Linguistic Circumstances Research Articles

Harnessing large language models over transformer models for detecting Bengali depressive social media text: A comprehensive study

In an era where the silent struggle of underdiagnosed depression pervades globally, our research delves into the crucial link between mental health and social media. This work focuses on early detection of depression, particularly in extroverted social media users, using LLMs such as GPT 3.5, GPT 4 and our proposed GPT 3.5 fine-tuned model DepGPT, as well as advanced Deep learning models(LSTM, Bi-LSTM, GRU, BiGRU) and Transformer models(BERT, BanglaBERT, SahajBERT, BanglaBERT-Base). The study categorized Reddit and X datasets into “Depressive” and “Non-Depressive” segments, translated into Bengali by native speakers with expertise in mental health, resulting in the creation of the Bengali Social Media Depressive Dataset (BSMDD). Our work provides full architecture details for each model and a methodical way to assess their performance in Bengali depressive text categorization using zero-shot and few-shot learning techniques. Our work demonstrates the superiority of SahajBERT and Bi-LSTM with FastText embeddings in their respective domains also tackles explainability issues with transformer models and emphasizes the effectiveness of LLMs, especially DepGPT (GPT 3.5 fine-tuned), demonstrating flexibility and competence in a range of learning contexts. According to the experiment results, the proposed model, DepGPT, outperformed not only Alpaca Lora 7B in zero-shot and few-shot scenarios but also every other model, achieving a near-perfect accuracy of 0.9796 and an F1-score of 0.9804, high recall, and exceptional precision. Although competitive, GPT-3.5 Turbo and Alpaca Lora 7B show relatively poorer effectiveness in zero-shot and few-shot situations. The work emphasizes the effectiveness and flexibility of LLMs in a variety of linguistic circumstances, providing insightful information about the complex field of depression detection models.

Between capitalism and socialism: Tugan-Baranovsky on cooperatives

Abstract This paper provides a comprehensive discussion of Tugan-Baranovsky’s (1916) seminal study about the working of cooperatives in a capitalist environment, which, due to historical and linguistic circumstances, has left only a limited trace in the subsequent economic literature in the Western world. He claimed to have provided the then only full analytical and historical account of economic cooperation in its several forms, especially producer and consumer cooperatives, and their impact on their members’ welfare. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that cooperative organisations gradually occupied again the research agenda of economists under the guise of ‘labor-managed firms’. Tugan’s treatise on cooperation has been mentioned in that literature to a limited extent only, in connection with the issue of the life-cycle of producer cooperatives. Tugan’s economic treatment of cooperatives is discussed here as part of his broader social and political views of capitalism and socialism.

리처드 파워스의 소설『갈라테아 2.2』에 기술된 인공 지능(AI) 헬렌(Helen)의 특징적인 언어양상 연구

Richard Power’s novel Galatea 2.2 presents the task and prospect of Artificial Intelligence’s language although the novel is based on story-telling and the author’s imagination. In particular, it is worth to note not only terms of address and terms of reference but also terms of body concerning Artificial Intelligence Helen. She is mostly addressed by her first name (Helen) and other terms such as machine, apparatus, bag of networks, fancy tin-can telephone, distributed process, multidimentional shape, etc. Also, Artificial Intelligence Helen is a symbol of A (a twenty-two year old woman and post-graduate student) and imitating A, some terms like ‘a gifted cockatiel’ and ‘twin’ are used for Helen in terms of reference. In comparison, Rick is addressed in various ways, that is first name, surname, affectionate names and other nicknames. In addition, Artificial Intelligence Helen has no nose, mouth or fingers and only she has partially functioning eyes and ears. Thus Helen is not able to fully understand metaphorical language expressions concerning emotion. For instance, in some expressions like ‘your stomach in knots’, ‘embarrasment shrinks you’, or ‘amazement strikes you dead’. Helen could not feel the meanings and thus she has a lack of knowledge in similar linguistic circumstances. Lastly, Artificial Intelligence Helen is Imp. H. It means that Helen has been evolved from Imp. A, Imp. B, Imp. C, and so on. So the shut down of herself in the novel suggests and hints at the revival of a new version of Artificial Intelligence may be named “Galatea 3.3”.

Large-scale consensus with dynamic trust and optimal reference in social network under incomplete probabilistic linguistic circumstance

Consensus plays a pivotal role in large-scale group decision-making, and the social network relationship significantly impacts the consensus reaching process (CRP). Consequently, there is considerable focus on achieving large-scale consensus within social network (LSC-SN). Typically, experts are used to expressing their evaluations with language that can be effectively characterized by probabilistic linguistic term set (PLTS). However, the existing distance measure of PLTS exhibits drawbacks, and PLTSs provided by experts might be incomplete. To address the two challenges, this research defines an improved distance measure and proposes an estimation method for incomplete PLTS from the perspectives of trust relationships, collaborative filtering, and confidence level. Subsequently, in the CRP, a hierarchical clustering algorithm based on the trust-similarity measure is developed to cluster experts who share mutual trust and similar evaluations. Then, a consensus model employing dynamic trust and optimal reference is introduced to achieve both intra-cluster and inter-cluster consensus simultaneously. Finally, to illustrate the feasibility and advantage of the proposed model, a numerical experiment and the comparative analyses are conducted.

Iz fonetske problematike govora Banjske i Gojbulje

This paper provides an inventory and distribution of consonant and vocal sounds in certain settlements in the lower parts of the river Sitnica (Banjska and Gojbulja villages) near Vucitrn. The main intention of the interpreted material is to show the phonetic peculiarities of the speech of Donja Sitnica on a synchronic level and thus contribute to the knowledge of Serbian languages in the area of Kosovo. It can be seen that the Kosovo-Resava substratum has suffered sediments from other dialects from the neighboring Albanian language, which defines the investigated languages as peripheral. Therefore, the structures of the researched micro zones can be recognized as having multiple influences, which come from the progressive stokavian speech, the Prizren - South Morava dialect, Montenegrin speech and non Slavic linguistic circumstances. In the vowel system, the influences from the first three directions are more present, while in consonantism there are noticeable features from the structure of the Albanian language.

A probabilistic linguistic thermodynamic method based on the water-filling algorithm and regret theory for emergency decision making

Since thermodynamics can describe the energy of matter and its form of storage or transformation in the system, it is introduced to resolve the uncertain decision-making problems. The paper proposes the thermodynamic decision-making method which considers both the quantity and quality of the probabilistic linguistic decision information. The analogies for thermodynamical indicators: energy, exergy and entropy are developed under the probabilistic linguistic circumstance. The probabilistic linguistic thermodynamic method combines the regret theory which captures decision makers’ regret-aversion and the objective weight of criterion obtained by the water-filling algorithm. The proposed method is applied to select the optimal solution to respond to the floods in Chongqing, China. The self-comparison is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the objective weight obtained by the water-filling algorithm and regret theory in the probabilistic linguistic thermodynamic method. The reliability and feasibility of the proposed method are verified by comparative analysis with other decision-making methods by some simulation experiments and non-parametric tests.

Solving hesitant fuzzy linguistic matrix game problems for multiple attribute decision making with prospect theory

Game theory is powerful to solve the multiple attribute decision making problems, in this paper, we propose a matrix game method from the perspective of the decision maker and Nature. The purpose of the decision maker is not gaining the maximum benefit in the short term, but to realize the sustainable development of mankind and Nature in the long run. The payoffs of matrix game are represented by the hesitant fuzzy linguistic information which portrays the uncertainty and fuzziness in an effective and flexible way. A modified method is proposed to aggregate the hesitant fuzzy linguistic information. Because decision makers show the risk-seeking tendency for gains and the risk-averse tendency for losses, the prospect theory under the hesitant fuzzy linguistic circumstance is investigated. Then the hesitant fuzzy nonlinear programming models for the decision maker and Nature are established and the optimal solution is obtained. Furthermore, the proposed method is applied to determine importance ranking of the alternatives when developing the economic strategies in Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, China. Finally, the comparative analysis is designed to verify the availability and reasonability of the proposed method.

Large-scale consensus with endo-confidence under probabilistic linguistic circumstance and its application

In real decision-making problems, decision makers (DMs) usually select the most potential project from several ones. However, they unconsciously show different confidence levels in decision-making process because they come from various backgrounds and have different experiences, etc., which affects the decision results. Moreover, the probabilistic linguistic term set, which not only includes the linguistic expressions used by DMs in their daily life but also contains the probability for each linguistic term, can well portray the real perceptions of DMs for the projects. Furthermore, large-scale consensus has gradually been a popular way to effectively solve complex decision-making problems. To sum up, in this paper, we are dedicated to constructing a large-scale consensus model considering the confidence levels of DMs under probabilistic linguistic circumstance. Firstly, the endo-confidence is defined and measured by DM’s probabilistic linguistic information. Then, the DMs are clustered according to the similarities of both evaluation information and the endo-confidence levels. Both evaluation of the non-consensus cluster and evaluation integrated by the clusters with higher endo-confidence level than this non-consensus cluster are used as the reference to adjust its evaluation information. Then, a case study and the comparative analysis are carried out. Finally, some conclusions and future work are given.

Selecting products through text reviews: An MCDM method incorporating personalized heuristic judgments in the prospect theory

Online reviews have become an increasingly popular information source in consumer’s decision making process. To help consumers make informed decisions, how to select products through online reviews is a valuable research topic. This work deals with a personized product selection problem with review sentiments under probabilistic linguistic circumstances. To this end, we propose a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method incorporating personalized heuristic judgments in the prospect theory (PT). We focus on the role of personalized heuristic judgments on review helpfulness in the final decision outcomes. We demonstrate the consistency between the three common heuristic judgments (with respect to review valence, sentiment extremity, and aspiration levels) and the three behavioral principles of the PT. Then, the products are ranked with the probabilistic linguistic term set (PLTS) input, based on the proposed adjustable PT framework, in which the coefficients of negativity bias are derived from the consumer’s heuristic judgments. Finally, a real case on TripAdvisor.com and two simulation experiments are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed method.

Exploring the Difficulties in Learning English Grammar Rules in Functional English/ESP Classrooms, a Study into the Context of Southern Punjab, Pakistan

The key objective of the current study was exploring the difficulties in learning English grammar rules in functional English classrooms at the public sector colleges, universities. The present research was planned to use a mixed-method type and respondents were male & female on equal ratio and SPSS, version 23 was used to extract percentage and cumulative percentage. The source of data used in the study was a structured questionnaire. The most important aim of this research was to look at the barriers and difficulties of the students of the South Punjab in learning English as the target language especially learning the rules of English grammar which become a great ordeal and cause of making errors and mistakes in learning various skills of L2 in functional English courses. The majority of the learners responded that they fall into different difficulties while learning the grammar rules of L2 such as subject-verb agreement, plural markers, or rules related to tenses, confusion in using forms of the verb, difficulty in memorizing two-word verbs, confusion in using verb tense, difficulty in using phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions might be caused by the linguistic circumstances of the students. English teachers should properly direct and motivate their l2 learners in this perspective and they must opt their lecture on grammar by making difference between English, Urdu, or other regional languages so that they could eradicate the difficulties of English grammar faced by the learners.

The Forgotten Phenomenology: “Enactive Perception” in the Eyes of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty

This paper compares the enactive approach to perception, which has recently emerged in cognitive science, with the phenomenological approach. Inspired by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the enactive theorists Alva Noë and Evan Thompson take perception to be a result of the interaction between the brain, the body and the environment. Their argument turns mostly on the role of self-motion and sensorimotor knowledge in perceptual experience. It was said to be entirely consistent with phenomenology, indeed its revival. However, this issue is under debate. To show this, I begin with analyzing the enactive conception as a physicalist attempt to overcome the challenge of dualism and representationalism. I then turn to Husserl’s transcendental method and argue that Noë’s solution, unlike Husserl’s, remains naturalistic, as it does not take the phenomenon of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the “cultural world” into account. Afterwards I turn to Merleau-Ponty and demonstrate that there is some certain common ground with Noë, but also major differences. I conclude that the enactive approach is not completely refuted by the phenomenological one, insofar as the latter partly contains the first. Yet the enactivists deal merely with the necessary physiological conditions of perception qua animal perception, not with the sufficient sociocultural conditions for the understanding of human perception, like the inquiry into the historical and linguistic circumstances under which the understanding of human mind is made possible. The reason why the recent transformation of phenomenology into neurophenomenology is perceived as a revival is virtually inherent to the specific scientific ethos of enactivism and reveals a certain oblivion of the objectives of philosophical phenomenology.

A Decision-Making Model Under Probabilistic Linguistic Circumstances with Unknown Criteria Weights for Online Customer Reviews

Online customer reviews (OCRs) provide much information about products or service, but the mass of information increases the difficulty for customers to make decisions. Thus, we establish a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model to evaluate products or service. To analyze OCRs, the sentiment analysis (SA) is introduced to identify the sentiment orientation of reviews. Considering that the textual information in OCRs is linguistic information, probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs) are applied to present the results of the SA. A process of extracting probabilistic linguistic information based on SA from OCRs is also presented. Then, for the MCDM problems with unknown criteria weights, we combine the PP (projection pursuit) method and the MULTIMOORA (multiplicative multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis) method, and develop an extended method (named as the PP-MULTIMOORA method). The projection pursuit (PP) method is developed to derive objective criteria weights and the MULTIMOORA method is to derive final rankings of products or service. Finally, we apply the proposed model to a case of evaluating doctors’ service quality and further conduct a comparative analysis to illustrate the effectiveness of our work.

"Doctor, teacher, translator:" International medical students' experiences of clinical teaching on an English language undergraduate medical course in China.

Like many Chinese universities, Ningbo University (NBU) has two undergraduate medical courses - one taught in Mandarin for domestic students, and one taught in English for international students. This study examines the experiences of medical students who recently completed the English language program that has a particular focus on clinical placements. In-depth, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 final year medical students at NBU in April 2019. Transcripts were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. All medical student participants were non native English speakers and had a limited grasp of Chinese. Their clinical teachers were all fluent in Chinese and had variable command of English. The large majority of patients in the teaching hospitals where placements took place spoke only in Chinese. Despite the obvious challenges arising from this, students still had predominantly positive experiences of clinical placements. Although students recognized that their clinical teachers' English proficiency was variable, they felt that other attributes, such as enthusiasm, interactivity, and a desire to teach were more important factors to their learning experiences. Despite challenging linguistic circumstances, non native English-speaking students were able to navigate the challenges of studying clinical medicine from teachers with limited English language skills and with patients who spoke virtually no English. Further studies should explore the perceptions of teachers of the program, and graduate outcomes when these students enter the workplace. Educators involved in supporting international medical students should note that non technical curricular areas such as professionalism may require greater attention where language barriers exist.

Continuing Training of Language Teachers in the UK

AbstractThis paper emphasizes the fact that the current socio-cultural conditions in Ukraine put fundamentally new requirements on professional training of future language teachers. Furthermore, the reforms in Ukrainian higher education, including its focus on the implementation of the principles of the Bologna Declaration, expect that continuing teacher training of future language teachers should result in professionally mobile, proactive and independent future language teachers. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the continuing teacher training of future language teachers in the UK and suggest ways to improve continuing teacher training of language teachers in Ukraine. The paper indicates that the UK is at a turning point today. The country is on its way of leaving the EU, which will significantly change not only its relations with EU countries but also with other countries all over the world. Thereby, the UK needs the skills and capabilities, which will facilitate the understanding of other cultures and languages, to continue to be important for successful international relationships at all levels. The four nations of the UK have approached policy on language education in different ways, which reflect their different linguistic circumstances, and they will continue to do so. The paper states that the model of the UK language teacher includes not only professional qualities but also his or her professional and personal development in the context of professional training and retraining. The paper concludes that the use of the UK’s positive experience in providing continuing teacher training to language teachers and ensuring their professional development discovers some new opportunities for Ukraine. Further research should focus on the peculiarities of the programmes for the professional development of language teachers. It can help to enhance the quality of advanced training of language teachers in Ukraine.

Languaging among Latinx siblings in immigrant homes: Implications for teaching literacy

ABSTRACTThis article synthesizes multiple studies that we have conducted on language and literacy practices among Latinx siblings at home, and identifies implications for teaching. Examples from micro-ethnographic discourse analyses provide rich vignettes of sibling interactions within Mexican and Central American immigrant households to illustrate how siblings engage in complex negotiations as they language together at home, in English and Spanish. Older siblings provided unique scaffolds for younger children’s learning and development in ways that demonstrated broad and flexible expertise, but these practices also reflected the complex social and linguistic circumstances in which immigrant-origin Latinx children live. Findings suggest that teachers can play active roles in supporting language and literacy development inside and outside classrooms.

Swiss Multilingualism: A Historical Background to Language Policy

AbstractSpecific historical and linguistic circumstances gave way to a Swiss original concept of a multilingual state as the nation of the will. The discussion concerns problems inherent to the unity-in-diversity philosophy and the proportional representation of national languages within the framework of the Swiss constitution, including the legislation protecting language and the language principles obtaining in Switzerland. Drawing on the language ideology studies, this paper shows how the linguistic diversity is designed on the administrative level and what provisions have been made to maintain multilingualism. The discussion also addresses and concludes on the ever timely questions of diversity, pluralism and intergroup cooperation fostered by the Swiss political and social culture.

Decision Models to Find a Promising Start-Up Firm with Qualiflex under Probabilistic Linguistic Circumstance

QUALIFLEX is a flexible method to solve the multi-criteria decision-making problem with a few alternatives. Moreover, the linguistic term is a very general way used by decision makers (DMs) to express their real perceptions. In particular, the probabilistic linguistic information, including the probability of each linguistic term, can simulate the vague perceptions of the DMs well. Therefore, the main contributions of this paper are constructing two novel QUALIFLEX with probabilistic linguistic information. First, based on the classical QUALIFLEX, it has been extended under probabilistic linguistic circumstance. Secondly, it is common for the DMs to have different risk attitudes for gains and losses when making their decisions under uncertainty, which is well explained by prospect theory (PT). Hence, PT has been integrated into the extended QUALIFLEX. Then, in this paper, a prospect QUALIFLEX is proposed as well. The feasibility and validity of the proposed methods have been verified by a numerical example in venture capital. The comparative and simulated analysis shows that the latter method with prospect framework is more appropriate than the former one because of the inherent psychological behaviors of the DMs and its excellent ability in identifying the similar alternatives. Furthermore, the ranking results derived from the prospect QUALIFLEX do not change with the different values of parameters. It reveals that the prospect QUALIFLEX is stable and reliable.

The Crosslinguistic Influence of First and Second Language on Third Language Acquisition

This paper explores the crosslinguistic influences of first and second language on third language acquisition. While it has earlier been argued that Universal Grammar is lost with subsequent language acquisition, some studies indicate that Universal Grammar is not lost and is also applied when acquiring other languages. By drawing on two studies of third language acquisition where the third languages are V2, it is shown that when it comes to acquiring a third language, transfer can happen from both the first and second languages. One study showed that both the first and second languages can influence the acquisition of a third language while another argued in favor of the second language being the most dominant influence. On the basis of an examination of different theoretical approaches to language transfer, this paper argues that the Typological Primacy Model provides the most convincing and pragmatic explanation in that language transfer depends on linguistic circumstances.

Expanding Grey Relational Analysis With the Comparable Degree for Dual Probabilistic Multiplicative Linguistic Term Sets and its Application on the Cloud Enterprise

Under the cloud trend of enterprises, how do traditional businesses get on the cloud becomes a worth pondering question. To help those traditional businesses that have no experience to dispel the clouds and see the sun as soon as possible, we are planning to choose one corporation with rich experience to take them into the cloud market. The quintessence of dual probabilistic linguistic term sets (DPLTSs) is that it uses the combination of several linguistic terms and their proportions to reveal decision information by opposite angles. This paper proposes the dual probabilistic multiplicative linguistic preference relations (DPMLPRs) based upon the dual probabilistic multiplicative linguistic term sets (DPMLTSs). Then, it defines the comparable degree between the DPMLPRs and studies the consensus of the group DPMLPR. Moreover, it probes the expanding grey relational analysis (EGRA) under the proposed comparable degree between the DPMLTSs. After that, one example of choosing the experienced cloud cooperative partner is simulated under the dual probabilistic linguistic circumstance. Besides, the comparative analysis is performed by considering the similarity among the EGRA, TODIM, and VIKOR.

Can the 17th century Latvian dictionaries be trusted in the search for old meanings?

[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]
 This paper analyzes two of the 17th century Latvian dictionaries – the Lettus by Georgius Mancelius and the dictionary manuscripts of Christopher Fürecker from the end of the 17th century. The task of the paper: based on the experience gained working with the Historical Dictionary of the Latvian Language, to try and determine how reliable the translations of the meanings found in the 17th century dictionaries are and to what extent can they be used for determining the meanings in the historical dictionary.
 Examples included in the Historical Dictionary of the Latvian Language are divided into several groups depending on the following aspects: 1) Whether a word of the Latvian language or its German translation is or is not commonly used nowadays; 2) Whether the meaning of these words have or have not changed to the present day. Within each group, one or more examples are considered, including a possible explanation of the meaning of the word in the Historical Dictionary of the Latvian Language.
 Based on the examples given, it was concluded that, despite some unequivocal mistakes of explanation of the meaning, in most cases, the explanations of the meanings of the words in the dictionary of G. Mancelius and the manuscripts of the dictionary of K. Fürecker are given correctly, as evidenced by the use of the corresponding words in the related texts. It is more difficult to judge in cases when one must rely solely on dictionaries, the German translations of words, because the German language has also changed significantly since the 17th century; the old Latvian dictionaries contain obsolete words specific to the Baltic German language. In such cases, the historical dictionaries of the German language, dialect dictionaries, as well as the dictionary of the Baltic-German language, are helpful in understanding the word meanings. Consequently, many translations that originally seem like mistakes of the authors of the 17th century dictionaries, however, turn out to be correct after a more in-depth study and a careful analysis of the linguistic circumstances of that respective period.