Linguistic Properties Research Articles

Clickbait detection in Hebrew

Abstract The prevalence of sensationalized headlines and deceptive narratives in online content has prompted the need for effective clickbait detection methods. This study delves into the nuances of clickbait in Hebrew, scrutinizing diverse features such as linguistic and structural features, and exploring various types of clickbait in Hebrew, a language that has received relatively limited attention in this context. Utilizing a range of machine learning models, this research aims to identify linguistic features that are instrumental in accurately classifying Hebrew headlines as either clickbait or non-clickbait. The findings underscore the critical role of linguistic attributes in enhancing the performance of the classification model. Notably, the employment of a machine learning model resulted in an impressive accuracy of 0.87 in clickbait detection. Moving forward, our research plan encompasses dataset expansion through the best machine learning model assisted labelling, with the objective of optimizing deep learning models for even more robust outcomes. This study not only advances clickbait detection in the realm of Hebrew but also emphasizes the fundamental importance of linguistic features in the accurate classification of clickbait.

Carport and carpet: Effects of compound and pseudocompound word structures on typing.

Typing slows at the middle of the word. The exact nature of the slowdown is still disputed. Research on attentional and motoric effects in typing suggests that the slowdown is purely a function of chunking of letters in creating the motor output; this approach posits no further influence of linguistic information during output. Research from a psycholinguistic perspective does posit lexical and sublexical effects during output and explains the midword slowing as a function of slowdowns at the boundaries of sublexical units. Across four experiments, using three different typing tasks, we investigated the typing of compound (schoolteacher) and pseudocompound (carpet) words. Typing at the midword region is sensitive to the morphological structure of the word and to linguistic properties of the word and its (pseudo)constituents (e.g., linguistic information about school and teacher affects schoolteacher, and car and pet affects carpet). These findings suggest that typing compounds involves a hierarchical plan consisting of two separate motor plans for each constituent executed sequentially such that the output of letters is sensitive to the number of letters within that plan, the position of the sequence in the hierarchy (e.g., first vs. second constituent), and the morphemic structure of the to-be-typed word. Surprisingly, given that pseudocompound lexical representations should not include the pseudoconstituents and given that our tasks in the first three experiments demand full access to the lexical representation before typing, pseudocompound typing is also sensitive to the pseudoconstituent characteristics, suggesting that, during typing, the system attempts to build a compound-like structure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The linguistic structure of an emotional text influences the sympathetic activity and the speech prosody of the reader

In this study, we present an analysis of the relationship between the linguistic profile of a text and the physiological and acoustic characteristics of the reader to improve the emotion recognition systems. To this aim, we recorded the speech and electrodermal activity (EDA) signals from 33 healthy volunteers reading neutral and affective texts aloud. We used the BioVoice toolbox and cvxEDA algorithm to estimate some of the main speech and EDA features, respectively. The selected texts were analyzed to quantify their lexical, morpho-syntactic, and syntactic properties. Correlation and Support Vector Regression analyses between linguistic and speech and EDA features have shown a significant bidirectional association between the morpho-syntactic structure of the text and both sympathetic markers and voice acoustic properties. Specifically, significant relationships were observed between linguistic properties and certain EDA and speech features commonly used to evaluate human emotional state (e.g., edaSymp, mean tonic, F0). These findings suggest that lexical, morpho-syntactic, and syntactic properties may have a significant impact on an individual’s emotional dynamics.

다의어 break 번역 시 한국어의 영향

Objectives This study investigates the Korean language (L1) influence on the understanding of multiple senses of English (L2) word ‘break’ from a language transfer perspective. Methods To achieve this, a survey questionnaire was constructed using 12 sentences with the different senses of break selected in descending order of frequency from the iWeb corpus. Depending on their English proficiency, 90 university students were recruited into tri-level proficiency (i.e., elementary, intermediate, advanced) groups, each containing 30 people. The participants were asked to translate 12 different senses of break, provide multiple responses for the senses they had prior knowledge of, and give a single response for the most challenging sense while explaining their choice. Results This study yielded four main findings. First, as the corpus frequency of each sense increases, the trans-lation accuracy of participants tended to rise, indicating a higher comprehension of core senses with higher fre-quency senses and lower comprehension of peripheral senses with lower frequency senses. Second, senses with Korean equivalents exhibited higher translation accuracy than those without them, highlighting the positive trans-fer of senses with Korean equivalents. Third, the elementary proficiency group showed a larger effect size of Korean similarity compared to other groups, indicating that semantic properties of Korean have a more impact on it. The elementary group also exhibited a larger effect size of corpus frequency compared to other groups, sug-gesting a tendency for the mental lexicon to be more fixed on the core senses. The sense similarity between ‘상처가 나게 하다’ and ‘break skin’ tended to fail to be recognized, while ‘break the code’ has no equivalent sense in Korean, yet the translated phrase ‘암호를 깨다’ from ‘crack the code’ was exposed, thus triggering a distinctive pat-tern of positive transfer. Both examples indicate that learners' psychological perceptions play a more important role in language transfer than objective linguistic properties. Conclusions While this study demonstrates the persistent influence of the first language on semantic transfer, it suggests that the impact of L1 may diminish as English proficiency improves and L2 learners may develop a mental lexicon that diverges from the influence of their L1. Future research is expected to explore the different conceptual structures of polysemous words across languages, and to investigate the effect of psychological per-ception on language transfer by using the research methodology that compares the findings on languages that use same scripts and languages that use cross-scrips.

On non-referential contexts of using the pronoun ten (this)

This article analyses the Polish pronoun ten (‘this’) located next to proper names in contexts such as ten Martynowski, ten Marek, ten Gdańsk, ten Giewont. Due to its occurrence in immediately next to two expressions which primarily function as exponents of specific reference, one can put forward a hypothesis that the investigated pronoun is not applied in its referential function in this type of settngs. Thus, it ceases to be a demonstrative pronoun, and assumes linguistic properties other than its basic ones. The aim of this study is to determine the linguistic nature of such occurrences of ten, also in reference to the thesis prevailing in the relevant literature, which, among other aspects, concerns the expressive value of such applications of the pronoun. The combinations of ten with proper names selected for analysis will be juxtaposed with non-obligatory occurrences of this pronoun next to nouns (as, for example, in the sentence: Na tym wczorajszym indyku można sobie było zęby połamać (You could break your teeth on that turkey yesterday).

The Prosaics of Weak Grammar: Novel Theory at the Crossroads of Linguistic Transformation

Abstract Novelistic sentences dramatically simplified in structure and contracted in length throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. This article places these changes within the longer process of grammatical “weakening” (the loss of inflection for regular order). Building on the linguist Otto Jespersen's theorization of the relationship between grammar and social change, the article argues that the grammar of modern novels, irrespective of their representational content or individuating style, has a proleptic relation to the rise of mass society. The problems that Georg Lukács and Theodor Adorno would articulate in terms of reification and alienation are already enacted grammatically as words break down into their linguistic properties and increasingly derive their meaning through placement. The article focuses on three pivotal moments of this development: the “prosification,” or the virtual conflation of poetic and prosaic syntax, in the Romantic era; the conspicuous intensification of uninflected prose that is generally taken to be the stylistic innovation of the modernist era exemplified by Virginia Woolf; and the sedimentation of syntax into generic idioms in subsequent decades in such writers as Doris Lessing and Samuel Beckett. Novelistic grammar, precisely by prefiguring the social changes to come, models a rationality that constrains the possibilities of moving past those changes. By analyzing the contradictions constitutive of novelistic grammar, this article questions what is reinforced or foreclosed in the endless generativity of grammar.

The interactive organization of every day “talk” of native Kenyan sign language (KSL) users: The case of cohesion

People who are deaf in Kenya operate within a distinct Kenyan deaf culture that uses Kenya Sign Language (KSL) to interact. The focus of this paper is every day “talk” or any signing activities that they engage in during their interaction in everyday contacts. The paper pivots on discourse that is not planned. According to Brazil [1] unplanned discourse is instinctive and happens gradually in time. Therefore, unplanned discourse is spontaneous and impulsive and is heavily reliant on immediate context to make known people’s thoughts and relies less on structure to express meaning, Brazil [2]. An analysis of “Talk” that occurs naturally is conversational analysis. Consistent with Richards et al [3], conversation analysis involves examination of naturally occurring conversations to establish the linguistic attributes of “talk” and how it is used in ordinary life. This is the concern of this paper. It also examines how casual talk achieves cohesion as we investigate the linguistic characteristics of every day “talk” in the context of people who are deaf and users of KSL.

Orienting Role of Terminology in Context of Its Scientific-Popular Conceptualization

The article examines the structural and functional properties of terms in popular scientific discourse. The authors aim to characterize the orientation of a term as a combination of its linguistic and functional properties, which define the concept expressed by the term, its connections with other concepts, and its place within the terminological system. The object of the study is linguistic and speech units in popular scientific texts, while the subject is the means of expressing orienting properties of terms in popular scientific discourse. The novelty of the research lies in studying the orienting properties of terms in popular scientific style based on their linguistic and speech properties, and providing a classification of these properties according to the scope and content of the expressed concepts. The relevance of the study is determined by the important role of these properties in the process of forming specialized concepts, understanding scientific, popular scientific, and educational discourses, and solving practical problems related to terminology use. The authors focus on the orienting function of a term, which is carried out through linguistic and speech means, with logical definitions, textual explanations, intercategorical connections expressed by elements of word formation and morpho-syntactic systems being the most active ones. The authors conclude that orienting properties of terms play a significant role in terminological conceptualization (formation of specialized concepts).

Existing terminology related to antimicrobial resistance fails to evoke risk perceptions and be remembered

BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global healthcare threat promoted by all use of antibiotics. Hence, reducing overuse of antibiotics is essential. The necessary behaviour change relies on effective public health communication, but previous information campaigns—while showing some successes—have fallen short in generating a lasting increase of public awareness. A potential reason for this is AMR-related terminology, which has been criticised as inconsistent, abstract and difficult to pronounce. We report the first empirical test of word memorability and risk association for the most frequent AMR-related health terms.MethodsAcross two surveys sampling 237 US and 924 UK participants, we test people’s memory for and the risk they associate with six AMR-related terms and thirty-four additional health risk terms (e.g., cancer). Participants also rate the terms on different linguistic dimensions including concreteness, familiarity, processing fluency and pronounceability.ResultsOur findings suggest that existing AMR-related health terms—particularly “AMR” and “Antimicrobial resistance”—are unsuitable for public health communication, because they score consistently low on both memorability and risk association. Out of the AMR terms, “Antibiotic resistance” and—to a lesser extent—“Drug-resistant infections” perform best. Regression analyses suggest that linguistic attributes (e.g., familiarity, processing fluency, pronounceability) are predictors of the terms’ risk association.ConclusionsOur findings highlight an urgent need to rename AMR with a memorable term that effectively signals the existential threat of AMR and thereby motivates a change in antibiotic use. The success of the revised term is likely to depend, at least partially, on its linguistic attributes.

Who could be behind QAnon? Authorship attribution with supervised machine-learning

Abstract A series of social media posts on 4chan then 8chan, signed under the pseudonym ‘Q’, started a movement known as QAnon, which led some of its most radical supporters to violent and illegal actions. To identify the person(s) behind Q, we evaluate the coincidence between the linguistic properties of the texts written by Q and to those written by a list of suspects provided by journalistic investigation. To identify the authors of these posts, serious challenges have to be addressed. The ‘Q drops’ are very short texts, written in a way that constitute a sort of literary genre in itself, with very peculiar features of style. These texts might have been written by different authors, whose other writings are often hard to find. After an online ethnography of the movement, necessary to collect enough material written by these thirteen potential authors, we use supervised machine learning to build stylistic profiles for each of them. We then performed a ‘rolling analysis’, looking repeatedly through a moving window for parts of Q’s writings matching our profiles. We conclude that two different individuals, Paul F. and Ron W., are the closest match to Q’s linguistic signature, and they could have successively written Q’s texts. These potential authors are not high-ranked personality from the US administration, but rather social media activists.

Language-specific properties and overt pronoun interpretation:The case of L2 Japanese

Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker’s first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even across two null-argument languages. This study investigates the interpretation and processing of overt pronouns in Japanese by speakers whose L1 (English) and L2 (Japanese) differ not only in whether they allow null arguments, but also in the relative involvement of structural and pragmatic constraints on overt pronoun interpretation. This combination of languages is particularly interesting because English and Japanese overt third-person subject pronouns can be considered at extreme ends of a spectrum: in English they are largely structurally constrained and show a consistent preference for a local subject antecedent, while in Japanese they are loosely constrained by pragmatic factors and show no consistent interpretation preference. Both interpretation and eye-tracking data is recorded, with results suggesting that the unique nature of overt pronouns in Japanese, including their rarity in the input, leads to partial knowledge of them on the lexical level rather than implicating the larger syntactic system or syntax–pragmatics interface.

BlendCSE: Blend contrastive learnings for sentence embeddings with rich semantics and transferability

Sentence representation is one of the most fundamental research topics in natural language processing (NLP), as its quality directly affects various downstream task performances. Recent studies for sentence representations have established state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on semantic representation tasks. However, embeddings by those approaches share unsatisfying transferability when applied to various specific applications. Seldom work studies the transferability of semantic sentence embeddings. In this paper, we first explore the transferability characteristic of the sentence embeddings, and present BlendCSE, a new sentence embedding model targeting rich semantics and transferability. BlendCSE blends three recent advanced NLP learning methodologies, namely, continue learning on masked language modeling (MLM), contrastive learning (CL) with data augmentations (DA), and semantic supervised learning. The main objectives of BlendCSE are to capture token/word level information, diversified linguistic properties, and sentence semantics, respectively. Empirical studies demonstrate that BlendCSE captures semantics comparably well on STS tasks, yet surpasses existing methods on various transfer tasks, yielding even stronger transferability on document-level applications. Ablation studies verified that the three learning objectives synergy well to capture semantics and transferability effectively.

Adaptation and validation of the Psychologist and Counsellor Self-Efficacy Scale (PCES) among Brazilian psychologists and psychology students

This study aimed to: (i) Translate, adapt, and evaluate the linguistic and semantic properties of the Psychologist and Counsellor Self-Efficacy Scale (PCES) for use among psychology students and psychologists in Brazil; (ii) Assess the psychometric attributes of the adapted PCES, including its construct validity and other related psychometric properties. A total of 2,139 participants, comprising psychologists and psychology students (Mage = 25.36 years; SD = 9.46), partook in this study. The PCES exhibited commendable fit indices (CFI = .990; TLI = .989; SMR = .043), and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed a consistent level of invariance between students and practicing psychologists, as well as between male and female participants. Network analysis offered significant insights into the distribution of factors, while the convergent validity of PCES was corroborated by its correlations with the subscales of the General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale (GPSS). These findings unequivocally affirm the reliability and suitability of PCES as an assessment instrument for both psychologists and psychology students in the Brazilian context.

Exposing influence campaigns in the age of LLMs: a behavioral-based AI approach to detecting state-sponsored trolls

The detection of state-sponsored trolls operating in influence campaigns on social media is a critical and unsolved challenge for the research community, which has significant implications beyond the online realm. To address this challenge, we propose a new AI-based solution that identifies troll accounts solely through behavioral cues associated with their sequences of sharing activity, encompassing both their actions and the feedback they receive from others. Our approach does not incorporate any textual content shared and consists of two steps: First, we leverage an LSTM-based classifier to determine whether account sequences belong to a state-sponsored troll or an organic, legitimate user. Second, we employ the classified sequences to calculate a metric named the “Troll Score”, quantifying the degree to which an account exhibits troll-like behavior. To assess the effectiveness of our method, we examine its performance in the context of the 2016 Russian interference campaign during the U.S. Presidential election. Our experiments yield compelling results, demonstrating that our approach can identify account sequences with an AUC close to 99% and accurately differentiate between Russian trolls and organic users with an AUC of 91%. Notably, our behavioral-based approach holds a significant advantage in the ever-evolving landscape, where textual and linguistic properties can be easily mimicked by Large Language Models (LLMs): In contrast to existing language-based techniques, it relies on more challenging-to-replicate behavioral cues, ensuring greater resilience in identifying influence campaigns, especially given the potential increase in the usage of LLMs for generating inauthentic content. Finally, we assessed the generalizability of our solution to various entities driving different information operations and found promising results that will guide future research.

북한 공장대학교 영어교과서 읽기지문에 대한 코퍼스 기반 분석

This paper aims to analyze reading passages found in an English textbook used at Factory College in North Korea and examine the characteristics of English education for adults, particularly “learning while working system” implemented in North Korea. To investigate the linguistic properties; lexical frequency(high frequency vocabulary, keywords, and 4gram) and readability(measured by FKGL and FRE), this corpus-based analysis was conducted with Wordsmith, AntConc and Readable. The findings demonstrate frequent appearance of science and technology terms, and their frequent description. This confirms that North Korea attempts to connect education with industrial sites by combining English and technical education. In addition, as a result of analyzing vocabulary diversity and readability, it was found that the level of difficulty increased rapidly compared to high school English textbooks. The vocabulary appeared less varied than English reading passages of Korean SAT and readability showed a similar level.

Linguistic and discursive properties of hate speech and speech facilitating the expression of hatred

Abstract Examples of posts from three Finnish (236 posts) and one French (410 posts) discussion threads are analyzed with regard to lexicon, grammar, speech acts, and topoi. The aim is to illustrate the different means used to express hatred or speech pertaining to ideological and thematic spaces in which the expression of hatred may be legitimized. The examples represent everyday discourse, which is an influential arena for the materialization of ideologies. Given the lack of linguistic and discursive tools used exclusively to express or legitimize hatred, doing research on hate speech always entails taking a specific ideological stance: neither linguistics nor pragmatics or discourse studies can provide a definition of hate speech that is valid in all contexts. Triangulating different methodological and theoretical perspectives is necessary to produce convincing research results.

Synergizing Process and Genre: Nurturing Proficiency in L2 Writing Through Advanced ESL Instruction

This essay explores the synergy between the process-based and genre-based approaches in instructing advanced ESL writing, particularly focusing on the book review genre. The study delves into the distinctive features, pedagogical outcomes, and applications of both methodologies. The book review of "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande serves as a case study, unraveling its purpose, audience, structure, and linguistic attributes. The analysis further outlines a classroom strategy where elements of both approaches are integrated to facilitate effective writing instruction for advanced ESL students.

Linguistic Markers of Inherently False AI Communication and Intentionally False Human Communication: Evidence From Hotel Reviews

To the human eye, AI-generated outputs of large language models have increasingly become indistinguishable from human-generated outputs. Therefore, to determine the linguistic properties that separate AI-generated text from human-generated text, we used a state-of-the-art chatbot, ChatGPT, and compared how it wrote hotel reviews to human-generated counterparts across content (emotion), style (analytic writing, adjectives), and structural features (readability). Results suggested AI-generated text had a more analytic style and was more affective, more descriptive, and less readable than human-generated text. Classification accuracies of AI-generated versus human-generated texts were over 80%, far exceeding chance (∼50%). Here, we argue AI-generated text is inherently false when communicating about personal experiences that are typical of humans and differs from intentionally false human-generated text at the language level. Implications for AI-mediated communication and deception research are discussed.

Joint effects of individual reading skills and word properties on Chinese children’s eye movements during sentence reading

Word recognition during the reading of continuous text has received much attention. While a large body of research has investigated how linguistic properties of words affect eye movements during reading, it remains to be established how individual differences in reading skills affect momentary cognitive processes during sentence reading among typically developing Chinese readers. The present study set out to test the joint influences of word properties and individual reading skills on eye movements during reading among Chinese children. We recorded eye movements of 30 grade 3 (G3) children and 27 grade 5 (G5) children when they read sentences silently for comprehension. Predictors of linear mixed models included word frequency, visual complexity, and launch site distance, in addition to the participants’ offline psychometric performances in rapid naming, morphological awareness, word segmenting, and character recognition. The results showed that word properties affected word recognition during sentence reading in both G3 and G5 children. Moreover, word segmenting predicted the G3 children’s fixation durations and the G5 children’s fixation location, whereas rapid naming predicted the G5 children’s fixation duration. Implications are discussed based on the current findings, in light of how different literacy skills contribute to reading development.

Язык и культура в системе межкультурной коммуникации

The article deals with the actual problem of the functioning of language and culture in the process of intercultural communication in the context of bilingualism and multilingualism. In the course of conducting scientific research, the analysis and description of the material of linguistic, sociological and linguodidactic scientific literature of a lexicographic nature was carried out in order to identify the degree of reflection of the participation of language as a toolkit (tool) of culture in the process of intercultural communication and its definition in the corresponding dictionary entries characterized by similarities and differences. The main differences lie in the explicit or implicit expression of the participation of language in the process of intercultural communication, or in not providing for the role of language in this global interethnic communication. The basis of intercultural communication is language as a means of transmitting information, and bilingualism as a linguistic and speech property of representatives of different nationalities, which ensures the implementation of intercultural communication. In the definitions of intercultural communication presented in four linguographic works, in understanding and defining it, language often goes by the wayside. 12 understandings and definitions of intercultural communication are analyzed. Of these, in 7 the participation of the language is presented explicitly, in 4 — implicitly, in one it is not presented. Intercultural communication cannot be carried out without interlingual communication: language, as a mirror of culture, reflects its inner and outer world, which forms foreign language and foreign cultural knowledge, abilities, skills, which together form and develop the interlinguistic and cultural competence of the individual and society. Intercultural communication is both a universal (universal) phenomenon and a national-specific phenomenon. The second is formed and functions in local conditions. The totality (class) of linguocultural communications in local conditions forms its world (universal) system and dynamics. Language and culture, as components of the act of functioning of intercultural communication, are a dual unity of social functions that ensure interethnic communication in various conditions of the individual and society. Language is a transmitter of culture, so we should talk about inter-linguocultural communication. In the process of conducting scientific research, inductive, deductive methods, comparative and linguostatistical methods were used, which gave scientific results of theoretical and practical significance.