Lexical Representations Research Articles

The Lexico-Semantic Field of Post-Truth in Socio-Political Discourse

The purpose of the review article is to identify conceptualizations of the post-truth era in the English-language socio-political communication, based on the key vocabulary of a number of reviews and sources representing the component post-truth in the media. The object of the analysis is lexical representation of the component post-truth in the media. The subject matter of the analysis is conceptual interpretation of the post-truth component in such relevant phrases as post-truth era (or politics, world of politics, politicians, society, age, knowledge and power, condition, campaign, etc.) in various authorial sources. The Russian equivalents of truth in the item post-truth are reliability (достоверность), accuracy (точность), credibility (доверие); in the media the phrase post-truth comes to mean ‘to abandon or neglect the principles of objectivity and reliability’. It has been shown that in the USA and UK socio-political field expert assessments and interpretations of the claim itself are contradictory and are often marked with skepticism. It is clear, however, that it cannot be taken literally and that in science and education discourse, with the exception of history, it manifests itself differently: in close relation to scientific rational truths or facts, but not to daily factual truths described by H. Arendt. Also, specific sets of key words are used to describe manifestations of post-truth in the media and science. “Fake news” and election campaigns don’t seem to be the major features of the post-truther media. Instead, the concepts bullshit by H. Frankfurt and post-truth game by S. Fuller are competing for this role; however, they can’t be regarded as elaborated formal rhetorical schema either. Yu.Shatin alone made a pertinent and significant attempt to describe the new post-truther rhetoric. The specialist literature review shows that the media post-truth discourse is actually a manifestation of a deep crisis in the ‘canonical’ democracy, a reflection of its agonal state in the American-British vocabulary and narratives. The paper emphasizes that this kind of discourse has not only a home dimension, but also a foreign policy one and, consequently, internal and external addressing. Its reception in Russia is distorted due to remoteness of observers, which does not allow them to see how fakes and the new post-truth vocabulary are actually interpreted by the agents in the process of intra- or intercultural confrontation.

Linguistic-conceptual analysis of silence in the novel «Ivan» by V.O. Bogomolov

A review of the verbal and nonverbal representations of the concept of silence and its cognitive and propositional structure in the literary context is presented in this paper. The research is based on the novel "Ivan" (1957) by Vladimir O. Bogomolov and the aim is to decode the general linguistic layer underlying the literary concept of silence and to discover the author's intention in the linguistic means of objectifying the concept. Using the pragmatic expressive and aesthetic approach typical of a literary text, the author narrates the mysterious story of Ivan, a twelve-year-old boy found in the water near the riverbank and arrested on suspicion of espionage. By employing the metaphor of silence, the author focuses on describing the boy's private history, deprived of his childhood, which he reverently guards in his silence, devoting more attention to that than to the depiction of military episodes. The article deals with a variety of verbalizations of the conceptual content of silence, revealing the author's individual perceptions of it, allowing him to present the conceptosphere of silence as a field, the core of which is a generalized cognitive and propositional structure that includes the main lexical representations of the concept. Figurative meanings constitute the immediate periphery, while subjective-modal meanings are the further periphery. Such an analysis helps to reveal the functions of the concept in focus and, consequently, to interpret the individual-authorial image of the world and broaden the understanding of the narrative text itself.

On the Problem of Lexical Meaning Representation: A Semiotic Aspect

The paper provides comparative analysis of the seme stocks denoting good in modern English and French. The formalized analysis of lexical semantics integrating both mathematical and purely linguistic methods has been employed to conduct the research. The study shows that each word in question is internally structured and presents an organized hierarchy of lexical meanings. The seme stocks of the nouns denoting good in English and French present hierarchical systems, subdivided into subsets of polyfunctional, semes with the average degree of functionality, and monofunctional. The comparison of the seme stocks under study has shown that they differ in quantitative characteristics more than qualitative ones. The views on good are partially concurrent in the English and French language world pictures. Both cultures associate it with a good-doer, his/her inner world, social rank, acts of favour, courteous attitude to others, spiritual and material values that promote the highest happiness. The distinctive features reveal the socio-pragmatic character of the concept in English and socially conditioned – in French.

A usage-based account of paragogic /e/ in 20th century New Mexican Spanish

Abstract This study tests if New Mexican Spanish speakers’ productions of words that variably display paragogic /e/ (rincón ∼ rincon e ‘corner’) are predictable from their lexical frequency, utterance position, and the frequency with which these words occur in an utterance position that conditions paragoge. In the study, the variable that measures the frequency with which words occur in the conditioning context is referred to as the FCC. The analysis of 77 word types and 2,235 tokens produced by 24 speakers demonstrates that the likelihood that a speaker produces paragogic /e/ increases when words are produced at the end of an utterance. The study also finds novel evidence for the mediating effect of lexical frequency on the effect of the FCC variable: the influence of the frequency with which words are produced in utterance-final position on the likelihood of paragogic /e/ is strengthened as lexical frequency decreases. Together with research on reductive phonological processes (e.g., Forrest, John. 2017. The dynamic interaction between lexical and contextual frequency: A case study of (ING). Language Variation and Change 29(2). 129–156), it seems that the effect of the FCC variable is amplified by lexical frequencies that already harbor the phonological process. These novel findings invite scholars to reconsider the assumption that such effects require many exemplars to shape lexical representation and speech production.

Semantic processing during continuous speech production: an analysis from eye movements and EEG.

Speech production involves neurological planning and articulatory execution. How speakers prepare for articulation is a significant aspect of speech production research. Previous studies have focused on isolated words or short phrases to explore speech planning mechanisms linked to articulatory behaviors, including investigating the eye-voice span (EVS) during text reading. However, these experimental paradigms lack real-world speech process replication. Additionally, our understanding of the neurological dimension of speech planning remains limited. This study examines speech planning mechanisms during continuous speech production by analyzing behavioral (eye movement and speech) and neurophysiological (EEG) data within a continuous speech production task. The study specifically investigates the influence of semantic consistency on speech planning and the occurrence of "look ahead" behavior. The outcomes reveal the pivotal role of semantic coherence in facilitating fluent speech production. Speakers access lexical representations and phonological information before initiating speech, emphasizing the significance of semantic processing in speech planning. Behaviorally, the EVS decreases progressively during continuous reading of regular sentences, with a slight increase for non-regular sentences. Moreover, eye movement pattern analysis identifies two distinct speech production modes, highlighting the importance of semantic comprehension and prediction in higher-level lexical processing. Neurologically, the dual pathway model of speech production is supported, indicating a dorsal information flow and frontal lobe involvement. The brain network linked to semantic understanding exhibits a negative correlation with semantic coherence, with significant activation during semantic incoherence and suppression in regular sentences. The study's findings enhance comprehension of speech planning mechanisms and offer insights into the role of semantic coherence in continuous speech production. Furthermore, the research methodology establishes a valuable framework for future investigations in this domain.

Внешность человека через призму зооморфной метафоры в русском и китайском языках

The study aims to identify the universal and culture-specific parameters of imagery underlying Russian and Chinese zoomorphic metaphors that are involved in the creation of typical ideas about human appearance. The paper considers the lexical representation of the metaphorical understanding of human appearance through animalistic images in a comparative aspect. Within the framework of the basic metaphorical model “Animal appearance – human appearance”, the following frames were identified and analysed: “General assessment of appearance”, “Physique and height”, “Shape of body parts and organs”, “Physical condition” and “Age”. The study is novel in that it is the first to describe and systematise a segment of zoomorphic metaphorics formed on the basis of the source domain “External characteristics of an animal” using the material of the Russian and Chinese languages. As a result of the study, it has been found that the process of development of metaphorical meanings in the zoomorphisms characterising human appearance in the languages under consideration is generally based on similar prototypical ideas about the anthropomorphic properties of an animal. At the same time, an emotional and evaluative rethinking of their meanings occurs under the influence of national consciousness stereotypes, which results in the same zoonyms receiving unequal metaphorical development and evaluative interpretation within the framework of the linguistic cultures under consideration.

Дискурс смешанных единоборств как разновидность боевого спортивного и развлекательного дискурсов

The article dwells on the English language mixed martial arts (MMA) discourse which is interpreted as a variety of sports martial and interactive discourses. The main concepts that represent the entertaining aspect of MMA discourse are singled out. Among them are the following notions: “game”, “fun”, “entertainment”, “show”, “performance”, “pleasure”, etc. All of them have direct lexical representation and correspond with the relevant lexical units. At the same time, they can be indicated through synonymous words and phrases. All in all, MMA discourse has not been studied in detail and as such, it presents the linguist with an opportunity to consider it from different perspectives. In particular, from the standpoint of stylistics, one can determine some features of how different rhetorical devices are used in order to actualize the linguistic and pragmatic intentions of the speaker. In this regard, the article analyzes such a trope as the metaphor. Defining the metaphor as a trope shaping the world, the article differentiates several metaphorical models which are actualized in MMA discourse. It is found out that within the framework of martial sports communication, the military metaphorical model is most often used. This can be explained by conceptual and cognitive proximity of MMA and military discourses. It is not a coincidence that the notions like “battle”, “war”, “fight” are equally important for both communicative spheres. In the process of the analysis, zoomorphic, hunting, criminal, etc. metaphors have also been considered. The use of these metaphors corresponds to the fact that aggression is the key notion of MMA discourse but aggression, as it is known, is also inherent in nature and social relationships. This provides basis for metaphorical transfers and analogies.

Соотношение религиозной и военной лексики в армянском тексте: квантитативный подход

The study aims to identify hidden trends and patterns in the distribution of lexical units of two thematic classes – religious and military vocabulary – in the poetic texts of Russian literature dedicated to Armenia. These themes represent important parameters in the Armenian text, they are realised in most works about Armenia and reflect important aspects of its history and culture. The analysis involves poems created in the XIX-XXI centuries. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it examines the issue of the lexical representation of two figurative-thematic parameters within the framework of a quantitative approach, which makes it possible to objectively determine the nature of the coverage of military and religious themes at various stages of the formation and development of the Armenian text. The study of the relations of lexical units in the texts of the works allows the researcher to examine both general trends in the perception of this country in Russian literature and the individual features of the poets’ construction of Armenia’s artistic image. The coefficients of variation, the Busemann coefficient, the estimation of statistical significance (chi-square) and the Euclidean distance are used for quantitative analysis. The results of the analysis made it possible to establish the interrelationships of two important themes for the Armenian text and the dynamics of their changes over time. The strongest changes were observed between the second (pre-revolutionary) and the third (Soviet) periods. A comparative analysis of the works of 8 poets who wrote about Armenia made it possible to classify them and determine differences in the frequency of military and religious vocabulary.

Pseudoword spelling: insights into sublexical representations and lexical interactions

ABSTRACT In this work we introduce a new tool for measuring English spelling-sound consistency, the PG Toolkit, which we use to conduct detailed analyses of pseudoword spellings that provide new insights into the nature of sublexical and lexical representations. There are several key findings: first, sound-spelling consistency measured at two different “grain sizes”, phonographeme and onset/rime, each explained unique variance in pseudoword spelling. Second, lexical skill was more related to pseudoword accuracy at the onset/rime level than at the phonographeme level, and individuals who chose more consistent mappings to spell pseudowords tended to have better lexical skill. Finally, no unique contribution of consistency in the reading direction (“feedback”) was found after controlling for consistency in the spelling direction. Taken together, the results validate the various measures provided by the PG Toolkit and establish new evidence that supports an interpretation of sublexical processes as operations over hierarchically-structured representations.

Developing the “Language Profile Test” for Greek Students aged 11-15 Years.

This paper discusses the development of the “Language Profile Test,” a tool for assessing the underlying component skills of reading fluency and comprehension for students aged 11–15 in the context of Greek as L1. The test consists of five subtests: three reading subtests (isolated words, pseudowords, and text), spelling (single-word spelling), comprehension, and vocabulary (cloze test). The paper aims to present the development of the test, which was based on previous research on lexical representations, specialized corpora, word-frequency lists, and cloze tests as a measure of vocabulary assessment and comprehension, reading fluency, and spelling. Special emphasis has been given to the asymmetry in the transparency of Greek orthography between the feedforward (reading) and feedback (spelling) directions that were considered for the test creation. The “Language Profile Test” was tested on a sample of 346 students. Our findings revealed that students fell into three performance categories for each subtest: high, average, and low. This classification can give teachers more insights into students’ challenges regarding the underlying components of reading fluency and comprehension.

Cross-linguistic influence in the simultaneous bilingual child's lexicon: An eye-tracking and primed picture selection study

AbstractIn a between-language lexical priming study, we examined to what extent the two languages in a simultaneous bilingual child's lexicon interact, while taking individual differences in language exposure into account. Primary-school-aged Dutch–Greek bilinguals performed a primed picture selection task combined with eye-tracking. They matched pictures to auditorily presented Dutch target words preceded by Greek prime words. Their reaction times and eye movements were recorded. We tested for effects of between-language phonological priming, translation priming, and phonological priming through translation. Priming effects emerged in reaction times and eye movements in all three conditions, at different stages of processing, and unaffected by language exposure. These results extend previous findings for bilingual toddlers and bilingual adults. Processing similarities between these populations indicate that, across different stages of development, bilinguals have an integrated lexicon that is accessed in a language-nonselective way and is susceptible to interactions within and between different types of lexical representation.

Integrative views of representations and processes in morphology: an introduction

AbstractOne of the most enduring conceptualisations of the language architecture rests on a modular subdivision of work between lexical representations of stored items on the one hand, and dynamic processes, modelled as procedural rules working on such items, on the other hand. In morphology, network-based approaches have suggested an alternative “integrative” view of word representations and processes, where lexical representations consist of partially overlapping activation patterns spreading over several processing units. From this integrative perspective, the resulting network is both a lexicon and a word processor. We argue that the network-based view provides a stimulating research framework for several complementary levels of language inquiry (including theoretical, computational and neuro-psychological approaches) to be fruitfully integrated into a novel, comprehensive understanding of morphology. We discuss some implications of this view and delineate prospects of progress in this area.

Lexicon over Syntax: L2 Structural Processing of Chinese Separable Verbs

This study used online and offline tasks to examine whether proficient Korean learners of Chinese can analyze the syntactic structure of separable verbs in a native-like manner during real-time processing. Separable verbs are considered a unique grammar in Chinese, involving an interface of lexicon and syntax. Despite their lexical status, separable verbs occur in the form of syntactic phrases, with constituents modified by phrase-level rules in syntax. The present study demonstrates that despite native-like offline judgments on the syntactic analysis of separable verbs, the same grammatical information was not utilized in the L2 real-time processing. The results of the experiments indicate that the structural information of separable verbs was employed less in the L2 online processing due to overreliance on the lexical representations of these compounds. In contrast, it was shown that L1 speakers could access both syntactic and lexical information associated with separable verbs during real-time processing. It is suggested that when processing a construction involving an interface of syntax and lexicon, L2 speakers rely heavily on lexicon storage and underutilize structural information.

Inhibition of lexical representations after violated semantic predictions

There is a consensus that humans predict upcoming words during sentence processing. Prediction makes language comprehension fast and efficient if this anticipatory processing is accurate. However, often times, predictions are not correct. There is a lack of research investigating the cognitive operations at play when predictions are violated. According to several proposals, such violations lead to an inhibition of the predicted word to facilitate the integration of the unexpected word. Across four experiments, we have tested whether predicted words are indeed inhibited when listeners encounter unexpected stimuli, and whether the linguistic status (word or sound) and semantic congruency of a word (plausible or implausible) influences this purported inhibitory process. Using a Cross-Modal Lexical Priming paradigm, we showed that when predictions are violated, the activation of the predicted word is inhibited, resulting in increased reaction times. These inhibitory effects appear to be language specific, in that they are only observed after unexpected words, as opposed to non-linguistic sounds (tones). However, contrary to a long-held assumption in the field of sentence processing, inhibitory effects are not modulated by the semantic congruency of the unexpected word (i.e., whether the unexpected word is plausible within the sentence context). Indeed, in the current study, any linguistic information that violated listeners' semantic prediction resulted in the inhibition of the predicted word. Thus, the current findings are more compatible with a view in which unexpected linguistic events that are meaningful engage inhibitory processes with the specific purpose of inhibiting the predicted, though out-of-date, word.

Are lexical representations graded or discrete?

Most research on mental lexical representations (lemmas) assumes they are discrete and correspond in number to a word's number of distinct meanings. Thus, homophones (bat), whose meanings are unrelated, have separate lemmas for each meaning (one for baseball bat, another for flying bat), whereas polysemes (paper), whose senses are related, have shared lemmas (the same lemma for printer paper and term paper). However, most aspects of cognition are thought to be graded, not discrete; could lemmas be graded too? We conducted a preregistered picture-word interference study with pictures of words whose meanings ranged from unrelated (homophones) to very related (regular polysemes). Whereas semantic competitors to picture names slow picture naming, semantic competitors to non-depicted meanings of homophones facilitate naming, suggesting distinct lemmas for homophones' meanings. We predicted that competitors to non-depicted senses of polysemes would slow naming, as polysemes' depicted and non-depicted senses presumably share a lemma. Crucially, we aimed to examine the transition from facilitation to inhibition: two groupings (where competitors to non-depicted senses led to facilitation for words with two lemmas but inhibition for words with one lemma) would imply that lemmas are indeed discrete. But a transition that varies continuously by sense relatedness would imply that lemmas are graded. Unexpectedly, competitors to non-depicted senses of both homophones and polysemes facilitated naming. Although these results do not indicate whether lemmas are graded or discrete, they do inform a long-standing question on the nature of polysemes, supporting a multiple-lemma (vs. core-lemma) account.

Лексико-семантическая репрезентация концепта «память»

The article analyzes lexical and semantical representation of the concept «memory». The structure of this concept, consisting of the nexus, close and far periphery is analyzed in the article, as well as basic terms and term elements, verb phrases, representing this concept. The authors come to the conclusion that the terms designating processes of information storage, function both in medical discourse and in other domains, however, they undergo metaphorization.

ČLENKI: SLOVARSKI PRIKAZ NJIHOVE PRAGMATIČNE MOČI OZ. SOBESEDILNE VLOGE

The particle still remains a challenge for linguists given that its meaning is determined each time it is used in a specific text. From a propositionality aspect, particles are a kind of communication by an author, including their mood; from a functional point of view, particle use can be either primarily in modal (interpersonal) or connecting (text) roles. It was particularly this communicative-pragmatic perspective, which includes the speaker or author in the system of dictionary explanations, accompanied by definitions of particles as part of speech, that featured among the many other reflections on language that occupied Prof. T. Korošec. The article therefore describes how the presentation of particles and particle use is solved in the new explanatory dictionary of standard literary Slovenian. The most comprehensive and functional semantic-circumstantial evaluation of particles can be found in lexical representation. Keywords: particles, particle use/role, modality, text, dictionary

Interactions of lexical and conceptual representations: Evidence from EEG

We examined whether meanings automatically activate linguistic forms, and whether these forms affect semantic decisions. Participants were presented sequentially with pairs of pictures and decided whether the objects in the pictures were related. At no point did they name the pictures. The object names of the experimental stimuli were ambiguous either in orthography (homographs), phonology (homophones), or both (homonyms), or unambiguous. We show that the lexical characteristics of the name of the objects affect a semantic decision about real world relations, in an online measure (N400), in addition to offline behavioral measures. We show a dissociation between conceptual and lexical recognition, where an earlier component (N230), was affected by relatedness, but was not sensitive to the lexical characteristics. We interpret this as supporting the hypothesis that semantic recognition occurs before the automatic lexical activation of the object name, but that once linguistic representations are activated, they affect semantic integration.

Gender Equality in the Foreign Language Textbooks of Indonesian Junior High Schools

The objectives of this research were (1) to find out the gender representation of men and women in the English curriculum documents; and (2) to find out the distribution of men and women in the foreign curriculum documents. The sample consisted of three most common books used in junior high schools representing grade VII, VIII and IX. The data on gender equality were analyzed through content analysis approach. The results of the research showed that: (1) the lexical representation of men compared to women in the textbook were higher than women lexical related issues; (2) the distributions of men were also much wider compared to the distribution of women. The word ‘he’ is used much more frequently that the used of word ‘she’ in different context of reading, writing, listening and speaking

Thematic separation in light of sentence comprehension

AbstractThematic relations are traditionally analysed as projecting into derivations of sentence meanings from the lexical content of verbs. Thematic separation, a natural outgrowth of event semantics, proposes an alternative to this tradition: thematic relations are introduced into derivations by verb‐independent elements and are, therefore, grammatically separate from the lexical content of verbs. Although critical to theories of meaning and lexical representation, the evidence for thematic separation has not been reckoned with widely in linguistic theory, and the consequent implications for psycholinguistic theories have not received proper consideration. This is surprising as the representations permitted by thematic separation comport quite well with evidence for pre‐verbal thematic interpretation during real‐time sentence comprehension. Psycholinguistic theories, therefore, stand to benefit from engagement with separationist alternatives to thematic relations, and may, in turn, shed light on the representations semantic theory should provide. After briefly defending the utility of events in semantic representation, this paper motivates thematic separation with evidence from the cumulative interpretations and adnominal modal adverbs; two cases where a semantic operator intervenes between a thematic relation and a verbal predicate. Psycholinguistic results investigating pre‐verbal thematic interpretation then follow, where thematic separation is argued to furnish theories with coherent incremental representations without commitment to specific verbal predicates. The timecourse of verb predictability is also shown to intersect with ongoing debates on the granularity of thematic relations, suggesting further connections between semantic and psycholinguistic theory to be explored.