Discursive Information Research Articles

Semantic units: organizing knowledge graphs into semantically meaningful units of representation

BackgroundIn today’s landscape of data management, the importance of knowledge graphs and ontologies is escalating as critical mechanisms aligned with the FAIR Guiding Principles—ensuring data and metadata are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. We discuss three challenges that may hinder the effective exploitation of the full potential of FAIR knowledge graphs.ResultsWe introduce “semantic units” as a conceptual solution, although currently exemplified only in a limited prototype. Semantic units structure a knowledge graph into identifiable and semantically meaningful subgraphs by adding another layer of triples on top of the conventional data layer. Semantic units and their subgraphs are represented by their own resource that instantiates a corresponding semantic unit class. We distinguish statement and compound units as basic categories of semantic units. A statement unit is the smallest, independent proposition that is semantically meaningful for a human reader. Depending on the relation of its underlying proposition, it consists of one or more triples. Organizing a knowledge graph into statement units results in a partition of the graph, with each triple belonging to exactly one statement unit. A compound unit, on the other hand, is a semantically meaningful collection of statement and compound units that form larger subgraphs. Some semantic units organize the graph into different levels of representational granularity, others orthogonally into different types of granularity trees or different frames of reference, structuring and organizing the knowledge graph into partially overlapping, partially enclosed subgraphs, each of which can be referenced by its own resource.ConclusionsSemantic units, applicable in RDF/OWL and labeled property graphs, offer support for making statements about statements and facilitate graph-alignment, subgraph-matching, knowledge graph profiling, and for management of access restrictions to sensitive data. Additionally, we argue that organizing the graph into semantic units promotes the differentiation of ontological and discursive information, and that it also supports the differentiation of multiple frames of reference within the graph.

Automatic Corporeal Gesture in a Flash: A performative theory of process

My artistic practice and research explore automatic processes used throughout time that develop conceptual and physical aptitude in the performer; to transcend the status quo and experience alternative versions of embodied reality. In homage to Elvis Presley and the spirit of Rock and Roll, I define automatism as a process formulated as Automatic Corporeal Gesture in a Flash (ACG ) where I work to make art without fear from an inspirational sensation in my body. ACG is inspired, authentic action that I do in a creative act through some kind of plan or set of parameters to get a material result; it is automatic action through diffraction in an apparatus, to produce material with qualitative data that can be considered for its meaning after the performance. Like having a conversation with someone, this approach helps me to understand things as they are, learning about their qualities. In ACG I combine my vibration with the vibration of what inspires me. It is a relational act of co-agential meaning making. It is a performance process that uses perception and action intrepidly while in an apparatus to maintain corporeal balance, integrity and momentum during an event. Practising ACG changes qualities in material, which changes the way meaning is made from it. These changes are always particular to each event. Our senses are physical and extra-sensory. My imagination contains qualitative, empirical data. I am using my corporeal senses to perceive my imagination’s inspiration, as I would also use my other senses and their correlating extra-sensory capabilities to perceive the material world around me. The meditative groove of my ACG is a trance dance. Trance is maintaining the entrainment of one’s body to a frequency which focuses perceptive consciousness. How a piece is created carries discursive information. Qualities of the movement of the body and the marks it makes speaks about our corporeal condition as well as speaking of its perception of qualities through/of itself and its local and extra-local environments. I use ACG to learn about the qualities that experience has had in my body, and this knowledge increases my ability to be more responsible and accountable as a receiver and transmitter of discourse, which is the function of my relationality. ACG helps me to access my full body, and it allows me to coordinate and integrate all my other senses and their correlating extra aspects into my creative action. ACG is what keeps sparking the dynamic process in which I realize my creative potential, and where I can expand my abilities to perceive more of the qualities of life.

Itinerários de reconstrução de corpos de mulheres agredidas com agentes químicos em Bogotá, Colômbia

Abstract This article explores experiences of care-seeking for the physical, social and psychological reconstruction of women attacked with chemical agents in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Based on an ethnographic design, observational and discursive information was collected in formal and nonformal therapeutic settings, and in-depth interviews were conducted with survivors and health professionals. The data was analyzed from a narrative-critical approach. The findings show divergent interpretations within health care systems on what constitutes the reconstruction of a body attacked with chemical agents in a context marked by profound inequalities in access to health.

Are 9th Grade Students Ready to Engage in the Theoretical Discursive Process in Geometry?

This study was conducted to examine whether newly enrolled 9th grade students were ready to directly engage in the theoretical discursive process from the perspective of Duval’s Cognitive Model. The sample of the study was comprised of 51 newly-enrolled 9thgrade students between the ages of 14 and 15, who had not received any prior geometry instruction. These 51 students were posed two open-ended questions that would enable them to make a transition between perceptual and discursive apprehension. The qualitative data obtained from the open-ended questions were classified into three categories, and clinical interviews were held with three students from each category. According to the findings obtained from the study, many of the students could not display the necessary behaviors for theoretical discursive process. Students were mostly unsuccessful in converting discursive information into perceptual information, in writing discursive information based on perceptual information, and making inferences based on discursive information. These findings indicate that recent graduates of secondary school are not ready enough to directly engage in theoretical discursive process and, thus, they could experience difficulties in such high order skills as providing proof requiring the theoretical discursive process.

“I’ll just make sure we’re all on the same page”: Talking fictional worlds into being

This poster will present emerging results from a study of material and discursive information practices in tabletop roleplaying games. The focus will be on the ways in which players collaboratively construct and interact with the fictional worlds of play. A “big and small story” approach, influenced by the ethnomethodological methods of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, will be used to analyze the players’ talk as they intersubjectively create and sustain a fictional space of play.

Stakeholders’ Participation in Sustainable Tourism Planning for a Rural Region: Extremadura Case Study (Spain)

The objective of this research is to obtain and analyze discursive information on the problems and solutions of the tourism sector in an eminently rural region, such as Extremadura, based on the opinions of stakeholders, in order to incorporate them into the evaluation and tourism planning of the region. More specifically, on the situation of the sector, perceptions on profitability and return on investment, the problem of overnight stays, and coordination between tourism agents and training demands, in order to make a sustainable tourism sector in a rural region. The research starts from the following premise: for tourism to be sustainable, stakeholders must participate in the strategic decision-making process. This paper aims, on the one hand, to clarify sufficiently the state of the art regarding the validity of focus groups and their analysis as a research methodology, explaining how to address the main challenges implied by this technique by reviewing a selection of research works that we consider relevant in this field. On the other hand, an analysis of the tourism sector in Extremadura is carried out based on these group dynamics. The main result, after analyzing the discourse of six focus groups, is that the different opinions of their members reveal, despite everything, that the training of human capital in the tourism sector in rural environments is a pending issue.

Usage patterns in the development of Hebrew grammatical subjects

The grammatical subject is a multi-faceted linguistic notion embedded in morphology, syntax and discourse-pragmatics. In Hebrew, grammatical subjects are associated with two distinct word orders, differing along grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic axes. The study examines the growth and proliferation of Hebrew grammatical subjects in the spontaneous speech of preschool children in a Usage-Based perspective, taking into account inflectional, syntactic and semantic properties of the clause side by side with discursive information. The corpus used for this study consisted of the recordings of 54 children in six age groups from two to eight years, engaged in triadic peer talk. Subject, predicate morphology and word order were coded, and utterances were coded according to their conversational roles. Using cluster analysis, each age group was found to have a characteristic usage pattern of subjects with associated syntactic, semantic and discursive properties, underscoring the acquisition and development of grammatical subjects in Hebrew. The usage patterns emerging from the current corpus are taken as a manifestation of the Discourse Profile Constructions notion: probabilistic form-function correlations consisting of multiple sources of formal and functional information, pairing a usage pattern of clauses with a unified construal and discourse function. Three Discourse Profile Constructions emerged from the data: joint action planning, conversational narrative, and conversational presentation. Each of these was associated with a different patterning of lexical or pronominal subjects coupled with predicates with specific temporal features and different word order. These findings suggest that gaining command of the subject category is linked to communicative functions in development.

PHRASEOLOGICAL UNIT AS A COMPENDIOUS MYTH AGENT: TRANSLATION DIFFICULTIES

The current research features phraseological units and the role of myth in the formation of fixed combinations. By positioning phraseology as a “compendious” myth, the author points out that it is extremely difficult to interpret these speech units because of the discursive information hidden in their semantics. It is noted that the specificity of phraseological units is determined not by formal, but by content characteristics. The article describes the most effective ways of translation of phraseological units. The research owes its topicality to the fact that phraseological units are common in different genres, which leads to problem of their adequate translation. The novelty of the article is in the approach to the phraseological interpretation of units, which are considered in this paper as agents of a “compendious” myth. The theoretical significance and practical value are based on the fact that such an interpretation promotes a deeper understanding and, therefore, an adequate translation of phraseological units into another language. The research methods are: method of phraseological identification, comparison, analysis, experiment.

L1 French learning of L2 Spanish past tenses: L1 transfer versus aspect and interface issues

This paper examines the process of acquiring L2s that are closely related to the L1 through data on how adult French speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of past tenses in this L2. We consider the role of transfer and simplification in acquiring mental representations of the L2 grammar, specifically in the area of tense and aspect, and how learners deal with integrating grammatically encoded, lexical and discursive information, including mismatching feature combinations leading to particular inferential effects on interpretation. Data is presented on the Spanish past tenses (simple and compound past, pluperfect, imperfect and progressive forms) from two tasks, an oral production filmretell and a multiple-choice interpretation task, completed by learners at A2, B1, B2 and C1 CEFR levels (N = 20-24 per level). L1 influence is progressively attenuated as proficiency increases. Difficulties were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but related also to grammar-discourse interface issues when integrating linguistic and pragmatic information in the interpretation process. This has clear implications for the teaching of closely related languages: instruction should not only focus on crosslinguistic contrasts, but also prioritize uses requiring complex interface integration, which are harder to process.

Contribution of prosodic and paralinguistic cues to the translation of evidentiary audio recordings

This study examines accuracy in the translation and transcription of evidentiary audio recordings in the Australian context. Verbatim translation requested by crime agencies and courts is investigated and translation and transcription methods are suggested with reference to conversation analysis. The purpose of evidentiary audio recordings dictates a faithful translation; however, the prevalent ‘written to be read’ translation and transcription styles used by crime agencies can jeopardise the output, given the problems created in reflecting the speakers’ intentions, moods, power and attitudes. The credibility of transcripts when tendered in evidence in court hinges on the quality of the translation. In addition to the stylistic accuracy of the translation of speakers’ interactions, the present paper argues that important discursive information exhibited in the suprasegmental features in conversation should be documented on transcripts, including prosodic and paralinguistic elements, such as intonation, timing of responses and volume. When strategically used, these features can help in placing the last pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and producing ‘audible’, ‘written to be read as if spoken’ texts.

Grammar and context in Functional Discourse Grammar

This article presents a proposal for the organization of the Contextual Component in Functional Discourse Grammar. A guiding principle in this proposal is that, given the fact that Functional Discourse Grammar is a theory of grammar, the Contextual Component should provide the information that is necessary for a proper functioning of the grammar rather than aim at an exhaustive specification of all the information that plays a role in interpreting linguistic expressions. The Contextual Component contains situational and discursive information and is organized in different strata that correspond to the interpersonal, representational, morphosyntactic, and phonological levels of representation within the grammar. The contextual representations make use of the same formalizations as the corresponding linguistic representations, thus allowing for direct exchange of information between the Grammatical and the Contextual Components. Thus exchange of information is handled by an interface called thecontextualizer. The article illustrates the functioning of this model by analyzing the role of contextual information with respect to three grammatical phenomena in three different languages: Unexpressed arguments in Turkish, Englishtoo, and answers to yes/no questions in European Portuguese.

Quality of Employment: Strategies and Interpretations of Spanish Employers and Trade Unions

This article examines the different discourses of trade unions and employers on quality of employment in Spain. The study takes a qualitative approach, using discussion groups to obtain discursive information about the meanings of quality, assessments and the different strategies employed by social agents. Trade unions use the ‘quality discourse’ as a reason to examine and reconstruct their current role, extending their main concerns and paradigms from those which defend workers’ interests to those which consolidate their criticism of a reprehensible Spanish employer class. Employers’ discourse, on the other hand, is aimed at highlighting the market’s productive purpose, and sustaining their privileged position in labour management, whilst disassociating and distancing themselves from the employment decisions they make.

Sobre la estructura discursiva de la oración y su proyección sintáctica: el caso de los adverbios oracionales y otros constituyentes de la periferia oracional

En este trabajo voy a investigar la relación que existe entre las categorías funcionales extendidas de la oración vinculadas con la estructura discursiva (Speas y Tenny, 2003) y ciertos constituyentes con alcance oracional y cuya interpretación remite necesariamente a aspectos discursivos. Los constituyentes de los que me ocuparé van a ser adverbios de dominio o punto de vista, adverbios orientados al hablante modificadores de la manera del decir y la conjunción que con valor enunciativo, capaz de introducir el discurso. Estos tres elementos, aparentemente tan dispares, tienen en común su ubicación en el margen izquierdo de la oración y la presencia en su interpretación de dos factores: los relacionados con las propiedades lingüísticas de las unidades léxicas y los que remiten a la información extralingüística y a los conocimientos compartidos por los hablantes.

SETTING THE STANDARD: USAGE LABELS IN ADVANCED MONOLINGUAL LEARNERS' DICTIONARIES OF GERMAN

ABSTRACTUsing lexical items from Martin Durrell's classification of register variation as a sample, the study investigates how the current advanced monolingual learners' dictionaries of German as an additional language treat such variation and indicate to their users what they consider to be standard usage: how do they set the standard? Abbreviated usage labels as conventionally found in dictionaries for first‐language users are the primary indications, and the dictionaries seldom go beyond such labels. German Standard German is the norm. At its core are unmarked or unlabelled items, while its range extends to include less formal items from everyday use, especially spoken, which are typically labelled umg. or gespr., and more formal items, more particularly found in written usage, which are labelled geh. or geschr. Non‐standard items, if entered as headwords, may be labelled derb or vulgär, veraltet or lit. No one dictionary stands out from the others as setting the standard in terms of treating register variation, and it must be questioned whether learners of German as an additional language would not be better served by more detailed, discursive information on different contexts of use and stylistic levels.

Ethnocultural Variations in Mental Illness Discourse: Some Implications for Building Therapeutic Alliances

Ethnocultural Variations in Mental Illness Discourse: Some Implications for Building Therapeutic Alliances

Correção de textos e concepções de língua e variação: relações nem sempre aparentes

Os objetivos deste trabalho são identificar conceitos de língua e de variação lingüística subjacentes à correção de textos escolares realizada por professores de língua materna e explicitar a relação entre esses conceitos e a correção/avaliação feita. Para isso, foram analisadas duas redações corrigidas e avaliadas por um grupo de professores em formação continuada, tendo-lhe sido solicitada a justificativa para a nota a elas atribuída. A análise foi baseada em princípios teóricos relativos à formação de professor, correção/avaliação e concepções de linguagem. Os resultados indicam que os professores corrigem, sobretudo, seguindo normas do código, embora ao justificarem suas notas lancem mão de informações discursivo-textuais, demonstrando terem se apropriado de um discurso teórico moderno sobreposto a práticas tradicionais.