Meaning Of Utterance Research Articles

Signal dimensionality and the emergence of combinatorial structure

In language, a small number of meaningless building blocks can be combined into an unlimited set of meaningful utterances. This is known as combinatorial structure. One hypothesis for the initial emergence of combinatorial structure in language is that recombining elements of signals solves the problem of overcrowding in a signal space. Another hypothesis is that iconicity may impede the emergence of combinatorial structure. However, how these two hypotheses relate to each other is not often discussed. In this paper, we explore how signal space dimensionality relates to both overcrowding in the signal space and iconicity. We use an artificial signalling experiment to test whether a signal space and a meaning space having similar topologies will generate an iconic system and whether, when the topologies differ, the emergence of combinatorially structured signals is facilitated. In our experiments, signals are created from participants’ hand movements, which are measured using an infrared sensor. We found that participants take advantage of iconic signal-meaning mappings where possible. Further, we use trajectory predictability, measures of variance, and Hidden Markov Models to measure the use of structure within the signals produced and found that when topologies do not match, then there is more evidence of combinatorial structure. The results from these experiments are interpreted in the context of the differences between the emergence of combinatorial structure in different linguistic modalities (speech and sign).

Multilingual semantic dictionaries for natural language processing: The case of BabelNet

Accurate semantic modeling lies at the very core of today’s Natural Language Processing (NLP). Getting a handle on the various phenomena that regulate the meaning of linguistic utterances can pave the way for solving many compelling and ambitious tasks in the field, from Machine Translation to Question Answering and Information Retrieval. A complete semantic model of language, however, needs first of all reliable building blocks. In the last two decades, research in lexical semantics (which focuses on the meaning of individual linguistic elements, i.e., words and expressions), has produced increasingly comprehensive and effective machine-readable dictionaries in multiple languages: like humans, NLP systems can now leverage these sources of lexical knowledge to discriminate among various senses of a given lexeme, thereby improving their performances on downstream tasks and applications. In this paper, we focus on the case study of BabelNet, a large multilingual encyclopedic dictionary and semantic network, to describe in detail how such knowledge resources are built, improved and exploited for crucial NLP tasks such as Word Sense Disambiguation, Entity Linking and Semantic Similarity.

TUTURAN DEKLARATIF DALAM BAHASA SMS MAHASISWA UNRI PRODI TEKNOLOGI HASIL PERTANIAN TAHUN 2015

Traditionally, utterances are speech units used in a language directly. It contains series of words and complete thought. The utterances are used in various contexts. One of them is in SMS ( Short Messege Service ). SMS is a facility to send and receive short text messege via wireless device namely telephone mobile communication devices. In this case, the communication device used in cellular telephone. Related to that, this writing presents the analysis of declarative narratives used by students of Agriculture department in Riau University in 2015. It analyzes how the narratives are used and their meanings. Thus, the purpose of the analysis is to identify and describe the meaning of specch utterances of those students.

Utterance Meaning and Explicature

Utterance Meaning and Explicature

Aspects of Meaning in Interaction: Incomplete Interpretive Hypotheses in L2 Discourse

From a relevance theory perspective, it is assumed that verbal communication processes are governed by a ‘less-than-perfect heuristic’, entailing failures in communication, and that what requires explanation is how successful communication may be achieved (Sperber and Wilson 1995). Accordingly, little attention has been paid to miscommunication or hypotheses about jointly-adjusted interpretive meaning in the relevance theory framework. Using the relevance theory perspective (Carston 2002; Sperber and Wilson 1995; Wilson and Sperber 2004) with a view to extending the understanding of meaning by language users in interaction (Culpeper and Haugh 2014), this paper is concerned with a nuanced understanding of the meaning of the utterances as part of the interpretation process, including miscommunication, in second language (L2) English conversational discourse. Drawing on the relevance-theoretical notions of the individual’s ‘expectations of relevance’ (Sperber and Wilson 1995), ‘parallel adjustment process’ (Wilson and Sperber 2004) and Culpeper and Haugh’s (2014) notion of ‘recipient meaning’, this paper highlights that the potential for miscommunication in interaction is not uncommon, particularly in terms of meaning construction.

Sincere, Deceitful, and Ironic Communicative Acts and the Role of the Theory of Mind in Childhood

The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship among age, first- and second-order Theory of Mind and the increasing ability of children to understand and produce different kinds of communicative acts – sincere, ironic, and deceitful communicative acts – expressed through linguistic and extralinguistic expressive means. To communicate means to modify an interlocutor’s mental states (Grice, 1989), and pragmatics studies the inferential processes that are necessary to fill the gap, which often exists in human communication, between the literal meaning of a speaker’s utterance and what the speaker intends to communicate to the interlocutor. We administered brief video-clip stories showing different kinds of pragmatic phenomena – sincere, ironic, and deceitful communicative acts - and first- and second-order ToM tasks, to 120 children, ranging in age from 3 to 8 years. The results showed the existence of a trend of difficulty in children’s ability to deal with both linguistic and extralinguistic pragmatic tasks, from the simplest to the most difficult: sincere, deceitful, and ironic communicative acts. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that age plays a significant role in explaining children’s performance on each pragmatic task. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that first-order ToM has a causal role in explaining children’s performance in handling sincere and deceitful speech acts, but not irony. We did not detect any specific role for second-order ToM. Finally, ToM only partially explains the observed increasing trend of difficulty in children’s pragmatic performance: the variance in pragmatic performance explained by ToM increases between sincere and deceitful communicative acts, but not between deceit and irony. The role of inferential ability in explaining the improvement in children’s performance across the pragmatic tasks investigated is discussed.

Contextual effects on explicature

Abstract The debate between advocates of free pragmatic enrichment and those who maintain that any pragmatic contribution to explicature is mediated by a covert linguistic indexical took a new turn with the claim that these covert elements may be optional (Martí, 2006). This prompted the conclusion (Recanati, 2010b) that there is no longer any issue of substance between the two positions, as both involve optional elements of utterance meaning, albeit registered at different representational levels (conceptual or linguistic). We maintain, on the contrary, that the issue remains substantive and we make the case that, for a theory of the processes involved in utterance comprehension, the free pragmatic enrichment account is indispensable. We further argue that the criticism of free enrichment that motivates at least some indexicalist accounts rests on a mistaken assumption that it is the semantic component of the grammar (linguistic competence) that is responsible for delivering truth-conditional content (explicature).

Pragmatic Aspect of Translation: The Interpretation-Based Inference and Its Implications for Translation

The elements of encoding, transferring and decoding are crucial in all processes of communication, however, drawing the appropriate inference from the current context is equally important in communication according to relevance theory (Gutt, 1998, p. 41). Semantic content is not always sufficient to fully comprehend the exact meaning of a particular utterance as the meaning of that utterance may hinge upon the contextual detail with which it is inferentially associated. The success of the process of communication relies on whether or not the recipient makes use of the context intended by the speaker. Failure to do so would give rise to miscommunication (Gutt, 1998, p. 42). Translation, as a communicative act, involves interpretation made by the translator, which takes the context of the target text (TT) reader and his/her knowledge into consideration. The present paper argues that even though the translator, according to relevance theory, is required to reproduce a TT that can stand as a faithful rendering of the source text (ST), the translator, however, needs to make his/her translated text relevant to the target reader. This, in many instances, may demand following certain procedures of explications in the TT to equip the target reader with the relevant contextual information needed to draw the appropriate inferences from the utterance concerned, and therefore make the right interpretation. Such exegesis needs to be added to the target text as what is inferable for the ST user may not be inferable for the TT receiver owing to cognitive and cultural differences.

Prosody Analysis of Mariah Carey’s 1999 Billboard Award Speech and Its Contribution to EFL

Prosodic elements are the essential elements in human beings’ speech that can be used to know what the speakers of an utterance exactly mean when they are speaking. This research was a work of analysis on prosody of speech to know the emotion and the meaning of utterances. Descriptive qualitative type of research model was employed in this research. The object of the research was Mariah Carey’s speech when she was receiving a special award named the Billboard artist of the decade in 1999. The researcher was interested in not only knowing about Mariah Carey’s emotion and meaning when she was delivering her speech but also finding other uses of prosodic elements which were not found in the supporting previous literatures used in this research. Moreover, the possible contribution which these research findings could contribute to the EFL teaching and learning was also addressed. It is evident that prosody definitely has significant contribution in EFL teaching and learning especially in improving speaking and reading comprehension skills.

SCOPE OF SPEECH LANGUAGE THERAPY

The consistent indulgence of the developed world in neurological research, during the post second world war era, led to several discoveries and subsequently the laying down of several theories about socio-communicative behaviors in human beings. The areas of the brain responsible for the functions of speech and language were studied further, providing an insight to the role of the brain in cognitive skills of attention, recall, memory, analytical and inferential skills, as well as judgment, necessary during verbal and nonverbal communication. Information about cerebral dominance for language, which lies in the left hemisphere for a larger majority of people; led to establishing the role of the right hemisphere for the supra-segmental features of language, or the meaning of spoken utterances carried by the rhythm in our speech. Thus ‘aphasiology’ emerged as the ‘study of aphasia’ which is an acquired language disorder that results from an insult to the brain, mostly in adults who have used language in the best possible way through their lives; but may also be seen in children known as ‘childhood aphasia.’ The period and pattern of recovery from aphasia varied greatly in adults and children, which led to establishing the theory of ‘critical period’ for language development, shedding more light on the miraculous development and functioning of the human neurological system since birth, for language. Knowledge about the rapid development of the human brain in the early years of life led to the essential concept of ‘early intervention’ of children having any communicative or physical challenges

Towards the supervised machine learning and the conceptual segmentation technique in the spontaneous Arabic speech understanding

The understanding task of an utterance meaning depends mostly on its concepts extraction. In this paper, we propose a method for the spontaneous Arabic speech understanding, in particular a conceptual segmentation of spontaneous Arabic oral utterances. It takes a transcribed utterance as input and provides conceptual labels as output in the form of a set of Conceptual Segments (CSs). This method is a part of the numerical approach and is based on supervised machine learning (ML) technique. The originality of our work lies in the processing of Out-Of-Vocabulary (OOV) words whether before and/or after the utterance segmentation task. Furthermore, this work is a part of the improvement of the understanding module of SARF system [2]. Indeed, we aim to compare our numerical method with the symbolic one proposed by [2] and the hybrid one proposed by [1].

Future tense in Serbian: A fuzzy linguistic category

In the world we live in, and more so in natural languages, it is rarely possible to offer strict and precise categorisations. In light of discussions on the semantic status of the future tense in linguistic theory, this paper aims to investigate further the possibilities of treating the Serbian future tense within a modal category and thus provide an elucidating account of its fuzzy nature. The modal-temporal semantics of the future tense is viewed from the perspective of prevailing standpoints presented in the relevant literature on tense and modality. Therefore, the provided account focuses on three components of utterance meaning (the modal, performative and propositional). In order to present a systematic and detailed description, the following semantic pragmatic features of future reference utterances have been investigated: non-factuality and non-assertiveness, modal meanings (epistemic and volitive), a speaker's commitment to the propositional content of an utterance and its higher-level, illocutionary, potential. The authentic examples of the future tense in simple sentences extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary Serbian Language (SrpKor) have been used in the analysis. As my analysis has shown, future tense utterances are necessarily modally nuanced by additional information, which is not related to the localization of time but to the modal attitude conveyed. This, in turn, is directly related to the illocutionary potential of utterances and non-factuality of propositions. Accordingly, it is possible to treat the future tense in Serbian within the category of modality. The paper has shown that modality and tense are intertwined to such an extent in future reference that the crucial issue of the future tense categorization could hardly be fully resolved. In this regard, my analysis has confirmed the fuzziness of the examined linguistic category and the existence of a modality-non-modality continuum.

Wittgenstein on Metaphor

<p>In this work, I examine Wittgenstein’s possible contributions to an elucidation of the grammatical status of certain metaphors – often found in theoretical and speculative texts – which resist an approach based on the assumption of a clear split between the fields of pragmatics and semantics. I take as examples of works that depart from this assumption Elizabeth Camp’s Contextualism, Metaphor and What is said (which explores the lines suggested by Paul Grice), and John Searle’s Expression and Meaning. Both rely on a distinction between speaker’s meaning (utterance meaning) and sentence meaning to explain the nature of metaphor. They assume that the very metaphorical operation involves meaning something instead of saying something. But it is anything but obvious that, when we consider, e.g., the following metaphor of Philosophical Investigations: “A picture held us prisoners” (§115), we can assume that we are facing a non-descriptive use of language. I argue that Wittgenstein himself can provide us with tools to examine a possible descriptive function of this kind of sentence when he develops his grammatical research methods which: a) are not focused on the linguistic dimension of a sentence but on the linguistic dimension of discourse; b) bring up the issue of language learning; c) lead us to ask if certain metaphors could not work as modifiers of convictions, i.e., if they could not act directly on what Wittgenstein once called Weltbild.</p><p><br />Keywords: Metaphor. Wittgenstein. Weltbild. Saying. Meaning.</p>

Presupposition and the Implicit Display Theory

Presupposition is one way of expressing irony which is a communicative behavior in that the literal meaning and background assumptions associated with an utterance differ in systematic ways from the reality as assumed by the interlocutors. Typically, the intended meaning of ironical utterances is the opposite of the literal meaning. Irony is perceived through a complex interaction between an utterance and its context and sense many social functions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the presupposition role in the recognition of irony in Middleton (1989) cynical tragedy. The issue of controversy in irony research depends on what features of irony people endorse. Thus, a more comprehensive view of irony, the implicit display theory of verbal irony is herewith proposed. Discussion of the findings suggests that implicit display theory and the tool of presupposition can account for indirect effects on the degree of irony.

Towards a New Account of Interpreting: Levinson’s Heuristics in the Interpretation of Press Conferences

This study refers to interpretation as a speedy and effortless process through Levinson’s utterance-type-meaning (1995, 2000). It applies Levinson’s heuristics (Q, I and M) to warrant the message accuracy and trigger the utterance meaning and function in more immediate and stereotypical manner. The heuristics were applied to the interpretation of a number of press conferences between Arabic and English. The heuristics as pragmatic principles of communication assist interpreters to produce a message that is most consistent with the speaker’s knowledge of the world or what s/he believes to be true, expand and compress the TM’s components as allocated in the SM, and communicate any reiterative, emotive, and persuasive functions through a similar level of markedness.

Making Sense of “Helping Friends”: “Flexing” Motivational Accounts of Cannabis Growing

Using ethnographic fieldwork among cannabis growers and dealers, I investigate how they adjust their self-proclaimed motives for growing to fit others’ normative expectations. Scholars have typically interpreted the motivational accounts of offenders as either reports of what really happened or as ideal types. To scrutinize the complexity of their motives, I use narrative ethnography to show how they are situationally constructed. In particular, I show how one large-scale cannabis grower provides four motivational accounts in four separate settings to illustrate how these accounts are artfully created and situationally conditioned. All four accounts include the topic and utterance of “helping friends,” but they are used to signify very different and even contradictory meanings. To analyze how people can tell different and even competing stories without compromising their sense of being self-coherent, I introduce the concept of “flexing meaning.” The term flexing is a verbification of the word flexible, and it enables us to analyze how people and accounts create coherency and credibility by adjusting—flexing—meanings of established utterances and expressions. Using this case study, I discuss how people can make sense of and live by different and conflicting accounts without experiencing that they are being inauthentic.

COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF CONVERSATIONS IN VIKRAM SETH’S A SUITABLE BOY: A SOCIO-PRAGMATIC ASSESSMENT OF INFERENTIAL CHAINS OF INTERPRETATION

<p>Grice (1975) provides an interpretative model that explains how we draw inferences from conversation. This theory of Cooperative Principle (CP), based on the philosophical ideas of Grice, relates the text to its contexts, including social context. As Schiffrin (1994) remarks, the application of CP to dialogic conversations leads to a particular view of discourse and its analysis, i.e. discourse as a text whose contexts (including cognitive, social and linguistic contexts) allow the interpretation of real speaker meaning in utterances (p. 227). The approach that Gricean Pragmatics offers to discourse analysis is based on a set of general principles about rationally-oriented communicative conduct that tells speakers and hearers how to organize and use information offered in a text, along with background knowledge of the world (including knowledge of the immediate social context), to convey (and understand) more than what is said– put simply, to communicate. In this paper, I am going to focus on and explore how we understand fictional discourse using pragmatic interpretative strategies to reconstruct inferential chains which lead us to a particular interpretation of conversation. I will discuss various issues of inferences, generated via Grice’s model, in the interpersonal pragmatics involved in the character utterances in Vikram Seth’s <em>A Suitable Boy</em>. The paper attempts to demonstrate how pragmatic interpretative strategies can make an added contribution to the study of literature as well as to the development of pragmatic competence, critical thinking, and better understanding of the use of naturally occurring language, both in literature and language classrooms.</p>

Emotional prosody effects on verbal memory in older and younger adults

ABSTRACTProsody, or the way things are said, can modify the meaning of utterances making qualitatively different affective prosodies useful for understanding how auditory affective information is processed and remembered. In this study, we collected behavioral data from 225 younger (M age = 20.8 years, SD = 2.5 years; 119 males) and 225 older adults (M age = 71.6 years, SD = 6.5 years; 119 males) in order to examine age differences in emotional prosody effects on verbal memory. Participants were randomly divided into three subgroups according to different prosody listening conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and prosody effects on a yes–no recognition memory task were investigated. The results showed how older adults who listened to the story read with a neutral prosody remembered more words than those who listened to the same story with a positive or negative prosody. Younger adults showed no valence effects. Our findings highlighted an age and affective prosody interaction that affects remembering in older adults alone.

Inaccuracy in Indonesian Subtitles of The King’s Speech Movie (2010)

Movie subtitles is a product of translations, so the rules of translations must be followed. The research explored how translation mistakes in Indonesian subtitles of “The King’s Speech” Movie (2010) and distort the meaning of the original utterances. The data were the dialogues in English and their Indonesian translations. Qualitative method was applied in this research. The analysis was done by comparing the meaning of the original utterances and their Indonesian subtitles. It is found that the types of mistakes that mostly occurred in the Indonesian subtitles of the movie were ambiguity and omission mistakes. To avoid these mistakes, the context of the original utterance must be considered. In general, it can be concluded that accuracy in subtitling should be taken into account.

THE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN UNDERSTANDING CROSSCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: A STUDY AT XI GRADE STUDENT OF SMK NEGERI 1 BATULAYAR

This paper investigates the students’ English pragmatic competence in understanding crossculturalcommunication. There were eighteen communicative situations designed in threedifferent speech acts namely; handling complaint, request and refusal. The situationspresented were very similar to the authentic situation that students found during the joborientation for six months in tourism industry. Three instruments were used in collecting thedata; questionnaires, discourse completion tests (DCTs) and interview. The multiple choicequestionnaire was used to investigate the students’ pragmatic understanding in three deferentspeech acts. Meanwhile DCTs was used to investigate the students’ pragmatic knowledge ingiving response to the given situations related to three different speech acts. Interviewquestion was used to clarify the missing information and to strengthen the reason why suchresponses were given in questionnaire and in DCTs. The sample of this study was 92 XIGrade students from Hotel Accommodation Program (AP) at SMK Negeri 1 Batulayar. Theresult show that the students ability in understanding pragmatic is considered very low, theyonly can understand the utterance from the literal meaning of words and phrases, but theimplied meaning of some particular utterances were uneasy to deal with. It is seen from thereported data that the average of the students’ responses in understanding pragmatics of thethree different speech acts is only 12.7%. The second three different speech acts in discoursecompletion test (DCTs) was also about giving response to the complaint, request and refusal.DCTs were used to investigate the students’ ability in using their pragmatic knowledge toresponse the nine situational communicative designed. The finding show that the students’ability in giving the written response were vary and less impressive. The written responsesin three different speech acts prompt were potentially led to a pragmatic inability inmaintaining the smooth conversation in various situations.