Search results for: linguistic analysis

Authors: Sannikumar Patel, Brian Nolan, Markus Hofmann, Philip Owende, Kunjan Patel

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Sentiment analysis and opinion mining have become emerging topics of research in recent years but most of the work is focused on data in the English language. A comprehensive research and analysis are essential which considers multiple languages, machine translation techniques, and different classifiers. This paper presents, a comparative analysis of different approaches for multilingual sentiment analysis. These approaches are divided into two parts: one using classification of text without language translation and second using the translation of testing data to a target language, such as English, before classification. The presented research and results are useful for understanding whether machine translation should be used for multilingual sentiment analysis or building language specific sentiment classification systems is a better approach. The effects of language translation techniques, features, and accuracy of various classifiers for multilingual sentiment analysis is also discussed in this study.

Keywords: cross-language analysis, machine learning, machine translation, sentiment analysis

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Authors: Jehan Fahim M. Alsulami

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Academic research about sentiment analysis in sentiment analysis has obtained significant advancement over recent years and is flourishing from the collection of knowledge provided by various academic disciplines. In the current study, the status and development trend of the field of sentiment analysis in social networks is evaluated through a bibliometric analysis of academic publications. In particular, the distributions of publications and citations, the distribution of subject, predominant journals, authors, countries are analyzed. The collaboration degree is applied to measure scientific connections from different aspects. Moreover, the keyword co-occurrence analysis is used to find out the major research topics and their evolutions throughout the time span. The area of sentiment analysis in social networks has gained growing attention in academia, with computer science and engineering as the top main research subjects. China and the USA provide the most to the area development. Authors prefer to collaborate more with those within the same nation. Among the research topics, newly risen topics such as COVID-19, customer satisfaction are discovered.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis, sentiment analysis, social networks, social media

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Authors: Modupe Beatrice Adeyinka

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European Languages are languages of literature, science and technology. Whereas, African languages are of literature, both written and oral, making it difficult for Yoruba, the African language of Kwa linguistic classification, to neatly and accurately translate European scientific and technological words, expressions and technologies. Unless a pragmatic and communicative approach is adopted, equivalence of European technical and scientific texts might be a mission impossible for Yoruba scholars. In view of the aforementioned difficult task, this paper tends to highlight the need for a thorough study and evaluation of English or French words, expressions, idiomatic expressions, technical and scientific terminologies then, trying to find ways of adopting them to Yoruba environment through interpretative translation.

Keywords: communication, high technology, translation, Yoruba language

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Authors: Ward Makhoul

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Code-switching (CS) is known as a ubiquitous phenomenon in multilingual societies and countries. Vernacular Palestinian Arabic (PA) variety spoken in Israel is among these languages, informally used for day-to-day conversations only. Such conversations appear to contain code-switched instances from Hebrew, the formal and dominant language of the country, even in settings where the need for CS seems to be unnecessary. This study examines the CS practices in PA and investigates the reason behind these CS instances in controlled settings and the correlation between bilingual dominance and CS. In the production-task interviews and Bilingual Language Profile test (BLP), there was a correlation between language dominance and CS; 13 participants were interviewed to elicit and analyze natural speech-containing CS instances, along with undergoing a BLP test. The acceptability judgment task observed the limits and boundaries of different code-switched linguistic structures.

Keywords: code-switching, Hebrew, Palestinian-Arabic, vernacular

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Authors: Lisa Winstead, Penny Congcong Wang

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This two-year multiple case study of eight Spanish-English speaking teachers explores bilingual-bicultural Latino teachers’ lived experiences as English Language Learners and, more recently, as adult teachers who work with English Language Learners in mainstream schools. Research questions explored include: How do bilingual-bicultural teachers perceive their native language use and sense of self within society from childhood to adulthood? Correspondingly, what are bilingual teachers’ perceptions of how their own language learning experience might affect teaching students of similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds? This study took place in an urban area in the Pacific Southwest of the United States. Participants were K-8 teachers and enrolled in a Spanish-English bilingual authorization program. Data were collected from journals, focus group interviews, field notes, and class artifacts. Within case and cross-case analysis revealed that the participants were shamed about their language use as children which contributed to their primary language loss. They similarly reported how experiences of mainstream educator and administrator language shaming invalidated their ability to provide support for Latino heritage ELLs, despite their bilingual-bicultural expertise. However, participants reported that counter-narratives from the bilingual authorization program, parents, community and church organizations, and cultural responsive teachers were effective in promoting their language retention, pride, and feelings of well-being.

Keywords: teacher education, bilingual education, English language learners, emergent bilinguals, social justice, language shame, language loss, translanguaging

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Authors: Hanan Yousef, Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh

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The present study investigates the use of the expression of refusal by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic (NSsJA) in different social situations (i.e. invitations, suggestions, and offers). It also investigates the influence of gender on the refusal realization patterns within the Jordanian culture to provide a better insight into the relation between situations, strategies and gender in the Jordanian culture. To that end, a group of 70 participants, including 35 male and 35 female students from different departments at the Hashemite University (HU) participated in this study using mixed methods (i.e. Discourse Completion Test (DCT), interviews and naturally occurring data). Data were analyzed in light of a developed coding scheme. The results showed that NSsJA preferred indirect strategies which mitigate the interaction such as "excuse, reason and, explanation" strategy more than other strategies which aggravate the interaction such as "face-threatening" strategy. Moreover, the analysis of this study has revealed a considerable impact of gender on the use of linguistic forms expressing refusal among NSsJA. Significant differences in the results of the Chi-square test relating the effect of participants' gender indicate that both males and females were conscious of the gender of their interlocutors. The findings provide worthwhile insights into the relation amongst types of communicative acts and the rapport between people in social interaction. They assert that refusal should not be labeled as face threatening act since it does not always pose a threat in some cases especially where refusal is expressed among friends, relatives and family members. They highlight some distinctive culture-specific features of the communicative acts of refusal.

Keywords: gender, Jordanian Arabic, politeness, refusals, speech act

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Authors: Ekpeti Bukola Grace, Mahmoudi Sabar Esmail, Chaer Issa

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Global energy consumption has been increasing steadily over the last half - century, and this trend is projected to continue. As energy demand rises in many countries throughout the world due to population growth, natural ventilation in buildings has been identified as a viable option for lowering these demands, saving costs, and also lowering CO2 emissions. However, natural ventilation is driven by forces that are generally unpredictable in nature thus, it is important to manage the resulting airflow in order to maintain pleasant indoor conditions, making it a complex system that necessitates specific control approaches. The effective application of fuzzy logic technique amidst other intelligent systems is one of the best ways to bridge this gap, as its control dynamics relates more to human reasoning and linguistic descriptions. This article reviewed existing literature and presented practical solutions by applying fuzzy logic control with optimized techniques, selected input parameters, and expert rules to design a more effective control system. The control monitors used indoor temperature, outdoor temperature, carbon-dioxide levels, wind velocity, and rain as input variables to the system, while the output variable remains the control of window opening. This is achieved through the use of fuzzy logic control tool box in MATLAB and running simulations on SIMULINK to validate the effectiveness of the proposed system. Comparison analysis model via simulation is carried out, and with the data obtained, an improvement in control actions and energy savings was recorded.

Keywords: fuzzy logic, intelligent control systems, natural ventilation, optimization

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Authors: Shahadat Hossain

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The United Nations (UN) declared Rohingya as the most oppressed nation in the world. The Rohingya's native place is Arakan, Myanmar, which is newly named Rakhine. The Rohingya have been forcibly migrated to Bangladesh, Malaysia, and other states for settlement for many years. Bangladesh has not been able to handle the pressure of Rohingya refugees, although it has been hosting Rohingya refugees for multiple decades. As a result, Rohingya refugees have been mixed with the local population. Some of the Rohingya people of Arakan already became citizens of Bangladesh after migrating to Bangladesh. The Rohingya have become Bangladeshis through intermarriage, kinship, labour, and business partnerships. Rohingya people preferred to settle in Bangladesh due to cultural, religious, and linguistic similarities. Some of the Rohingyas get an advantage also from the domestic political and voting equation of Bangladesh. This research tried to explore how the Rohingyas settled in Chattogram and Cox's Bazar and became one of the locals. The research sought to focus on their advantage, difficulties, and narrative.

Keywords: Rohingya, refugee, Bangladesh, Rohingya settlement

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Authors: Jawharah Alasmari

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In inflectional morphology of verb, tense and aspect indicate action’s time either past/present or future and their period whether completed or not. The usage and meaning of tense and aspect differ in Arabic and English, therefore is no simple one -to- one mapping from an Arabic verb inflected form an appropriate English translation depends on a range of features, including immediate and wider context of use. The Quranic Arabic Corpus includes seven alternative expertly crafted English translations of each Arabic verses, which provides a test dataset for the study of appropriate Arabic to English translations of verb tense and aspect. We applied Corpus Linguistics Methods in a theoretical study of exemplary verbs, to elicit candidate verbal contexts which influence the choice of English inflection for each verse.

Keywords: Corpus linguistics methods, Arabic verb, tense and aspect, English translations

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Authors: Christopher Dick

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While the translation of 'literal language' poses numerous challenges for the translator, the translation of 'figurative language' creates even more complicated issues. It has been only in the last several decades that scholars have attempted to propose theories of figurative language translation, including metaphor translation. Even less work has applied these theories to metaphoric translation in literary texts. And almost no work has linked an analysis of metaphors in translation with the recent scholarship on conceptual metaphors. A study of literature in translation must not only examine the inevitable shifts that occur as specific metaphors move from source language to target language but also analyze the ways in which these shifts impact conceptual metaphors and, ultimately, the text as a whole. Doing so contributes to on-going efforts to bridge the sometimes wide gulf between considerations of content and form in literary studies. This paper attempts to add to the body of scholarly literature on metaphor translation and the function of metaphor in a literary text. Specifically, the study examines the metaphoric expressions in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. First, the issue of Hemingway and metaphor is addressed. Next, the study examines the specific metaphors in the original novel in English and the German translations, first in Annemarie Horschitz’s 1928 German version and then in the recent Werner Schmitz 2013 translation. Hemingway’s metaphors, far from being random occurrences of figurative language, are linguistic manifestations of deeper conceptual metaphors that are central to an interpretation of the text. By examining the modifications that are made to these original metaphoric expressions as they are translated into German, one can begin to appreciate the shifts involved with metaphor translation. The translation of Hemingway’s metaphors into German represents significant metaphoric loss and shifting that subsequently shakes the important conceptual metaphors in the novel.

Keywords: Hemingway, Conceptual Metaphor, Translation, Stylistics

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Authors: Javiera Espinosa, Patricia López, Noelia Santos, Nadia Loro, Esther Moraleda

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In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of investigations that establish that Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder are diagnoses that can coexist together. However, there are also many studies that consider that both diagnoses present neuropsychological, linguistic and adaptive characteristics with a totally different profile. The objective of this research is to question whether there really can be a profile that encompasses both disorders or if they can be incompatible with each other. To this end, a review of the scientific literature of recent years has been carried out. The results indicate that the two lines collect opposite approaches. On the one hand, there is research that supports the increase in comorbidity between Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder, and on the other hand, many investigations show a totally different general development profile between the two. The discussion focuses on discussing both lines of work and on proposing future lines of research in this regard.

Keywords: disability, language, speech, down syndrome

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Authors: A. Noll, J. Roth, M. Scholz

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The importance of written language in a democratic society is non-controversial. Students with physical, learning, cognitive or developmental disabilities often have difficulties in understanding information which is presented in written language only. These students suffer from obstacles in diverse domains. In order to reduce such barriers in educational as well as in out-of-school areas, access to written information must be facilitated. Readability can be enhanced by linguistic simplifications like the application of easy-to-read language. Easy-to-read language shall help people with disabilities to participate socially and politically in society. The authors state, for example, that only short simple words should be used, whereas the occurrence of complex sentences should be avoided. So far, these guidelines were not empirically proved. Another way to reduce reading barriers is the use of visual support, for example, symbols. A symbol conveys, in contrast to a photo, a single idea or concept. Little empirical data about the use of symbols to foster the readability of texts exist. Nevertheless, a positive influence can be assumed, e.g., because of the multimedia principle. It indicates that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. A qualitative Interview and Eye-Tracking-Study, which was conducted by the authors, gives cause for the assumption that besides the illustration of single words, the visualization of complete sentences may be helpful. Thus, the effect of photos, which illustrate the content of complete sentences, is also investigated in this study. This leads us to the main research question which was focused on: Does the use of easy-to-read language and/or enriching text with symbols or photos facilitate pupils’ comprehension of learning tasks? The sample consisted of students with learning difficulties (N = 144) and students without SEN (N = 159). The students worked on the tasks, which dealt with introducing fractions, individually. While experimental group 1 received a linguistically simplified version of the tasks, experimental group 2 worked with a variation which was linguistically simplified and furthermore, the keywords of the tasks were visualized by symbols. Experimental group 3 worked on exercises which were simplified by easy-to-read-language and the content of the whole sentences was illustrated by photos. Experimental group 4 received a not simplified version. The participants’ reading ability and their IQ was elevated beforehand to build four comparable groups. There is a significant effect of the different setting on the students’ results F(3,140) = 2,932; p = 0,036*. A post-hoc-analyses with multiple comparisons shows that this significance results from the difference between experimental group 3 and 4. The students in the group easy-to-read language plus photos worked on the exercises significantly more successfully than the students who worked in the group with no simplifications. Further results which refer, among others, to the influence of the students reading ability will be presented at the ICERI 2018.

Keywords: inclusive education, mathematics education, easy-to-read language, photos, symbols, special educational needs

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Authors: Olga Bernikova, Oleg Redkin

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Globalization is a process of worldwide economic, political and cultural integration. Obviously, this phenomenon has both positive and negative issues. This article analyzes the impact of the modern process of globalization on the national traditions of language teaching and research. In this context, the problem of the ratio of local to global can be viewed from several sides. Firstly, since English is the language of over 80 percent of scientific and technical research worldwide, what should be the language of science in certain region? Secondly, language 'globality' is not always associated with English, because intercultural communications may have their regional peculiarities. For example, in the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic can also be regarded as 'global' phenomenon, since the mother-tongue languages of the population are local Arabic dialects. In addition, the correlation 'local' versus 'global' is manifested not only in the linguistic sphere but also in the methodology used in language acquisition and research. Thus, the major principles of the Arabic philological tradition, which goes back to the 7th century, are still spread in the modern Arab world. At the same time, the terminology and methods of language research that are peculiar to this tradition are quite far from the issues of general linguistics that underlies the description of all the languages of the world. The present research relies on a comparative analysis of sources in Arabic linguistics, including original works in Arabic dating back to the 12th-13th centuries. As a case study, interaction of local and global is also considered on the example of the Arabic teaching and research in Russia. Speaking about the correlation between local and global it is possible to forecast development of two parallel tendencies: the spread of the phenomena of globalization on one hand, and local implementation of a language policy aimed at preserving native languages, including Arabic, on the other.

Keywords: Arabic, global, language, local, tradition

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Authors: Thaveesha Dheerasekera, Dileeka Sandamali Alwis

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The escalating prevalence of mental health issues, such as depression and suicidal ideation, is a matter of significant global concern. It is plausible that a variety of factors, such as life events, social isolation, and preexisting physiological or psychological health conditions, could instigate or exacerbate these conditions. Traditional approaches to diagnosing depression entail a considerable amount of time and necessitate the involvement of adept practitioners. This underscores the necessity for automated systems capable of promptly detecting and diagnosing symptoms of depression. The PsyVBot system employs sophisticated natural language processing and machine learning methodologies, including the use of the NLTK toolkit for dataset preprocessing and the utilization of a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model. The PsyVBot exhibits a remarkable ability to diagnose depression with a 94% accuracy rate through the analysis of user input. Consequently, this resource proves to be efficacious for individuals, particularly those enrolled in academic institutions, who may encounter challenges pertaining to their psychological well-being. The PsyVBot employs a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model that comprises a total of three layers, namely an embedding layer, an LSTM layer, and a dense layer. The stratification of these layers facilitates a precise examination of linguistic patterns that are associated with the condition of depression. The PsyVBot has the capability to accurately assess an individual's level of depression through the identification of linguistic and contextual cues. The task is achieved via a rigorous training regimen, which is executed by utilizing a dataset comprising information sourced from the subreddit r/SuicideWatch. The diverse data present in the dataset ensures precise and delicate identification of symptoms linked with depression, thereby guaranteeing accuracy. PsyVBot not only possesses diagnostic capabilities but also enhances the user experience through the utilization of audio outputs. This feature enables users to engage in more captivating and interactive interactions. The PsyVBot platform offers individuals the opportunity to conveniently diagnose mental health challenges through a confidential and user-friendly interface. Regarding the advancement of PsyVBot, maintaining user confidentiality and upholding ethical principles are of paramount significance. It is imperative to note that diligent efforts are undertaken to adhere to ethical standards, thereby safeguarding the confidentiality of user information and ensuring its security. Moreover, the chatbot fosters a conducive atmosphere that is supportive and compassionate, thereby promoting psychological welfare. In brief, PsyVBot is an automated conversational agent that utilizes an LSTM model to assess the level of depression in accordance with the input provided by the user. The demonstrated accuracy rate of 94% serves as a promising indication of the potential efficacy of employing natural language processing and machine learning techniques in tackling challenges associated with mental health. The reliability of PsyVBot is further improved by the fact that it makes use of the Reddit dataset and incorporates Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) for preprocessing. PsyVBot represents a pioneering and user-centric solution that furnishes an easily accessible and confidential medium for seeking assistance. The present platform is offered as a modality to tackle the pervasive issue of depression and the contemplation of suicide.

Keywords: chatbot, depression diagnosis, LSTM model, natural language process

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Authors: Wujian Han

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In the process of human interaction and communication, speech act verbs are considered to be the most active component and the main means for information transmission, and are also taken as an indication of the structure of linguistic behavior. The theoretical value and practical significance of such everyday built-in metalanguage have long been recognized. This paper, which is part of a bigger study, is aimed to provide useful insights for a more precise and systematic application to speech act verbs translation between English and Chinese, especially with regard to the degree to which generic integrity is maintained in the practice of translation of legal documents. In this study, the corpus, i.e. Chinese legal texts and their English translations, English legal texts, ordinary Chinese texts, and ordinary English texts, serve as a testing ground for examining contrastively the usage of English and Chinese directive speech act verbs in legal genre. The scope of this paper is relatively wide and essentially covers all directive speech act verbs which are used in ordinary English and Chinese, such as order, command, request, prohibit, threat, advice, warn and permit. The researcher, by combining the corpus methodology with a contrastive perspective, explored a range of characteristics of English and Chinese directive speech act verbs including their semantic, syntactic and pragmatic features, and then contrasted them in a structured way. It has been found that there are similarities between English and Chinese directive speech act verbs in legal genre, such as similar semantic components between English speech act verbs and their translation equivalents in Chinese, formal and accurate usage of English and Chinese directive speech act verbs in legal contexts. But notable differences have been identified in areas of difference between their usage in the original Chinese and English legal texts such as valency patterns and frequency of occurrences. For example, the subjects of some directive speech act verbs are very frequently omitted in Chinese legal texts, but this is not the case in English legal texts. One of the practicable methods to achieve adequacy and conciseness in speech act verb translation from Chinese into English in legal genre is to repeat the subjects or the message with discrepancy, and vice versa. In addition, translation effects such as overuse and underuse of certain directive speech act verbs are also found in the translated English texts compared to the original English texts. Legal texts constitute a particularly valuable material for speech act verb study. Building up such a contrastive picture of the Chinese and English speech act verbs in legal language would yield results of value and interest to legal translators and students of language for legal purposes and have practical application to legal translation between English and Chinese.

Keywords: contrastive analysis, corpus-based, directive speech act verbs, legal texts, translation between English and Chinese

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Authors: Dina C. Castro, Rossana Boyd, Eugenia Papadaki

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Immigration within and across continents is currently a global reality. The number of people leaving their communities in search for a better life for them and their families has increased dramatically during the last twenty years. Therefore, young children of the 21st century around the World are growing up in diverse communities, exposed to many languages and cultures. One consequence of these migration movements is the increased linguistic diversity in school settings. Depending on the linguistic history and the status of languages in the communities (i.e., minority-majority; majority-majority) the instructional approaches will differ. This session will discuss how bilingualism is addressed in early education programs in both minority-majority and majority-majority language communities, analyzing experiences in three countries with very distinct societal and demographic characteristics: Peru (South America), the United States (North America), and Italy (European Union). The ultimate goal is to identify commonalities and differences across the three experiences that could lead to a discussion of bilingualism in early education from a global perspective. From Peru, we will discuss current national language and educational policies that have lead to the design and implementation of bilingual and intercultural education for children in indigenous communities. We will also discuss how those practices are being implemented in preschool programs, the progress made and challenges encountered. From the United States, we will discuss the early education of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers, including the national policy environment, as well as variations in language of instruction approaches currently being used with these children. From Italy, we will describe early education practices in the Bilingual School of Monza, in northern Italy, a school that has 20 years promoting bilingualism and multilingualism in education. While the presentations from Peru and the United States will discuss bilingualism in a majority-minority language environment, this presentation will lead to a discussion on the opportunities and challenges of promoting bilingualism in a majority-majority language environment. It is evident that innovative models and policies are necessary to prevent inequality of opportunities for bilingual children beginning in their earliest years. The cross-cultural examination of bilingual education experiences for young children in three part of the World will allow us to learn from our success and challenges. The session will end with a discussion of the following question: To what extent are early care and education programs being effective in promoting positive development and learning among all children, including those from diverse language, ethnic and cultural backgrounds? We expect to identify, with participants to our session, a set of recommendations for policy and program development that could ensure access to high quality early education for all bilingual children.

Keywords: early education for bilingual children, global perspectives in early education, cross-cultural, language policies

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Authors: Md. Moniruzzaman, Thirayoot Limanond

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Being the most visible indicator, the transport system of a city points out how developed the city is. Dhaka megacity holds a mixed composition of motorized and non-motorized modes of transport and the number of vehicle figure is escalating over times. And this obviously poses associated environmental costs like air pollution, noise etc. which is degrading the quality of life in the city. Eventually sustainable transport or more importantly green transport from environmental point of view has become a prime choice to the transport professionals in order to cope up the crisis. Currently the city authority is planning to execute such sustainable transport systems that could serve the pressing demand of the present and meet the future needs effectively. This study focuses on the selection and evaluation of green transportation systems among potential alternatives on a priority basis. In this paper, Fuzzy TOPSIS - a multi-criteria decision method is presented to find out the most prioritized alternative. In the first step, Twenty-one individual specific criteria for sustainability assessment are selected. In the following step, experts provide linguistic ratings to the potential alternatives with respect to the selected criteria. The approach is used to generate aggregate scores for sustainability assessment and selection of the best alternative. In the third step, a sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the influence of criteria weights on the decision making process. The key strength of fuzzy TOPSIS approach is its practical applicability having a generation of good quality solution even under uncertainty.

Keywords: green transport, multi-criteria decision approach, urban transportation system, sustainability assessment, fuzzy theory, uncertainty

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Authors: Mohsine Khazrouni

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The present study is an attempt to highlight the importance of adaptation in translation. To convey the message, the translator needs to take into account not only the text but also extra-linguistic factors such as the target audience. The present paper claims that adaptation is an unavoidable translation strategy when dealing with texts that are heavy with religious and cultural themes. The translation task becomes even more challenging when dealing with children’s literature as the audience are children whose comprehension, experience and world knowledge are limited. The study uses the Arabic translation of the short story ‘Christmas Every Day’ as a case study. The short story will be translated, and the pragmatic problems involved will be discussed. The focus will be on the issue of adaptation. i.e., the source text should be adapted to the target language audience`s social and cultural environment.

Keywords: pragmatic adaptation, Arabic translation, children's literature, equivalence

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Authors: L. Tizzi

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The aim of this contribution is to present the experience of the U.S. secondary school Social Justice High School (SoJo), part of the larger Campus of Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) located in Chicago, Illinois (USA). This experience can be considered a concrete application of the principles of the educational perspective known, in the United States, as Social Justice Education, aimed at ensuring quality education and educational success for students from disadvantaged groups, particularly those characterized by “biculturalism”, i.e. students with a dual cultural and linguistic background. The contribution will retrace the historical and social events that led to the birth of the SoJo, explaining the principles and methods used by the school to achieve its objectives and giving also some statistical data.

Keywords: biculturalism, educational success, social justice education, social justice high school

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Authors: Marina Fomina

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The paper focuses on the category of semantic subject within the framework of a functional approach to linguistics. The semantic subject is related to similar notions such as the grammatical subject and the bearer of predicative feature. It is the multifaceted nature of the category of subject that 1) triggers a number of issues that, syntax-wise, remain to be dealt with (cf. semantic vs. syntactic functions / sentence parts vs. parts of speech issues, etc.); 2) results in a variety of approaches to the category of subject, such as formal grammatical, semantic/syntactic (functional), communicative approaches, etc. Many linguists consider the prototypical approach to the category of subject to be the most instrumental as it reveals the integrity of denotative and linguistic components of the conceptual category. This approach relates to subject as a source of non-passive predicative feature, an element of subject-predicate-object situation that can take on a variety of semantic roles, cf.: 1) an agent (He carefully surveyed the valley stretching before him), 2) an experiencer (I feel very bitter about this), 3) a recipient (I received this book as a gift), 4) a causee (The plane broke into three pieces), 5) a patient (This stove cleans easily), etc. It is believed that the variety of roles stems from the radial (prototypical) structure of the category with some members more central than others. Translation-wise, the most “treacherous” subject types are the peripheral ones. The paper 1) features a peripheral status of spatial impersonal sentence models such as U menia v ukhe zvenit (lit. I-Gen. in ear buzzes) within the category of semantic subject, 2) makes a structural and semantic analysis of the models, 3) focuses on their Russian-English translation patterns, 4) reveals non-prototypical features of subjects in the English equivalents.

Keywords: bearer of predicative feature, grammatical subject, impersonal sentence model, semantic subject

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Authors: Ponghyung Lee

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This study seeks to investigate the variations occurring to Korean consonantal variations center around laryngeal features of the concerned sounds, to the exclusion of others. Our fundamental premise is that the weak contrast associated with concerned segments might be held accountable for the oscillation of the status quo of the concerned consonants. What is more, we assume that an array of notions as a measure of communicative efficiency of linguistic units would be significantly influential on triggering those variations. To this end, we have tried to compute the surprisal, entropic contribution, and relative contrastiveness associated with Korean obstruent consonants. What we found therein is that the Information-theoretic perspective is compelling enough to lend support our approach to a considerable extent. That is, the variant realizations, chronologically and stylistically, prove to be profoundly affected by a set of Information-theoretic factors enumerated above. When it comes to the biblical proper names, we use Georgetown University CQP Web-Bible corpora. From the 8 texts (4 from Old Testament and 4 from New Testament) among the total 64 texts, we extracted 199 samples. We address the issue of laryngeal feature variations associated with Korean obstruent consonants under the presumption that the variations stem from the weak contrast among the triad manifestations of laryngeal features. The variants emerge from diverse sources in chronological and stylistic senses: Christianity biblical texts, ordinary casual speech, the shift of loanword adaptation over time, and ideophones. For the purpose of discussing what they are really like from the perspective of Information Theory, it is necessary to closely look at the data. Among them, the massive changes occurring to loanword adaptation of proper nouns during the centennial history of Korean Christianity draw our special attention. We searched 199 types of initially capitalized words among 45,528-word tokens, which account for around 5% of total 901,701-word tokens (12,786-word types) from Georgetown University CQP Web-Bible corpora. We focus on the shift of the laryngeal features incorporated into word-initial consonants, which are available through the two distinct versions of Korean Bible: one came out in the 1960s for the Protestants, and the other was published in the 1990s for the Catholic Church. Of these proper names, we have closely traced the adaptation of plain obstruents, e. g. /b, d, g, s, ʤ/ in the sources. The results show that as much as 41% of the extracted proper names show variations; 37% in terms of aspiration, and 4% in terms of tensing. This study set out in an effort to shed light on the question: to what extent can we attribute the variations occurring to the laryngeal features associated with Korean obstruent consonants to the communicative aspects of linguistic activities? In this vein, the concerted effects of the triad, of surprisal, entropic contribution, and relative contrastiveness can be credited with the ups and downs in the feature specification, despite being contentiousness on the role of surprisal to some extent.

Keywords: entropic contribution, laryngeal feature variation, relative contrastiveness, surprisal

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Authors: Maya Lisa Aryanti, S. S. M. Hum

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Students usually make a lot of mistakes when they write their composition. The common mistake occurs when they write their own sentences. They perhaps can use certain verb and verb phrases properly, but on another occasion, they may choose wrong verb phrases. This paper illustrates ill-formed phrases, improper agreement between subject and verb and referent and reference in the students’ writings. The objectives of this research are to show possible variety of ill-formed phrases, to show frequent mistakes in S-V Agreement, and to show wrong reference in students’ writing. The methodology of this research is descriptive qualitative research. Some general linguistic theories and semantics are used in this paper. The results of this research concern to the number and the forms of possible ill-formed phrases, the types of Subject-Verb Agreement which are often applied incorrectly in a sentence and types of reference which are often used incorrectly.

Keywords: agreement, meaning, phrases, reference

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Authors: Asier Romero Andonegi, Irati De Pablo Delgado

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The objective of this study is to explore the different methodological procedures that are used to obtain information on the early linguistic development of children. To this end, two different methodological procedures were carried out on the same sample: on the one hand, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, in its adaptations in Spanish and Basque; and on the other hand, longitudinal observation through professional software: ELAN and CHAT. The sample consists of 8 Basque children/ages 16 to 30 months with different mother tongue (L1). The results show the usefulness of inventories in obtaining information on the development of early communication and language skills, but also their limitations mostly focused on the interpretive overvaluation of their children’s lexical development.

Keywords: early language development, language evaluation, lexicon, MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventories

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Authors: Jiang Niu, Yue Jiang

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With the ultimate goal to automatically generate translated texts with high quality, machine translation has made tremendous improvements. However, its translations of literary works are still plagued with problems in coherence, esp. the translation between distant language pairs. One of the causes of the problems is probably the lack of linguistic knowledge to be incorporated into the training of machine translation systems. In order to enable readers to better understand the problems of machine translation in coherence, to seek out the potential knowledge to be incorporated, and thus to improve the quality of machine translation products, this study applies Theme-Rheme structure to examine how a machine-translated literary text is organized and developed in terms of coherence. Theme-Rheme structure in Systemic Functional Linguistics is a useful tool for analysis of textual coherence. Theme is the departure point of a clause and Rheme is the rest of the clause. In a text, as Themes and Rhemes may be connected with each other in meaning, they form thematic and rhematic progressions throughout the text. Based on this structure, we can look into how a text is organized and developed in terms of coherence. Methodologically, we chose Chinese and English as the language pair to be studied. Specifically, we built a comparable corpus with two modes of English translations, viz. machine translation (MT) and human translation (HT) of one Chinese literary source text. The translated texts were annotated with Themes, Rhemes and their progressions throughout the texts. The annotated texts were analyzed from two respects, the different types of Themes functioning differently in achieving coherence, and the different types of thematic and rhematic progressions functioning differently in constructing texts. By analyzing and contrasting the two modes of translations, it is found that compared with the HT, 1) the MT features “pseudo-coherence”, with lots of ill-connected fragments of information using “and”; 2) the MT system produces a static and less interconnected text that reads like a list; these two points, in turn, lead to the less coherent organization and development of the MT than that of the HT; 3) novel to traditional and previous studies, Rhemes do contribute to textual connection and coherence though less than Themes do and thus are worthy of notice in further studies. Hence, the findings suggest that Theme-Rheme structure be applied to measuring and assessing the coherence of machine translation, to being incorporated into the training of the machine translation system, and Rheme be taken into account when studying the textual coherence of both MT and HT.

Keywords: coherence, corpus-based, literary translation, machine translation, Theme-Rheme structure

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Authors: Premvadee Na Nakornpanom

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Language mixing in spontaneous speech has been widely discussed, but not in virtual situations; especially in context of the third language learning students. Thus, this study was an attempt to explore the characteristics of the mixing of Japanese, English and Thai in a mobile chat room by students with their background of Japanese, English, and Thai. The result found that Insertion of Thai and English content words was a very common linguistic phenomenon embedded in the utterances. As chatting is to be ‘relational’ or ‘interactional’, it affected the style of lexical choices to be speech-like, more personal and emotional-related. A Japanese sentence-final question particle“か”(ka) was added to the end of the sentence based on Thai grammar rule. Moreover, some unique characteristics were created. The non-verbal cues were represented in personal, Thai styles by inserting textual representations of images or feelings available on the websites into streams of conversations.

Keywords: code-mixing, Japanese, English, Thai, line chat

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Authors: Ibrahim Sani

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This paper examines the use of English discourse markers with the aim of investigating their communicative functions on Facebook as used by UMYUK members of academic staff. The paper uses the qualitative approach and relevance theory by Sperber and Wilson (1995) to highlight and examine DMs in different communicative contexts. In the course of data collection, five (5) academic staff from the five faculties of the university who are already Facebook friends of the researcher are used as the participants with their consent. The paper examines the communicative functions of English DMs among UMYUK academic staff on Facebook and reveals a number of communicative functions used in different contexts. One of the major findings indicates that 'contrastive markers' such as 'but', 'however', 'although' etc. are the dominant communicative functions employed by UMYUK academic staff on Facebook with 42% occurrence; it also shows that a single DM can function differently in the same linguistic environment.

Keywords: role, communicative, discourse markers, facebook, academic staff

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Authors: Daniela Panico

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Framed by language socialization and family language policy theories, the present study explores the ways the language choice patterns of bilingual siblings contribute to the shaping of the language environment and the language practices of Italian/English families residing in Sydney. The main source of data is video recordings of naturally occurring parent-children and child-to-child interactions during everyday routines (i.e., family mealtimes and siblings playtime) in the home environment. Recurrent interactional practices are analyzed in detail through a conversational analytical approach. This presentation focuses on the interactional trajectories developing during the negotiation of language choices between all family members and between siblings in face-to-face interactions. Fine-grained analysis is performed on language negotiation sequences of multiparty bilingual conversations in order to uncover the sequential patterns through which a) the children respond to the parental strategies aiming to minority language maintenance, and b) the siblings influence each other’s language use and choice (e.g., older siblings positioning themselves as language teachers and language brokers, younger siblings accepting the role of apprentices). The findings show that, along with the parents, children are active socializing agents in the family and, with their linguistic behavior, they contribute to the establishment of a bilingual or a monolingual context in the home. Moreover, by orienting themselves towards the use of one or the other language in family talk, bilingual siblings are a major internal micro force in the language ecology of a bilingual family and can strongly support language maintenance or language shift processes in such domain. Overall, the study provides insights into the dynamic ways in which family language policy is interactionally negotiated and instantiated in bilingual homes as well as the challenges of intergenerational language transmission.

Keywords: bilingual siblings, family interactions, family language policy, language maintenance

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Authors: Antonio Piga

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The study of language strategies in financial and corporate discourse has always been vital for understanding how companies manage to communicate effectively with a wider customer base and offers new perspectives on how companies interact with key stakeholders, not only to convey transparency and an image of trustworthiness, but also to create affiliation and attract investment. In the light of Systemic Functional Linguistics, the purpose of this study is to examine and analyse the annual reports of Asian and Western joint-stock companies involved in oil refining and power generation from the point of view of the functions and frequency of grammatical metaphors. More specifically, grammatical metaphor - through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) - is used as a theoretical tool for analysing a synchronic cross-cultural study of the communicative strategies adopted by Asian and Western companies to communicate social and environmental sustainability and showcase their ethical values, performance and competitiveness to local and global communities and key stakeholders. According to Systemic Functional Linguistics, grammatical metaphor can be divided into two broad areas: ideational and interpersonal. This study focuses on the first type, ideational grammatical metaphor (IGM), which includes de-adjectival and de-verbal nominalisation. The dominant and more effective grammatical tropes used by Asian and Western corporations in their annual reports were examined from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective. The aim was to categorise and explain how ideational grammatical metaphor is constructed cross-culturally and presented through structural language patterns involving re-mapping between semantics and lexico-grammatical features. The results show that although there seem to be more differences than similarities in terms of the categorisation of the ideational grammatical metaphors conceptualised in the two case studies analysed, there are more similarities than differences in terms of the occurrence, the congruence of process types and the role and function of IGM. Through the immediacy and essentialism of compacting and condensing information, IGM seems to be an important linguistic strategy adopted in the rhetoric of corporate annual reports, contributing to the ideologies and actions of companies to report and promote efficiency, profit and social and environmental sustainability, thus advocating the engagement and investment of key stakeholders.

Keywords: corporate annual reports, cross-cultural perspective, ideational grammatical metaphor, rhetoric, systemic functional linguistics

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Authors: Ming Fang Hsieh

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the reading responses of infants and toddlers across different contexts in nursery centers. The study adopted Sipe’s framework for children’s literacy education to explore the reading behavior of infants and toddlers. The study was conducted at two nurseries. The sample comprised 46 infants and toddlers and 6 caregivers. The methods of data collection included observation of various reading activities, including shared reading in a group, one-on-one reading, and unstructured reading activities, as well as interviews with caregivers. The data obtained through observations and interviews were transcribed and analyzed. The caregivers and the children’s parents signed an informed consent form before the start of the study. There was no risk anticipated during the course of the study. The analysis revealed five types of reading responses exhibited by the infants and toddlers: (1) linguistic- verbally responding to reading, repeating vocabulary, and answering questions; (2) affective- concentrating on reading or requesting for repeated reading, leaning on books, and gazing at caregivers; (3) explosive- children under 18 months were observed manipulating books through their bodies or different movements like flipping, rotating, or tapping on books; (4) social- during unstructured reading context, children were seen interacting with peers or following the rules of reading, sitting properly, and choosing one book at a time; and (5) distracted responses- paying attention to something else instead of reading, walking around, and playing, which was usually observed during shared reading in a group. The study concluded that children’s distraction and explosive reading behaviors may be a part of the process of their emergent reading behavior. As children develop, they demonstrate an increase in verbal responses, improved concentration, and better behavior. The study suggests that adults should continue to provide appropriate reading opportunities beginning from infancy to nurture children’s reading behaviors.

Keywords: reading response, infants and toddlers, early reading, picture books

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Authors: Reza Nozadheravi, Masoud Hasanzade Novin

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Those techniques of translation which are engaged with short textual segments and mostly are prescriptive can be considered as micro level elements. Macro levels, however, refer to those translation strategies and those external factors that affect the translator’s decisions and have descriptive nature. What was scrutinized in details in the paper reveals the ‎macro-elements which are crucial in canonized translated texts, moreover, different aspects ‎of the patronage, which can be considered as the important factors from having the texts ‎chosen to the final translation products, have been observed in translated texts of Najaf ‎Darya-Bandarie, the well-known Iranian Translator. What is probed in this paper ‎reveals that marco-elements along with the linguistic aspects of the texts, micro-elements, ‎are considered as the significant aspects in translation process and even final translated ‎texts.

Keywords: canolized translated texts‎, culture‎, macro-elements‎, patronage

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