Informal Usage Research Articles

Reviving the past: urban strategies for renovating historic commercial streets in city centers

Historical city centers are one of the reasons that give cities their identity, memory, and sense of belonging. The commercial areas within these centers are particularly important, as they contribute significantly to the vitality of the urban environment. However, due to rapid developments in recent times, many of these historic commercial streets have lost their significance and fallen victim to informal usage, resulting in the erosion of their historic identity. Consequently, it becomes imperative to renovate these historic commercial streets to preserve the community’s identity. The proposed methodology aims to foster local culture by revitalizing these streets and emphasizing the principles and criteria of heritage preservation that not only preserve the community’s identity but also serve as vibrant and inclusive spaces for residents and visitors alike to fulfill the concept of vitality and livability. In this context, the focus is on protecting historical areas and ensuring their ongoing relevance and benefits, extending not only to street users but also to the entire community. To achieve this, a series of steps are suggested for the renovation of historic commercial streets within city centers, accompanied by a reliable set of criteria that preserve their visual identity rooted in history. To demonstrate the application of these criteria, a case study was conducted for the proposed renovation of Mahmud Al-Banna Street, a historic commercial street in downtown Tanta, Egypt. The objective of the study was to develop strategies that would effectively address various aspects, including urban, visual, environmental, and economic issues. As a result, the research concluded that the proposed regeneration strategies, if implemented, could enhance the vitality and livability of the historic commercial districts for other urban environments.

CORRECTING STUDENTS CORRECTLY: AVOIDING GRAMMAR MISCONCEPTIONS IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Grammatical accuracy is a justifiable goal in language teaching classrooms. But misconceptions about grammar can hinder this goal. The main misconception is that native speakers make grammar errors when using their own native language. They do not. The idea that native speakers can make grammar mistakes in their own languages is detrimental to foreign language classrooms because when language teachers attempt to find answers to grammar questions, they encounter conflicting information and are sometimes not able to give their students useful answers. The main cause of the misconception that native speakers can make grammar errors in their own language is the conflation of formal and informal style, a conflation of grammar and style, which leads to informal usage being incorrectly stigmatized as incorrect grammar. This paper will outline three major misconceptions arising from this fundamental confusion of style and grammar: 1) the idea that native speakers use words incorrectly; 2) native speakers using words that are said not to be real words; and 3) conflation of emphasis and redundancy. This issue will be addressed in the context of the English language. But the principles apply across languages. Knowledge of these misconceptions will allow language teachers to answer and advise students.

Bilingualism as a risk factor for false reports of stuttering in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K:2011).

Bilingualism has historically been claimed to be a risk factor for developmental stuttering. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011) ostensibly contains evidence to test that claim. We analyze data from monolingual and bilingual children in Kindergarten through fifth grade in the ECLS-K:2011. The prevalence, male/female ratio, and onset and recovery of reported stuttering in the ECLS are inconsistent with widely-accepted clinical reports of stuttering. We argue that the reported figures may be misleading. We discuss some factors that may inflate the reported prevalence, including a lack of awareness of the difference between stuttering vs. normal disfluencies, and the informal usage of the word "stuttering" on the part of teachers and parents to describe typical disfluencies.

Corpus Linguistics: Theory Vs Methodilogy

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the stages of formation and development of corpus linguistics. The purpose of the article is to analyze various scientific approaches to the scientific significance of this linguistic discipline and identify a set of concepts and criteria that form the foundation of this field. Corpus linguistics is one of the most promising and rapidly developing areas of language research. Linguistics of the XIX century set as its goal the study of language as such, and linguistics of the XXI century sees the relevance of the research not in identifying absolute linguistic categories and meanings but in the practical application of linguistic knowledge. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that the linguistic corpus contains a vast potential, which the scientific community has not fully comprehended since the text as the main object of corpus linguistics in various forms of its implementation is one of the central components systems of language and speech-thinking activity of a modern native speaker of any language. The content and volume of linguistic corpora of various kinds allow obtaining reliable information about the modern and real use of a particular term: the corpus becomes a tool for analyzing the functioning of this term both in the linguistic field of morphology, syntax, and vocabulary and in the theory and practice of translation, identifying the register of its formal or informal usage. The fundamental novelty of this studys results allows us to speak about the legitimacy of the creation of corpus dictionaries and corpus grammars of a new generation, developed and verified concerning a specific fixed corpus. Simultaneously, the author substantiates the proposition that the corpus nature of dictionaries and grammars increases their reliability and objectivity and avoids the subjectivity that is often characteristic of research-based solely on the intuition of a linguist. The corpus is a medium for obtaining new scientific data, the comprehension of which seems to be a priority for modern linguistic description and necessary in the scientific activity of a modern researcher. From our point of view, this article's relevance and novelty lie in the fact that the expediency of corpus research is an essential requirement of the time, associated with a new quality of linguistic reality and meeting the needs of modern society. The article examines the main stages of the formation of corpus linguistics as a scientific field, characterizes the scientific concepts and approaches inherent in each of these stages, provides an overview of the main conceptual provisions of corpus linguistics within the framework of domestic and foreign linguistics. The author analyzes in detail the polemics between representatives of various scientific directions and reveals the advantages of one or another approach, traces the similarities and differences between approaches to the study of corpora at various historical stages of their formation. The review's focus is the role and place of corpus studies of language in modern linguistics, comparison of the pro and contra arguments of the use of corpus technologies in linguistic description. Considerable attention is paid to the main criteria for the classification of corpora, a brief overview of the most famous corpora in history is offered, and the prospects for their use in various fields of modern language science are discussed.

Sarcasm Discernment on Social Media Platform

Past studies in Sarcasm Detection mostly make use of Twitter datasets collected using hashtag-based supervision but such datasets are noisy in terms of labels and language. To overcome the limitations related to noise in Twitter datasets, this News Headlines dataset for Sarcasm Detection is collected from two news website. TheOnion aims at producing sarcastic versions of current events and we collected all the headlines from News in Brief and News in Photos categories (which are sarcastic). We collect real (and non-sarcastic) news headlines from Huff Post. Sarcasm Detection on social media platform. The dataset is collected from two news websites, theonion.com and huffingtonpost.com. Since news headlines are written by professionals in a formal manner, there are no spelling mistakes and informal usage. This reduces the sparsity and also increases the chance of finding pre-trained embeddings. Furthermore, since the sole purpose of TheOnion is to publish sarcastic news, we get high-quality labels with much less noise as compared to Twitter datasets. Unlike tweets that reply to other tweets, the news headlines obtained are self-contained.

O padrão frasal [trem + adjetivo] sob a perspectiva da gramática de construções

Este artigo examina o padrão frasal [trem + adjetivo], em 1000 ocorrências de amostras do Twitter, objetivando averiguar, sob a ótica da Gramática de Construções e do Modelo de Língua Baseado no Uso e da Gramaticalização, se este padrão se trata de uma construção do português brasileiro, aplicável não só a objetos, mas também a pessoas. Foram encontradas evidências de que, no uso informal, o padrão frasal [trem + adjetivo] faz referência a pessoas em contextos em que não há depreciação do referente, como costuma ocorrer com o nome trem isoladamente, o que atesta a hipótese de que se trata de uma construção do português brasileiro.

Foreign Influences on English Recipes since 1901: An Analysis of the Culinary Impact of French, Spanish and German on the English Language in the 20th and 21st Centuries with a Specific Focus on Informal Usage

Foreign Influences on English Recipes since 1901: An Analysis of the Culinary Impact of French, Spanish and German on the English Language in the 20th and 21st Centuries with a Specific Focus on Informal Usage

Formal and informal scenario-planning in strategic decision-making: an assessment of corporate reasoning

PurposeThe theoretical value of scenario-planning as a strategic tool is well recognized in literature. The purpose of this study is to explore the corporate reasoning of formal and informal usage (or non-usage) of scenario-planning in strategic decision-making.Design/methodology/approachAn overview of the relevant literature on scenario-planning as a strategic decision-making tool in the context of complexity and uncertainty is presented, in combination with 15 case studies on executives in the South African context.FindingsThe findings are based on a study in the emerging market context. From the case studies reported, it is evident that industry, organizational and leadership-related factors influence the effective use or non-use of scenario-planning.Research limitations/implicationsEmpirical findings are reported, contributing to an assessment framework to revisit the usage of formal and informal scenario-planning in strategic decision-making. Further research to determine which supportive tools and technologies should be used for scenario-planning across multiple contexts is needed.Practical implicationsThe study expands upon previous insights into the formal and informal usage (or non-usage) of scenario-planning in strategic decision-making based on an emerging market context.Originality/valueThis study contributes to understanding the value of scenario-planning in complex contexts that require strategic adaptability and offers a hands-on toolkit and shortlist of assessment criteria to conceptualize the organizational reasoning and scholarly framing of formal, informal or non-scenario-planning in strategic decision-making.

Problematising the Historic Environment Record: Comments on Persistent Issues in England and Sweden

ABSTRACTAs a mainstay of local and national cultural heritage management, historic environment records play an effective role in the dissemination of data, particularly in the modern development control process. However, despite their functionality and sustained professional use, these inventories are not unproblematic, particularly in regards to informal usage. Based on the author’s professional experience this article will discuss some of the issues which convolute the delivery of historic environment data. These issues can be grouped thematically beneath the banners of fragmentation, interoperability, and accessibility. Underpinning these three topics is the relationship between historic environment records as institutions and digitality as both a cognitive process and a distribution mechanism. From a critical perspective, the extent to which these issues reoccur and inhibit the flow of data will be highlighted by examining the historic environment practice in England and Sweden in the hope that these insights can inform the contemporary approach.

SINONIM NOMINA BAHASA MELAYU MANADO

This research focuses on the problems of synonymy of the nouns in Malay Manado language. The objectives of the research are to describe the distinctive features among synonymous nouns in Malay Manado language. This research is descriptive research, of the type of the text analysis (content analysis), using the primary data (written) taken from Kamus Bahasa Malay Manado and the secondary data from the informants. The data were collected using the documentary method, listen and note taking method, and elicitation method. The analysis process was done using the orthographic similarity method because the standards are in the written form. Then, the similarity technique used was connect and compare equate technique (teknik hubung banding menyamakan (HBS)); and connect and compare distinguish technique (teknik hubung banding membedakan (HBB)). The analyses revealed the following: most Malay Manado nouns have near synonyms; there are general semantic features among the synonymous pairs of nouns; the pairs of the synonymous nouns are near synonyms because there are some distinguishing features (there are differences in aesthetic sense among the speakers, there are differences in the medium of sentences which use synonymous nouns, there are uncommon usage of nouns considered synonymous, and there are influences of dialects in the use of synonymous nouns). The use of synonymous nouns in the communication (both in spoken and written texts, both formal and informal usage), requires the accuracy on the part of the speakers due to the fact that there are distinguishing features in each of the synonymous pairs. This would avoid the obscurity and misunderstanding in receiving the information.Keywords: synonymous nouns, near synonym, distinguishing components of meaning, connect and compare equate technique, connect and compare distinguish technique

Stroke rehabilitation familiar close: developing integrated care for elderly with CVA [1

Introduction: CVA is one of the most expensive diseases in the Netherlands (2,5% of the total health cost [2]). Most patients are older and suffer chronic malfunctions despite intensive revalidation. Patients, professionals, organizations and insurance companies are not content with the current situation. Patients tend to stay too long, unnecessary or unwanted (patients) in hospitals and revalidation units. Aim of the research: The purpose of this research was to explore what kind of partnership and health services could lead to an effective and efficient offering of integrated rehabilitation care for (older) stroke patients in the region of Deventer (NL). Method of research: The research is descriptive and multiple data sources where used. The relevant literature was collected by literature studies on the important indicators for a successful partnership, quality demand, the influence of governance and legislation within the stroke rehabilitation. Opinions, experience and facts of partners, insurance companies, clients and professionals in the rehabilitant care were researched through document analysis, semi structured interviews and a member check. For the design of the new care process and cooperation in the integrated chain care for CVA patients the Development Model for Integrated Care [3][4] is applied. Results: An effective alternative partnership can be achieved by optimizing the complete chain of stroke care by system integration. In this way existing knowledge and cooperation relationships are kept intact by: - Improving innovation strength, by exchanging and sharing of knowledge and expertise by optimizing the complete chain of stroke care. - Cooperation of the hospital specialists, rehabilitation specialists and geriatric specialist within the geriatrics revalidation unit and expert teams to support care at home. - Participation in the development of the new care treatment “stroke rehabilitation familiar close” (specialized homecare). For elderly people with geriatric CVA care on demand, treatment at home, integrating and support of informal care contributes to their experience of quality of life. Recommendations: The new care treatment “stroke rehabilitation familiar close” will lead to an efficient and effective offering of integral rehabilitation to elderly chronic stroke patients at their familiar home by: - Hospital replaced care in the specialized nursing home (increasing the throughput). - A shortening of the stay in the nursing home by intensive rehabilitation treatment in cooperation with specialists from hospital and revalidation unit. - Home rehabilitation by cooperation of informal care, general practitioners, physiotherapists, expert teams (geriatric, rehabilitation, physician) and usage of eHealth technology. This will partly replace the existing medical revalidation care in nursing homes and improve the wellbeing in general of the treated patients.

Sub-series and sub-epochs are informal units and should continue to be omitted from the International Chronostratigraphic Chart

In June 2016 the Paleogene, Neogene, and Quaternary subcommissions (ISPS, SNS, SQS) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) voted on whether to formalize sub-series and their geochronologic equiva-lents, sub-epochs. The vote required a 60 percent major-ity for the proposal to be forwarded to the ICS for further consideration. That majority was not achieved, albeit by a narrow margin, hence sub-series and sub-epochs are currently to be regarded as informal, and if used should carry a lower case modifier, as in lower Miocene and early Pleistocene. To accompany the vote, those who favoured continuation of informal usage were asked to prepare a short summary of the main arguments in support of their viewpoint, as were the proponents of the formalization case. Although this statement was not originally intended for publication, it is reproduced here at the request of the Former Chair of the ICS, so as to put it on record.

Трансформация института президентства в Италии (1978–2015)

The article reviews key aspects of the Italian presidents' activity under A. Pertini, F. Kossiga, O.L. Scalfaro, C.A. Ciampi and G. Napolitano. Special attention is paid to the comparative analysis of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi's and Giorgio Napolitano's presidency results, as well as of external factors correlating with these politicians' ratings, considering their significant influence on the head of state institute transformation during the period of their tenures. The aim of the paper is to review the examples of initiatives taken by C.A. Ciampi and G. Napolitano, which is necessary for highlighting new trends of the presidency development in Italy. Systematization and sequencing of popular approaches in the research allow to sort out distinctive characteristics of relations among three political actors: the head of state, political parties and the government. The author conducts comparative analysis of the two presidents' tenures results. The study of C.A. Ciampi's and G. Napolitano's ratings is carried out to determine a decision-making pattern. In the article, the examples of an informal instruments usage are considered, and their effectiveness is evaluated. In this respect, it is possible to review the transformation of the role of a president as an actor responsible for the country's political system stability. Relations between the prime-minister and the head of state are the subject for a separate consideration. In this article, the system analysis method together with other universal scientific approaches (comparative historical, institutional and structural-functional) are used. The contribution of this research consists of defining the role of informal instruments in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, in Russian bibliography, only limited attention is paid to domestic policy issues of the Second Italian Republic. However, the research conducted by the author should elucidate the specificity of presidency and its relations with other public institutes. This paper is addressed to scientists devoting themselves to the South Europe political research, particularly Italy, as well as to anyone interested in the Italian domestic policy issues. Additionally, it may be used in further comparative politics investigations, for the analysis of presidential activities in other European states.

Marginal Linguistic Systems (Animal Calls, Child-Directed Language) and Political Folklore in Lebanon. Two Case Studies

This paper takes a sociolinguistic approach to the analysis of the informal usage of two words common in modern Lebanese political discourse; ħarf at-tanbīh (the warning interjection) “hā,” used in Arabic inter alia in calls to animals, and the hypocoristic forename “Roro,” borrowed from the French. The paper also demonstrates how these lexical characteristics of the Lebanese dialect reveal similarities to what Ferguson termed marginal systems within languages. The paper is supplemented by graphical representations and other extra-linguistic data.

From Slang to Acceptability: Style-Shifting Variation in English Language Usage by Students of CRUTECH, Calabar, Nigeria

This paper focuses on informal language usage by students of Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria. This includes the use of slang words from primarily the substrate and superstrate language of the mother tongue (MT) and Nigerian Pidgin (NP) respectively. Participant observation was used for this work including lectures and other forums. Focus is on the speech discourse of students. The NP in particular is a contact language which has grown in stature due to factors of relevance as a common language in a pluralistic society like the Cross River State in particular, and Nigeria in general. Its use has also expanded due to urbanization. The MT has been observed to be influential through direct translation of certain expressions. Findings have shown that the informal use of language by the students has inadvertently affected their competence in standard and formal language use.

Formal subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch: a Discussion Paper by a Working Group of INTIMATE (Integration of ice‐core, marine and terrestrial records) and the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (International Commission on Stratigraphy)

AbstractThis discussion paper, by a Working Group of INTIMATE (Integration of ice‐core, marine and terrestrial records) and the Subcommision on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), considers the prospects for a formal subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch. Although previous attempts to subdivide the Holocene have proved inconclusive, recent developments in Quaternary stratigraphy, notably the definition of the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary and the emergence of formal subdivisions of the Pleistocene Series/Epoch, mean that it may be timely to revisit this matter. The Quaternary literature reveals a widespread but variable informal usage of a tripartite division of the Holocene (‘early’, ‘middle’ or ‘mid’, and ‘late’), and we argue that this de facto subdivision should now be formalized to ensure consistency in stratigraphic terminology. We propose an Early–Middle Holocene Boundary at 8200 a BP and a Middle–Late Holocene Boundary at 4200 a BP, each of which is linked to a Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). Should the proposal find a broad measure of support from the Quaternary community, a submission will be made to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), via the SQS and the ICS, for formal ratification of this subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

MARGINAL LINGUISTIC SYSTEMS (ANIMAL CALLS, CHILD-DIRECTED LANGUAGE) AND POLITICAL FOLKLORE IN LEBANON: TWO CASE STUDIES

This paper takes a sociolinguistic approach to the analysis of the informal usage of two words common in modern Lebanese political discourse; ħarf at-tanbīh (the warning interjection) “hā,” used in Arabic inter alia in calls to animals, and the hypocoristic forename “Roro,” borrowed from the French. The paper also demonstrates how these lexical characteristics of the Lebanese dialect reveal similarities to what Ferguson termed marginal systems within languages. The paper is supplemented by graphical representations and other extra-linguistic data.

Is optimism optimal? Functional causes of apparent behavioural biases

We review the use of the terms 'optimism' and 'pessimism' to characterize particular types of behaviour in non-human animals. Animals can certainly behave as though they are optimistic or pessimistic with respect to specific motivations, as documented by an extensive range of examples in the literature. However, in surveying such examples we find that these terms are often poorly defined and are liable to lead to confusion. Furthermore, when considering behaviour within the framework of optimal decision theory using appropriate currencies, it is often misleading to describe animals as optimistic or pessimistic. There are two common misunderstandings. First, some apparent cases of biased behaviour result from misidentifying the currencies and pay-offs the animals should be maximising. Second, actions that do not maximise short-term pay-offs have sometimes been described as optimistic or pessimistic when in fact they are optimal in the long term; we show how such situations can be understood from the perspective of bandit models. Rather than describing suboptimal, unrealistic behaviour, the terms optimism and pessimism are better restricted to informal usage. Our review highlights the importance of choosing the relevant currency when attempting to predict the action of natural selection.

Is mobile learning a resource in higher education? Data evidence from an empirical research in Ticino (Switzerland)

Nowadays mobile devices are highly present and well integrated in students’ everyday life. People use them for communication, information retrieval and exchange, entertainment, and even for business. But what can be said about learning? This article tries to figure out the importance of mobile devices for students in their learning experience: on one side by giving an insight into current researches in the field of mobile learning, and on the other side by providing data evidence collected in two higher education institutions of Ticino in Switzerland. By analyzing questions such as, which mobile devices do students use for learning, what for, how do they use them and how keen they are to adopt their mobile tools to support their formal learning activities at university. We also explore whether a transfer from informal usage of mobile devices in students’ everyday life to more formal applications in learning processes has taken place. So far, this does not seem to be the case. Most students use mobile devices to communicate with peers for learning-related purposes and very little to directly learn through them.

Editorial for AI planning and scheduling

Planning and scheduling have an interesting relationship. In informal usage, planning and scheduling are frequently treated almost interchangeably. In contrast, formally, their refined and tightly specified descriptions appear quite different: planning is a PSPACE-hard problem, while scheduling is an archetypal NP-hard problem. The research communities that examine these problems seem, to a large extent, to share this dichotomy, with surprisingly distinct research communities having developed around the two problems. Despite this division, there have been many individuals in both communities who have recognised the importance and relevance of the relationships between the two problems. The apparent simplicity of the separation offered by the complexity classes of the different problems belies the difficulty of giving a clean intuition to the differences between planning and scheduling—a difficulty which seems to return to the much less sharply drawn boundaries of the informal usage of the terms. The common characterisation is that planning is the problem of deciding what actions should be performed to solve a problem, while scheduling is about deciding when to execute them and with what resources. For example, this is the characterisation used by Garrido et al. in their paper in this issue. Although this characterisation is convenient, it is a simplification: which action to use to solve a problem frequently depends on how resources are to be allocated, so that plans depend on scheduling choices, while equally, what resources are available to support the scheduling decisions depend on which actions are selected to solve a problem. Thus, the choices made in planning and scheduling are interlocked and interdependent.