Meaning Of Adjectives Research Articles

Using syntax and semantics to acquire subjective adjective meanings

ABSTRACT Adjectives like good, nice, pretty, and big are among the most frequent adjectives heard by children in the ambient language, and among the first adjectives produced by children. While these gradable adjectives are ostensibly short and sweet, their abstract semantic representations encode reference to features of the discourse context, including speaker subjectivity, which are surprisingly complex, and which also give rise to specific subclasses. How, then, do children acquire these fine-grained adjectival meanings? In this research, we hypothesize that as with verbs, the linguistic environments in which these adjectives appear provide surface-level distributional cues that narrow the space of meaning. In a proof-of-concept experiment with adults following in the footsteps of the Human Simulation Paradigm, we provide empirical evidence that surface-level linguistic patterns support the acquisition of different subclasses of subjective adjectives. Adults were presented with scripted dialogues featuring novel words in controlled linguistic environments manipulating grammatical subjects, adverbial modifiers, standard phrases, syntactic complements, and evidence of faultless disagreement among speakers. Participants were then asked to guess the word meaning (either incrementally after each ‘frame’ or after multiple frames) and rate their confidence. Results, as measured by the percentage of category-consistent, frame-compliant guesses, paired with an increase in confidence levels, indicate a sensitivity to this surface-level information, thereby highlighting the role of the linguistic environment in supporting the acquisition of adjective meaning.

LINGUODIDACTIC FEATURES OF TEACHING ADJECTIVES IN THE COURSE OF UKRAINIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The article delineates the nuances surrounding the meaning, morphological features, syntactic functions, and stylistic attributes of Ukrainian adjectives as a focal point for foreign learners, accompanied by a proposed set of exercises tailored to foster practical proficiency and fluency in their application within speech. It underscores the close association between adjectives and nouns, wherein their interdependency epitomizes the essence of their lexical meaning and grammatical categories. The semantics of adjectives is linked with word-formation structures, encompassing both derivative and non-derivative forms, as well as processes of substantiation. In teaching Ukrainian to non-native speakers, particular emphasis is placed on elucidating the autonomous nature of morphological categories – gender, number, and case – when adjectives assume the role of a noun or predicate. A comprehensive array of morphological variations within adjectives is delineated: 1) forms of word change by gender, number, case; 2) forms of adjectival comparison; 3) short and full (conjugated and unconjugated) forms of adjectives; 4) forms of adjectives by the final consonant of the stem (hard, soft, mixed group). Consideration is given to the formation and utilization of grammatical forms in tandem with the lexical and stylistic nuances inherent to adjectives. Moreover, the article underscores the distinctive approach employed in textbooks targeting Ukrainian as a foreign language when addressing the topic of adjectives. Authors extensively employ tables, instructional rules, generalizations, and grammatical exercises with a communicative emphasis, supplemented by explanatory commentary. It is essential to exercise creativity in leveraging the grammatical content within textbooks, critically evaluating presentation modalities and sequential learning patterns, and devising a comprehensive range of exercises and tasks aimed at cultivating practical aptitude and proficiency in adjective usage within speech. The efficacy of addressing these objectives hinges upon the methodological proficiency of Ukrainian language educators catering to foreign learners. Key words: Ukrainian as a foreign language, adjective, practical grammar, morphological features, syntactic functions, methodological competence.

More hard words: Learning emotion and mental state adjectives from linguistic context

ABSTRACT How do young children learn the meanings of adjectives that label emotions and mental states, like happy or confident? The concepts behind these words seem easy to grasp, and yet the properties they denote are abstract and lack reliable visual correlates, much as with verbs such as think or know. There is robust evidence that the linguistic context in which mental state verbs appear supports their acquisition. Using a two-pronged approach, we explore whether the same is true for these adjectives. First, we present a comprehensive study of adjectives in child-directed speech (CDS) in CHILDES corpora, revealing that these adjectives have a unique distributional profile based on the semantics of co-occurring words, and the syntactic complements with which they appear, distinguishing them from other adjective types. Second, we present a word learning study with adults using a version of the Human Simulation Paradigm manipulating key variables from the corpus study (subject animacy and syntactic complements), while holding other features (morphosyntactic form and syntactic position of the adjective) constant. Participants’ guesses demonstrate that they recruit these cues to constrain the meaning of novel adjectives to one corresponding to an emotion or mental state. By presenting a thorough comparison of adjective types across key linguistic contexts and providing evidence that such contexts constrain adjective meaning, we systematically extend syntactic bootstrapping to the adjectival domain in a way that goes well beyond previous work, and paints a vibrant picture of what supports the acquisition of adjectives.

On the Role of Loopholes in Polite Communication: Linking Subjectivity and Pragmatic Inference.

Existing proposals on the attenuating uses of indirect, negated expressions (e.g., not happy to mean sad) agree that speakers exploit indirectness for pragmatic purposes but differ on the underlying sources they attribute to these uses. Here, we synthesize existing proposals via adjective subjectivity, which operationalizes the notion of loopholes for plausible deniability. We present experimental evidence that the degree of subjectivity of an adjective predicts the degree to which participants strengthen the negated adjective's meaning, but only if the adjective under consideration has an evaluatively-positive meaning. This finding indicates that speakers may intentionally use negation to leave themselves the option to retract the implicated face-threatening meaning if openly challenged.

Absorption of Arabic Vocabulary into Indonesian (Analysis of Phonology, Morphology and Meaning in the Kbbi V Dictionary)

This research aims to detail the process of absorbing Arabic vocabulary into Indonesian, emphasizing phonology, morphology, and semantics changes. This approach is library research using the listening, tapping, and free listening methods to collect data from various sources such as books, articles, networks, magazines, newspapers, and related documents. In phonological analysis, it was found that Arabic loan words used in daily communication experienced phonological changes, including sound changes, sound weakening, and changes in certain sounds. The results showed significant changes in the pronunciation of loan words. Meanwhile, semantic analysis reveals changes in meaning in borrowing Arabic words into Indonesian, including narrowing, widening, and changes in the meaning of adjectives, nouns, adverbs, and verbs, including changes in referential meaning. From a morphological perspective, changes in word classes are recorded, such as changes from nouns to adjectives, nouns to verbs, and other changes. The complexity of vocabulary absorption is illustrated through changes in these word classes. This research highlights that absorbing Arabic vocabulary into Indonesian is dynamic and complex. These findings have important implications for the evolution of Indonesian and interlanguage relations. Changes in phonology, semantics, and morphology reflect the complex interactions between these two languages, which will continue to develop along with changes and developments over time. This research provides deep insight into understanding the evolution of Indonesian and the dynamics of interlanguage relationships.

Processing adjectives in development: Evidence from eye-tracking.

Combining adjective meaning with the modified noun is particularly challenging for children under three years. Previous research suggests that in processing noun-adjective phrases children may over-rely on noun information, delaying or omitting adjective interpretation. However, the question of whether this difficulty is modulated by semantic differences among (subsective) adjectives is underinvestigated.A visual-world experiment explores how Italian-learning children (N=38, 2;4-5;3) process noun-adjective phrases and whether their processing strategies adapt based on the adjective class. Our investigation substantiates the proficient integration of noun and adjective semantics by children. Nevertheless, alligning with previous research, a notable asymmetry is evident in the interpretation of nouns and adjectives, the latter being integrated more slowly. Remarkably, by testing toddlers across a wide age range, we observe a developmental trajectory in processing, supporting a continuity approach to children's development. Moreover, we reveal that children exhibit sensitivity to the distinct interpretations associated with each subsective adjective.

Вариативность средств выражения отрицания (на материале немецких прилагательных)

The expression of the category of negation in the system of the German adjective has not yet received a sufficiently complete description, although many researchers have repeatedly addressed this issue. One of the unsolved problems remains the problem of the speaker’s choice of a linguistic means of negation. The aim of the study is to identify the reasons for the variation of the means of negation in the class of German adjectives. The subject of consideration is represented by the ways that the negative meaning of adjectives is expressed. The main provisions concerning the essence and specifics of how the stems of adjectives are combined with negative affixes are touched upon. The variety of negative characteristics is seen as a peculiarity of the adjective from the perspective of the expression of a negative property or the absence of something. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the variability of the means of negative expression by adjectives is considered as an object of a synchronous structural analysis of linguistic units and is investigated taking into account the following linguistic levels: word-formation, structural-typological, syntactic and semantic. As a result of the study, it has been found that, in general, only a small number of factors are crucial when choosing a certain negation variant. In most cases, the prefix ‘un-’ is used to negate adjectives, regardless of the factors considered.

한·중 냉각 형용사 대조 연구

Objectives The purpose of this study was to illuminate the semantic extension patterns of cooling adjectives in Korean and Chinese through a comparative study focusing on the Korean words ‘차다’, ‘차갑다’, ‘시리다’, ‘쌀쌀하다’, ‘서늘하다’, ‘싸늘하다’, and the Chinese word ‘涼’.
 Methods In this study, the definitions and characteristics of the original meanings, extended meanings, metaphor, and metonymy were first summarized. Then, a comparative analysis of the dictionary meanings of cooling adjectives in Korean and Chinese was conducted. Through this process, distinctions were made between the original meanings and extended meanings of these adjectives. Subsequently, corpus data were used to analyze the patterns of semantic extension of cooling adjectives in Korean and Chinese.
 Results The extended meanings of the Chinese word ‘涼’ and the Korean words ‘차다’, ‘차갑다’, ‘시리다’, ‘쌀쌀하다’, ‘싸늘하다’, and ‘서늘하다’ were found to encompass both similar and completely distinct meanings. However, the most important observation was that even when there are similar meanings, there are significant differences in the extension paths. The extension paths of the character 涼 mainly focus on abstract semantic extensions, and the verb ‘차다’ reveals not only abstract semantic extensions but also sensory extensions. Furthermore, when comparing the extended meanings of 涼 and ‘차갑다’, ‘쌀쌀하다’, ‘서늘하다’, and ‘싸늘하다’, it can be observed that while they share some similar extended meanings, the extension paths of ‘차갑다’, ‘쌀쌀하다’, ‘서늘하다’, and ‘싸늘하다’ are relatively diverse. Lastly, it can be confirmed that there is no similar meaning in the extended meanings of 涼 and ‘시리다’, and from the perspective of extension paths, both words share the commonality of extensions related to ‘state’ and ‘abstract entity’. Additionally, the Chinese character 涼 has additional extension paths related to ‘body parts’ and ‘area (space)’.
 Conclusions This study is meaningful in that when making sentences using adjectives for cold , the vocabulary is accurately selected and used by referring to the expansion path of the extended meaning of Korean and Chinese adjectives for cold.

A Cognitive Approach to Expressions of English Metaphors

This paper analyses the three expressions of English metaphors: nominal metaphors; verbal metaphors; adjective metaphors from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. For nominal metaphors, the author starts from metaphorical mapping mechanism, interpreting the different syntactic features of them: as a subject, an object, a predicate, an appositive and a possessive, figuring out the reasons for producing nominal metaphors and its cognitive approach. For verbal metaphors, this paper has, in detail, analyzed three different categories of them: the verbal metaphors with a logical subject predicate collocation; the ones with a logical verb, object collocation; and with a logical subject, predicate, object collocation with the above three kinds of linguistic theories, obtaining the forming mechanism of the verbal metaphors and its working ways in languages. For the adjective metaphors, this paper mainly applies the mapping theory between a source domain and a target domain in Conceptual Integration Theory. A comprehensive, detailed and systematical analysis of adjective meanings in basic adjective metaphors and metaphorical combinations of basic adjectives leads to the following conclusion: the combination of basic adjective metaphors is the result of the “Least Effort Principle” with characteristics of simplicity and popularity. In addition, it also possesses the capability to produce richer metaphorical expressions.

Англи, монгол хэлэнд тэмдэг нэрийн утгыг бууруулах үзэгдэл илрэх нь

Adjective (eng - adjective, russ - имя прилагательельное) is an English and Mongolian word that indicates a characteristic of a phenomenon or situation and is a component of the vocabulary. The main purpose of this short article is to study how to express and form the diminutive of meaning of adjectives in English, Mongolian. To observe and describe phenomena related to the diminutive of the meaning based on the literature in the two languages.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ФУНКЦИОНИРОВАНИЯ ПАРАМЕТРИЧЕСКИХ ПРИЛАГАТЕЛЬНЫХ С НАИМЕНОВАНИЯМИ ЛИЦА В АНГЛИЙСКОМ И ТАТАРСКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ

The article is devoted to the examination of the size adjectives “big / small” functioning in the Tatar and English languages. When combined with a person’s names differences and similarities in both languages are observed. The isomorphism of the Tatar and English languages is manifested when characterizing people in terms of the intensity of their activity. Duality of interpretation is characteristic the Tatar language where the meanings “occupying a large space” and “having achieved greatness” are possible. The main purpose of the article is to determine the range of a person’s names that function in combination with size adjectives in Tatar and English. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time meanings expressed by size adjectives in combination with person’s names have been compared. As a result of the conducted research, it can be concluded that the meanings of size adjectives in different languages coincide although in the Tatar language two adjectives are involved.

Incremental pragmatic interpretation of gradable adjectives: The role of standards of comparison

While for relative gradable adjectives the value on the underlying measurement scale that serves as a standard of comparison is contextually determined, for absolute gradable adjectives this is typically taken to be a fixed, context-invariant value (Rotstein & Winter 2004; Kennedy & McNally 2005). The present study investigates how lexical-semantic factors, such as the type of standard of comparison invoked by gradable adjectives, affect the incremental computation of scalar implicatures triggered by such adjectives. Our study shows that the incremental computation of scalar implicatures is facilitated by the immediate visual context but only for relative adjectives. Minimum standard absolute adjectives, which impose a lower bound on their corresponding measurement scales, robustly trigger upper-bounded interpretations independently of the availability of contrastive visual information. Our findings indicate that different kinds of scalar meaning are computed incrementally and potentially in parallel. Overall, these findings shed new light on theories of scalar implicatures and highlight the need for a model of adjective meaning that incorporates semantic and pragmatic factors (see also Gotzner 2021; and for related ideas in the domain of quantifiers see Franke & Bergen 2020 and Cremers, Wilcox & Spector 2022, and Magri (2017) for Hirschberg scales).

Supporting adjective learning across the curriculum by 5–7 year‐olds: Insights from psychological research

AbstractAdjectives are a powerful tool for enriching vocabulary and developing conceptual understanding. In early elementary and primary classrooms, across core and foundation subjects, children are expected to describe, measure, classify, and compare objects and events—all processes that require a mastery of adjective meanings and use. While teachers are trained in vocabulary learning, they may be less familiar with: (i) the psychological processes by which children learn adjectives, and (ii) how a focus on adjectives can support learning in domains beyond language and literacy lessons. To address these gaps, we have collaborated as a unique interdisciplinary team with linguistic, psychological, and pedagogical expertise. We synthesise research across our disciplines to provide an accessible, practical, evidence‐based primer of research findings on adjective development. We then provide guidance on how these findings can be used to enhance teaching and learning practices across subjects for children aged five to seven.

The Relative Meaning of The Adjective in The Kurdish Language

This study deals with the meaning of relative meaning of adjectives in Kurdish language. It is a descriptive study. The purpose is to find out the relative meaning of adjectives based on the Relative theory of language in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It was hypothesized that relative meaning occurs more in adjectives and the ratio is subject to change according to the understanding and the view point of speaker and his thought. This study consists of two chapters as well as the introduction and conclusion. The first chapter is devoted to the definition, the concept, types, and characteristics of Adjectives. It includes (definition of adjectives, types of adjectives, characteristics of adjectives, adjectives according to degrees of comparison, and different categorization of adjectives. While the second chapter deals with relative meaning of adjectives, it includes; (relativity of language, and the relativity of meaning of adjectives in the scope of semantics and pragmatics). The researcher tried to refer the relativity of meaning in adjectives in pragmatic framework because it varies with the variation of speakers.

Pragmatic reasoning and semantic convention: A case study on gradable adjectives

Gradable adjectives denote properties that are relativized to contextual thresholds of application: how long an object must be in order to count as long in a context of utterance depends on what the threshold is in that context. But thresholds are variable across contexts and adjectives, and are in general uncertain. This leads to two questions about the meanings of gradable adjectives in particular contexts of utterance: what truth conditions are they understood to introduce, and what information are they taken to communicate? In this paper, we consider two kinds of answers to these questions, one from semantic theory, and one from Bayesian pragmatics, and assess them relative to human judgments about truth and communicated information. Our findings indicate that Bayesian accounts can model human judgments about what is communicated better than they can model human judgments about truth conditions, and their weakness on the latter is mainly because they fall short in accurately predicting the relevant threshold distributions. We explore the possibility that the overall performance of the Bayesian accounts can be potentially improved when they are supplemented with the threshold conventions postulated by semantic theory. EARLY ACCESS

A bibliometric study of the research field of experimental philosophy of language

The past eighteen years witnessed the rapid development of experimental philosophy of language. Adopting a bibliometric approach, this study examines the research trends and status quo of this burgeoning field based on a corpus of 237 publications retrieved from PhilPapers. It is observed that experimental philosophy of language has undergone three stages, the initiation stage, the development stage, and the extension stage, across which there is a clear upward trend in the annual number of publications. Michael Devitt, Edouard Machery, John Turri, Nat Hansen, et al., are found to be the most productive philosophers, testifying their leading positions in this field. Journals, instead of books, are the major homes of works in this area. The analysis also yields a list of influential works, including the seminal work “Semantics, Cross-cultural Style” and other significant publications on the semantics of various types of expressions. Relatedly, the major research themes are found to include not only intuitions about the reference of proper names, but also a wide array of philosophically and linguistically interesting issues like the meaning of color adjectives, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste, the norms of assertions and the essence of lies, etc. These findings showcase that experimental philosophy of language has broadened the research territory and offered deep insights into central issues of philosophy of language that are beyond the reach of the conventional armchair methodology.

Adjectives in Mullaippattu’s Poetry

Mullailapattu is one of the sub-texts within the Tenth Path. Adjuncts are abundant throughout Mullailapattu. Adjectives are the development of Adjunct. These Adjuncts are seen as adjectives. Tolkappiyar mentions 100 adjectives in his vocabulary. 100 Adjectives mentioned by Tolkappiyar in Uriyal are found in Mullailapattu and the adjective pronouns are identified and how they support the Mullailapattu poeticization. Adjective Pronouns are adjectives that take the meaning of adjectives as pronouns. Also, this review article highlights that the adjectives, substitute adjectives, monosyllabic, subjunctives, etc. are found in the initials and they support the poeticization of the initials.

Construction Grammar Conceptual Network: Coordination-based graph method for semantic association analysis

AbstractIn this article, we present the Construction Grammar Conceptual Network method, developed for identifying lexical similarity and word sense discrimination in a syntactically tagged corpus, based on the cognitive linguistic assumption that coordination construction instantiates conceptual relatedness. This graph analysis method projects a semantic value onto a given coordinated syntactic dependency and constructs a second-order lexical network of lexical collocates with a high co-occurrence measure. The subsequent process of clustering and pruning the graph reveals lexical communities with high conceptual similarity, which are interpreted as associated senses of the source lexeme. We demonstrate the theory and its application to the task of identifying the conceptual structure and different meanings of nouns, adjectives and verbs using examples from different corpora, and explain the modulating effects of linguistic and graph parameters. This graph approach is based on syntactic dependency processing and can be used as a complementary method to other contemporary natural language processing resources to enrich semantic tasks such as word disambiguation, domain relatedness, sense structure, identification of synonymy, metonymy, and metaphoricity, as well as to automate comprehensive meta-reasoning about languages and identify cross/intra-cultural discourse variations of prototypical conceptualization patterns and knowledge representations. As a contribution, we provide a web-based app at http://emocnet.uniri.hr/.

Ibn Kemal's Treatise "fî Cevāzi't- tawassuʿ fî kelāmi'l-ʿArab" and His Views on the Expansion of Meaning in Arabic

Bu makalede İbn Kemal’in (Kemalpaşazâde) (ö. 940/1534) fî Cevâzi’t-tevessü‘ fî kelâmi’l-‘Arab adlı risâlesi ve Arapçada dilde genişlemeye dair görüşleri incelenecektir. Risâlede, Arap dilinde “lafızda anlam genişlemesi” anlamına gelen tevessü olgusu ele alınmaktadır. İbn Kemal’e göre Arap dilinde lafzın anlam genişlemesine uğraması sık görülen bir durumdur. Ona göre, ismin farklı şekillerde kullanılması, teşbih, mecâz, istiâre, mübâlağa vb. yollarla anlamsal genişlemesine uğraması mümkündür. Yine mastar olarak gelen ismin sıfat anlamında kullanılması, deyim içinde kullanılan bazı özel isimlerin vasıf anlamına gelmesi de anlam genişlemesi türlerindendir. İbn Kemal, eserde, kendinden önceki dilci ve belâgatçıların dildeki genişleme hakkındaki görüşlerini örnekler üzerinden ifade etmekte ve onları bazen eleştirmektedir. Hatta temelde risâlesinin yazılış amacının bu eleştirileri dile getirmek olduğu dahi söylenebilir. İsmin morfolojik ve gramatik yapısı onun ne tür bir anlam genişlemesine uğradığını göstermektedir. Fakat son tahlilde anlam genişlemesini belirleyen esas ölçüt, gündelik dilde o lafız veya terkiple kast edilen anlamdır. İbn Kemal - es-Sekkâkî (ö. 626/1229) gibi bazı klasik belâgatçılardan farklı olarak - ismin sıfat anlamı kazanırken anlam değişiminin nahvî, sarfî ve özellikle de belâgî yönlerine vurgu yapmaktadır. Yani risaleyi isimlerdeki anlam genişlemesini tam olarak ifade etmeyen dilcilere karşı yazmıştır diyebiliriz. İbn Kemal, risalede anlam genişlemesini sıfat anlamını yüklenebilen ve haber olarak gelen isimlerle sınırlı tutmuş ve Tefsir ilmindeki anlam genişlemesi tartışmalarından farklı olarak fiillerdeki tevessü olgusuna değinmemiştir.

Problems and Diffculties Encountered by EFL University Students in Using Adjective Intensifiers

Adjective intensifiers play an important role in the process of communication in conveying the attitude of the speaker or writer. They are used to focus the reader’s attention as well as to enhance the meaning of adjectives in their writing. The main problem is that English foreign language learners lack the ability to use these intensifiers in relevant register. Also, these intensifiers may perform syntactic and semantic functions and it may overlap and cause ambiguity. This study aims at highlighting the importance of using these intensifiers in written discourse. This study hypothesizes the following:1. English foreign language learners use adjective intensifiers in their writing.2. English foreign language learner’s vocabulary is insufficient, and thus they try to use the intensifiers in order to hide their lexical insufficiency.3. Misuse of intensifiers may lead to semantic or pragmatic misunderstanding and affects negatively on communication.4. The grammatical proficiency of English foreign language learners does not confirm the appropriate use of intensifiers in written production.This work is limited to the fourth-year students in translation department, college of Arts, Tikrit University. The researcher takes the following procedures:1. Constructing T-Test.2. Dividing the test into: a Pre-Test, and a post test.3. Calculating the mean score statistically in both of the two tests.4. The researcher discusses the results of both test in order to prove the hypotheses.In this study, the researcher adopts Quirk et al. (1999) model concerning the intensifiers.