NEW POLITICAL TERMS IN INTERNET-MEDIA SPEECH (SEMANTIC AND FUNCTIONAL ASPECT)

The article purpose is to analyze the semantic and functional parameters of the newest political terms in the Ukrainian internet-media speech. The study displays the semantic stratification of new terms based on their correlation with the environment and their functioning peculiarities using qualitative and quantitative parameters that allow to identify the most frequent lexical units in online media. The research object is the newest political terms in the modern Ukrainian language, and the subject of study is semantic and functional characteristics of these language units. The main research approach is semantic and functional analysis of language phenomena. Conceptual-linguistic method was used for semantic stratification of the latest political terms through the scope of their correlation with the environment. The quantitative analysis was meant to identify the most frequent lexical units with political semantics in online media. The descriptive method was used for linguistic facts interpretation. The article extends the notion of socio-political terminology and specifies correlation between socio-political terminology and socio-political vocabulary. The nomination system has formed and is permanently refreshed due to the new communication conditions in the globalized world. The study establishes that socio-political terminology is an open set with increasingly blurred boundaries. A lexical unit affiliation to socio-political terminology is determined by its conceptual content. The research proves that semantic stratification of the latest political terms is primarily based on the correlation with the environment, for instance, journalism and social communications, informational technologies, PR and advertising, art, linguistics, and rhetoric. Units in the analyzed lexical-semantic cluster are quite difficult to identify as terminological words or common words. The study has shown diffuse zone where the lexemes constantly fluctuate between strict requirements for a term (unambiguity, stylistic neutrality) and real functioning in media texts where they acquire imagery and expression. Therefore, the socio-political neolexicon needs further attention of scientists.

A-122 Verbal Fluency Switching and Clustering Performance in Retired Professional Football Players

Introduction Repeated sports-related concussion has been associated with cognitive deficits, like other forms of traumatic brain injury. Football speed players (FSP; e.g., quarterbacks) are at greater risk of cognitive impairment compared to football non-speed players (FNP). Verbal fluency is typically comprised of two tasks: letter fluency (LF) and semantic fluency (SF). Verbal clustering (production of continuous words belonging to the same category or subcategory) and switching (abandoning an exhausted semantic cluster to a new one in order to produce more words) reflect executive control and strategy use. We examined LF, SF, as well as LF and SF switching and clustering performance in retired FSP, FNP, and healthy comparison (HC) participants. Methods The sample consisted of 28 HC, 17 retired FSP, and 53 retired FNP. ANOVAs were conducted to determine group differences on LF, SF, switching, and clustering. FSP and FNP did not differ in concussion frequency. Results We found the HC group outperformed the FSP group in LF, p = 0.042, ηp2 = 0.07. For SF, the HC and FNP groups outperformed the FSP group, p = 0.013, ηp2 = 0.09. Furthermore, we found the HC group outperformed both football groups in SF switching, p = 0.000, ηp2 = 0.17. Conclusion As expected, the HC group outperformed the FSP group on LF and SF. Also, the FNP group outperformed the FSP group on SF. Interestingly, FSP displayed generally worse performances, supporting the notion that their experience of sub-concussive blows puts them at greater risk for cognitive impairment. Further investigation is needed with larger sample sizes to evaluate SF and other cognitive deficits in the FSP participants.

Narratives ofamor,armaandarmenta in Ovid’sMetamorphoses

Ovid frequently organizes individual “narratives” on the basis of semantic relations (including etymology) that link together basic concepts and themes. This web of semantic relations creates a second level of text or subtext that deepens our understanding of the composition of the poem and adds meaning(s) to each particular narrative. One such subtext concerns the semantics of erotic violence or of “love” (amor) and “arms” (arma), the study of which can enrich our understanding of Ovid’s narrative skills. The pair amor and arma is sometimes expanded to include armenta in the sense of “cattle,” “oxen,” or any animal less commonly or uniquely assigned to this species. The addition of armenta to the semantic cluster is due to the fact that they are often included in Ovid’s mythological narratives, either as real animals or as transformed human beings or as disguised divinities.

Vom Schrank und seinen Türen und einem Meer, das lachte

The paper deals with the semantic theory of interpretation of A. F. Losev in his early period up to 1930 as well as in his linguistic investigations in the 70’s and 80’s of the last century. In using a word or some grammatical category, a speaker already interprets some state of affairs. In a sense, all invariant meaning seems to be metaphorical, i.e. meanings are interpretations of the world. This theory is illustrated with some famous examples by Losev himself: Garden, cabinet, the sentence “The sea was laughing”. Reflecting about his garden and his cabinet Losev shows the difference and convergence of parts and the whole: trees, flowers or the cabinet’s doors on the one hand, and the garden or the cabinet as a whole on the other. These relations are related to the meaning of words. In his early works, especially in the Philosophy of the Name and the Dialectics of Myth, Losev sees in meaning a semantic cluster which develops within speech (in sentences, narrations or myths). The works of the late period investigate invariant meanings of words and grammatical categories in the sense of some interpretive force.

Influence of age and education on the processing of clustering and switching in verbal fluency tasks

ABSTRACT Verbal fluency (VF) is a widely used tool in neuropsychological assessment. Objective: We aimed to investigate the influence of age and educational level on clustering and switching in three VF modalities: phonemic (PVF), semantic (SVF) and unconstrained (UVF). We evaluated type of cluster, mean cluster size, and quantity of clusters, intersections, and returns. A total of 260 healthy subjects were assessed. Methods: Participants were divided into three age groups: young adults (18 to 39 years), middle-aged adults (40 to 59 years) and older adults (60 to 80 years) and into two groups of educational level: 1-8 years (low), 9 years or more (high). A two-way ANOVA analysis was conducted to analyze the effect of age and educational level and its interactions. A repeated measures ANOVA was performed to verify the performance during the task. Results: A main effect of age was detected on the UVF and SVF scores for total switches, taxonomic clusters, and for the total semantic clusters on the SVF. There was a greater effect of educational level on total switches (UVF, PFV and SVF), taxonomic clusters (UVF and SVF), thematic clusters and total semantic cluster (UVF), phonemic and mixed clusters (PVF), mean cluster size (UVF and SVF) and intersections (SVF). Educational level had a greater effect on all three VF tasks.

Productivity vs predictability

The nominal gender distinction in Algonquian languages known as Animate versus Inanimate has long been observed to correlate closely with semantic animacy, even as superficially ‘unpredictable’ Animates at first suggest an ultimately formal and rote-lexicalized character. In Chapter 12, drawing on data from four Northeastern-area Eastern Algonquian languages, the author shows that Animate assignment is neither purely formal-lexicalized, nor based on a single elusive shared semantic feature, but instead is an emergent phenomenon: a mutable, ongoing lexicon-structuring process that builds up a set of lexical-semantic ‘families’ to which AN status is assigned. This is seen most strikingly in Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and Mi’kmaw speakers’ robust knowledge of the gender assignment of novel items and foreign words, with similar patterns seen in Penobscot and Western Abenaki corpora. Language-internally, the phenomena of ‘dual animacy’ and ‘variable animacy’ also support this view, as does the observation that Animate assignment appears to change diachronically across Algonquian by semantic cluster, i.e. by ‘family’, rather than by individual lexeme. Establishing that the phenomenon is dynamically synchronically productive (and far more predictable than not), the author aims to encourage further research in this heretofore neglected area, and so also presents preliminary questions about the falsifiability of the model and what adequate semantic and syntactic accounts would require, and finally observes how this new line of investigation might substantially help Algonquian language reclamation/revitalization efforts.