Linguistic Environment Research Articles

Longitudinal case study on the development of consonant–vowel distribution in the babbling of a Czech–English infant

Previous studies have shown that bilingual infants adjust the distribution of vowels and consonants, while babbling, to the languages they are exposed to, but little is known about the developmental trajectory of this skill. In this study, an infant exposed to English and Czech from birth was recorded every two/three days from the age of 0;6.13 to the age of 1;6.21 while babbling, and the distribution of vowels and consonants was analysed in his speech in relationship to the person he was interacting with. The study shows that the proportion of consonants increases throughout development in the recordings in which the child is interacting with his father (Czech speaker), and it remains instead stable over development in the recordings in which the child is interacting with his mother (English speaker). This finding suggests that the child is able to tie his babbling strategies, within a few months, to the distribution of vowels and consonants occurring in the linguistic environment.

‘I walk in language circles’: transnational-translocal entanglements of a refugee-background Somali-Bantu’s multilingual identity

ABSTRACT This narrative case study examines the multilingual practice and identity of Haben, a refugee-background Somali-Bantu in a larger one-year (2019-2020) ethnography with refugee arrivals in coping with new linguistic and cultural environment in a northeastern U.S. city. Framed by the entangled transnational-translocal approach to multilinguals, languages, and identities, this study finds Haben’s African languages and English were acquired and used as resources for survival and thrival and weaponized against bullying and discrimination in his early and later life in diaspora. Haben’s multilingual identity was (re)produced by the sociocultural and linguistic flows across national boundaries and his responses to local needs. This study indicates multilingual identity as a discursive spatio-temporal entanglement that blurs the boundaries between transnational-translocal, past-present, human-nonhuman. This study challenges deficit discourse that perceives immigrant multilingualism as a deficit.

FEATURES OF VERBAL GREETINGS OF REPRESENTATIVES OF INTERCULTURAL SPACE

Nowadays, the emergence of intercultural contacts is an integral part of our lives. When a person enters another cultural or linguistic environment, he finds himself in a world of other values and rules of communication. It is necessary to take into account the fact that a person communicates with representatives of different cultures and different languages. The multifaceted nature of communication involves the application of various verbal and non-verbal means, the awareness of which allows you to determine your psychological personality and take into account the relevant qualities of the interlocutor, thus influencing the outcome of the interaction. The verbal components, the main carriers of message meanings, play an important role in interpersonal communication. Interlocutors begin any conversation with a greeting, and the words uttered during the greeting set the tone for all further communication. The article defines the features of the greeting depending on the part of the day, social status, age, etc. It was found that the British accompany the greeting with the question “How are you doing?”, the Indians say “Namaskar” (NamaskAr) or “Namaste” (NamastE) which means approximately “I greet God to you”, the French when meeting say the famous “Bonjour” and then add: “Comment ca va?” (“How’s it going?”), Italians wonder if the interlocutor’s fulcrum is good enough, so they ask: “Come sta?” (“How are you?”), a Japanese person’s conversation will begin with the greeting “Konichciva”, the literal translation of which is “The day has come”, Chinese when meeting ask each other “Have you eaten today?”, in Malaysia it is customary to ask “Where are you going?”, Georgians greet each other with the word “Gamarjoba!” – “Be right!” or “Win!”, Mongolians have a very specific greeting – “Are your cattle healthy?”, Arabs will say “Peace be with you!”, and Jews – “Peace be with you!” Greeting traditions of different peoples of the world are one of the important parts of culture. The etiquette has a national color, which depends on the way of life, beliefs, rituals, and traditions of a particular people. Key words: intercultural communication, language, etiquette, greetings.

Effects of multilingual and monolingual social networks on speech perception

Speech perception is gradient—listeners track continuous acoustic differences within a category (McMurray et al., 2022; Kapnoula & McMurray, 2022). Listeners use this gradiency to adjust subphonetic details (McMurray & Jongman, 2011), recover from ambiguity (McMurray et al., 2009), and aid learning and adaptation (McMurray & Farris-Trimble, 2012; Clayards et al., 2008). However, it is unclear whether gradiency is a developmental product of linguistic experience, particularly the variability of speech that is experienced. This ongoing project (current n = 31, planned n = 60) is testing school-aged children (6–11 years old) using the visual analogue scaling task (Kong & Edwards, 2011). Children hear tokens from a speech continuum (e.g., beach/peach) and make continuous ratings about how /b/- or /p/- like the sound is. This is related to social network information regarding children’s language and social background. Preliminary results suggest that linguistic diversity impacts speech perception gradiency. The implications of bilingual education and linguistic environment in development will be discussed.

Shifting towards the institutional language?

Early on, parents in multilingual families start moulding their children’s linguistic environment, a process which is believed to be influenced by several external and family-related factors. The present study examines which factors correlate with parents’ efforts to maximise the institutional language (here Dutch) input in the home. The variables taken into account are: the families’ language policy constituted by language practices, beliefs and management; advice from both early childhood professionals and other sources; the parents’ linguistic and educational resources, as well as the family’s migration generation. Our data, representing 776 multilingual families in the officially monolingual, yet de facto language-diverse Flemish community of Belgium, were subjected to a bivariate correlational analysis and a stepwise logistic regression. Our results show the potential influence of advice and educational resources on parental decisions to maximise their children’s institutional language input. Both lower educational resources and advice given by professionals are linked with higher Dutch exposure efforts, whereas advice from other sources appears connected with less inclination to expose children to the institutional language at home. In further discussing our findings, policy implications are introduced.

Základné tematické línie teologickej recepcie Kierkegaarda v 20. storočí

The reception of Kierkegaard’s thought in twentieth century theology was extremely varied and complex. One can, however, identify in it thematic lines which originated largely due to the fact that theologians reflected not only on Kierkegaard’s primary work but also on its secondary reception in their contemporaries and predecessors. The repeated emphasis on certain moments of Kierkegaard’s thought led to the emergence of an intellectual continuity within the theological reception. I present four basic thematic lines in the article which run through the theological reception in different denominational and linguistic environments. The key motifs of these lines are the image of Kierkegaard as a representative of engaged Christianity, the interpretation of his thought as a corrective of the immanentization of theology, the reception of his concept of the relationship between Christianity and culture, and the discussion of his concept of the single individual. These reception lines contain both positive and negative moments, since Kierkegaard was perceived in an ambivalent way. His thought represented, however, an important source of inspiration for twentieth century theology which used it in its confrontation with the issues of its time.

Interlinguistic Interaction in the study of Russian as a Foreign Language in the Conditions of the Belarusian-Russian Linguistic and Cultural Environment

This study is devoted to an urgent problem of teaching Russian as a foreign language in the Republic of Belarus - the problem of interlinguistic interaction in the conditions of Belarusian-Russian bilingualism. Closely related bilingualism gives a rich picture of the world, promotes the development of multicultural consciousness and increases the potential capabilities of the individual, since two national cultures - Russian and Belarusian are broadcasted at once through one language (Russian). Mastering the norms of intercultural communication is carried out in various fields: educational, social, cultural, scientific, professional. A teacher of Russian as a foreign language has a special task - to ensure a harmonious combination of the culture of the language being studied (Russian), the culture of the residence country (Belarus) and the national culture of the student studying. The result of interlinguistic interaction is the formation in his mind the so-called “mixed” interlingual zone, including the elements of different language systems, which are not identified by the speaker as belonging to separate languages, hence can enter different linguistic contexts. In the course of the analysis, we came to the conclusion that the main functions of communication are currently assigned to the Russian language, while the Belarusian language acts as a translator of the national ideology and cultural symbolism.

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects

ABSTRACT The effective use of preverbal linguistic cues to make successful clause-final verbal prediction as well as robust maintenance of such predictions has been argued to be a cross-linguistic generalisation for SOV languages such as German and Japanese. In this paper, we show that native speakers of Hindi (an SOV language) falter in forming a clause-final structure in the presence of a centre-embedded relative clause with a non-canonical word order. In particular, the fallibility of the parser is illustrated by the formation of a grammatically illicit locally coherent parse during online processing. Such a parse should not be formed if the grammatically licit matrix clause final structure was being successfully formed. The formation of a locally coherent parse is further illustrated by probing various syntactic dependencies via targeted questions. We show that the parser's susceptibility to form such structures is not driven by top-down processing, rather the effect can only be explained through a bottom-up parsing approach. Further, our investigation suggests that while plausibility is essential, presence of overt agreement features might not be necessary for forming a locally coherent parse in Hindi. These results go against top-down proposals to local coherence such as lossy surprisal and are consistent with the good-enough processing model to comprehension while only partially supporting the SOPARSE account. The work highlights how top-down processing and bottom-up information interact during sentence comprehension in SOV languages – prediction suffers with increased complexity of the preverbal linguistic environment.

Особенности развития когнитивной регуляции в связи с коммуникативной компетентностью детей-монолингвов и сбалансированных билингвов

Preschool age is the most favorable period for mastering languages due to a number of psychological factors. This is the age of potential children's opportunities, the period of intensive development of language abilities. Therefore, an indispensable pedagogical condition for the development of early bilingualism is the creation of a favorable educational environment for children. The aim of the study is to study the development of cognitive regulation in connection with the communicative competence of balanced bilinguals (Tatar / Russian) and monolinguals (Russian), whose socialization is carried out in different developing subject-spatial environments. The research methodology is based on sociocultural concepts of “environmental” influences on the mental development (Vygotsky, 1999; Bronfenbrenner, 1999). The empirical study involved 60 children aged 5 to 7 years, among them 30 balanced bilinguals socializing in a bilingual (Tatar/Russian) environment, and 30 monolinguals in a Russian-speaking linguistic environment. To diagnose the development of children’s cognitive regulation, children’s subtests of the NEPSY-II neuropsychological battery were used: “Repetition of sentences”, “Memory for construction”, “Inhibition”, “Sorting cards according to a changeable attribute”; communicative competence in communication - the methods of “Pictures” by E.O. Smirnova and E.A. Kalyagina, “Peculiarities of interpersonal relations for children” by G.R. Khuzeeva; level of general intelligence - a children’s version of the Raven Test methodology. Statistical processing of the obtained data was carried out using the non-parametric U-Mann-Whitney test, Spearman correlation analysis. Conclusions and recommendations. It has been established that balanced bilinguals in older preschool age, compared with monolinguals, have advantages in cognitive regulation, in particular, in updating non-verbal information in the linguistic context of the target language (visual working memory), blocking and suppressing irrelevant verbal and non-verbal information (inhibitory control). Bilingual preschoolers are more active in communication, but less prone to leadership and dominance in a peer group, while monolingual children readily take on a leading role in a group with a desire for a high social position in a peer group. Differences in the convergence of indicators in groups of preschoolers were revealed, in particular, in the group of monolingual children, indicators of cognitive regulation are significantly associated with indicators of communicative competence, while in the group of balanced bilinguals they are with indicators of general intelligence as the ability to use mental operations in solving cognitive problems. We assume that the content of the educational program for the older group of monolinguals in the preschool educational institution is focused primarily on social and communicative development, while for bilinguals it is focused on cognitive and speech development.

(Non-)effects of linguistic environment on early stable consonant production: A cross cultural case study

Recent evidence shows that children reach expected basic linguistic milestones in two rural Indigenous communities, Tseltal and Yélî, despite their infrequent exposure to child-directed speech from adults. However, those results were partly based on measures that are fairly robust to environmental variation, e.g. the onset of babbling. By contrast, directed speech input is typically linked to lexical development, which is environmentally sensitive. We investigate whether these children’s vocal motor schemes—a motor-phonological measure of stable consonant production related to early vocabulary—show a similar “expected” developmental pattern to what has been found for typically developing children in urban “child-centered” linguistic communities. We also compare development between the two languages, whose phonological inventories differ greatly in size and complexity. Using spontaneous speech from clips sampled across children’s waking days at home, we find that children’s canonical babble and stable consonant production is overall comparable to previous work with typically developing children. We find no evidence for difference between the two languages.

Usage of the foreign websites on foreign language practical classes for development of students’ communicative competence

The paper is devoted to considering the usefullness of authentic materials when teaching a foreign language in order to form the communicative competence of students. The author analyzes the concept of authenticity, highlighting its types, states and characteristics, as well as features of the use of authentic materials in the educational process. Classifying foreign official websites of law-enforcement bodies as authentic materials, the author considers them as one of their effective means of forming communicative competence in the absence of a natural linguistic environment. The author developed and methodically substantiated a system of working with authentic materials in the form of foreign official websites of law-enforcement bodies, which was tested in a practical lesson in a foreign language at the Kuzbass Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. The analysis of the experimental lesson allowed the author to come to conclusions about the feasibility and effectiveness of organizing work with authentic materials on the basis of a methodically developed task to form the communicative competence of students, expand their socio-cultural and professional knowledge and motivate them to study a foreign language.

A Two-Sided Matching Decision-Making Approach with Correlative Criteria Under Probabilistic Linguistic Environment

Two-sided matching decision-making (TSMDM) problems widely exist in human being’s life. In practical TSMDM problems, subjects who are being matched with usually tend to provide linguistic evaluations for convenience. Owing to the fuzziness of decision-making environment, subjects may provide several linguistic terms associated with their probabilities as the evaluations, which can be described as the probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs). To model such scenarios, this paper proposes a TSMDM approach with probabilistic linguistic evaluations. The probabilistic linguistic evaluations are firstly normalized with the preservation of ignored probabilities. The normalized evaluations are then aggregated into the comprehensive evaluations by using the defined Choquet integral-based probabilistic linguistic aggregation (CIPLA) operator. Thereafter, the satisfaction degrees of two sides of subjects are calculated based on the closeness coefficient in TOPSIS method. On the basis of this, a multi-objective TSMDM model aiming to maximize the comprehensive satisfaction degree is built and transformed into a single-objective TSMDM model considering the weights of two sides. To solve the single-objective TSMDM model is to determine the optimal matching result. An illustrative example of matching enterprises and knowledge-sender universities is introduced to validate the proposed approach and compare it with other existing TSMDM approaches. The results illustrate that the proposed approach can not only avoid information loss, but also effectively integrate PLTSs with correlative criteria.

Problems Of Teaching Speaking Skill And Its Solution Among Students At The Second Public Intermediate School Of Bondowoso For The School Year 2021/2022

Speaking is the first productive skill and the primary skill in language teaching. But in fact, teaching speaking skill so far is still under the teacher’s control. It does not allow the students to participate in the teaching activities and exercises actively, so they cannot speak the Arabic language and feel bored teaching it. This research aims to describe the problems faced by language teachers and students at the Second Public Intermediate School of Bondowoso for the school year 2021/2022 in teaching speaking skills, as well as to describe solutions to those problems for teaching Arabic speaking skills. The researcher used qualitative and descriptive research to know the problems of teaching speaking skills and its solution among students at the Second Public Intermediate School of Bondowoso for the school year 2021/2022. The data collection methods in this research are observation, interview, and document. The result of this research is to find the problem for the teacher, which is (1) the teacher’s weak efficiency in speaking skill, (2) the lack of time to teach Arabic, (3) the student’s lack of desire to teach Arabic, (5) the lack of opportunity to practice speaking, ( 6) The lack of an excellent linguistic teaching environment. The problem with the students is (1) Students’ unwillingness to learn Arabic, (2) Different students’ study backgrounds, (3) Some students are unable to pronounce sounds due to problems with them, (4) The teacher’s boring way of teaching speaking skills. As for the solutions to these problems, as told by the teacher, they are: allowing the teacher to improve his efficiency, increasing the share of teaching Arabic, using the preferred method, creating the appropriate environment for teaching Arabic, and encouraging the teacher to promote students’ desire to teach Arabic.
 الكلام هو المهارة الإنتاجية الأولى، والمهارة الرئيسية في تعليم اللغة. لكن في الواقع أن تعليم مهارة الكلام حتى الآن مازال تحت سيطرة المعلم ولا يتيح الفرصة لدى الطلبة ليشتركو ا بجهد ونشاط في الأنشطة التدريسية والتدريبات حتى أن الدارسين لم يستطيعوا أن يتكلموا باللغة العربية ويشعرون بالملول في تعليم اللغة العربية. هدف هذا البحث لوصف المشكلات التي يوجهها معلموا اللغة و الطلبة بالمدرسة المتوسطة الحكومية الثانية بوندوصو للسنة الدراسية 2021/2022 في تدريس مهارة الكلام, وكذلك لوصف الحلول لتلك المشكلات لتدريس مهارة الكلام للغة العربية. واستخدم الباحث في هذا البحث بحثا کيفيا وصفيا في معرفة مشكلات تدريس مهارة الكلام و حلها عند الطلبة بالمدرسة المتوسطة الحكومية الثانية بوندوصو للسنة الدراسية 2021/2022. وطريقة جمع البيانات في هذا البحث هي طريقة الملاحظة و المقابلة والوثيقة. و نتيجة لهذا البحث إيجاد المشكلة للمعلم و هي (1) ضعفة كفاءة المعلم في مهارة الكلام, (2) ضيق الوقت في تعليم اللغة العربية, (3) قلة الرغبة الطلبة في تعليم اللغة العربية، (5) وقلة الفرصة في ممارسة الكلام ، (6) وعدم بيئة التدريسية اللغوية الجيدة.و المشكلة من التلاميذ، : (۱) عدم رغبة التلاميذ في تعلم اللغة العربية (۲) خلفية دراسية التلاميذ المختلفة (3) بعض التلاميذ غير قادرين على نطق الأصوات لوجود مشکلات عنده (4) طريقة المعلم المملة في تعليم مهارة الكلام. أما الحلول لتلك المشكلات كما أخبرها المعلم و هي: إعطاء الفرصة للمعلم لترقية كفاءته, وزيادة الحصة لتعليم اللغة العربية , واستخدام الطريقة المعجبة, وتكوين البيئة المناسبة لتعليم اللغة العربية, والتشجيع من المعلم لترقية رغبة الطلبة في تعليم اللغة العربية.

Decolonizing translanguaging research methodologies: A commentary and self-reflection

This article discusses translanguaging methodologies from a decolonial perspective. Drawing on tangsing, I have argued that the research methodologies to investigate translanguaging should not only push linguistic boundaries but also question the relevance of Western/colonial research methods that reproduce linguistic insecurity and epistemic inequality for Indigenous and racialized/ethnic minority communities. My claim is that translanguaging methodologies should not just pay attention to “collecting” language practices, they should also be concerned with visibilizing the epistemologies and epistemic positionalities of the people that translanguage to respond to unequal linguistic environments across spaces.

New success likelihood index model for large group human reliability analysis considering noncooperative behaviors and social network

Human reliability analysis (HRA) is a systematic method to qualitatively and quantitatively assess and analyze potential human errors for enhancing the safety and reliability of complex socio-technical systems. As a representative HRA approach, the success likelihood index method (SLIM) has been widely applied to quantify the effects of performance shaping factors on human performance and derive the human error probabilities of operational tasks. The influence quantification of performance shaping factors mainly relies on experts’ subjective judgments, where conflict opinions inevitably exist because of their different knowledge and experiences. Besides, the current SLIM studies often involved a small group of experts and assumed them to be independent, which is insufficient to tackle increasingly complicated HRA problems. In this article, a large group SLIM model is developed to calculate the human error probabilities of operational tasks considering experts’ noncooperative behaviors and social relations. Specifically, a large group of experts are included to provide task state assessments under complex uncertain linguistic environment, and clustered into subgroups based on a social network analysis. Then a consensus reaching process is performed to tackle the noncooperative behaviors of experts to obtain a consensus human error probability estimation. Finally, a case study of cargo loading process is provided to illustrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed large group SLIM model.

A novel consensus reaching method for MCGDM in social network with intuitionistic grey linguistic numbers

PurposeThe existing consensus reaching mechanisms ignore the influence of social triangle structure on the decision-makers’ (DMs') weights, and the consensus reaching process (CRP) fails to fully reflect the DMs' subjectivity and can be time consuming and costly. To solve these issues, a novel CRP for multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems with intuitionistic grey linguistic numbers (IGLNs) is proposed in this paper.Design/methodology/approachFirst, a weight calculation method is proposed by analysing the triangle structure of DMs' social network and scale of adjacent nodes. Then, a consensus degree index based on three-level polygon area is defined and applied to identify the inconsistent DMs. Finally, the feedback mechanism based on particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm under grey linguistic environment is developed, where subjective trust relationships in social network is utilised to determine the adjustment coefficient.FindingsThe advantages of the proposed method are highlighted by two practical applications of the evaluation of tunnel construction method and the selection of a hotel for the centralised isolation. Comparision analysis and numerical simulation are performed to reveal the effectiveness and applicability of the method.Practical implicationsThe proposed model can not only reflect the effect of triangle structure in social network on DMs' weights, but also reduce the time and cost of decision-making.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper is to propose a new MCGDM model based on intuitionistic grey linguistic numbers, which can handle the problem of inconsistency of information more effectively.

Combinatorial design of the MAUT and PAMSSEM II methods for multiple attributes group decision making with probabilistic linguistic information

This paper considers the application of Probabilistic Linguistic Term Sets (PLTS) in Multiple Attribute Group Decision Making (MAGDM) when the weights cannot be determined. Firstly, as an improvement of PROMETHEE, the PAMSSEM method has substantial advantages in handling mixed data and missing data. It can not only make use of the preference threshold as well as the irrelevant threshold to express the preference degree of the decision-maker (DM) but likewise express the compensation limit that DM is willing to accept through the rejection threshold. Simultaneously, the MAUT method cleverly employs the marginal utility function to redistribute the evaluation values under the same attribute within a fixed interval, making the decision matrix standard and reliable. To comprehensively utilize the advantages of these two methods, we integrated the PAMSSEM II and MAUT methods in the probabilistic linguistic environment to form the PL-MAUT-PAMSSEM II method followed by applying it to the problem of inbound tourism destination selection. Secondly, in the process of data processing, an equivalent conversion function will be used to convert the PLTS and the probabilistic hesitant fuzzy set (HPFS) to each other to make the calculation between the matrices feasible and use the entropy method to calculate the weights to ensure the decision-making process. Finally, taking the sample deviation value as the inspection standards, the big data analysis compared with other methods is carried out through a large number of sample examples to scientifically validate the superiority of the newly proposed method.

An optimization model for rescuer assignments under an uncertain environment by using Dempster–Shafer theory

Emergency decision making and disposal are significant challenges faced by the international community. To minimize the emergency casualties, and reduce probable secondary disasters, it is necessary to immediately dispatch rescuers for emergency rescue in calamity prone areas. The abruptness, destructiveness, and uncertainty of emergencies, the rescue team often faces challenges of pressing time, scattered calamity locations, and diverse tasks. This necessitates the effective organization of rescuers, for their swift dispatch to the areas requiring rescue. A valuable research problem is how to group and dispatch rescuers reasonably and effectively according to the actual needs of the emergency rescue task and the situation to achieve the best rescue effect. This study establishes a dispatch model for rescuers in multiple disaster areas and rescue points. First, this paper combines the Dempster–Shafer theory (DST) and linguistic term set, to propose the concept of an evidential linguistic term set (ELTS), that can flexibly and accurately describe the subjective judgment of emergency decision-makers. It not only lays a theoretical foundation for establishing the rescuers’ dispatch model, but also aids in expressing information in uncertain linguistic environments of decision-making and evaluation. Second, to determine the weight of ability-based rescuer evaluation criteria, this study adopted the evidential best–worst method, combining it with DST to compensate for the limitations of the traditional weightage calculation method in expressing uncertainty. Third, to effectively dispatch rescuers to multiple disaster areas, modeling is carried out based on the above methods to maximize the competence of rescuers and the satisfaction of rescue time, and the best scheme for the allocation of rescuers is determined by solving the model. Finally, the advantages of the constructed model in emergency multitasking group decision-making are demonstrated through an empirical analysis.

Intelligibility of Select World Englishes and the Factors Affecting It: The Case of High School ESL Learners

With the significant upsurge of English language speakers in the world, it is easier to anticipate the chances of both native and non-native speakers communicating with each other. As a consequence, the question of the intelligibility of the different English varieties has become a significant area to be studied. Normally, most studies utilized participants who have an extensive background in the language, such as English majors, teachers, or natives of the English language, to investigate the intelligibility of World Englishes. However, in the Philippine setting, students across all grade levels also use English as their second official language. Stemming from the aforementioned, this paper projects to establish the research space by employing ESL senior high school students of Southern Mindanao to determine the intelligibility of American, Philippine, and Chinese Englishes and the factors that affect the intelligibility of these varieties. With a mixed method research design, the study found that Philippine English was relatively the most intelligible variety to the students. Moreover, the study further revealed that accent familiarity, pronunciation, speech rate, and linguistic environment are the factors that influence intelligibility. The findings of the study suggest that English language users should be keen on the factors that affect intelligibility to increase their awareness of the different varieties of English. It is also suggested that teachers should adopt a variety that is most beneficial for the users to achieve better intelligibility.

Robot Selection Using An Integrated MAGDM Model Based on ELECTRE Method and Linguistic q-Rung Orthopair Fuzzy Information

With the development of engineering sciences, many companies are using robots in different industries to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their work. However, the need for robots under different requirements is different, which makes the selection of robots complex. In this paper, a linguistic q-rung orthogonal fuzzy multiple attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) method based on ELECTRE is proposed for robot selection. First, the basic Hausdorff distance is extended to the linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy environment to measure the deviation between two linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy numbers and two linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets. Then, the properties of the linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy distance measure based on Hausdorff distance are investigated. In addition, two maximum deviation models for deriving the weights of decision-makers and attributes are proposed. Moreover, a new MAGDM method is proposed by extending the ELECTRE method to the linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy environment. Finally, the practicality as well as the effectiveness of the method is demonstrated through a case study of the robot selection problem. The linguistic q-rung distance measure is used to construct two maximum deviation models to objectively derive the weights of attributes and decision-makers, and the linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy ELECTRE method is used to complete the selection of robots for a clean energy company. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis of the parameter in the proposed method is provided, and the superiority of the new method is illustrated by the comparison with existing MAGDM methods.