Referential Characteristics Research Articles

Participation of referential mechanisms of subject nominations in the implementation of reliability in English and Belarusian media texts

Taking into account the proportion of objective and subjective, accurate and approximate in reporting of events, the problem of information reliability in different media cultures, is relevant not only from the linguistic point of view, but also proves to be essential for every modern consumer of information. This article is devoted to establishing correlations between the referential mechanisms of subject nominations that encode sources of information and parameters of the reliability of what is reported in English and Belarusian media texts of various genres. The research is based on the methods of analysis, comparison and classification; methods of contextual, semantic and linguo-pragmatic analysis. It has been established that in both media cultures, the referential characteristics of subjects have a direct impact on the reliability of the message in terms of the accuracy / inaccuracy parameter of the language nomination of information sources: the use of a referential subject contributes to an increase in the reliability of the reported data; a non-referential subject, as a rule, reduces the reliability and in limited cases does not change its indicators. It is shown that referential subjects, which are cognitive authorities, participate in the implementation of factual and communicative reliability; non-referential subjects as pseudo-cognitive authorities contribute to the preservation of communicative reliability only and do not provide any of the reliability types if they are sources with an unknown reputation. Taking into account the parameter of objectivity / subjectivity in the modern English and Belarusian press, it was revealed that in both media cultures submitting information exhibits a thematic-genre determination, the absence of simple correlations ‘one-sided reporting – subjectivity’, ‘multisided reporting – objectivity’, the interpenetration of objectivity and subjectivity depending on multiple subjects. It is shown that the objective reporting is possible when the event is covered in a balanced way: without a discourse overweight in favor of one of the parties and without evaluative comments from the journalist-narrator.

L1 referential features influence pronoun reading in L2 for deaf, ASL–English bilinguals

AbstractReferential processing relies on similar cognitive functions across languages – in particular, working memory. However, this has only been investigated in spoken languages with highly similar referential systems. In contrast to spoken languages, American Sign Language (ASL) uses a spatial referential system. It is unknown whether the referential system of ASL (L1) impacts referential processing in English (L2). This cross-language impact may be of particular importance for deaf, bimodal bilinguals who sign in ASL and read in English. Self-paced reading times of pronouns in English texts were compared between ASL–English bimodal bilinguals and Chinese–English unimodal bilinguals. The results showed that L1 referential characteristics influenced pronoun reading time in L2. Furthermore, in contrast to Chinese–English bilinguals, ASL–English bilinguals’ referential processing during reading of English texts relied on vocabulary knowledge – not working memory. These findings emphasize the need to expand current theories of referential processing to include more diverse types of language transfer.

The exponence of caseless NPs in Moksha

In this paper, I argue that the difference between indefinite- and definite-declension genitives in Moksha (Uralic) is not in the semantic or referential characteristics of the nominals they mark (as the name suggests), but rather in the syntactic size of the nominals. I show that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the definiteness of a noun phrase and its marking. In particular, indefinite-declension genitives can mark non-specific indefinite as well as specific definite noun phrases. At the same time, indefinite-declension genitives are number-neutral, while definite-declension genitives are specified for number. In contrast to indefinite-declension nominals, definite-declension ones also trigger possessive agreement on the head noun. I analyze indefinite-genitives as NPs and definite-genitives as DPs. Based on what is generally known about DPs, I make several predictions regarding the distribution of the genitives; two definite-declension genitives should be incompatible within one enclosing DP, while there should be no such restriction on the co-occurrence of an indefinite-declension genitive with either another indefinite-declension genitive or a definite-declension genitive. These predictions are borne out, and these new findings enrich the discussion of the ban on the co-occurrence of two DPs which are too close in the structure. More generally, my analysis supports the view that nominals of different structural size can coexist within one language.

Cognitive peculiarities of perceiving and distinguishing different meanings of the modal verb would

The article deals with the problem of functional peculiarities of the modal verb “would” in narrative texts. The analysed corpus comprises those meanings of “would” that render temporal aspects of the semantics of the following simple infinitive. The various meanings of modal constructions are considered in terms of the relative frequency of their usage in written texts as well as of their dependence on the broader lexical and pragmatic context. The present article also studies cognitive nuances of creating and perceiving “would + simple infinitive” phrases including their referential characteristics. At the end of the paper we attempt to build a cognitive model of the narrative discourse functioning of “would”-constructions, which takes into account the addressor’s presuppositions at the input and the implications at the output as inferred by the addressee.

외화 시청 중 외국어 수준과 자막 참조 특성의 비교

오늘날 통신 기술이 발달함에 따라 외국 문물을 쉽게 접할 수 있게 되면서, 외화(外畫)를 통한 외국어 능력 향상에 관심을 갖는 학습자들이 증가하고 있다. 이러한 시대적 흐름에 따라, 외화를 활용한 외국어 학습에서 자막의 역할이 중요하다는 연구 결과도 제시되고 있다. 그러나 대부분의 동영상 플랫폼에서는 이러한 학습자들의 특성을 고려한 자막을 제공하고 있지 않다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 시선 추적 실험을 통해 외국어 수준에 따른 외화 시청자의 자막 참조 특성을 파악하고, 이를 통해 외국어 학습자들을 위한 효과적인 자막활용 방안을 제안함으로써 학습 효율 향상에 도움을 주고자 한다.

SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF VERBAL ASPECTUALITY IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN DISCOURSES

The relevance of the proposed article stems from the scientific interest in investigation of different means of conceptual organization of knowledge in the process of production and interpretation of English and Russian utterances. Thus, it aims at establishing the role of aspect in English and Russian discourse through interpreting aspectual situations which are analyzed at the level of sentences and textual fragments borrowed from two translation versions of M. Mitchell’ s novel “Gone with the Wind”.The theoretical framework for the research is provided by Relevance theory as developed in recent works on procedural meaning to handle H. Reichenbach’s symbolic logic for tense and aspect and Relevance theory proposed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson. We suggest that the following means are involved in expressing the type of action: a combination of lexical and grammatical properties of the verb; grammatical forms of the verb; meanings of time adverbs. These means are capable of characterizing R, a conceptual notion, which can be inferred by contextual assumptions.Systematization of referential relations among the above mentioned components taking into account the influence of pragmatic interpretive component and contextual analysis of informational organization of discourse proves the hypothesis that referential characteristics being combined contribute to the description of a discourse situation as stative, habitual, inchoative or punctual.The article will be interesting for researchers in contrastive and cognitive linguistics.

Manual Signing in Adults With Intellectual Disability: Influence of Sign Characteristics on Functional Sign Vocabulary

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of sign characteristics in a key word signing (KWS) system on the functional use of those signs by adults with intellectual disability (ID). All 507 signs from a Flemish KWS system were characterized in terms of phonological, iconic, and referential characteristics. Phonological and referential characteristics were assigned to the signs by speech-language pathologists. The iconicity (i.e., transparency, guessing the meaning of the sign; and translucency, rating on a 6-point scale) of the signs were tested in 467 students. Sign functionality was studied in 119 adults with ID (mean mental age of 50.54 months) by means of a questionnaire, filled out by a support worker. A generalized linear model with a negative binomial distribution (with log-link) showed that semantic category was the factor with the strongest influence on sign functionality, with grammatical class, referential concreteness, and translucency also playing a part. No sign phonological characteristics were found to be of significant influence on sign use. The meaning of a sign is the most important factor regarding its functionality (i.e., whether a sign is used in everyday communication). Phonological characteristics seem only of minor importance.

Quantifier position in Japanese and the domain of specificity and indefiniteness

Abstract It has been noted that the variation in syntactic positioning of quantity expressions in Japanese - the pre-nominal construction and the NP-external construction - reflects different referential domains of the quantified entities (Martin 1975, Inoue 1978, Okutsu 1986, Downing 1996). The distinction between definiteness/indefiniteness as well as the notion of specificity have been used to explain the behavioral patterns of quantity expressions. However, due to the lack of a clearly defined framework that illuminates the relationship between the two separate referential categories of definiteness/indefiniteness and specificity/non-specificity, previous studies could not offer a coherent account of why the two constructions sometimes yield contrasting definite and indefinite readings, sometimes become synonymous, and sometimes allow slight differences in nuance. Using a framework that illuminates the relationship between the two referential categories, this study re-analyzes the observations made in previous studies and ascertains the referential characteristics of the two quantifier constructions. It suggests that the pre-nominal construction and NP-external construction do not express opposing domains of one referential category, but instead express one of the domains of two independent categories of referentiality, i.e. the domains of specificity and indefiniteness respectively. This study also discerns the referential meanings expressed by the constructions themselves from contextually derived meanings.

Les constructions détachées comme cadres de discours

We first propose a classification of various detached constructions (appositions, gerunds, absolute constructions), then go on to examine how their syntactic, semantic and referential characteristics make it possible for these constituents to fulfil discourse functions and to extend their scope over text segments beyond the sentence. We attempt to establish a hierarchy of the different types of constructions, whereby some of them appear better able to act as discourse frames because of properties which make them similar to temporal or causal circumstantial subordinate clauses.

Discourse structure and performance efficiency in interactive and non-interactive spoken modalities

Near-term spoken language systems will likely be limited in their interactive capabilities. To design them, we shall need to model how limitations on speaker interaction influence spoken discourse patterns in different types of tasks. Speaker interaction is a central feature of human dialogue, one presumed to have a powerful influence on its discourse structure and performance efficiency. The present study examined two speech modalities that represent opposites on the spectrum of speaker interaction—the telephone dialogue and audiotape monologue. Experts provided spontaneous instructions by either telephone or audiotape as their novice partner completed an assembly task. Within this task framework, a comprehensive analysis is provided of the basic differences in discourse organization, referential characteristics and performance efficiency for these two spoken modalities. The outlined distinctions are interpreted with special reference to the role of confirmation feedback in promoting dialogue efficiency. Implications are discussed for the design of non-interactive speech technology and limited interaction spoken language systems.

Indexical and Referential Characteristics of "I"

Indexical and Referential Characteristics of "I"