Linguistic Relations Research Articles

Language Entails Linguistic Relativity.

This commentary addresses the challenge of linking an individual-grounded theory of concepts to a phenomenon that assumes conceptual conventions at population level (linguistic relativity). We distinguish I-concepts (individual, interior, imagistic) from L-concepts (linguistic, labeled, local) and see that quite different causal processes are often conflated under the term "concepts." I argue that the Grounded Cognition Model (GCM) entails linguistic relativity only to the extent that it imports L-concepts into its scope, which it can hardly avoid doing given that practitioners require language to coordinate around their theory and findings. I conclude that what entails linguistic relativity is not the GCM but language itself.

Beyond Linguistic Relativity, Emotion Concepts Illustrate How Meaning is Contextually and Individually Variable.

Kemmerer describes grounded accounts of cognition and, using crosslinguistic diversity across conceptual domains, argues that these accounts entail linguistic relativity. In this comment, I extend Kemmerer's position to the domain of emotion. Emotion concepts exemplify characteristics highlighted by grounded accounts of cognition and differ by culture and language. Recent research further demonstrates considerable situation- and person-specific differences. Based on this evidence, I argue that emotion concepts carry unique implications for variation in meaning and experience, entailing a relativity that is contextual and individual in addition to linguistic. I conclude by considering what such pervasive relativity means for interpersonal understanding.

A Study on Korean Bridging Inferences Marked by Korean Demonstrative ‘ku’

Bridging inferences (or references) are important in a variety of contexts since they are quite often unconsciously employed by people as one of the most efficient linguistic devices to establish coherence relations in discourse. The present study aims to explore the utilization of the anaphoric demonstrative ku by Korean speakers in the formation of bridging references. 252 occurrences of bridging references identified in 184 Korean argumentative essays were scrutinized and their distributions were compared with those of two other groups - English speakers (ESs) and Korean EFL learners (KEFLs) - which had been examined by Crosthwaite (2019). This study revealed that the implementation of anaphora is distinctively realized in typologically different languages, grammar-based and discourse-based, thus serving as a reminder of linguistic relativity. Furthermore, the study posited that L1 transfer occurred only restrictively in the Attribute category of bridging references among KEFLs. After all, our study provides insights into Korean speakers’ capacity to use contextual information to efficiently form and maintain coherent discourse, in comparison with English speakers’ and KEFL learners’.

Emotional Resonance of Arabic-English Bilinguals

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has inspired many researchers to investigate the relationship between language and thought. However, little attention has been paid to Arabic. The current study aimed to examine Arabic-English bilinguals’ perceptions of emotional words in their first and second languages. In addition, the current study aimed to detect whether gender is a significant variable affecting individuals’ viewpoints. The sample consists of 20 men and 29 women, with ages ranging from 19 to 31 years. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods in which the participants rated each question on a 5-point Likert scale. In addition, open-ended questions obtained informative responses from the participants. An independent t-test was used to detect differences between men and women. The results indicate that Arabic-English bilinguals feel higher emotional intensity when using their first language than when using their second. In addition, the participants’ independent variables, such as frequency of use, language proficiency, and context of acquisition, were significant because they affected their perception of emotional words in their first and second languages. Moreover, the results did not indicate any gender differences between men and women. Thus, this study provides insights into Arabic-English bilinguals’ perceptions of emotional terms in both languages.

Linguistic Relativity Today. Language, Mind, Society, and the Foundations of Linguistic Anthropology, written by Danesi, M.

Linguistic Relativity Today. Language, Mind, Society, and the Foundations of Linguistic Anthropology, written by Danesi, M.

Instructional Communication and Medium of Instruction: Content Instructors’ Perspectives

This paper hypothesizes that higher proficiency in the medium of instruction (MI) is a precondition for effective instructional communication (IC), with the latter being essential for higher cognitive processes, positive affects, and better performance in the learning environment. The reported study used questionnaires comprising open-ended questions to survey 341 content instructors who taught on 26 undergraduate programs with English as the MI (EMI) in a Saudi public university. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the resulting qualitative data, and the results reveal four themes. The first theme is the advantages of using the students’ mother tongue (Arabic in this case) as an MI; the findings show that doing so is related to robust IC, with the latter leading to better cognition, positive affects, and stronger performance in the learning environment. The second theme is the advantages of using EMI, which can be classified into three main areas: more educational resources, better international research collaboration, and more international job opportunities. The third theme is the use of code-switching in EMI classes because of poor IC; instructors code-switch for three purposes: cognitive, affective, and performance. The fourth theme is suggestions from participants for how to improve IC in EMI programs: the findings recommend the use of IC theory and linguistic relativity to examine EMI programs; also, collaboration among IC researchers, cognitive linguists, and EMI researchers will help understand how the MI influences students’ success; furthermore, policymakers must design curricula that consider the perspectives of content instructors and provide them with training to overcome several IC barriers in EMI programs.

Polar kya in Urdu: Both Mirative and Interrogative

This study aims to address the following question: what are the licensing conditions for the Urdu/Hindi polar question particle kya’s multiple concept selection behaviour? More specifically, what is the nature of contexts in which kya contributes both interrogative and mirative meanings, and how can such a phenomenon be characterized in terms of cognitive semantic compositional processes? To address this research question, the present study uses the Lexical Concept and Cognitive Model (Evans, 2009) as its theoretical underpinnings. This framework proposes the constructs of Lexical Concept and Cognitive Model to account for the mechanisms of semantic composition for polyfunctional phenomena. The study employs multiple data sources such as naturally occurring data, individual and dialogical introspections and Urdu Lughat. The study finds that to encode interrogative as well as mirative meanings, the polar kya undergoes the semantic compositional processes of lexical concept selection, integration and interpretation for final information characterization. The study concludes that kya can encode multiple lexical concepts in certain contexts, and its pragmatic functions result from construal imposed on the propositional content in the prior discourse. Theoretically the study shows that linguistic form-meaning relation is shaped by actual use.

Linguistic Conceptualization of Spatial Prepositions: Romanian ʺînʺ and Polish ʺwʺ ‒ A Comparative Approach

"Linguistic Conceptualization of Spatial Prepositions: Romanian “în” and Polish “w” – Comparative Approach. The Romanian preposition ""în"" corresponds to the Polish preposition ""w"". Both express the spatial relationship that consists of placing an object in a limited space; they indicate the interior of the space where something is located. In addition to this general definition in both languages, the preposition acquires other semantic functions that may be convergent, rendered directly by the pair Rom. în = Pol. w. Furthermore, representation of some linguistic relations can be different: for a Romanian speaker, the space relation could be reflected by preposition representing a closed space – în, but for a Polish speaker, it reflects an open space or a surface coralated to the Polish preposition – na. The main objective of this article is to analyze the differences that, first, result from the distinctive conceptualization of space reflected in the language using prepositions and, secondly, result from heterogenous grammatical system (Roman vs. Slavic). The analysis is based, among other things, on the frequent mistakes in the use of prepositional structures that Polish speakers make when learning Romanian. The wrong structures appear especially at the level of abstract language, in phrases or verbs, when the regime imposes prepositions or cases that do not correspond functionally to the native ones; however, the linguistic image of the space is also different and difficult to identify in the metaphorical or abstract structures. The cognitive approach allows the delineation of some image schemes that represent the core meaning of the preposition. The comparative study of the preposition in the Romanian and Polish languages shows that the prepositional system in the Romanian language is more developed and richer than the Polish one, and the latter presents a much stronger and more direct attachment to the feature of ""interiority"" expressed by the preposition ""w / în"" than in the Romanian language. Keywords: prepositions, Romanian as a Foreign Language, linguistic conceptualization, prepositional structures, polish language "

Integration of Multi-Branch GCNs Enhancing Aspect Sentiment Triplet Extraction

Aspect Sentiment Triplet Extraction (ASTE) is a complex and challenging task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). It aims to extract the triplet of aspect term, opinion term, and their associated sentiment polarity, which is a more fine-grained study in Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis. Furthermore, there have been a large number of approaches being proposed to handle this relevant task. However, existing methods for ASTE suffer from powerless interactions between different sources of textual features, and they usually exert an equal impact on each type of feature, which is quite unreasonable while building contextual representation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel Multi-Branch GCN (MBGCN)-based ASTE model to solve this problem. Specifically, our model first generates the enhanced semantic features via the structure-biased BERT, which takes the position of tokens into the transformation of self-attention. Then, a biaffine attention module is utilized to further obtain the specific semantic feature maps. In addition, to enhance the dependency among words in the sentence, four types of linguistic relations are defined, namely part-of-speech combination, syntactic dependency type, tree-based distance, and relative position distance of each word pair, which are further embedded as adjacent matrices. Then, the widely used Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) module is utilized to complete the work of integrating the semantic feature and linguistic feature, which is operated on four types of dependency relations repeatedly. Additionally, an effective refining strategy is employed to detect whether word pairs match or not, which is conducted after the operation of each branch GCN. At last, a shallow interaction layer is designed to achieve the final textual representation by fusing the four branch features with different weights. To validate the effectiveness of MBGCNs, extensive experiments have been conducted on four public and available datasets. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of MBGCNs, which obviously outperform state-of-the-art approaches.

“Acquired” Equals Addition? Associating Verbs with Arithmetic Operations Impacts Word Problem Performance

AbstractSuccessful word problem performance often requires understanding the linguistic relations between characters and objects. However, the keyword method promotes associating specific words with mathematical operations while neglecting the situational context. Research has thoroughly investigated the detrimental effects of individuals associating relational terminology (e.g., “more”) with mathematical operations (e.g., “addition”). The current study expands upon this line of research by examining whether undergraduate students associate verbs with mathematical operations and if verbal associations affect word problem performance. Similar to relational terminology, the participants associated verbs with operations, which significantly impacted performance. The educational implications are discussed.

Grammatical Gender and Cognition

This study aims to answer the question "does grammatical gender have any impact or influence on thought or cognition?" by comparing results from a conducted experiment with English- and Spanish-speaking segments. The question is tied to the theory of linguistic relativity that explores the possibility of language influencing thought.

The aesthetic analysis of idiomatic expressions in Amaụzari Igbo: A socio-cultural approach

Idiomatic expressions are useful tools for communicating a great deal of meaning in different languages. The purpose and the objective of this study are to examine the aesthetic nature of idiomatic expressions and to illustrate how Igbo people use idiomatic expressions in discourses. This study takes a socio-cultural approach to how words in the language are used in oral expressions for entertainment and peaceful discussions that bind the Amaụzari people together. Amauzari is a town in Isiala Mbano local government area of Imo State, Nigeria. The study used a sample population of over hundred men and women for her data collection. The aesthetic characteristics of idiomatic expressions are exhibited and appreciated especially during cultural ceremonies that attract a lot of people to the villages in Amaụzari. Data for this study were collected from the primary source. We collected data through participant observations of discourse contexts. The study used over hundred men and women as the sample population for data collection. The Theoretical framework we adopted in the study is Linguistic relativity which is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis shows that the meaning of utterances is from cultural conventions for how the words are used and interpreted. The study discovered that the appropriate use of idiomatic expression is a mark of pragmatic competence. In conclusion, the study shows that the characteristics of idiomatic expressions contribute to the peaceful existence of people according to their cultural backgrounds.

Does language rule perception? Testing a radical view of linguistic relativity.

To investigate whether language rules the visual features that can be discriminated (a radical assumption of linguistic relativity), we examined crosslinguistic differences between native Korean and German speakers during liminal perception of a target disk that was difficult to perceive because its visibility suffered from masking by a ring that followed and enclosed the target disk (metacontrast-masking). Target-mask fit varied, with half of the masks tightly and the other half loosely encircling the targets. In Korean, such tight versus loose spatial relations are semantically distinguished and thus highly practiced, whereas in German, they are collapsed within a single semantic category, thus are not distinguished by language. We expected higher sensitivity and greater attention to varying spatial target-mask distances in Korean than in German speakers. This was confirmed in Experiment 1, where Korean speakers consistently outperformed German speakers in discriminating liminal metacontrast-masked stimuli. To ensure that this effect was not attributable to generic differences in attention capture or by language-independent differences between participant groups, we investigated stimulus-driven attention capture by color singletons and conducted a control experiment using object-substitution masking, where tightness of fit was not manipulated. We found no differences between Korean and German speakers regarding stimulus-driven attention capture or perceptual sensitivity. This was confirmed in Experiment 3, where we manipulated types of masking within participants. In addition, we validated the tightness-of-fit manipulation in a language-related task (Experiment 4). Overall, our results are consistent with linguistic relativity, namely its assumed generalized language influences in nonlinguistic perceptual tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Vague terminology and pedagogy

A key challenge for any academic field is using, and teaching about, field-specific terminology. Speech science faces a unique set of circumstances, since many students and non-experts believe they understand a specific term. However, their definitions may vary drastically from the agreed upon definitions within the field. This becomes even more complicated when a specific piece of terminology is contentious within the field. Take, for example, the term “non-native.” Recent work has demonstrated that this term is simultaneously imprecise (i.e., does not refer to all and only individuals who meet specific criteria) and othering (i.e., inherently places one group in opposition to the “normal” group of native speakers). However, this terminological conundrum provides a ripe ground for pedagogical shift. In this presentation, we address both the pedagogical opportunities available in addressing these terminological issues, including metalinguistic discussions of the notions of categories and how this may tie into discussions around linguistic relativity. Furthermore, this approach allows for a broader discussion in the classroom that changing terminology only solves part of the problem; regardless of the terminology we use, we do not mitigate the bigger issues of interest. In fact, altering terminology alone can result in virtue-signaling (miles-hercules & Muwwakkil 2021).

How Educational Intercultural Bilingualism has shaped indigenous people language learning in Mexico: Decolonial challenges

Educational Intercultural Bilingualism (EIB), this approach to language education in multi-ethnic integration countries has received attention from a wide range of experts and scholars. This is because the right to be educated in one's mother tongue and to speak a dialect based on indigenous people often does not coexist with the official language of cultural identity at the national level. Better inclusion and valuing the place of indigenous people in the national cultural identity makes language education a social movement for equity and adaptation progress. This paper will focus on the EIB in Mexico, through a multi-level analysis of the historical processes and challenges encountered in language education for indigenous populations decolonization. The richness of Mexico's linguistic diversity and changing social relations will be useful in helping to build on-board experience in language teaching around the world.

Historical bases of Chinese-Kazakh language relations

The article analyzes the historical linguistic relations between the Chinese and Kazakh languages, which have developed in the mists of time. In the field of linguistic research, modern linguistics proves that the study of the language of each nation in combination with its past history, their social environment, interaction with other peoples is the best way to obtain the necessary information from the history of the development of languages. Studying the vocabulary of the Kazakh literary language on the basis of ancient Kazakh words, comparing them with the historically neighboring Chinese language, provides an excellent opportunity to study the past history of the Turkic languages, as well as determine the historical basis of the Dictionary of the Kazakh language. It is known that the relationship of languages ​​depends on mutual hostility, political, economic and cultural relations of neighboring peoples at different stages of historical development. It is well known that words are a linguistic unit that tends to move from one language to another, and from there to a third, and it is natural that Turkic words penetrate into the ancient Chinese language. The article reveals the possibility of gaining the meaning of many words in our language, the disclosure of their unclear meaning, the relationship of the Kazakh people with other peoples in different eras, or the possibility of obtaining detailed information about their past.

Linguistic Relativism and the Expression of Basic Theoretical Rationality in Inuktitut

This paper begins by stressing the importance of distinguishing between linguistic relativity, whose reality is hardly debatable, and linguistic relativism, which ultimately holds that language communities are locked within their own worldview, hence their own notions of truth. It then rejects linguistic relativism by asserting the existence of a universal core of theoretical rationality comprised at the very least of the logical principles of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle. It goes on to show how this theoretical rationality manifests itself in the lexicon of a language that differs greatly from English: Inuktitut spoken by Inuit of Nunavik (Arctic Quebec). The definitions provided by Taamusi Qumaq for three words relating to critical thought are translated for the first time. Other quotes give examples of theoretical rationality in actual usage. Finally, the paper asks why logic as such is accorded little value in the culture Inuktitut expresses. The suggested answer follows Jack Goody, who holds that a long written tradition is required for the rules of formal logic to take hold in language practices. Writing is not just a transcription of the spoken word; it is an intellectual technology that impacts the way speakers use their language.

Reduplication in Newar Language: An Empirical Study

This research paper aims to explore the reduplication practices in Newar language and its linguistic relations with other languages. A field survey was conducted among Newar community in Patan. Data was collected through interviews. The collected qualitative data were analyzed using transcription, reinterviews, and re-field visits. The study found that Newar language is very rich in language reduplication. Newar people use reduplication for a number of purposes: plural marking, expressing frustration, expressing unknown and unwilling states, expressing difficult situations, emphasizing dislikes and refusals, expressing urgency, asking somebody to hold on, politely inviting somebody to come, persuading somebody to go, expressing empathy, asking somebody to remain longer and many more. The intention differs from situation to situation, person to person and as per time. The findings of this research may be helpful for those future researchers who want to study reduplication in other languages. Inclusion of impact of other languages on Newar language in terms of reduplication may enrich the findings.

Incomplete linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy preference relations and their application to multi-criteria decision making

With the development of social and economic research, the judgements that people deal with are full of fuzziness and vagueness. It is convenient to use the linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy numbers to offer the qualitative uncertain information. Consequently, in this paper, we mainly study linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy preference relations (Lq-ROFPRs) and apply them to a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. The multiplicative consistency of Lq-ROFPRs is first introduced, then a consistency-based model is established to derive the normalized linguistic q-rung orthopair fuzzy priority weight vector. The concept of acceptably multiplicative consistency is further defined, and an optimization model is formulated to repair the unacceptably multiplicative consistent Lq-ROFPR. To cope with the incomplete Lq-ROFPR, another programming model is built to ascertain the missing values. The weights of criteria are determined by constructing a possibility degree matrix. Subsequently, an MCDM problem with incomplete Lq-ROFPRs is considered and a step-by-step algorithm is put forward. Finally, the proposed method is applied to three examples, and the advantages of this new approach are also demonstrated.

Emerging Roles of Sociology of Language and Culture as Panacea to Incessant Conflict in Zamfara State, Nigeria

The situation of crises in Zamfara state, North-west Nigeria has recently reached quite unprecedented heights so much so that hardly a day passes without horrible pictures and heartbroken details of excessive destruction and senseless killings on the television screen, radio broadcasting, newspapers, and magazine. Security in Zamfara state has become a major problem in recent times. Cases of abduction, kidnapping, terrorism, senseless killings, maiming, nihilism, burgeoning restlessness, banditry, and other others, have been undoubtedly rampant. Therefore, Zamfara citizens, despite the state apparatus to ensure the safety and protection of lives and property, are incessantly living in perpetual fear and worry. It is against this backdrop that the study tends to proffers other means of trying to resolve the scenario of crises and banditry through the sociology of language and culture as a panacea to incessant crises and banditry in Zamfara state, Nigeria. The objective of the study is, among other things, reasonably available data to identify how language and culture would lead to the achievement of peacebuilding across the state. The researcher employed the use of questionnaires, oral interviews, and formal interactions to elicit information from the inhabitants of the study areas where there are records of banditry and conflicts activities are extensive. The work employed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which holds that our thoughts are shaped by our native language and that speakers of different languages, therefore, think differently as its theoretical Framework. The study discovered among other things that the application of language and culture are stronger weapons than the arms and ammunition which are being employed by the federal government of Nigeria in attempting to resolve many crises in Zamfara state.