbs favor i- and that unergative verbs favor sa-(ta-). This might be undermined by the fact that transitives are also found to follow i-. However, with several manifestations of split intransitivity in Old Japanese discussed, the behavior of transitives in verbal prefix selection is no longer as surprising as it may seem to be when one look at the selection of verbal prefix in isolation. It is possible that there are one or more features that played essential roles in determining the selection of i-, and the attested transitive verbs happen to have these features. The data suggest that this feature is a sense of ‘change’ of location or state involved in the event donated by the verb, which is a feature of typical unaccusatives. This is further discussed in the ‘affectedness’ hierarchy. The presentation of this paper, which includes a brief demonstration of the OCOJ, is expected to be of the interest of both specialists and general audiences.

Keywords: old Japanese, split intransitivity, unaccusatives, unergatives, verbal prefix selection

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Authors: Kuralay Bimoldaevna Kuderinova, Beisenkhan Samal

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The history of creating a linguistic corpus in Kazakh linguistics begins only in 2016. Though within this short period of time, the linguistic corpus has become a national corpus and its several subcorpora, namely historical, cultural, spoken, dialectological, writers’ subcorpus, proverbs subcorpus and poetic texts subcorpus, have appeared and are working effectively. Among them, the spoken corpus has its own characteristics. The Kazakh language is one of the languages belonging to the Kypchak-Nogai group of Turkic peoples. The Kazakh language is a language that, as a part of the former Soviet Union, was directly influenced by the Russian language and underwent major changes in its spoken and written forms. After the Republic of Kazakhstan gained independence, the Kazakh language received the status of the state language in 1991. However, today, the prestige of the Russian language is still higher than that of the Kazakh language. Therefore, the direct influence of the Russian language on the structure, style, and vocabulary of the Kazakh language continues. In particular, it can be said that the national practice of the spoken language is disappearing, as the spoken form of Kazakh is not used in official gatherings and events of state importance. In this regard, it is very important to collect and preserve examples of spoken language. Recording exemplary spoken texts, converting them into written form, and providing their audio along with orphoepic explanations will serve as a valuable tool for teaching and learning the Kazakh language. Therefore, the report will cover interesting aspects and scientific foundations related to the creation, content, and methodology of the oral subcorpus of the Kazakh language.

Keywords: spoken corpus, Kazakh language, orthoepic norm, LLM

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Authors: Mohamed Ali Al Shaari, Khalid M. El Fitori

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In the field of Quran Studies known as Ghareeb A Quran (the study of the meanings of strange words and structures in Holy Quran), it is difficult to distinguish some pragmatic meanings from conceptual meanings. One who wants to study this subject may need to look for a common usage between any two words or more; to understand general meaning, and sometimes may need to look for common differences between them, even if there are synonyms (word sisters). Some of the distinguished scholars of Arabic linguistics believe that there are no synonym words, they believe in varieties of meaning and multi-context usage. Based on this viewpoint, our method was designed to look for synonyms of a word, then the differences that distinct the word and their synonyms. There are many available books that use such a method e.g. synonyms books, dictionaries, glossaries, and some books on the interpretations of strange vocabulary of the Holy Quran, but it is difficult to look up words in these written works. For that reason, we proposed a logical entity, which we called Differences Matrix (DM). DM groups the synonyms words to extract the relations between them and to know the general meaning, which defines the skeleton of all word synonyms; this meaning is expressed by a word of its sisters. In Differences Matrix, we used the sisters(words) as titles for rows and columns, and in the obtained cells we tried to define the row title (word) by using column title (her sister), so the relations between sisters appear, the expected result is well defined groups of sisters for each word. We represented the obtained results formally, and used the defined groups as a base for building the ontology of the Holy Quran synonyms.

Keywords: Quran, synonyms, differences matrix, ontology

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Authors: Jason D. Lin, Christine Sim

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This paper examines the nature of transnational media flows in East Asia, specifically expounding on the popularity of Korean dramas in China and Taiwan. Situated in interdisciplinary academic work from cultural studies, media studies, and linguistics, this project locates the significance of certain genres and regions in determining why some are subject to flow while others remain within domestic borders. Moreover, transnational flows can take one of two routes –official translations and adaptations by media corporations and subtitles written by fans in online communities. The work of 'fan-subbing' has allowed for a more democratized showcase of what bilingual fans consume and are invested in sharing, rather than what major media companies deem relevant and monetizable. This reflects a culture of relatability driven by audiences rather than by corporate direction. Of course, a variety of technological, political, and economic factors play imperative roles in how both professional and fan-made subtitles flowed across borders and between nations. While fan-subbed media may be subject to criticism because of a lack of formal regulation, these limitations can, in some cases, be overcome by the agency afforded to audiences in the digital landscape. Finally, this paper offers a critical lens for deliberating the lasting impact of fan involvement on both professional practices and the flows of mainstream media throughout East Asia.

Keywords: audience studies, bilingual, cultural proximity, fan-subbing, online communities, subtitles

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Authors: Eliziane Navarro, Aparecida Citta

Abstract:

Child of the dark is the work of the Brazilian author Carolina Maria de Jesus published at the first time by Ática & Francisco Alves in 1960. It is, mostly, a story of lack of rights. It lacks to men who live in the slums what is essential in order to take advantage of the privilege of rationality to develop themselves as civilized humans. It is, therefore, in the withholding of the basic rights that inequality finds space to build itself to be the main misery on Earth. Antonio Candido, a Brazilian sociologist, claims that it is the right to literature has the ability to humanize men, once the aptitude to create fiction and fable is essential to the social balance. Hence, for the forming role that literature holds, it must be thought as the number of rights that assure human dignity, such as housing, education, health, freedom, etc. When talking about her routine, Carolina puts in evidence something that has great influence over the formation of human beings, contributing to the way they live: the slum. Even though it happens in a distinct way and using her linguistics variation, Carolina writes about something that will only be discussed later on Brazil’s Cities Statute and Ermia Maricato: the right to the city, and how the slums are, although inserted in the city, an attachment, an illegal city, a dismissing room. It interests ourselves, for that matter, in this work, to analyse how the deprivation of the rights to the city and literature, detailed in Carolina’s journal, conditions human beings to a life where the instincts overcome the social values.

Keywords: Child of the dark, slum, Brazil, architecture and literature

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Authors: Lai Yi-Hsiu

Abstract:

The present study addressed the nature of bilingual semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min and examined category effects and age effects. Nineteen bilingual adults of Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min, nine monolingual seniors of Mandarin Chinese, and ten monolingual seniors of Southern Min in Taiwan individually completed two semantic tasks: Picture naming and category fluency tasks. The instruments for the naming task were sixty black-and-white pictures, including thirty-five object pictures and twenty-five action pictures. The category fluency task also consisted of two semantic categories – objects (or nouns) and actions (or verbs). The reaction time for each picture/question was additionally calculated and analyzed. Oral productions in Mandarin Chinese and in Southern Min were compared and discussed to examine the category effects and age effects. The results of the category fluency task indicated that the content of information of these seniors was comparatively deteriorated, and thus they produced a smaller number of semantic-lexical items. Significant group differences were also found in the reaction time results. Category effects were significant for both adults and seniors in the semantic fluency task. The findings of the present study will help characterize the nature of the bilingual semantic processing of adults and seniors, and contribute to the fields of contrastive and corpus linguistics.

Keywords: bilingual semantic processing, aging, Mandarin Chinese, Southern Min

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Authors: Moharram Sharifi

Abstract:

Despite a growing interest in the study of the introduction section of Research Articles (RA), there have been few studies to investigate how academic writers engage with other voices and alternative positions in this academic genre. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to show how Native Speaker (NS) and (Non-Native Speaker (NNS) writers take positions and stances in research article introductions. For this purpose, Engagement resources based on the appraisal framework were investigated in sixty articles written by English NS and Iranian NNS published in applied linguistics journals. It was found that the mean occurrences of heteroglossic items in both corpora were larger than those of monoglossic items, but comparing the means of monoglossic engagements between the two corpora, it was revealed that NS writers’ corpus had larger mean occurrences of monoglossic engagements than NNS writers’ corpus implying the native’s stronger authorial stance in the texts. The results also revealed that there was no significant difference in the use of contractive and expansive engagements by NS writers (t (29) = -0.995, p>0.05), indicating a balanced use between the two options. However, the higher mean occurrences of expansive options compared with contractive options in the NNS corpus may suggest that NN writers open up more dialogic room for alternative positions in the RA introductions. The findings of this study may help writers to better perceive the creation of a strong authorial position using appropriate engagement resources in RA introductions.

Keywords: engagement, heteroglossic, monoglossic, introduction

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Authors: Erica Lima

Abstract:

In Brazil, considering the (little) age of translation studies, it can be argued that the University of Campinas is traditionally an important place for graduate studies in translation. The story is told from the accreditation for the Masters, in 1987, and the Doctoral program, in 1993, within the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics. Since the beginning, the program boasted cutting-edge research, with theoretical reflections on various aspects, and with different methodological trends. However, on the one hand, the graduate studies development was continuously growing, but on the other, it is not what was observed in the undergraduate degree program. Currently, there are only a few disciplines of Translation Theory and Practice, which does not seem to respond to student aspirations. The objective of this paper is to present the characteristics of the university’s graduate program as something profitable, considering the concern in relating the research to the historical moment in which we are living, with research conducted in a socially compromised environment and committed to the impact that it will cause ethically and socially, as well as to question the undergraduate program paths. The objective is also to discuss and propose changes, considering the limited scope currently achieved. In light of the information age, in which we have an avalanche of information, we believe that the training of translators in the undergraduate degree should be reviewed, with the goal of retracing current paths and following others that are consistent with our historical period, marked by virtual and real, by the shuffling of borders and languages, the need for new language policies, greater inclusion, and more acceptance of others. We conclude that we need new proposals for the development of the translator in an undergraduate program, and also present suggestions to be implemented in the graduate program.

Keywords: graduate Brazilian program, undergraduate Brazilian program, translator’s education, Unicamp

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Authors: Faith Fang Xi Ooi, Kam-Fong Lee

Abstract:

Headlines are generally the summary of the content of news articles. With the added influence of hectic lifestyles, readers may rely solely on the headlines for information. In the media, what is reported concerning health issues are government responses and community involvement. There is a need for a call to action to curb health issues and not just reporting on what the government is doing about these health-related issues. In other words, linguistic elements of persuasive communicative function should be realized when reporting on health issues. Hence, this paper aims at identifying and analyzing the transitivity, Mood and Modality systems in two hundred news headlines from two Malaysian online news portals, namely The Star Online and New Straits Times. This study employs the purposive sampling method to obtain the news headlines on healthy eating using the search keyword ‘healthy eating’ and is based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework. The results show that the Material process dominates the process types along with its participants of Scope and Goal. The mood type that constitutes most of the headlines in the two newspapers is the declarative mood. Moreover, for Modality, the median Probability constitutes the highest in the headlines on healthy eating. This study contributes to the implications of being a source of reference for news writers and producers in constructing news headlines and for health campaign strategists to realize the persuasive appeals to influence behaviors and attitudes of the public towards healthy eating.

Keywords: healthy eating, modality, mood, news headlines, SFL

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Authors: Muhammed-Badar Salihu Jibrin, Chibabi Makedono Darlington

Abstract:

This paper studied Ideational Grammatical Metaphor (IGM) of Narrative History in Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country. It started with a narrative historical style as a recent genre out of the conventional historical writings. In order to explore the linguistic phenomenon using a particular lexico-grammatical tool of IGM, the theoretical background was examined based on Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics. Furthermore, the study considered the possibility of applying IGM to the Part 4 of Achebe’s historical text with recourse to the concept of congruence in IGM and research questions before formulating a working methodology. The analysis of Achebe’s memoir was, thus, presented in tabular forms to account for the quantitative content analysis with qualitative research technique, as well as the metaphorical and congruent wording through nominalization and process types with samples. The frequencies and percentage were given appropriately with respect to each subheadings of the text. To this end, the findings showed that material and relational types indicated dominance. The discussion and implications were that the findings confirmed earlier study by MAK Halliday and C.I.M.I.M. Matthiessen’s suggestion that IGM should show dominance of material type process. The implication is that IGM can be an effective tool for the analysis of a narrative historical text. In conclusion, it was observed that IGM does not only carry grammatical function but also an ideological role in shaping the historical discourse within the narrative mode between writers and readers.

Keywords: ideational grammatical metaphor, nominalization, narrative history, memoire, dominance

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Authors: Sophie Whittle

Abstract:

Prior to present day, English syntax historically exhibited an inconsistent verb-second (V2) rule, which saw the verb move to the second position in the sentence following the fronting of a type of phrase. There was a high amount of variation throughout the history of English with regard to the ordering of subject and verb, and many explanations attempting to account for this variation have been documented in previous literature. However, these attempts have been contradictory, with many accounts positing the effect of previous syntactic changes as the main motivations behind the decline of V2. For instance, morphosyntactic changes, such as the loss of clitics and the loss of empty expletives, have been loosely connected to changes in frequency for the loss of V2. The questions surrounding the development of non-V2 in English have, therefore, yet to be answered. The current paper aims to bring together a number of explanations from different linguistic fields to determine the factors driving the changes in English V2. Using historical corpus-based methods, the study analyses both quantitatively and qualitatively the changes in frequency for the history of V2 in the Old, Middle, and Modern English periods to account for the variation in a range of sentential environments. These methods delve into the study of information structure, prosody and language contact to explain variation within different contexts. The analysis concludes that these factors, in addition to changes within the syntax, are responsible for the position of verb movement. The loss of V2 serves as an exemplar study within the field of historical linguistics, which combines a number of factors in explaining language change in general.

Keywords: corpora, English, language change, mixed-methods, syntax, verb-second

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Authors: Temitope Ogungbemi

Abstract:

Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (also called Boko Haram) in the North-East of Nigeria has facilitated ideological binarity in discourses on the crisis. Since its proliferation, media representation of the crisis has facilitated identity contamination and ideological struggle through which other critical issues, such as religious intolerance, ethnic diversity and other forms of class conflict in the Nigerian state, are brought to public notice. Though Boko Haram insurgency is ideological laden, the manifestation of the inherent ideologies requires extensive scholarly attention in order deconstruct the veiled ideologies. Therefore, the thrust of this study is to critically investigate identity (mis)representation as a basis for ideological mapping in discourses on Boko Haram in Nigeria, adopting critical discourse analytical tools supported with insights from systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis. The data for this study consist of articles on Boko Haram in Nigerian newspapers published in English. The data selection is purposive and aimed at responding to challenges that are inherent in Nigeria's multifaithism and multiculturalism, and their effects on the construction of narratives on Boko Haram. The study reveals that identity manipulation is a constructive device for ideological mapping, realised through labeling, agency activation, and transitivity. Identity representation in discourses on Boko Haram depicted four dichotomous binarities using exclusion, generalisation, contrasting and attribution.

Keywords: identity representation, ideology, Boko Haram, newspapers

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Authors: Pakenam Shiha, Nadine Lacsina

Abstract:

Systematic and in-depth analysis of ESL learners’ lexical errors, in general, and of collocation errors, in particular, are relatively rare. Analysis as such proves crucial in understanding how ESL learners construct and use these fixed expressions. Collocational competence of ESL learners is necessary for achieving a native-like proficiency level, which is one of the objectives of foundation programs. This study aims to examine the collocational competence of 50 Saudi foundation program students and identify the collocation errors that they often make. Furthermore, using a questionnaire, the challenges that students encounter in learning collocations and the ways in which their L1 affects their ability to recognize these expressions are identified. To identify the lexical errors and the collocational competence of the students a collocation test was administered. The 150-item lexical collocation test consists of verb-noun and adjective-noun structures. Results of the study reveal that there is a significant difference between the scores of students in the verb-noun and adjective-noun structures. The majority of errors were recorded in the adjective-noun structures due to the students’ L1 influence on the English collocations and the inability to distinguish between synonyms. Moreover, some challenges that students encountered were problems in translation, non-exposure to certain collocations, and degree of L1-L2 difference. All in all, the findings of this study can be interpreted in relation to the student's proficiency level and L2 instruction. Other findings of the study provide insights into language pedagogy—specifically strategies to help students learn collocations more effectively.

Keywords: collocations, ESL, applied linguistics, lexical collocations

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Authors: Eliziane Fernanda Navarro, Aparecida Eleonora Sitta

Abstract:

Child of the Dark is the work of the Brazilian author Carolina Maria de Jesus, published at the first time by Ática and Francisco Alves in 1960. It is, mostly, a story of lack of rights. It lacks to men who live in the slums what is essential in order to take advantage of the privilege of rationality to develop themselves as civilized humans. It is, therefore, in the withholding of the basic rights that inequality finds space to build itself to be the main misery on Earth. Antonio Candido, a Brazilian sociologist claims that it is the right to literature has the ability to humanize men, once the aptitude to create fiction and fable is essential to the social balance. Hence, for the forming role that literature holds, it must be thought as the number of rights that assure human dignity, such as housing, education, health, freedom, etc. When talking about her routine, Carolina puts in evidence something that has great influence over the formation of human beings, contributing to the way they live: the slum. Even though it happens in a distinct way and using her own linguistics variation, Carolina writes about something that will only be discussed later on Brazil’s Cities Statute and Erminia Maricato: the right to the city, and how the slums are, although inserted in the city, an attachment, an illegal city, a dismissing room. It interests ourselves, for that matter, in this work, to analyse how the deprivation of the rights to the city and literature, detailed in Carolina’s journal, conditions human beings to a life where the instincts overcome the social values.

Keywords: Child of the Dark, slum, literature, architecture and urbanism, fundamental rights, Brazil

Procedia PDF Downloads 317