Linguistic Entities Research Articles

Mother Tongue Education and the Acquisition of English Language as a Second Language by Akoose Speaking Pupils

Cameroon is a very diversified linguistic entity with about 284 languages for a population of 15,803,220 inhabitants (Grimes 2002). This situation causes the nation to face quite some challenges with choices of languages utilized as media of instruction at various levels in schools. This article focuses on Early Education whereby, we investigate learning through the medium of the MT and its implication for a better proficiency of the L2 (English Language) by these learners. The endeavor requires the application of various strategies to accomplished the task of learning the L2. It is obvious that at the initial phase, there is bound to be interference of the first language into the second language (L2) with different outcomes. Its hypothesis stipulates that children will learn more when they are instructed in the language they master most and better rather than when they are taught in their L2 or L3. The sample for this study comprises 20 teachers and 460 pupils. In order to collect the relevant data, interviews, language test, participant observation and questionnaires were used. Therefore, the investigation engaged both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The theoretical framework used for this study is Krashen’s theory of Second Language Acquisition. The data was analyzed using both frequency and percentage tables and charts. The findings indicated among other things that the children understood, participated, performed and retained information much better when using mother tongue as medium of instruction than when they are taught solely in English language; that, children are more attentive in class when their mother tongue is used to them than when English is used at the initial phase of their educational exposure. Also, an amazing finding amongst others in this research endeavor is the fact that pilot school pupils who employed mother tongue in early learning as medium of instruction did not only perform better in all school curricular subjects but also in English language subject than their counterparts in the regular school system whose medium of instruction was English language.

The division of main and subordinate discourse information in real-time comprehension

The study examines the role of discourse structure representation in real-time comprehension, with a focus on how main discourse and subordinate discourse information guides language processing. Using a web-based visual world eyetracking paradigm, we investigated pronoun resolution in two types of relative clauses: appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and restrictive relative clauses (RRCs). While ARCs were generally considered as secondary and side-commentary information, aligning with subordinate discourse, RRCs were usually construed as part of the main discourse. Making use of this distinction between ARCs and RRCs, the current study examined pronoun resolution with two possible antecedents. In one condition (RRC), the two antecedents were part of the same discourse whereas in the other (ARC), they were in distinct discourse units. We found stronger competition between the two possible antecedents in the former condition than the latter. Our findings can potentially be explained by an encoding interference, where linguistic entities encoded with similar discourse status information can lead to an interference effect.

The role of linguistic perspectives in the language description

Abstract The paper discusses the language of linguistic description (metalanguage), in particular the question of how the language of description can influence the language that is the object of the description. I approach the topic from the aspect of the use of linguistic terms and their personification. I summarize the results of my three previous case studies, in which I tracked the formulations associated with the selected terms. I focused on the actions that, according to the literal understanding of the formulations, are performed by the terms. Based on these case studies, I concluded that the more frequently a term is used, the more likely it is that it will “perform” an activity and, if this happens, the further away they go, the more their “competencies” expand, i.e. they perform progressively more complex acts. I have characterized this phenomenon as the perspective through which we view linguistic reality through terms (the perspective of the term), and in contrast to it, I have presented the speaker’s perspective, through which linguistic reality is perceived from the perspective of everyday speakers. I have pointed out that the perspective of the term can affect the description of language in a way that shifts the linguist’s attention from the real behaviour of speakers to the “behaviour” of abstract linguistic entities.

APEX-pHLA: A novel method for accurate prediction of the binding between exogenous short peptides and HLA class I molecules

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules play critically significant role within the realm of immunotherapy due to their capacities to recognize and bind exogenous antigens such as peptides, subsequently delivering them to immune cells. Predicting the binding between peptides and HLA molecules (pHLA) can expedite the screening of immunogenic peptides and facilitate vaccine design. However, traditional experimental methods are time-consuming and inefficient. In this study, an efficient method based on deep learning was developed for predicting peptide-HLA binding, which treated peptide sequences as linguistic entities. It combined the architectures of textCNN and BiLSTM to create a deep neural network model called APEX-pHLA. This model operated without limitations related to HLA class I allele variants and peptide segment lengths, enabling efficient encoding of sequence features for both HLA and peptide segments. On the independent test set, the model achieved Accuracy, ROC_AUC, F1, and MCC is 0.9449, 0.9850, 0.9453, and 0.8899, respectively. Similarly, on an external test set, the results were 0.9803, 0.9574, 0.8835, and 0.7863, respectively. These findings outperformed fifteen methods previously reported in the literature. The accurate prediction capability of the APEX-pHLA model in peptide-HLA binding might provide valuable insights for future HLA vaccine design.

Pinpointing Linguistic Emphasis in Classical Greek

Abstract Emphasis is a ubiquitous notion in classical scholarship, but its vagueness has repeatedly been criticized (and its usefulness, consequently, questioned) by Greek linguists. This brief study seeks to identify (and secure) a place for this notion in the analytical toolbox for the description of Classical Greek by applying the strict but nuanced definition of emphasis in Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008) to the identification and classification of linguistic devices in the ancient language. In particular, this study argues for a distinction between emphasis as a rhetorical effect and emphasis as a communicative intention. In the former understanding, emphasis may be produced secondarily by a number of linguistic and rhetorical devices. Conversely, linguistic emphasis stricto sensu would only be conveyed by linguistic devices used primarily to intensify linguistic entities of any level (discourse acts, propositional contents, subacts).

On the Mode of Existence of Mute Law and the Inference of Cryptotypes

A widespread thesis in the analytical theory of law is that norms exist as linguistic entities. Rodolfo Sacco is one of the authors who have most fruitfully insisted, on the contrary, that there is no necessary correlation between norms and language, not even in the specific context of law. He thus extended the conceptualisation of legal normativity well beyond the boundaries of language through the notions of cryptotype and mute law. This paper takes into account two alternative hypotheses to the hypothesis that norms exist as linguistic entities, which are respectively based on the concepts of deontic state-of-affairs and deontic noema. Both hypotheses are tested for their applicability to the phenomena investigated by Sacco under the notion of mute law, notably with reference to cryptotypes. The question is raised then of how the existence of cryptotypes can be inferred from behaviour. The paper emphasizes the role that can be played in this context by nomotrophic behaviour, that is, the behaviour that consists in a reaction to the violation of a norm.

Evaluation of adjective and adverb types for effective Twitter sentiment classification.

Twitter, the largest microblogging platform, has reported more than 330 million active users in recent years. Many users express their sentiments about politics, sports, products, personalities, etc. Sentiment analysis has emerged as a specialized branch of machine learning in which tweets are binary-classified to provide sentimental insights. A major step in sentiment classification is feature selection, which primarily revolves around parts of speech (POS). Few techniques merely focused on single features such as adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, while other techniques examined types of these features, such as comparative adjectives, superlative adjectives, or general adverbs. Furthermore, POS as linguistic entities have also been studied and extensively classified by researchers, such as CLAWS-C7. For sentiment analysis, none of the studies conceptualized all possible POS features under similar conditions to draw firm conclusion. This research is centered on the following objectives: 1) examining the impact of various types of adjectives and adverbs that have not been previously explored for sentiment classification; 2) analyzing potential combinations of adjectives and adverbs types 3) conducting a comparison with a benchmark dataset for better classification accuracy. To assess the concept, a renowned human annotated dataset of tweets is investigated. Results showed that classification accuracy for adjectives is improved up to 83% based on the general superlative adjective whereas for adverbs, comparative general adverb also depicted significant accuracy improvement. Their combination with general adjectives and general adverbs also played a substantial role. The unexplored potential of adjectives and adverb types proved better in accuracy against state-of-the-art probabilistic model. In comparison to lexicon-based model, proposed research model overruled the dependency of lexicon-based dictionary where each term first needs to be matched for semantic orientation. The evident outcomes also help in time reduction aspect where huge volume of data need to be processed swiftly. This noteworthy contribution brought up significant knowledge and direction for domain experts. In the future, the proposed technique will be explored for other types of textual data across different domains.

Are languages and dialects inventions of nationalism? On the problem of totalising metalanguage

AbstractScholars of nationalism generally acknowledge that what counts as ‘a language’ and what as ‘a dialect’ is determined by historical and political circumstance, that both notions are idealisations of linguistic practice rather than objective entities and that the reality of language is fuzzy and complex. However, they nevertheless continue to talk about (and analyse) ‘linguistic entities’ in the same way nationalists do: as homogenous, closed systems. Paralleling Brubaker's groupist language, this paper proposes the notion of totalising metalanguage to signify all ways of talking about linguistic phenomena that reify them into unproblematically existing objects. I analyse the historical development of dialectology in Croatia and Serbia from the 19th century until today to show how dubious linguistic taxonomies have been presented in the discourse as objectively existing linguistic entities. The paper invites scholars of nationalism to seek alternative approaches to the language‐dialect dichotomy than that offered by the outdated model of Joshua Fishman.

Learning Hierarchical Modular Networks for Video Captioning.

Video captioning aims to generate natural language descriptions for a given video clip. Existing methods mainly focus on end-to-end representation learning via word-by-word comparison between predicted captions and ground-truth texts. Although significant progress has been made, such supervised approaches neglect semantic alignment between visual and linguistic entities, which may negatively affect the generated captions. In this work, we propose a hierarchical modular network to bridge video representations and linguistic semantics at four granularities before generating captions: entity, verb, predicate, and sentence. Each level is implemented by one module to embed corresponding semantics into video representations. Additionally, we present a reinforcement learning module based on the scene graph of captions to better measure sentence similarity. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed method performs favorably against the state-of-the-art models on three widely-used benchmark datasets, including microsoft research video description corpus (MSVD), MSR-video to text (MSR-VTT), and video-and-TEXt (VATEX).

MORPHOLOGY AND MORPHEMOLOGY: WORD STRUCTURE AND MORPHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

The article focuses on analyzing the foundational theoretical tenets of morphemology and morphology within contemporary Ukrainian linguistics, emphasizing their intrinsic interrelation. A comprehensive examination of the morpheme as the fundamental linguistic entity for morphemological studies is undertaken. The primary attributes of a morpheme as a linguistic unit are elucidated, facilitating a more proficient comprehension of the principles underlying the morphemic analysis of words. Furthermore, the research delves into the grammatical meanings embodied by morphemes within specific parts of speech, drawing on Ukrainian language lexemes for illustration. The discourse provides a rationale for considering morphemology as an autonomous branch of linguistics, intricately linked with morphology and derivatology. The article delineates distinctions in the application of terms such as "morphemics" versus "morphemology" and "morpheme" versus "morph." A crucial assertion is advanced, substantiating that a morpheme, functioning as the smallest semantically significant constituent of a word, can simultaneously convey lexical, grammatical, and word-formational meanings. The correlation between morphemology and morphology is substantiated by the integral semantics inherent in words, a phenomenon derived from the amalgamation of lexical and grammatical meanings. The confluence of these meanings establishes a word's classification within a specific grammatical category (part of speech) and its affiliation with a particular word-formational type. Similar to a word form, a morpheme exhibits reproducibility in language, possesses a semiological function, and serves to convey both subject (via the root) and non-subject (via affixes) meanings. As with other linguistic entities, morphemes and word forms can be regarded as historical categories, prompting the differentiation of word formation into historical and synchronic aspects. Throughout the historical evolution of a language, alterations in word structure manifest through phonetic changes, the loss of productive affixes, and modifications in the phonemic boundaries of morphemes. Consequently, the framework for synchronic morphemic analysis must not be indiscriminately applied to other synchronic facets of the language.

Translation and Equivalence: An Argumentative Approach

Purpose: This article aims at establishing a dialogue between the Theory of Semantic Blocks (TSB), developed by Ducrot and Carel, and translation theories (the notions of equivalence, skopo, and translators’ role), seeking a possible strategy for solving difficult situations when translating humoristic texts that have polysemy or homonymy relations.
 Methodology: The research methodology involved a literature review, and in the end, a humorous statement containing polysemy was chosen to illustrate how the application of TSB would work in a translation. In this paper, we do not aim to choose the most correct approach but try to match the positive aspects of each one with TSB in order to find strategies that might help translators.
 Findings: We understood that establishing argumentative meaning for enunciates enables a more proper selection of linguistic entities because it is done based on an argumentative equivalence. This study is ongoing. Given its relatively lengthy nature, it may not be applicable in situations requiring simultaneous translation.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: However, further investigation could explore its use as a means of assessing the adequacy of written translations. A more comprehensive study is also essential to discover additional ways of streamlining the translator's tasks and to determine if TSB can address various translation challenges across different textual genres. In conclusion, studies like this play a crucial role in expanding the range of possibilities to enhance a translator's work. This enables them to navigate between languages and cultures more confidently, linguistically supported, without the need to remain invisible to be recognized as proficient professionals.

Sign Language Analysis Using CNN Algorithm

Sign language is a rich and diverse mode of communication used by Deaf and hard of-hearing communities around the world. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of sign language, focusing on its linguistic and gestural elements. Our study encompasses an exploration of the structural properties of sign languages, their historical evolution, and the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying sign language processing. We begin by providing an overview of sign language as a natural and fully developed language with its own syntax, semantics, and phonological features. Drawing from various sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), and others, we investigate the grammatical aspects and iconicity within signs. Furthermore, we examine the role of facial expressions and non-manual markers in conveying essential linguistic information. This analysis also delves into the historical and cultural dimensions of sign languages, shedding light on the evolution of sign languages and the influence of Deaf culture on their development. It highlights the importance of recognizing sign languages as unique cultural and linguistic entities, distinct from spoken languages. Keywords:Computer Vision; Convolutional Neural Networks; Sign Language Recognition

Les marqueurs de discours

Although a common topic for some time, the idea of discourse markers has been hampered by the difficulty of providing an operative definition to the corresponding notion, in view of the very heterogeneous nature of the linguistic entities at stake. Starting from the different parameters regularly evoked in the study of such markers, this work aims at characterizing them as a class of operators likely to assume various functions according to their syntactic and/or semantic links within the discourse.

AN ECOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SALIENCE IN THE CAMEROONIAN NEWSPAPER

Environmental communication plays a vital role in creating awareness about the importance of nature conservation, and actions needed and/or put in place to safeguard it. This research piece investigates discursive patterns that activate ecological salience in the Cameroonian newspaper. Analysis focused, firstly, on the identification and interpretation of pragma-linguistic entities marked with valorisation and conservation of the biophysical environment. The data comprised forty (40) newspaper articles selected from ten newspaper publishers in Cameroon. Salience-evoking elements in environmental texts were identified and interpreted using the ecolinguistic framework, specifically the model of deixis, postulated by Bang and Døør (1993). The descriptive statistical method (DSM) was used. This involved qualitative and quantitative analyses of the articles; starting with the identification, quantification and interpretation of linguistic and pragmatic entities in the texts. Findings revealed that the Cameroonian press tactfully used language categories depicting the ideals, relevance and conservation of the country’s ecosystems. Ecologically valorising markers found included adjectives, hedging, headlines and slogan, eco-dignifying metaphors and intertextuality (the evocation of texts relating to the beauty and conservation of nature). Generally, it was observed that the Cameroonian press used language strategically to project a positive image (importance) of her existing flora, fauna, reptiles and fish, and biosphere (water bosies, land and the atmosphere). Cognizant of the sustenance nature offers earthly life, it is prudent for the media to cover nature stories regularly, and in language forms that align with, and reinforce, global efforts to valorise, protect and conserve the ecosystem.

English as Lingua Franca or World Englishes?

One of the key ways to realizing linguistic justice, as alluded to by Phillipe van Parijs (2011), is to welcome the use of English as a global lingua franca. Linguistic justice is defined as the condition in which the languages of linguistic groups are accorded official recognition, and the speakers do not suffer from social, economic, and dignity inequality on the basis of their language. However, the acceptance of English as an international language, as pointed out by many scholars, including Van Parijs himself, can also lead to potentially unjust linguistic situations. There are, in particular, three issues that come with the use of English as a global language, and they are (1) inequality in communication; (2) unfair resource allocation; and (3) lack of speaker dignity. This paper will provide a review of how political philosophers have talked about these problems, and the normative solutions to achieving linguistic justice. The aim of this article is to provide a linguistic perspective to the issue of linguistic justice. The author endeavors to do so by looking at linguistic justice through the lens of two dominant paradigms in the field of English linguistics: the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, pioneered by Braj Kachru; and the English as Lingua Franca (ELF) paradigm, a relatively more recent alternative developed by Jennifer Jenkins. The tenets of how each paradigm views speakers of English around the world are compared and a solution to the problem of linguistic justice is offered by thinking about “Englishes” instead of a single monolithic linguistic entity “English”. In doing so, efforts are made to highlight how linguistic justice can be achieved in the world of Englishes.

Exploring the Multifaceted Nature of Complex Syntactic Units in Linguistic Texts

This research delves into the intricate realm of complex syntactic units, emphasizing their role as pivotal linguistic and methodological entities. By intertwining the planes of expression and content, the study underscores the structural and semantic markers that define these units. A comprehensive review of existing literature on the subject reveals the depth and breadth of understanding surrounding complex syntactic units. The paper further highlights the primary characteristics of these units, emphasizing their role in bridging individual sentences and facilitating coherent communication. Special focus is given to the concluding sentences within these units, which play a crucial role in connecting and contextualizing disparate sentences.

Examining the Differences between Neologisms and Spelling Errors on Social Media

Neologisms and spelling errors are common features of social media and have contributed immensely to easing information dissemination in today?s world. The advent of the internet has enabled linguistic advancement, linguistic oddities, and communication. As an evolving phenomenon, language grants its users the liberty to use it as it suits them to convey their varied messages. The global language monitor in Austin calculated that a neologism is created every 98 minutes, while a spelling error occurs in every five posts on social media. This paper aims to examine the differences between neologisms and spelling errors. This work's theoretical framework is anchored on-Mediated Communication, Geoffrey Leech?s theory of linguistic deviations, morphological processes of word formation, and Pitt Coder?s theory of Error Analysis. The paper retrieved its data from status updates and comments on various social media platforms. The findings indicate that neologisms are formed by morphological processes such as blending, clipping, shortening, semantic extension, and acronyms and abbreviations, while spelling errors are formed by erroneous patterns of addition, selection, and omission . The paper concludes that neologisms and spelling errors are distinctive linguistic entities. While some neologisms may have been accepted as dictionary entries, spelling errors are outright blunders and linguistic oddities. As such, they can never be accepted as standard forms of communication.

Change detection versus change localization for faces, houses, and words.

Holistic processing aids in the discrimination of visually similar objects, but it may also come with a cost. Indeed holistic processing may improve the ability to detect changes to a face while impairing the ability to locate where the changes occur. We investigated the capacity to detect the occurrence of a change versus the capacity to detect the localization of a change for faces, houses, and words. Change detection was better than change localization for faces. Change localization outperformed change detection for houses. For words, there was no difference between detection and localization. We know from previous studies that words are processed holistically. However, being an object of visual expertise processed holistically, visual words are also a linguistic entity. Previously, the word composite effect was found for phonologically consistent words but not for phonologically inconsistent words. Being an object of visual expertise for which linguistic information is important, letter position information, is also crucial. Thus, the importance of localization of letters and features may augment the capacity to localize a change in words making the detection of a change and the detection of localization of a change equivalent.

The real Billy the Kid: Two articles in a single English proper name

ABSTRACT The paper investigates the rare case where a single English proper name is used with two articles, e.g. the real Billy the Kid. The article placed to the right of the personal name, i.e. Billy, is called the inner article, while the article located to the left of the personal name is termed the outer article. The usage of the inner article is first explored against the historical record, and it is demonstrated that it remains robust wherever the use of modern surnames has not yet taken hold, e.g. in regnal names, nicknames, names of cartoon characters, etc. It is shown that proper names requiring the use of the inner article carry identifying information that is needed to ensure that they refer uniquely and that such information is encoded in embedded NPs, which motivates the use of the article and explains why it is placed inside the linear order of proper name constituents. The outer article is shown to mark the (in)definiteness of a referent manifestation/spatial-temporal slice created by modifying a proper name. In double article cases like the real Billy the Kid the inner article and outer articles mark thus the (in)definiteness of two different linguistic entities: the proper name itself (the inner article) and its spatial-temporal slice (the outer article). Consequently, the former is always definite while the latter can be either definite or indefinite.

Emergence of verb-pattern morphology in young Arabic speakers: morphological and semantic features.

Arabic, a Semitic language, displays a particularly rich derivational morphological system with all verb stems consisting of a semantic root and a prosodic verb-pattern. Such regular and frequently encountered knowledge is expected to be acquired early. The present study presents a developmental perspective on the relative contribution of morphological and semantic complexity to the acquisition of verbs in Spoken Arabic. Verbs in a spontaneous corpus from 133 typically developing children, 2; 6-6; 0-year-old, were coded for type and token frequency of verbal patterns and root type, and classified according to semantic complexity. Results support an item-based emergence driven by semantic complexity at the earliest stages of acquisition. A developmental expansion in the diversity of verbal patterns and morphological complexity was observed with age. Morphological complexity is only identified when the same root appears in different verb patterns. The late emergence of the same root in different verb patterns indicates that the perception of verb patterns as abstract linguistic entities beyond the actual verbs is attained later than the semantically-constrained verbs in earlier childhood. We conclude that whereas semantic complexity obstructs verbs from emerging in the lexicon in younger age groups, morphological complexity constitutes no such obstruction, since their perception as morphological devices is attained later in acquisition.