Linguistic Insights Research Articles

QuestionComb: A Gamification Approach for the Visual Explanation of Linguistic Phenomena through Interactive Labeling

Linguistic insight in the form of high-level relationships and rules in text builds the basis of our understanding of language. However, the data-driven generation of such structures often lacks labeled resources that can be used as training data for supervised machine learning. The creation of such ground-truth data is a time-consuming process that often requires domain expertise to resolve text ambiguities and characterize linguistic phenomena. Furthermore, the creation and refinement of machine learning models is often challenging for linguists as the models are often complex, in-transparent, and difficult to understand. To tackle these challenges, we present a visual analytics technique for interactive data labeling that applies concepts from gamification and explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to support complex classification tasks. The visual-interactive labeling interface promotes the creation of effective training data. Visual explanations of learned rules unveil the decisions of the machine learning model and support iterative and interactive optimization. The gamification-inspired design guides the user through the labeling process and provides feedback on the model performance. As an instance of the proposed technique, we present QuestionComb , a workspace tailored to the task of question classification (i.e., in information-seeking vs. non-information-seeking questions). Our evaluation studies confirm that gamification concepts are beneficial to engage users through continuous feedback, offering an effective visual analytics technique when combined with active learning and XAI.

Does think mean the same thing as believe? Linguistic insights into religious cognition.

Does think mean the same thing as believe? Linguistic insights into religious cognition.

Discourse Relations and Connectives in Higher Text Structure

The present article investigates possibilities and limits of local (shallow) analysis of discourse coherence with respect to the phenomena of global coherence and higher composition of texts. We study corpora annotated with local discourse relations in Czech and partly in English to try and find clues in the local annotation indicating a higher discourse structure. First, we classify patterns of subsequent or overlapping pairs of local relations, and hierarchies formed by nested local relations. Special attention is then given to relations crossing paragraph boundaries and their semantic types, and to paragraph-initial discourse connectives. In the third part, we examine situations in which annotators incline to marking a large argument (larger than one sentence) of a discourse relation even with a minimality principle annotation rule in place. Our analyses bring (i) new linguistic insights regarding coherence signals in local and higher contexts, e.g. detection and description of hierarchies of local discourse relations up to 5 levels in Czech and English, description of distribution differences in semantic types in cross-paragraph and other settings, identification of Czech connectives only typical for higher structures, or the detection of prevalence of large left-sided arguments in locally annotated data; (ii) as another type of contribution, some new reflections on methodologies of the approaches under scrutiny.

A Discursive Analysis of Crisis Response Strategies in CEO Apologies—Drawing on Linguistic Insights from the Appraisal Framework

When corporations are confronted with a crisis, well-crafted CEO apologies can serve to repair, restore, and rebuild a damaged corporate image. In prior research, the use of linguistic resources exhibited in CEO corporate apology discourse for different crisis response strategies has not been sufficiently examined. Drawing on the appraisal framework and subsumed linguistic resources, this study analyzed the discursive construction of crisis response strategies in the corporate apology discourse of leading companies listed in the Fortune Global 2000. The findings revealed an integrated use of crisis response strategies in which attitude appraisal resources predominated, while different types of appraisal resources were deployed in various crisis response strategies to achieve rhetorical persuasion in corporate communication. The proposed framework integrating crisis response strategies in CEO apology discourse with appraisal resources could guide CEOs and crisis communicators to use the right words when composing corporate apologies.

Discussion: multiple approaches in CLIL: cognitive, affective and linguistic insights

ABSTRACT This article is an afterword to the special issue on ‘Assessing CLIL: A multidisciplinary approach'. It provides a conceptual overview of the key approaches and issues in CLIL research addressed in the different articles. Apart from the focus on the comparison of CLIL and non-CLIL students' L2 proficiency in the Belgian context, some of the variables addressed are the focus on different L2s, the longitudinal approach, or the use of a solid corpus of learner language. The different approaches to SLA addressed in the issue (cognitive, attitudinal and linguistic) are also discussed.

Diachronic Distribution of Elemental Ordering in English

ABSTRACT English elemental ordering in a non-canonical word order incorporates preposing, postposing and elemental reversal. This paper intends to explore how these types of elemental ordering are distributed during the last two centuries by employing the Corpus of Historical American English or COHA. The findings demonstrate that preposing has been increasing apparently but still in its inceptive phase; postposing, subsuming existential there and presentational there, generally keeps plateauing with existential there dominating presentational there; and elemental reversal experiences a trend of gradual decreasing, which is attributed to the dominance in occurrences of passive with a by phrase construction over those of inversion. This research provides us with a corpus linguistic insight of exploring elemental ordering, which distinguishes itself from other researches focusing on information status.

A linguist's perspective on teaching communication disorders

I am a linguist in a linguistics department rather than a clinician in an accredited program, and thus some aspects of a typical intro speech and hearing science course are well beyond my capabilities and experience, e.g., clinical decision making, intervention, etc. My approach to teaching communication disorders to linguistics students has always been to focus on discussing the communication breakdown in relation to standard linguistic insights of a typical speaker/hearer, things like natural classes and markedness, content versus grammatical function, and so on. I ask my students to understand, for instance, what is going on when a child learns phonology or an adult brain processes language; what seems to be ‘breaking’ when a child presents a speech sound disorder or an adult presents aphasia; and how a “standard” linguistic view handle (or not) the relationship of these cases. While there are many outstanding textbooks intended to introduce the field of communication disorders to students entering the field, there are few suitable for a course from “my perspective“ aimed to linguistics students. Some years ago, I realized that I was probably going to have to write (or edit) one myself. In this presentation, I present my plans for the content and organization for this textbook.

The composite scanning method (urbslingua)

This article describes the author’s method of composite scanning. The composite scanning method is the method used in the urbslingua (urban language); the ‘letters’ from the urbslingua ‘alphabet’ – morphos and signs – are composites. The language itself and its structure are modelled on those insights of linguistics in which the language, as well as being a communication tool, is also a means for thought and culture perceived as communication.

Covid-19 mõju liivi keele omandamise võimalustele

This article examines several programmes created by the University of Latvia Livonian Institute promoting Livonian language learning which came about as a result of the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. The value and role of specifically digital solutions increased across society during this period, becoming a standard part of every aspect of daily life. Taking into account the reasons for the present Livonian language situation, it becomes clear that despite the overall seriousness of the circumstances created by the pandemic, there have also been certain positive developments for language learning and endangered language maintenance resulting from this situation. It may be that the pandemic situation prompted a change in perspective - among not only researchers but also society in general - on Livonian language preservation as well as its role and function. This shift confirmed and emphasised to the Livonian community as well as to broader society that Livonian - despite its small number of speakers - deserves the same opportunities available to every language and that these are offered not only by modern technology, but also by linguistic insights into language vitality and language acquisition theory. In this context, the two main Livonian language learning programmes prompted by the pandemic are discussed. These are: (1) the 7 online Livonian language lessons, which originally were developed as an instructional module for general education schools and were the first time in history when the opportunity to study Livonian was included in the school programme in Latvia;and (2) the next step in learning language basics, which grew out of this project - a series of songs written by Livonian authors intended for children and young people. These Livonian language learning and popularisation initiatives - motivated by the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic - are grounded in new approaches and methods of language acquisition as well as other proven techniques for preparing educational materials. These initiatives show that in a difficult situation, a flexible approach and creative solutions can place even a small language on a more equal footing when competing with larger languages. © 2021 Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia, Emakeele Selts. All rights reserved.

Cognitive Linguistics and its tools in studying conceptual metaphor: research and practice in ESP

The purpose of the study is to show how the insights of cognitive linguistics can be applied in teaching/learning figurative expressions and develop an invariantmodel of communicativeoriented ESP teaching process. The research goal is associated with solving the tasks of theoretical and practical plans, such as studying a conceptual metaphor from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics and the theory of communicative foreign language teaching. Three practical tasks have been fulfilled: a sample of metaphorical expressions from authentic sources has been made and analyzed, and a sequence of the learning process stages and appropriate sources of information for use as a means of studying metaphor has been determined. A complex of research methods was applied, including linguistic analysis as well as linguodidactic methods of modelling, experimental teaching and questioning surveying. As a result of the study, a model of communicative-oriented teaching / learning of conceptual metaphor within ESP process has been elaborated.

O'ZBEK TILIDAGI TILSHUNOSLIK TERMINLARINING MOBIL ILOVASINI YARATISH

In this article, Uzbek linguistic terms are mobileWe are talking about the creation of the application. Linguistics in the Uzbek languageto create a mobile application of the terms and apply them to the general publicis created. The main purpose of this article is linguistic termsprovided general information and insights.

Klaipėdos krašto šiaurinės dalies nausėdijos XVI‒XVIII a. vietovardžiuose ir asmenvardžiuose | Oikonyms and Personal Names as a Source for Determining New Settlements in the Northern Part of the Klaipėda (Memel) Region: The 16th to the 18th Centuries

Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the area known from 1920 to 1939 as the Klaipėda region (Memel territory) experienced a variety of migration flows, which have been described by researchers on several occasions. When considering issues of migration, among other data, scholars from different fields often interpret personal and place names found in historical records. Based on the historical onomastics of the Klaipėda region, this article deals with the oikonyms and personal names derived from etymons bearing the meaning ‘new settler’. It examines their distribution, evolution, etymology, and motives behind picking these onymons. The author draws on research methods of historical onomastics, along with an analysis of historical sources and genealogical information. In addition to suggesting mutual links between onyms (personal names and oikonyms) of Baltic origin, the author puts forward hypotheses about the directions of population migration in the northern area of what was then the Memel eldership (Hauptamt Memel). The paper aims to offer linguistic insights into possible migration trends in the Klaipėda region in the 16th to the 18th centuries, which could later be verified by historical research.

Brain, mind and linguistic processing insights into the dynamic nature of bilingualism and its outcome effects

Brain, mind and linguistic processing insights into the dynamic nature of bilingualism and its outcome effects

Conciliation and Conflict in the Meccan and Medinan Qur'an: A Thematic Study of Suras 6 to 9

Despite its important social implications, the subject of conciliation in the Qur'an remains an under-researched field of study. This article focuses on the relationship between conciliation and conflict in Suras 6 to 9, a section of the muṣḥaf in which two Meccan suras are followed by two Medinan suras. In assessing the importance of conciliation in the Qur'an, this article considers its pervasiveness, manifestations, emphasis, and coherent thematic development. The analysis utilises two influential commentaries, the premodern Arabic exegesis by al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209) and the contemporary Urdu exegesis by Iṣlāḥī (d. 1997) which, taken together, provide complementary linguistic and structural insight. I will argue that conciliation is emphasised firstly in the Meccan component through the exemplars of prophetic restraint and divine mercy, and the central notion of iṣlāḥ. Iṣlāḥ forms the central axis around which equilibrium is maintained in the divine world order, a process of divine education in the form of revelation and prophetic instruction, which prevents and contains disputes. Secondly, Medinan injunctions highlight the importance of unity and the sanctity of maintaining peace treaties, thereby supporting the Qur'anic principle of non-compulsion in faith. In the course of analysis it becomes clear that, even during conflict (which is subject to extensive restrictions), conciliation remains of paramount importance.

Automatic generation of lexica for sentiment polarity shifters

AbstractAlleviating pain is good and abandoning hope is bad. We instinctively understand how words like alleviate and abandon affect the polarity of a phrase, inverting or weakening it. When these words are content words, such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives, we refer to them as polarity shifters. Shifters are a frequent occurrence in human language and an important part of successfully modeling negation in sentiment analysis; yet research on negation modeling has focused almost exclusively on a small handful of closed-class negation words, such as not, no, and without. A major reason for this is that shifters are far more lexically diverse than negation words, but no resources exist to help identify them. We seek to remedy this lack of shifter resources by introducing a large lexicon of polarity shifters that covers English verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Creating the lexicon entirely by hand would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, we develop a bootstrapping approach that combines automatic classification with human verification to ensure the high quality of our lexicon while reducing annotation costs by over 70%. Our approach leverages a number of linguistic insights; while some features are based on textual patterns, others use semantic resources or syntactic relatedness. The created lexicon is evaluated both on a polarity shifter gold standard and on a polarity classification task.

Automatic Construction of a Depression-Domain Lexicon Based on Microblogs: Text Mining Study.

BackgroundAccording to a World Health Organization report in 2017, there was almost one patient with depression among every 20 people in China. However, the diagnosis of depression is usually difficult in terms of clinical detection owing to slow observation, high cost, and patient resistance. Meanwhile, with the rapid emergence of social networking sites, people tend to share their daily life and disclose inner feelings online frequently, making it possible to effectively identify mental conditions using the rich text information. There are many achievements regarding an English web-based corpus, but for research in China so far, the extraction of language features from web-related depression signals is still in a relatively primary stage.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to propose an effective approach for constructing a depression-domain lexicon. This lexicon will contain language features that could help identify social media users who potentially have depression. Our study also compared the performance of detection with and without our lexicon.MethodsWe autoconstructed a depression-domain lexicon using Word2Vec, a semantic relationship graph, and the label propagation algorithm. These two methods combined performed well in a specific corpus during construction. The lexicon was obtained based on 111,052 Weibo microblogs from 1868 users who were depressed or nondepressed. During depression detection, we considered six features, and we used five classification methods to test the detection performance.ResultsThe experiment results showed that in terms of the F1 value, our autoconstruction method performed 1% to 6% better than baseline approaches and was more effective and steadier. When applied to detection models like logistic regression and support vector machine, our lexicon helped the models outperform by 2% to 9% and was able to improve the final accuracy of potential depression detection.ConclusionsOur depression-domain lexicon was proven to be a meaningful input for classification algorithms, providing linguistic insights on the depressive status of test subjects. We believe that this lexicon will enhance early depression detection in people on social media. Future work will need to be carried out on a larger corpus and with more complex methods.

Using Corpus Analyses to Help Address the DIF Interpretation: Gender Differences in Standardized Writing Assessment.

Addressing differential item functioning (DIF) provides validity evidence to support the interpretation of test scores across groups. Conventional DIF methods flag DIF items statistically, but often fail to consolidate a substantive interpretation. The lack of interpretability of DIF results is particularly pronounced in writing assessment where the matching of test takers’ proficiency levels often relies on external variables and the reported DIF effect is frequently small in magnitude. Using responses to a prompt that showed small gender DIF favoring female test takers, we demonstrate a corpus-based approach that helps address DIF interpretation. To provide linguistic insights into the possible sources of the small DIF effect, this study compared a gender-balanced corpus of 826 writing samples matched by test takers’ performance on the reading and listening components of the test. Four groups of linguistic features that correspond to the rating dimensions, and thus partially represent the writing construct were analyzed. They include (1) sentiment and social cognition, (2) cohesion, (3) syntactic features, and (4) lexical features. After initial screening, 123 linguistic features, all of which were correlated with the writing scores, were retained for gender comparison. Among these selected features, female test takers’ writing samples scored higher on six of them with small effect sizes in the categories of cohesion and syntactic features. Three of the six features were positively correlated with higher writing scores, while the other three were negative. These results are largely consistent with previous findings of gender differences in language use. Additionally, the small differences in the language features of the writing samples (in terms of the small number of features that differ between genders and the small effect size of the observed differences) are consistent with the previous DIF results, both suggesting that the effect of gender differences on the writing scores is likely to be very small. In sum, the corpus-based findings provide linguistic insights into the gender-related language differences and their potential consequences in a testing context. These findings are meaningful for furthering our understanding of the small gender DIF effect identified through statistical analysis, which lends support to the validity of writing scores.

The Contribution of Cognitive Linguistics to the Acquisition of Polysemy: A Dictionary Entry-Based Study with Chinese Learners of English

AbstractThis paper reported on a quasi-experimental study into the effectiveness of two types of entries – entries enhanced with cognitive linguistic insights (CL entries) and linearly ordered entries (LO entries) – in promoting L2 learners’ acquisition of English polysemes. Sixty-five college students majoring in English were divided into an experimental group (EG) and a reference group (RG). EG received the CL entries for lift and break in and RG were presented with the corresponding LO entries. Both groups were given twenty minutes to read the entries and to learn the twenty-seven senses. To examine the effectiveness of the two types of entries, an English-Chinese translation test was administered before the learning session (as Test 1), immediately after it (as Test 2) and two weeks later (as Test 3). The results showed that: (1) EG outperformed RG in the comprehension of the target senses on both Test 2 and Test 3. (2) The CL entries were more effective in promoting short-term retention than the LO entries, but had no advantage over the latter in long-term retention. (3) The CL entry for lift facilitated the learning of the target senses more than the LO entry did, but the CL entry for break in was no more effective than the LO entry in helping L2 learners acquire the target senses. The study suggests that the cognitive linguistic view can and should be further applied to treating polysemy in learner’s dictionaries, but the model for CL entries is not always recommendable and the knowledge gained from reading the CL entries needs consolidating.

A Linguistic Insight into the Legislative Drafting of English-Speaking Jurisdictions

A Linguistic Insight into the Legislative Drafting of English-Speaking Jurisdictions

‘Hakken en plakken’

Abstract Orthography is considered to be a major problem in Dutch education, since many pupils don’t seem to be able to master orthographic rules, even after years of education. In educational literature it is argued that the problems related to spelling are caused by approaches that focus more on rules of thumb than on linguistic insights. This is somewhat remarkable, since a good understanding of the Dutch orthographic system requires a fair amount of morphological knowledge. In order to effectively implement this knowledge, the development of a morphological awareness (MA) seems to be required. Therefore, a short intervention was designed for the upper levels of secondary schools (4 havo) which aimed to foster MA and, subsequently, improve orthographic skills. Results of this quasi-experimental study indicate that a short intervention can significantly boost MA, but that students don’t seem to be able to use MA effectively to enhance spelling performance.