Modern Language Research Articles

Analysis of temporal and spatial systems in chinese linguoculture (on russian language background).

The present article is dedicated to the concepts of time and space as a fragment of the Russian and Chinese linguistic worldviews. Notions of time are fundamental to any culture and people's worldview, hence in this study, we attempt to "unify" the aspects of Chinese and Russian time and space that we have identified through research. Our research object, as a fragment of the Russian linguistic worldview, is connected with notions of time and space. The subject of our investigation is the linguistic means in which Russian speakers' notions of time are expressed, considered against the backdrop of the Chinese language in lexical, semantic, and grammatical aspects.The aim of the study is to identify and describe the main features of the representation of time in Chinese and Russian languages, as well as to highlight the main differences in the representation of time and space in the Chinese and Russian linguistic worldviews. Structural-semantic, linguacultural, and comparative analysis methods are employed to analyze the conceptual models of time in these two languages. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the attempt to use a spatial model to describe the concept of time in order to identify possible temporal dimensions in language, as well as in attempting to interpret and generalize the notions of time from the perspective of the cognitive perception of Chinese language speakers. The theoretical significance of this article lies in the endeavor to specify the cognitive perception of language speakers through the analysis of historical and cultural origins of time models, as well as in generalizing some regularities of time expression in modern languages. Studying the fundamental concept of time and space models contributes to the further development of cognitive models, translation, teaching Russian and Chinese as foreign languages etc.

WHO INVENTED WHAT? EXPLORING THE ROLE OF THE NORTH WESTERN SEMITIC ALPHABET UPON THE FORMATION OF MODERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

It is an accepted fact that, with some exceptions, the ancient Greek and Latin languages served as the basis for the formation of most of the Western (modern) languages. However, what remains less known is that the Greeks borrowed the alphabet letters from the North-Western Semitic alphabet of the 2nd millenium BCE. This alphabet was used by Phoenicians, Arameans, Hebrews and the Moabites beginning with the early second millenium and was borrowed by the early Greeks from Phoenician merchants in the later part of the second millenium and the beginning of the first millenium BCE. In this article we will explore the issue of the revolutionary contribution that the North-Western semitic alphabet had upon the cultures of the Ancient Near East (including Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Siria).2 The transition from a system that used hundreds of pictograms and signs (the cuneiform and hierogliphic alphabets) to an alphabet of only 22 linear letters marked one of the most important, yet neglected, innovations in ancient history. The purpose of our article is to draw on both ancient and contemporary scholarship in order to show how this revolutionary alphabet influenced the Greek and Latin alphabets (and implicitly the languages themselves) and the impact that this event had upon the formation of the modern European languages.

PhraseMap: Attention-Based Keyphrases Recommendation for Information Seeking.

Many Information Retrieval (IR) approaches have been proposed to extract relevant information from a large corpus. Among these methods, phrase-based retrieval methods have been proven to capture more concrete and concise information than word-based and paragraph-based methods. However, due to the complex relationship among phrases and a lack of proper visual guidance, achieving user-driven interactive information-seeking and retrieval remains challenging. In this study, we present a visual analytic approach for users to seek information from an extensive collection of documents efficiently. The main component of our approach is a PhraseMap, where nodes and edges represent the extracted keyphrases and their relationships, respectively, from a large corpus. To build the PhraseMap, we extract keyphrases from each document and link the phrases according to word attention determined using modern language models, i.e., BERT. As can be imagined, the graph is complex due to the extensive volume of information and the massive amount of relationships. Therefore, we develop a navigation algorithm to facilitate information seeking. It includes (1) a question-answering (QA) model to identify phrases related to users' queries and (2) updating relevant phrases based on users' feedback. To better present the PhraseMap, we introduce a resource-controlled self-organizing map (RC-SOM) to evenly and regularly display phrases on grid cells while expecting phrases with similar semantics to stay close in the visualization. To evaluate our approach, we conducted case studies with three domain experts in diverse literature. The results and feedback demonstrate its effectiveness, usability, and intelligence.

LANGUAGE LEARNING AND LANGUAGE TEACHING APPROACHES

The evolution of modern language teaching and learning can be traced back to the 20th century, a time when travel by land, sea, and air became more accessible to a larger portion of the population. Initially limited to Europe and North America, travel eventually expanded globally,allowing people from all continents to explore foreign lands. This accessibility marked a departure from the exclusive domain of pilgrims, explorers, and the wealthy, making foreign travel achievable for the majority in developed nations. Additionally, advancements such as the discovery of electricity and wireless communication facilitated global contact, irrespective of geographical location or occupation. In this article, will look at early language learning and language teaching approaches.

Towards sustainable assessment formats in language teaching: testing integrated skills with portfolio-based tasks

In this paper, we share our experience of using portfolio-based tasks to assess integrated skills in German and Spanish language modules at level C1. The modules, delivered during the academic year 2022-23, are part of the institution-wide language provision at Durham University, which means that students come from various disciplines different from Modern Languages.
 The assessment system we have used is based on the principles of flexibility and choice. Throughout the year, students build up a body of work where they record and reflect on the experiences of a person living in a country where the target language is spoken. The portfolio contains both formative and summative submissions, so that students can benefit from the feedback received for formative tasks to fine-tune their summative work. In this regard, the system involves a combination of assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Every submission integrates different language skills, as well as transferable skills such as decision-making, autonomy, creativity, critical thinking and intercultural knowledge. Besides adding authenticity to the assessment tasks, the development of these skills is aligned with the principles of education for sustainable development (AdvanceHE, 2021).
 At the end of the paper, we explain what we have learned from the use of this assessment system, as well as the aspects that we would like to enhance and those that we would need to improve in future editions.

Turkic Ethnic Realities in the Medieval Manuscript of Kipchak Origin

The purpose of our work was to analyze the ethnic realities of the Kipchak language in order to
 establish its similarities and differences with modern Turkic languages for which this medieval
 language was a proto-language. The written medieval manuscript in Arabic “Al-Tuhfa al-Zakiyya fi al-
 Lugha al-Turkiyyah” (Genuine wonder about the Turkish language) was one of the most important and
 most valuable source for studying the Kipchak language. The main feature of the work was that the
 original version was written in the Kipchak, as the anonymous author pointed out on the first page of
 the manuscript, stored in Istanbul, in the Beyazit state library. When studying objects that were far
 apart from each other in a temporary sense, such as medieval and modern languages, we used the
 comparative-historical method, and as a result concluded that in some cases there were only phonetic
 differences, while the syntactic and semantic commonality of lexical and phraseological units persisted.
 To classify ethnic realities, the statistical method of analysis was used. Ethnographic, cultural and
 mental realities testified to direct kinship and a single nomadic culture of the speakers of the languages
 of this group and provided an opportunity to restore the historical stages of the development of the
 Turkic languages from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Концепт СЛАКТИВИЗМ и его реализация в сетевых дискурсивных практиках (на материале русского, английского и французского языков)

This publication is conducted in the stream of studying neology in the modern language influenced by the active use of internet communication and network discursive practices. The aim of the research is to identify the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the linguistic realization of the concept of SLACKTIVISM. The social significance of the concept is asserted, its intersections and relationships with semantically similar concepts such as PROPAGANDA, ACTIVISM circulating in the modern networked information space are determined. The scientific novelty of the conducted research lies in providing a systematic description of a new, unstudied concept in domestic philology, on the basis of the Russian, English, and French languages. This includes accentuating the history of its emergence, the contradictory nature of its linguistic implementation in the digital discourse of new media, and network techno-discursive practices. As a result, the concept of SLACKTIVISM is portrayed as an expression of a new form of internet activity that contributes to social and political changes both on a narrow scale and in the broader geopolitical space. The linguistic level examination indicates preferences for figurative nominations and common means of representation in European languages and national-cultural specificity.

METHODS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND PECULIARITIES OF THEIR APPLICATION IN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

The article examines various techniques, approaches, and methods of teaching foreign languages, namely: the communicative approach, lexical approach, audio-lingual method, direct method, test-teach-test technique, task-based learning technique, content and language integrated learning approach. The analysis of scientific and methodical literature was carried out. Emphasis is placed on new requirements that appear in the field of modern language education. The need to rethink the essence of foreign language teaching methods and teaching tools is highlighted.

The impact on motivation of CLIL-izing EMI in science education. A longitudinal case study in pre-service teacher training

The objective of this study was to identify the impact of implementing English as a medium of instruction (EMI) drawing upon Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology in science for pre-service teachers. Lecturers in modern languages and science education collaborated to design and implement the “CLIL-ization of EMI” intervention. The sample was made up of 105 students, 55 of whom were given instruction in English, and 50 in their mother tongue, Spanish. Two instruments for motivation in English and science were applied before the intervention, two weeks and one year afterwards. Additionally, an open-ended questionnaire was used with the experimental group to gain a more in-depth insight into student perception of EMI. Results showed that the short intervention did not impact motivation towards learning English, but it did effect that for science contents in the short and long term. The student stance on the experimental instruction of science in English was highly positive.

Vowel alternation with final i offers an easy-to-learn morphological option for a sex-blind grammatical gender in French.

Like all modern Romance languages, French has a sex-based grammatical gender with two genders, feminine and masculine, and a lexicon that is highly sex-differentiated. These characteristics give rise to a number of issues, including the problematic generic use of the masculine grammatical gender, coupled with the challenge of sex categorization itself, and the epistemological difficulty of an adequate sociological description and analysis of what gender commonsense categories really are about. To remedy these concerns, several authors have proposed the creation of an additional, epicene grammatical gender. We have identified three such systematic proposals, or solutions, which specify various morphological options for new epicene nouns and gender markers on their satellite elements. These options include the use of non-standard or rarely used characters, the merging of feminine and masculine gender markers, as well as consonantal and vowel changes. In the simplest proposal, referred to as "solution I," new epicene forms are mostly derived from feminine forms by systematically replacing with an i the final e that generally differentiates feminines from their masculine counterparts in written French. Although these solutions are used in some communities, their learnability has not been addressed so far, even though it could be a determining factor in their popularity and their eventual integration into standard French. In the present study, we provide a first assessment of this aspect by means of an online translation test. For each solution, French-speaking participants were instructed that they would be trained to learn an "alien" language that does not mark sex/gender categories (these alien languages correspond to standard French where only gendered words referring to people are replaced by the new epicene forms recommended by each solution). After a short learning-by-example phase, participants were required to translate into the alien language a set of 16 standard French sentences. The translations were analyzed as a function of several variables including the participants' self-reported age and sex, the word categories and the solutions themselves. While all solutions proved quickly learnable, participants' responses with solution I achieved the highest accuracy score, in particular with regard to the production of non-standard epicene forms.

El Manual de estilo de la Modern Language Association (MLA): La novena edición (2021) revisitada en el contexto hispanoparlante

This paper addresses the different criteria for documentation and bibliographic citation of the ninth edition (2021) of the Manual of Style of the Modern Language Association (MLA), where, in addition to considering citations within a document and the section entitled "Works Cited", it also explores different guidelines in relation to inclusive language, bibliographical sources, endnotes, the correct use of orthography and the avoidance of plagiarism. In short, this essay is proposed as a useful guide for professionals in library science, editors, professors, students, and researchers in the fields of literature, arts, and humanities to write clearly and consistently, both within a manuscript and in the aforementioned works cited section.

Mapping the Jews in the Byzantine Hymnography: The Triodion

The Byzantine hymnography was considered a “stumbling stone” of the Jewish–Orthodox Christian dialogue because of the harsh anti-Jewish elements kept in the modern liturgical texts without any revision. This article analyses the often-mentioned texts of the Triodion—the liturgical period before Pascha—using a quantitative approach. The starting point of this research states that we must keep in mind the broader view on the state of the hymnography without labelling the entire Byzantine hymnography as anti-Jewish by looking at some concrete stanzas from Holy Week services. The results demonstrate that we can speak only about very few hymnographical texts containing anti-Jewish elements compared to the entire Triodion. This approach helps us in the Jewish–Christian debates to focus on what exactly are we speaking about, and what precisely those texts are saying. After a short analysis of the content of selected hymns, I propose three concrete categories of hymns that could be more easily approached by either excluding them or transforming them through translation into modern languages.

Early humans out of Africa had only base-initial numerals

The vast majority of languages have numerals involving multiplication. Cross-linguistically, a numeral that involves a multiplier and a numeral base can be base-final, e.g., three hundred [three × hundred] in English, or base-initial, e.g., ikie ita [hundred × three] in Ibibio (Niger-Congo). A worldwide survey of 4099 languages reveals that 39% of the languages are base-initial, 48% are base-final, 4% use both orders, and 8% are without numeral bases. As the first step towards explaining this diversity and worldwide distribution, we offer convergent evidence to support the hypothesis that the languages of early humans in Africa had base-initial numerals. From a linguistic point of view, linearization is necessary for the verbal expression of multiplicative numerals. Between the two linear orders of multiplication, we demonstrate that the base-initial order has an initial advantage in communicative efficiency. We also offer typological evidence from the dominant head-initial word order in present-day numeral systems and nominal phrases in African languages. Finally, results from a phylogenetic analysis based on a global tree of human languages show that the base-initial order is more stable diachronically and more likely to be at the root of the reconstructed tree of languages in Africa between 100 and 150 thousand years ago. The dominant base-final order in non-African languages of modernity is thus likely to be a development after the Out-of-Africa exodus between 60 and 80 thousand years ago.

Body: between sacrum and profanum – a report

Body: between sacrum and profanum is an international conference organized in the Department of Modern Languages and the Department of German Studies at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland on November 28-29, 2023. The conference was organized within the ninth edition of Foreign Languages Days (known in Polish as Dni Języków Obcych - DJO) held annually since 2015 in the Department of Modern Languages and the Department of German Studies at the Faculty of Humanities. The conference had the honorary patronage of the Rector of the University of Zielona Góra, Professor Wojciech Strzyżewski.

MxPL: A Programming Language for Matrix-Related Operations

It is important to establish solid mathematical knowledge throughout the education period. Matrices are important mathematical objects commonly used in many diverse disciplines, including mathematics, engineering, and science. Most problems encountered in such disciplines are represented by mathematical models with various types of matrices, and solved through some applications of matrix algebra. Although simple or advanced operations of matrices can be performed by using modern programming languages, it usually results in a large fragment of code with a low level of readability due to a complicated sequence of control statements. On the other hand, special-purpose languages handle these operations via library functions, presenting poor integration with other programming environments, and less programming flexibility and practice. This paper addresses the design and development of a programming language, called MxPL, which supports matrix-related mathematics with the provision of some basic structures and functions. Firstly, a grammar that is compatible with the usual notations of matrices is constructed and the parser is produced. Then, the code verifier and interpreter for MxPL programs are implemented. Some code examples are presented to illustrate the performance of several sophisticated matrix operations. The comparative analysis of MxPL is conducted with modern programming languages based on language features.

Centenary Paper: Down But Not Out: Fighting to Maintain Federico García Lorca in UK Higher Education

Over the last decade, British universities have become increasingly reliant on an instrumentalist rhetoric to defend the ongoing relevance of research and teaching in the Humanities. This has resulted in a new chapter in the long-running saga concerning the crisis (purported or real) of Modern Languages alongside the study of literature. The very flexibility condemning traditional Modern Languages curricula to the past nevertheless offers new opportunities for literary study when used for the development of new skills. In this article, I employ my experience of a research-led undergraduate project on the UK stage legacy of Federico García Lorca as a case study to suggest ways in which the study of literature and theatre might be revamped.

Latin–Greek Code-Switching in Vicente Mariner’s (ca. 1570– 1642) Correspondence with Andreas Schott (1552–1629): A Case-Study

As one of very few authors from seventeenth-century Spain who chose to write in Ancient Greek, the work of Valencian Vicente Mariner (c.1570–1642) offers unique perspectives on the attitudes towards the classical languages in contemporary Iberia. Aside from a handful of published volumes, Mariner’s extensive, multilingual œuvre has been preserved in manuscript form. Mariner’s activity as a translator and Neo-Latin poet has been of interest to scholars from a variety of disciplines since the mid-twentieth century. The author’s deliberations on Ancient Greek, Latin and the vernaculars (Castilian and Valencian/Catalan) have also received the attention of theorists interested in the historical relationships between the classical and modern languages. More recently, Mariner’s poetic production in Greek has become the object of interest within the context of a turn to “Neo-Ancient Greek” literature.While earlier studies invariably reflect on the relationship between Greek and Latin in the author’s work and his attitudes towards them, Mariner’s bilingual correspondence with humanist friends and colleagues has yet to become the object of focused attention. As granular evidence the choices involved in Mariner’s use of Greek and Latin thanks to its numerous moments of code-switching, this paper offers a close-reading of a letter addressed by Mariner to prominent Belgian scholar André Schott (1552–1629) in April 1617. Alongside considerations of the communicative significance of the numerous switches between Latin and Greek in the document, this contribution also compares Mariner’s use of the languages in his letter with his theoretical reflections on Greek and Latin and their relationship in his poetry.

Understanding Language Teachers’ ICT Uptake from Ecological Perspectives


 
 
 
 
 
 
 This paper summaries factors affecting teachers’ decision to use ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in teaching modern languages. This paper tries to understand the teachers’ ICT uptake from ecological perspective discussing that teachers’ attitudes are influenced by environments in different levels (e.g. micro, meso, macro). In this paper, the environments refer to micro as teacher, meso as institution, and macro as beyond institution levels. Teacher levels define the aspects related to teachers’ psychological and demographic characteristics. Institutions levels describe the teachers’ decision from the influence of support and social circle in the institution. Beyond institution levels discuss the influence from wider environments such as government and public demand.
 
 
 

THE USE OF CHATBOTS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING TO PROMOTE MODERN LANGUAGE LEARNING: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Our world continues to become increasingly connected. The use of technology has become a must in this modern era to live accordingly. The requirement to use technology also widens the world of teaching, especially in teaching English. Nowadays, all generations of educators, whether young or old generations are expected to utilize technologies in their respective classrooms in an attempt to facilitate students with the newest atmosphere of the teaching and learning process. Speaking of those, chatbots are one of the technologies that can be engaged in English language teaching and learning. Relying on the huge benefit and easiness of implementation, the use of chatbots could be the leading technology for teachers to promote modern language learning. In this literature review-based research paper, the writers would like to encourage the use of chatbots in English language teaching as a medium for teachers to promote modern language learning.

Revisiting the Latin vocabulary of Terminologia Histologica: I. Nouns.

Almost 20% of the Latin nouns (193/993) in Terminologia Histologica (TH), the international standard nomenclature for human histology and cytology, display linguistic problems, particularly in the areas of orthography, gender, and declension. Some anatomists have opposed efforts to restore the quality of the Latin nomenclature as pedantry, preferring to create or modify Latin words so that they resemble words in English and other modern languages. A Latin microanatomical nomenclature is vulnerable to the criticism of anachronism, so the requirement for the use of authentic Latin, including derivation of new words from Greek and Latin words rather than from modern languages, if possible, may be even greater than it is for the anatomical nomenclature. The most common problem identified here appears to have been caused by derivation of Latin nouns by addition of -us and -um second declension endings to English words. Many Latin nouns (128) in TH contain one of six morphemes that have been treated this way even though the original Greek words are either first declension masculine or third declension neuter nouns. Ironically, deriving Latin nouns directly from Greek morphemes often results in words that look more familiar to speakers of Romance and Germanic languages than those derived indirectly through modern languages (e.g., astrocyte, collagene, dendrita, lipochroma, osteoclasta and telomere instead of astrocytus, collagenum, dendritum, lipochromum, osteoclastus, and telomerus).