Dynamical systems implementation of intrinsic sentence meaning

This paper proposes a model for implementation of intrinsic natural language sentence meaning in a physical language understanding system, where 'intrinsic' is understood as 'independent of meaning ascription by system-external observers'. The proposal is that intrinsic meaning can be implemented as a point attractor in the state space of a nonlinear dynamical system with feedback which is generated by temporally sequenced inputs. It is motivated by John Searle's well known (1980) critique of the then-standard and currently still influential Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), the essence of which was that CTM representations lack intrinsic meaning because that meaning is dependent on ascription by an observer. The proposed dynamical model comprises a collection of interacting artificial neural networks, and constitutes a radical simplification of the principle of compositional phrase structure which is at the heart of the current standard view of sentence semantics because it is computationally interpretable as a finite state machine.

From X to Y: Anatomy of a Constructional Pattern

Compositionality is undoubtedly one of the hardest problems in linguistics. In decoding theories, the speaker occupies a leading role, having to carefully choose the form that better encodes the meaning to be communicated. In contrast, in inferential theories, the burden is shifted from speaker to hearer: linguistic information typically underspecifies meaning and the hearer must make a number of inferences to bridge the gap between what is said and what is meant. In this article, I argue that constructional meaning can aid the process of sentence meaning formation by providing a scaffold that can help the hearer with the construal operations. Constructions, by providing an additional layer of meaning, constrain the range of possible meanings activated by words thereby reducing the combinatorial explosion when several words are joined together. This process is examined here by analysing the meanings associated with the grammatical construction [from X to Y], which is connected to a polysemy network of related senses, using examples extracted from a multimodal corpus. A preliminary analysis of the gesturing behaviour associated with the different senses proposed is also included, which can be seen to contribute to the characterisation of the different senses of the polysemy network.

STEREOTYPICAL FEATURES OF THE JEWISH IN THE WORLDWIEW OF THE LITHUANIAN SAMOGITIAN: LEXICOGRAPHIC DATA

Before the Second World War, urban Jewish communities in the Lithuanian ethnographic region of Samogitia were quite large, thus Samogitians and Jews used to maintain rather close contacts. The paper focuses on Samogitians’ view on Jews from an ethnolinguistic perspective, based on lexicographic material. The analysis of speech samples that express this opinion is based on a structural approach to meaning combined with a cognitive one, following from word meaning to sentence meaning. A stereotypical “image” of the Jew is believed to consist of a specific set of certain common characteristics and traits, which is further elaborated by an analysis of linguistic expression. The analysis of stereotypical features is related to the expression of the axiological system. The research revealed that, in the socio-cultural context, the scale of evaluation of the Jewish people included positive, neutral, and negative evaluations, with the prevalence of stereotypes of Jews as of neighbours, people of other religion, foreigners.

Indeterminate and Enriched Propositions in Context Linger: Evidence From an Eye-Tracking False Memory Paradigm

A sentence such as We finished the paper is indeterminate with regards to what we finished doing with the paper. Indeterminate sentences constitute a test case for two major issues regarding language comprehension: (1) how we compose sentence meaning; and (2) what is retained in memory about what we read in context over time. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants read short stories that were unexpectedly followed by one of three recognition probes: (a) an indeterminate sentence (Lisa began the book), that is identical to the one in the story; (b) an enriched but false probe (Lisa began reading the book); and (c) a contextually unrelated probe (Lisa began writing the book). The probes were presented either at the offset of the original indeterminate sentence in context or following additional neutral discourse. We measured accuracy, probe recognition time, and reading times of the probe sentences. Results showed that, at the immediate time point, participants correctly accepted the identical probes with high accuracy and short recognition times, but that this effect reversed to chance-level accuracy and significantly longer recognition times at the delayed time point. We also found that participants falsely accept the enriched probe at both time points 50% of the time. There were no reading-time differences between identical and enriched probes, suggesting that enrichment might not be an early, mandatory process for indeterminate sentences. Overall, results suggest that while context produces an enriched proposition, an unenriched proposition true to the indeterminate sentence also lingers in memory.

Roles of verb and construction cues

This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less inclined to sort sentences by a verb cue when the lexical-semantic information about a verb was obscured (i.e., nonce verb). In addition, the Korean-speaking participants were less likely affected by the verb semantics conditions than the English-speaking participants. These findings suggest the role of an argument structure construction in sentence comprehension as a co-contributor of sentence meaning, supporting the constructionist approach. The findings also imply language-specific mechanisms of sentence comprehension, contingent upon the varied impact of a verb on sentence meaning in English and Korean.

Identifying the Problems EFL Students Encounter in Translating Adverbs from English into Arabic

While discussing the grammatical problems EFL learners confront in translating between languages, especially in translating adverbs as a basic category in English Grammar, it is significantly highlighting the difficulties these learners encounter and justifying the errors they make when translating adverbs and adverbial phrases from English into Arabic. Obviously, the errors are due to the fact that both languages at hand belong to two sharply distant language families and systems. In other words, language is culture-specific; what might be in one, might not be the same in the other, this leads to the ambiguity and misunderstanding of adverbs real contextual meaning, resulting the displacement of adverbs within sentences. Besides, Arab learners of English are sufficiently competent of English language and culture, thus English adverbs system and adverbial order, and their counterparts in Arabic which in turn affect their translation into their native. The study, therefore, suggests some strategies to be employed by Arab learners when translating English adverbs into Arabic. However, it is hypothesized that EFL students at the undergraduate level have confusion in understanding the adverbs contextual meaning or in other words their sentential meaning, thus err when translating these adverbs from English into Arabic. To prove the hypotheses of the study, two tests, of five sentences each, are set for fifty randomly chosen students at the undergraduate level to do; the first test is set to re-place the adverbs properly within sentences; whereas the second is set to translate English adverbs into Arabic contextually. Then the data of the study are analyzed and the results of the tests are evaluated to show how sentence meaning is affected by the misplacement and mistranslation of adverbs and adverbial phrases. In addition, to prove that the deficiencies in translation are due to the dissimilarities between English and Arabic adverbs meaning and order, and Arabic learner

“Looking at” Negation: Faster Processing for Symbolic Rather Than Iconic Representations

Many studies have shown the double processing of negation, suggesting that negation integration into sentence meaning is delayed. This contrasts with some researches that have found that such integration is rather immediate. The present study contributes to this debate. Affirmative and negative compound sentences (e.g., “because he was not hungry, he did not order a salad”) were presented orally in a visual world paradigm while four printed words were on the screen: salad, no salad, soup, and no soup. The eye-tracking data showed two different fixation patterns for negative causal assertions, which are linked to differences in the representation and inferential demands. One indicates that negation is integrated immediately, as people look at the explicit negation (e.g., no salad) very early. The other, in which people look at the alternate (e.g., soup) much later, indicates that what is delayed in time is the representation of the alternate. These results support theories that combine iconic and symbolic representations, such as the model theory.

A Socio-pragmatic study of the swear and the oath in Shakespeare's "Othello"

“Never swear even if you are righteous” is an inherent statement that reflects the psychological, sociological, as well as structural characteristics of swearing and oath making in the individual’s life. This paper tries to present an introduction to the speech act of swearing and oath making. Pragmatics is a moderately new order whose nature of request crosses with that of various other sociologies, like phonetics, applied etymology, basic talk examination, semantics, sociolinguistics, human science, brain research and humanities. Pragmatics does not have its procedure; however, it draws upon the system utilized in other sociologies. As the field of pragmatics is expansive and covers an assortment of strands, from the investigation of contextualized sentence meaning to the investigation of significance in the manner by which information is gathered and examined relies upon the sober-minded viewpoint received by the specialist, just as on the object of study. This paper has zeroed in on socio-pragmatics as its approach to handling the selected subject; to be specific, on the investigation of the basic standards of speaker and listener significance as reflected in the (fitting) acknowledgement of discourse acts, the association of discussion, affableness appearances and socio-pragmatic variety. It hypothesizes that swearing, oaths are deeds that are socially influenced, and so that they should, socio- pragmatically studied. It aims to show the socio-pragmatics insight of the use of swearing and oaths by answering the raised questions. The questions are as follows; Do swearing and oaths have significance in “Othello”? Do Swearing and oaths differ from one person to another? Does the position of the individual influence the swearing and the oaths of the person? Does sex affect the use of swearing and oaths? The paper is limited to Shakespeare’s “Othello” as a text that has many reflections for the use of swears and oaths. It ends with a conclusion that sums up the results of the discussion.

German Lexical Units Containing the Suffixoid -Weise and their Equivalents in the Bulgarian Language

Our research interest was provoked by a group of lexical units typical of the German language, containing the productive suffix -weise. These words represent an open system, the representatives of which show a high frequency of use, and nuance the sentence meaning in a distinctive way. The present comparative study between the two unrelated languages, based on a corpus of excerpts from the original fiction and published translated texts from and into German, aims to identify and analyze possible options for precise bilateral translation of the respective lexical items. The analysis made is extremely useful and necessary to overcome the difficulties identified in the course of teaching German as a foreign language, and contributes to the formulation of clear concepts for achieving accurate equivalent translation.

Parafoveal words can modulate sentence meaning: Electrophysiological evidence from an RSVP-with-flanker task

During natural reading, readers also take up some visual information from not-yet-fixated words to the right of the current fixation and it is well-established that this parafoveal preview facilitates the subsequent foveal processing of the word. However, the extraction and integration of word meaning from the parafoveal word and its possible influence on the semantic sentence context are controversial. In the current study, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm to test whether and how updates of sentential meaning that are based only on parafoveal information influence the subsequent foveal processing. Using Chinese sentences, the sentence congruency of parafoveal and foveal target words were orthogonally manipulated. In contrast to previous research, we also controlled for potentially confounding effects of parafoveal-to-foveal repetition priming (identity preview effects) on the N400. Crucially, we found that the classic effect of foveal congruency on the N400 component only appeared when the word in preview had been congruent with sentence meaning; in contrast, there was no N400 when the preview word had been incongruent. These results indicate that sentence meaning rapidly adapts to parafoveal preview, which already changes the context for the then fixated word. We also show that a correct parafoveal preview generally attenuates the N400 once a word is fixated, regardless of congruency. Taken together, our findings underline the highly generative and adaptive framework of language comprehension.