Narrative Language Research Articles

Арабографические источники по истории Дагестана на аварском языке (XIX – нач. XX в.): палеографическая характеристика и общий обзор.

Introduction. The article is devoted to the study and introduction into scientific circulation of arabographic written sources in the Avar language of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Until recently, some of these sources were not known at all, and they were not the subject of scientific research. With the emergence of new sources on the history of the Caucasus, it became necessary to conduct a critical source study of the texts of previously published sources. Materials and methods. The research is based on the study of a number of sources in the Avar language, among which we can single out the most informative and early ones, such as: a). Chronicle "Derbent name" (History of Derbent) from the private collection of M.G. Nurmagomedov; b). The composition of Muhammadrafi (14th cent.), known in the historical literature as "Tarikh Dagestan". in three lists from, private and mosque collections; in). “Tarikhi Jar” (History of Jar) from the collection of Nakkaw Muhammad of Jar; d). One-village chronicle “Tarikh Argvani” (History of Argvani) and “Imam Gazimuhammad” by Hasanilav from Gimri, etc. We will tell you more about them below. As we have already mentioned, some texts of the studied sources have already been the subject of research and were previously published [1; 2; 6; 8; 13; 18;20; 22; 23]. The studies are provided with paleographic descriptions, which, in addition to information about the author and scribe, include basic paleographic information such as the date and place of correspondence, volume, paper, handwriting, language of the manuscript and place of storage. If the author of the essay is known, brief information about his life and work is provided. If the text of the essay was previously published in the Arabic edition, or in another Arabic script, then a comparative comparison of the most important plots and fragments (names, toponymic, date of compilation, etc.) of the text was carried out. After the paleographic part, short annotations were compiled to the source texts, divided into semantic and situational syntagms. Research results. Because of the study, we were able to introduce into scientific circulation new sources on the history of the peoples of the North Caucasus, as well as critically analyze the previously published texts of arabographic sources, taking into account modern source studies. The introduction of new narratives in the Avar language into scientific circulation makes it possible to determine the place and role of local historical works in the general system of arabographic sources on the history of the peoples of Dagestan. The results of the research can be used in compiling a special course for students of universities and colleges on source study and historiography of the peoples of the North Caucasus.

Beur Yazını ve Verlan Dili: Fransa’daki Kuzey Afrika Göç(er) Söylemi

1980’li yıllarda, adını Arap sözcüğünün hecelerinin yer değiştirilmesiyle elde edilen Verlan Dili ile bu süreçte gelişen Beur Yazını, yeni bir yazar kuşağını yazın evrenine taşımıştır. Beur yazını, Kuzey Afrika kökenli ya da Fransa'da doğup büyüyen Kuzey Afrika göçerlerinin özgün söylemidir. Göçün etkisiyle sömürgecilik sonrası ortaya çıkan bu yazınsal akımın romanlarının genç anlatı kişileri, sürekli bir iç çatışma içinde olup, iki ekin, iki yaşam ve iki toplum arasında algılanan göç acısı, eşitsizlik ve sömürgeleştirme duygusu içinde parçalanırlar. Özellikle 2005 yılından başlayarak, Yörekent Yazını, daha sonra da Çağdaş Kent Yazını ya da Dünya-Yazını olarak tanımlanan metinler, yazın ve dilbilim dünyasında bütünüyle yeni bir araştırma ve eleştiri nesnesi olarak belirmiştir. Beur Yazını romanlarında yazar, farklı kökenlerden, ekinlerden ve Arapça, Berber, Afrika ve Karayip ile Çingene dillerinden oluşan toplulukların dil uygulamalarını birlikte kullanarak çoğul ve karma yeni bir dilsel / söylemsel uzam oluşturmuştur. Biz bu çalışmada Mağrip ülkelerinden ulusötesi göç sonrası Fransa’da gelişen Beur yazını ve Verlan dilini, tarihsel ve kuramsal bağlamda incelemeyi amaçlıyoruz. Beur literature and Verlan language: North African Mover Discourse in France In the 1980s, Beur literature, whose name was derived by the displacement of syllables of the Arabic word, referred to as the Verlan language, carried a new generation of writers into the literary universe. Beur literature is the narrative language of North African movers/immigrants of North African descent or born and raised in France. The young narrative persons of the novels of this literary current, which are brought about by the influence of mobility, are in constant internal conflict, falling apart in a sense of perceived mobility burden, inequality, and colonization between two cultures, two lives, and two societies. Especially beginning in 2005, texts described as suburban literature have emerged as an entirely new object of research and criticism in the world of literature and linguistics. In Beur literature novels, the author has created a new linguistic space, plural and mixed, using the linguistic practices of communities of different origins, cultures and languages such as Arabic, Berber, African and Caribbean languages, and the languages of the Gypsy genre together. In this study, we aim to focus on the main aspects of bilingualism, multiculturalism, the search for identity, double alienation, expatriation, acculturation and harmony that the representatives of this paper focus on, after examining the Beur literature that developed in the Francophone literature with its historical and theoretical dimensions.

О поэтике олонхо «Нюргун Боотур Стремительный» П. А. Ойунского и тувинских героических эпосов

Introduction. The article provides a comparative analysis of artistic expressiveness means inherent to the Yakut Olonkho and Tuvan epics. The point is that poetics of the epic work Nurgun Bootur the Swift by P. A. Oyunsky recreated on the basis of folk tales has actually remained understudied, and this paper fills the gap. Goals. The work — as part of Yakut folklore studies — makes the first attempt to consider poetics and the system of artistic techniques of the Olonkho Nurgun Bootur the Swift in comparison to Tuvan heroic epics. Methods. The study employs a comprehensive approach that includes comparative historical and typological research methods. Results. The comparative analysis concludes that P. Oyunsky’s Nurgun Bootur the Swift is based on the principles of traditional folk epic, and reveals parallels to Tuvan heroic narratives. Special attention is paid to the means of artistic expression — hyperbole and comparison. There are functional semantic dependence and structural unity indicating a typological similarity of the epic works examined. The vivid language of Tuvan epic narratives and that of P. Oyunsky’s Olonkho are explicitly characterized by elements observed in heroic epic proper, and the poetic analysis shows the Yakut text is distinguished by artistic completeness. So, P. Oyunsky revived the Yakut heroic epic, enriched its conceptual/thematic essentials — to strengthen the unique poetic form.

Toplumcu gerçekçilik bağlamında Orhan Kemal'in hıkâyeleri üzerine bir inceleme

The genre of the short story appeared in modern Turkish literature at the end of the XIX century. Orhan Kemal is one of the realist writers of Turkish literature, known for his short stories during the Republican period. You can see that the socialist-realistic approach prevails in his stories. In his stories, along with his past, he realistically described the lives of people from the lower and middle classes who lived around him and managed to convey to his readers real situations in society. His position was not to create art or make a profit, but to convey facts. The stories discussed in this article were analyzed from the point of view of mentality, structure, theme, language and method of narration, studied in the context of text and tradition, intertextual relations, meaning and interpretation. The purpose of the research is to reveal the significance of the author–work–society connection with reference to the scientific works of Professor-literary critic Sherif Aktash concerning text analysis (theory and practice).

Antigypsyism as Symbolic and Epistemic Violence in Informative Journalism in Spain, 2010–2018

This study conducts a framing analysis of how Spanish journalism represents “Gypsy identity” within the markers of dangerousness and criminality (in the period from 2010 to 2018). The paper aims to validate the following underpinning hypothesis: as symbolic and epistemic violence, antigypsyism legitimizes systemicracial discrimination and exclusion against Roma in Spain. The article is organized into five sections. First, an analytical framework introduces the notions of “antigypsyism,” “structural discrimination,” “social fear,” “symbolic violence,” “epistemic violence,” and “framing analysis.” Second, a case study is presented on a sample of 150 national news reports that portray Romani characters in a biased way. Third, this analysis informs an ethical and legal debate that challenges the limits of free speech and the uses of discriminatory and biased language in informative narratives. The fourth section examines and provides conclusions regarding thecorrelation between structural discrimination against Roma and the role of media in engendering the stigma of the “Gypsy threat.” Finally, the article includes a series of recommendations that could be used to counteract racism in news narratives.

Narrative and Other Pragmatic Language Abilities of Children With a History of Maltreatment

Introduction In any given year, about 3.5 million children in the United States are suspected of having experienced maltreatment resulting in complex trauma involving the exposure to traumatic events and the long-term effects of this exposure on the child's psychological, emotional, social, linguistic, and communicative development. Method In this study, we analyzed retrospective data on the pragmatic language and social communication skills exhibited by children between the ages of 5 and 15 years with a documented history of maltreatment. Researchers analyzed the children's performance on the Hyter Pragmatic Protocol–Revised and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fifth Edition Screening Test to determine their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic abilities. Analyses were also conducted to determine if children with different genders, ages, and numbers of exposures demonstrated differences in performance. Results Results showed that many children with trauma exposure demonstrated specific deficits in both narrative and expository language skills. High percentages of children exhibited difficulty using narrative cohesion, narrative coherence, expository content, expository structure, and expository coherence on the Hyter Pragmatic Protocol–Revised. The number of maltreatment exposures did not significantly impact performance on narrative measures. Female participants tended to perform better on pragmatic language tests. Younger children performed better than older children on narrative cohesion and produced a landscape of action in their narratives. Most children received passing scores on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fifth Edition Screening Test, and there were no significant differences in pass rates among age, gender, and number of exposures. Conclusions Clinical implications for assessment are discussed. Implications include the need for clinicians to test pragmatic language, especially the narrative language of children exposed to complex trauma. Because older children with trauma exposure demonstrated lower scores on certain tests of narrative language, there is a need for periodic reassessment of these pragmatic skills as children age.

Quantifying grammatical impairments in primary progressive aphasia: Structured language tests and narrative language production

PurposeThis study examined grammatical production impairments in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), as measured by structured tests and narrative samples. We aimed to quantify the strength of the relationship between grammatical measures across tasks, and identify factors that condition it. Three grammatical domains were investigated: overall sentence production, verb morphology, and verb-argument structure. Methods77 participants with PPA (34 PPA-G, 16 PPA-L, 15 PPA-S and 12 other) completed a battery of grammatical tests and a narrative language sample was obtained. Accuracy scores were computed for the language tests and the narrative samples were analyzed for both accuracy of selected narrative variables as well as grammatical diversity across the three grammatical domains. Principal components analysis (PCA) and multiple regression were used to examine cross-task relationships for all measures. ResultsAs expected on the basis of classification criteria, accuracy scores were lower for the PPA-G group as compared to the PPA-L and PPA-S participants for overall sentence production and verb morphology, but not argument structure. Grammatical accuracy in narratives strongly predicted overall language test performance in PPA-G, whereas grammatical diversity in narratives did so in PPA-L, and no significant correspondence between narrative and language test performance was found for PPA-S. For individuals with severe grammatical impairments only, error distribution for both morphology and argument structure was strongly associated in structured tasks and narratives. ConclusionsGrammatical production in narrative language predicts accuracy elicited with structured language tests in PPA. However, unique narrative production patterns distinguish PPA by subtype: accuracy for PPA-G, and grammatical diversity for PPA-L. The impairment in PPA-G is likely to reflect a core impairment in grammar whereas that of PPA-L may be closely tied to the word retrieval and verbal working memory deficits that characterize this variant. This underscores the theoretical distinction between PPA-L and PPA-G, as well as the importance of including grammatical diversity measures in analyses of language production, especially for patients who do not display frank agrammatism. Further, the results suggest that measures of domain-specific language deficits (i.e., verb morphology vs. argument structure) are robust across tasks only in individuals with severe grammatical impairments.

Mortality in India established through verbal autopsies (MINErVA): Strengthening national mortality surveillance system in India.

BackgroundFollowing data access and storage concerns, Government of India transferred the management of its Sample Registration System (SRS) based mortality surveillance (formerly known as the Million Death Study) to an Indian agency. This paper introduces the new system, challenges it faced and its vision for future.MethodsThe All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, the new nodal agency, established the “Mortality in India Established through Verbal Autopsy” (MINErVA) platform with state level partners across India in November 2017. The network in its first three years has undertaken capacity building of supervisors conducting verbal autopsy under the SRS, established a panel of trained physician reviewers and developed three IT-based platforms for training, quality control and coding. Coding of VA forms started from January 2015 onwards, and the cause specific mortality fractions (CSMF) of the first 14 185 adult verbal autopsy (VA) records for 2015 were compared with earlier published data for 2010-2013 to check for continuity of system performance.ResultsThe network consists of 25 institutions and a panel of 676 trained physician reviewers. 916 supervisors have been trained in conducting verbal autopsies. More than 75 000 VA forms have been coded to date. The median time taken for finalizing cause of death on the coding platform is 37 days. The level of physician agreement (67%) and proportion of VA forms requiring adjudication (12%) are consistent with published literature. Preliminary CSMF estimates for 2015 were comparable with those for 2010-2013 and identified same top ten causes of death. In addition to the delay, two major challenges identified for coding were language proficiency of physician reviewers vis-à-vis language of narratives and quality of verbal autopsies. While an initial strategic decision was made to consolidate the system to ensure continuity, future vision of the network is to move towards technology-based solutions including electronic data capture of VAs and its analysis and improving the use of mortality data in decision making.ConclusionMINErVA network is now fully functional and is moving towards achieving global standards. It provides valuable lessons for other developing countries to establish their own mortality surveillance systems.

Los verbos de petición como introductores del discurso referido

The referred speech is usually presented by declarative verbs. However, there are other semantic classes specialized in speech reproduction procedures, such as request verbs. From the analysis of the Archivo de Textos Hispánicos de la Universidad de Santiago, made up of texts of oral, theatrical, journalistic and narrative language, we try to establish the frequency of use of the verbs implorar, suplicar, rogar, solicitar, pedir, reclamar and exigir as introducers of referred speech, as well as their greater or lesser productivity according to the type of procedure: indirect style, direct style, pseudo-direct style and hybrid style. In addition, the characteristics of each structure are explored with the proposal of knowing the configuration mode of the sequences that introduces each verb (its members, the position of each element, etc.) and that establish certain differences between them within each type of referred speech.

Evaluating the Oral Language Skills of English-Stream and French Immersion Students: Are the CLB/NCLC Applicable?

This study examined the oral language skills of grade-two anglophone children enrolled in French Immersion and English-stream programs. The study had two objectives: (a) to compare performance between the groups on measures of receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension, and narrative production (i.e., structure and language) in English, and (b) to explore the applicability of the Canadian Language Benchmarks/Niveaux de compétences linguistiques canadiens (CLB/NCLC) to assessment of their conversational competency. All children (English-stream n = 27, French Immersion n = 33, aged 7-8 years) were tested in English. In addition, the French Immersion students were tested using equivalent measures in French. The results comparing performance in English revealed no differences between the groups on receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension and narrative structure. However, the English-stream children outperformed their French Immersion peers in narrative language. Furthermore, CLB/NCLC listening and speaking criteria were applied to conversational samples yielding level scores in English (both groups) and French (French Immersion only). The range of benchmarks that are appropriate for this population is discussed in detail.

Identifying Developmental Language Disorder in School Age Bilinguals: Semantics, Grammar, and Narratives

ABSTRACT Children with Developmental language disorder (DLD) have particular difficulty learning language despite otherwise general normal development. When school age bilingual children struggle with language, a common question is if the difficulties they present reflect lack of ability or lack of language experience. To address the question of identification of DLD in the context of bilingualism, we explore the diagnostic accuracy of measures administered in two languages. The Bilingual English Spanish Assessment Middle Extension (BESA-ME) assesses semantics and morphosyntax and the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) assesses comprehension and production of narratives. These measures were administered to 112 second graders (19 with DLD) and 64 fourth graders (7 with DLD). We explored the classification accuracy of each of these measures alone and in combination using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The ROC curve illustrates diagnostic classification of a measure at various cutpoints. We compared the extent to which measures in English, Spanish, or best language account for area under the (ROC) curve. Discriminant function analysis using the best indicator (Spanish, English, best language) from each type of measure (semantics, morphosyntax, narrative) in combination demonstrate classification accuracy above 80%. Morphosyntax in the best language was the strongest predictor of DLD for second grade children. In fourth grade, the three measures contributed more equally in predicting DLD.

Drug discovery with explainable artificial intelligence

Deep learning bears promise for drug discovery, including advanced image analysis, prediction of molecular structure and function, and automated generation of innovative chemical entities with bespoke properties. Despite the growing number of successful prospective applications, the underlying mathematical models often remain elusive to interpretation by the human mind. There is a demand for ‘explainable’ deep learning methods to address the need for a new narrative of the machine language of the molecular sciences. This Review summarizes the most prominent algorithmic concepts of explainable artificial intelligence, and forecasts future opportunities, potential applications as well as several remaining challenges. We also hope it encourages additional efforts towards the development and acceptance of explainable artificial intelligence techniques.

From the Editors

In this last issue of Volume 40, the invited issue editor, Dr. Kelly Farquharson, brings together researchers from across the country and the globe who have a strong devotion to helping school-based speech–language pathologists provide evidence-based, educationally impactful services to the students on their caseloads. Two articles deal with services to children with speech sound disorders. Cabbage and DeVeney (this issue) present diverse intervention paradigms for speech sound disorders of unknown etiology—namely, the cycles, contrasts, and complexity therapeutic approaches—and describe how the selected treatment approach may be based on the types and patterns of sound production errors, consistency of those errors, stimulability for correct sound production, and concomitant language concerns. Ireland, McLeod, Farquharson, and Crowe (this issue) discuss means for effectively navigating federal and state laws, regulations, and guidance regarding when a student with a speech sound disorder also may be considered a student who is eligible for the receipt of special education and related services (including speech therapy), which does not always go hand in hand because of the three successive “gates” used to determine special education eligibility: (1) Does the child have a disability that is encompassed by one of the categories identified in federal legislation? (2) Does the disability have an adverse impact on the child's educational or functional performance and/or progress (including academic, social, and behavioral aspects of development)? (3) Does the child require specialized instruction to participate/make adequate progress in the general education curriculum (or appropriate preschool activities)? Their article also provides an overview of more recent articulation development research that suggests most children in the United States and other English-speaking nations should be able to correctly produce just about all English consonant sounds, even those once considered “late-developing,” by the age of 5 years. The remaining four articles address language and literacy interventions for children with speech and language disorders. Tambyraja and Schmitt (this issue) make a strong case for why school-based speech–language pathologists should integrate literacy (they focus on reading in their article, but writing should not be ignored by practitioners) into their services for students, including the mandate to do so promulgated in recent national certification and practice standards for the profession. The authors discuss a number of barriers clinicians may face in addressing literacy in school settings and offer some practical suggestions to overcome them. Their article sets the stage for the last few articles, in which literacy or literacy-related interventions and assessments that may be employed by school-based speech–language pathologists are described and evaluated. Gillon, McNeill, Denston, Scott, and Macfarlane (this issue) report the effects of a 10-week teacher-led whole-class literacy intervention, the Better Start Literacy Approach, that combined code-based and language-based activities on the speech, language, and word-level reading and spelling outcomes for children with weak oral language or weak oral language plus speech sound production difficulties. Koutsoftas, Srivastava, and Harris (this issue) present a spelling coding rubric that includes 15 codes to represent four primary types of knowledge needed for spelling: phonological, orthographic, morphological (both structural and semantic), and mental graphemic representations of words in long-term memory. The rubric can be used to assess spelling performance in actual writing samples (rather than just on dictated word lists) and changes in spelling performance due to application of the writing process. Petersen, Mesquita, Spencer, and Waldron (this issue) examine the feasibility of a multitiered (whole-class plus small-group) oral narrative language intervention, Story Champs, for improving narrative skills, reading comprehension, and writing performance using a sample of typically developing second graders. We hope readers will find the information in these articles helpful for their clinical activities in schools on behalf of children with speech sound disorders and reading and writing challenges. Schools are complex organizations where policies, practices, and people sometimes falter in achieving intended objectives. Nevertheless, shared values and insights, communicated, in part, through research articles like those here, go far in helping attain the goal of providing the best therapeutic services to the students who need them. —Gary A. Troia, PhD, CCC-SLP —Sarah E. Wallace, PhD, CCC-SLP Co-Editors

Examining the Effects of Multitiered Oral Narrative Language Instruction on Reading Comprehension and Writing

This early-stage feasibility study investigated the effects of a multitiered oral narrative language intervention on oral language, reading comprehension, and writing. Twenty-eight second-grade students participated in this quasi-experimental control group study with assignment at the classroom level. The independent variable was large- and small-group oral narrative language intervention that required students to retell increasingly complex stories that were strategically crafted to include academic language typically found in grade-level reading material. Story grammar, causal adverbial subordinate clauses, elaborated noun phrases, adverbs, and the acquisition of word meanings through context were explicitly taught. Students' performance on proximal measures of oral narrative retells, as well as distal measures of reading comprehension and writing, was assessed at pretest and posttest. Statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups were found on all outcome measures using nonparametric analyses. Large- and small-group multitiered oral narrative instruction improved not only oral narrative language but also reading comprehension and written composition.

Ruedas de investigación narrativa en la formación de profesores de química

Este artículo busca comprender el papel de la experiencia narrativa en la construcción de la identidad profesional de ser profesor de química, así como discutir sobre la investigación narrativa como una forma de construir conocimiento en las Ciencias Naturales. Para ello, se presenta un estudio del enfoque fenomenológico-hermenéutico, que permitió rastrear una historia metodológica y, por lo tanto, interpretar y aprender con los que narraron las historias. Las narrativas que constituyen la investigación se expresaron mediante un conjunto de significados que hacen que las narrativas sean más que comunicables: las hacen experimentables. Se entiende que las experiencias cuando se documentan en forma narrativa mejoran los procesos colaborativos de conversación, lectura, escritura y reescritura en la formación docente. Por lo tanto, las interpretaciones construidas conducen a comprender la experiencia narrada y a argumentar que la escritura narrativa proporciona una forma de pensar y hablar sobre lo que nos sucede en la formación de los maestros de Química. En este sentido, se discute sobre la importancia de las Ruedas de Investigación Narrativa en la formación de profesores de Química como una posibilidad para construir conocimiento, compartir experiencias de los sujetos en formación, y así favorecer el aprendizaje y la apropiación del lenguaje narrativo en Química.

REFLECTION ON DIALOGIC FEATURES IN VIETNAMESE NOVELS OF THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY FROM BAKHTIN’S THEORY

As a focus of introduction since the early 1990s of the twentieth century, Bakhtin’s theroy has significantly influenced the research, criticism and writing activities of the Vietnamese literary circle. Bakhtin’s foundational concepts, especially the dialogical principle, have urged Vietnamese writers to renovate their thinking for novels and their forms of creativity. This article is based on Bakhtin's dialogue theory to identify the movements and renovations of Vietnamese novels in the early twenty-first century. Accordingly, many novels that have gone from “multiphonics” to “polyphony” in the narrative language tone not only demonstrate the intersubjective dialogic feature but also bear the intertextuality dialogic sense. Particularly, novels have been transformed into a language play with endless dialogues between storytellers and characters, among characters as well as among writers, characters and readers, etc.

Narrative Language Markers of Arabic Language Development and Impairment.

Purpose We examined indices of narrative microstructure as metrics of language development and impairment in Arabic-speaking children. We examined their age sensitivity, correlations with standardized measures, and ability to differentiate children with average language and language impairment. Method We collected story narratives from 177 children (54.2% boys) between 3.08 and 10.92 years old (M = 6.25, SD = 1.67) divided into six age bands. Each child also received standardized measures of spoken language (Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary, Sentence Imitation, and Pseudoword Repetition). Several narrative indices of microstructure were examined in each age band. Children were divided into (suspected) developmental language disorder and typical language groups using the standardized test scores and compared on the narrative indicators. Sensitivity and specificity of the narrative indicators that showed group differences were calculated. Results The measures that showed age sensitivity included subject omission error rate, number of object clitics, correct use of subject-verb agreement, and mean length of utterance in words. The developmental language disorder group scored higher on subject omission errors (Cohen's d = 0.55) and lower on correct use of subject-verb agreement (Cohen's d = 0.48) than the typical language group. The threshold for impaired performance with the highest combination of specificity and sensitivity was 35th percentile. Conclusions Several indices of narrative microstructure appear to be valid metrics for documenting language development in children acquiring Gulf Arabic. Subject omission errors and correct use of subject-verb agreement differentiate children with typical and atypical levels of language development.

Development of a measure of function word use in narrative discourse: core lexicon analysis in aphasia.

Although discourse-level assessments contribute to predicting real-world performance in persons with aphasia (PWA), the use of discourse measures is uncommon in clinical settings due to resource-heavy procedures. Moreover, assessing function word use in discourse requires the arduous procedure of defining grammatical categories for each word in language transcripts. The purpose of this exploratory study was twofold: (1) to develop core function word lists as a clinician-friendly means of evaluating function word use in discourse; and (2) to examine the ability of the core function word measure to differentiate PWA from cognitively healthy adults and persons with fluent aphasia from non-fluent aphasia. The 25 most commonly used function words (core function words) were extracted from narrative language samples from 470 cognitively healthy adults, which were divided into seven age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s). The percent agreement of core function words for 11 PWA (fluent aphasia = 5; non-fluent aphasia = 6) and 11 age- and education-matched controls were then calculated. Percent agreement for the core function words produced was compared between the controls and the PWA group, and between participants with fluent aphasia and non-fluent aphasia. The results indicated that PWA produced fewer core function words from the lists than the control group, and that core function word use was strongly correlated with aphasia severity. Persons with non-fluent aphasia produced fewer core function words than those with fluent aphasia, although this could be a confound of aphasia classification from the use of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB)-Revised. Core function word lists consisting of a limited number of items for quantifying function word use in discourse remain in a nascent stage of development. However, the findings are consistent with previous studies analysing the total production of function words in language samples produced by PWA. Therefore, core function words may potentially serve as a clinician-friendly manner of quantifying function words produced in discourse. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject Function word analysis in discourse requires arduous processes of identifying the error production and grammatical category of function words in discourse. Previous studies have demonstrated that core lexicon measures are an efficient, simple means of quantifying discourse in PWA. However, function words have never been considered for generating an independent core lexicon list. What this paper adds to existing knowledge As an exploratory study, we focused primarily on developing a clinician-friendly measure to evaluate function word production in discourse, motivated by the idea of an adaptation strategy within the core lexicon framework. Our findings demonstrated that by using a simple scoring system that the core lexicon measure provides, we differentiated the control group from the PWA group, and persons with fluent aphasia from persons with non-fluent aphasia. Additionally, we found significant correlations between function word production and aphasia severity determined by WAB Aphasia Quotient (AQ). What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The results add empirical evidence for the utility of core function word lists for quantifying function word usage in discourse in PWA. Counting the presence and absence of function words in discourse will allow clinicians to avoid labour-intensive preparatory work, and to obtain useful diagnostic information in a less time-consuming way.

Using Parallel, Narrative-Based Measures to Examine the Relationship Between Listening and Reading Comprehension: A Pilot Study.

Purpose The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method Three listening and three reading comprehension narrative retells and subsequent responses to story questions and vocabulary questions were collected using the Narrative Language Measures Listening and Reading subtests of the CUBED assessment. Results Results indicated a strong correlation between the listening comprehension and reading comprehension measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the listening and reading comprehension measures loaded onto one factor. Mean scores were not significantly different between the listening and reading comprehension measures, and the equipercentile analyses indicated that the two measures yielded scores that aligned with similar percentile rankings for a diverse sample of students, suggesting symmetry and equity. Conclusion Oral narrative language retells and responses to story and vocabulary questions could potentially serve as proxy measures for reading comprehension for young students.

Лингвистические особенности текстов эвенкийских эпических героических сказаний

The research objective involves identifying linguistic peculiarities of the Evenk epic texts. Scientific originality of the paper lies in the fact that the author for the first time provides a comprehensive linguistic analysis of epic texts at different language levels. The study is conducted by the material of the Evenk folklore, which has not been previously investigated. The following conclusions are justified: the Evenk epic text contains stylistically neutral vocabulary, the language of narration is simple, tropes are absent. The findings indicate that alliteration and assonance are among the most frequent phonetic means in the epic legend. Verbs prevail in the epic text, and it makes the story more dynamic. The syntax of a heroic legend is characterized by the use of simple asyndetic sentences.