Regular Words Research Articles

The Exploration of Immersion Language Learning and Methods to Children's Preliminary Words Acquisition

This paper respectively pinpoints on the most EFFECTIVE and the most NATURAL approach for children to learn. In my paper, scientific experiments in four different ways of gaining basic vocabulary will be carried out and an interview with preschool teachers focusing on pronunciation will be conducted in this study. Moreover, Phonological Awareness Quick Assessment is utilized in the research to examine the standard level of each kid before the initiation of the experiment. This study reveals that the mix of regular letter-oriented word memorization and immersion English learning is the most natural way for preschoolers to learn English words while the combination of immersion and phonics-oriented word memorization method is the most effective one. As for its significance, apart from being helpful for teachers to realize whether they should change approaches to teaching preschoolers to memorize words the paper also gives directions to parents to understand whether they are supposed to adjust their strategies to assist and guide their kids to learn better for themselves.

A <i>wh</i> discourse particle: Dutch <i>hoezo</i>

This paper provides an analysis of a special kind of why-questions in Dutch, formed with the wh-word hoezo (lit. ‘how so’). We propose that hoezo signals the speaker’s resistance to updating the discourse model, by asking the interlocutor to provide a reason for their preceding discourse move. Hoezo shares properties with both discourse particles (its not-at-issue content expresses the speaker’s attitude towards the current state of the discourse), and question words (it asks the interlocutor to provide a reason). Unlike waarom (the regular word for ‘why’), hoezo is not subject to wh-movement and does not bind a variable.

Development and Clinical Evaluation of a Low Glycaemic Index Multi-Millet Snack

The prevalence of metabolic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol, has been closely linked to dietary habits characterized by a high intake of refined carbohydrates and unhealthy fats. Addressing this issue through healthy eating practices is crucial in preventing the onset of these disorders. However, popular snacks in society often contribute to unhealthy diets. In response, this study aimed to develop a nutritious multi millet snack using food technologies like protein extraction, extrusion puff technology, tumble blending and no-fry oil treatment. The nutritional analysis revealed high protein and high fibre content, as well as a low-fat profile. Clinical evaluation of the snack on 16 human volunteers demonstrated a low glycemic index (GI) 45.7, indicating slower sugar release into the bloodstream. The experiment's outcome presents a promising avenue for promoting health-conscious and diabetic-friendly dietary choices. The study underscores the potential of combining food technologies with millet-based formulations to create foods that align with the needs of individuals seeking to maintain or improve their metabolic health. Further investigations and long-term studies are needed to evaluate benefits of this multi millet snack on cholesterol and obesity when used as a replacement to regular dietary practices Key Words: Food technology, Millet, Snack, healthy, Low Glycemic index, GI

The symptoms of surface dyslexia in Arabic: the impact of orthographic ambiguity on reading abilities of a patient with Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT Like other Semitic languages, Arabic is known for its rich morphology and consonantal writing system. In this article, we report the first case of acquired surface dyslexia in an Arabic-speaking patient (HBS). Surface dyslexia is characterised by difficulty reading irregularly spelled words, while performance is better with regular words and nonwords. The purpose of this study was to describe the symptoms of surface dyslexia in Arabic and to investigate how orthographic depth may affect reading in the context of semantic impairment. In HBS, who had Alzheimer’s disease, reading was impaired for both words and nonwords. Her reading performance was affected by orthographic ambiguity and by the presence of diacritics depicting short vowels. In particular, she produced mainly vowel errors, suggesting an overreliance on the sublexical route of reading. On the other hand, HBS was able to distinguish long vowels from consonants represented by the same letters, provided there was a real root. This finding can be taken as evidence that HBS could access the word’s root to decide whether the vowel letter represents a long vowel or a consonant. The results of this study suggest that the characteristics of surface dyslexia appear to be universal: reading regular words is spared compared to irregular words and non-words. However, the error patterns that HBS showed in reading support a language-specific conceptualisation of the processing components of the lexical and sublexical routes of reading.

Experience in Measuring Productivity of Suffix Morphemes in Chinese Military News Discourse Based on a Universal Measure

The article studies the issues of measuring derivational productivity of affixes. It considers the concept of productivity and its various aspects which can be quantified by corpus linguistics methods. In particular, it analyzes the measures of “expanding” and “potential” productivity by H. Baayen, and proposes a new formula for “universal” productivity on the basis of the analysis. These three productivity measures are applied to 80 Chinese suffix morphemes (suffixes and semi-suffixes) within a thematic collection of texts – Chinese media reports on military topics for 2019. The language material comprises 2066 texts (2.852.262 characters). The study resulted in three variants of the rating list for the most productive suffix morphemes of the Chinese military news discourse, which can be used for didactic and applied purposes. H. Baayen’s “expanding productivity” and the “universal productivity” proposed in the work showed a high correlation (0.85), while H. Baayen’s “potential productivity” correlates with them negatively. A meaningful analysis of the results also brings up a question of the appropriateness of using the “potential productivity” measure. Comparison of existing measures and the formula proposed in the work allow us to conclude that for an approximate assessment of the suffix morphemes productivity one can use the formula of “expanding productivity” by H. Baayen, which, despite relying only on the single word token (hapax legomenon) frequency, gives quite plausible results. To measure the suffix morphemes productivity more precisely, it is recommended to use the “universal productivity” formula proposed in this paper which takes into account a larger number of significant parameters (the number of hapax legomena with the estimated affix, the total type count with the given affix, and the average regular word token frequency of the estimated affix) and is more reasonable in this respect.

The Application of Quantitative Methods in Assessing the Effectiveness of Litigation Legal Strategies - An Example of the Case Study Approach

Abstract In legal practice litigation cases, the selection of a litigation strategy significantly impacts both the litigation process and the overall outcome of the case. The study mainly applies quantitative methods to evaluate the effectiveness of legal strategies for litigation. We collect relevant legal strategy texts after analyzing relevant civil litigation cases in China. We then use text mining methods, such as regular expressions, jieba participles, and Word2Vec training word vectors, to refine high-frequency words in text data related to litigation legal strategies. This process establishes a quantitative evaluation index system for assessing the effectiveness of litigation legal strategies. We select litigation legal strategy cases as the evaluation object, utilizing the PMC index to determine and evaluate the effectiveness of each strategy. The sample litigation legal strategies have a mean PMC index of 6.69, indicating a good overall level. Only one strategy is considered acceptable, with the remaining 87.5% rated as good. Deficient litigation solutions and thought paths, with a mean value below 0.8, hinder the effectiveness of litigation legal strategies. We recommend optimizing and improving them to enhance their effectiveness.

Parallelisms and deviations: two fundamentals of an aesthetics of poetic diction.

Poetic diction routinely involves two complementary classes of features: (i) parallelisms, i.e. repetitive patterns (rhyme, metre, alliteration, etc.) that enhance the predictability of upcoming words, and (ii) poetic deviations that challenge standard expectations/predictions regarding regular word form and order. The present study investigated how these two prediction-modulating fundamentals of poetic diction affect the cognitive processing and aesthetic evaluation of poems, humoristic couplets and proverbs. We developed quantitative measures of these two groups of text features. Across the three text genres, higher deviation scores reduced both comprehensibility and aesthetic liking whereas higher parallelism scores enhanced these. The positive effects of parallelism are significantly stronger than the concurrent negative effects of the features of deviation. These results are in accord with the hypothesis that art reception involves an interplay of prediction errors and prediction error minimization, with the latter paving the way for processing fluency and aesthetic liking. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

Disentangling the Impact of Bilingualism and SES in Literacy Skills of Language-Minority Bilingual Children and Monolingual Peers Exposed to French

In the present study, we aimed to disentangle the impact of bilingualism and socioeconomic status (SES) on literacy in language-minority bilingual children (LMBC) and monolinguals exposed to French. We also wanted to explore the role of these two factors on cognitive and language skills, i.e., verbal knowledge (VK), morphosyntactic comprehension (MC), and phonological short-term memory (PSTM), well known to be important predictors of literacy acquisition. We compared LMBC with low and medium-high SES, and monolinguals with low and medium-high SES. All the children attended Grades 3, 4, and 5. We found that LMBC underperformed monolinguals on VK and MC. Low SES children showed lower scores compared to medium-high SES children on VK, MC, and PSTM. With regard to literacy, LMBC underperformed monolinguals on text and irregular word reading. Low SES children underperformed medium-high SES children only in regular word reading and pseudoword spelling. As a whole, bilingualism had an effect on measures involving lexical components, while SES had a more widespread effect on cognitive and language skills. The results are discussed considering implications for research, clinical, and educational settings.

Possibilities of regular word-formation in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky (based on the poems of the 1960s–1970s)

The article is devoted to regular word-formation in the fictional practice. The purpose of the work is to reveal the possibilities of the regular word-formation system based on the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. Within the framework of this study, we consider the concept of “productivity” and the approaches to differentiation between word-formation type and word-formation model definitions. We have formulated the meaning of the term “a word-formation category”. The article studies the structural and semantic aspects of regular derivatives: using the method of word-formation analysis, we have identified productive word-formation types for different parts of speech, actual categorical meanings and frequency morphemes. The article identifies stylistic features of specific morphemes and analyses the combination of different-style derivatives when the image and function of lexemes that implement different word-building types are created. In the corpus of regular derivatives, we reveal the productivity of “color” paradigms, which emphasizes their semantic importance for the poetic imagery of Joseph Brodsky. In the course of our study, we noted derivational lexemes of a different order – potential and occasional. Their basis is the usual system of language, which confirms the high potential of regular word formation for a poetic text. The article concludes that regular derivatives play an important role in constructing poetic imagery.

Linguistic, visuospatial, and kinematic writing characteristics in cognitively impaired patients with beta-amyloid deposition.

Beta-amyloid (Aβ) deposition, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), begins before dementia and is an important factor in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Aβ deposition is a recognized risk factor for various cognitive impairments and has been reported to affect motor performance as well. This study aimed to identify the linguistic, visuospatial, and kinematic characteristics evident in the writing performance of patients with cognitive impairment (CI) who exhibit Aβ deposition. A total of 31 patients diagnosed with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) with Aβ deposition, 26 patients with Alzheimer's-type dementia, and 33 healthy control (HC) participants without deposition were administered tasks involving dictation of 60 regular words, irregular words, and non-words consisting of 1-4 syllables. Responses from all participants were collected and analyzed through digitized writing tests and analysis tools. In terms of linguistic aspects, as cognitive decline progressed, performance in the dictation of irregular words decreased, with errors observed in substituting the target grapheme with other graphemes. The aMCI group frequently exhibited corrective aspects involving letter rewriting during the task. In terms of visuospatial aspects, the AD group displayed more errors in grapheme combination compared to the HC group. Lastly, in the kinematic aspects, both the aMCI group and the AD group exhibited slower writing speeds compared to the HC group. The findings suggest that individuals in the CI group exhibited lower performance in word dictation tasks than those in the HC group, and these results possibly indicate complex cognitive-language-motor deficits resulting from temporal-parietal lobe damage, particularly affecting spelling processing. These results provide valuable clinical insights into understanding linguistic-visuospatial-kinematic aspects that contribute to the early diagnosis of CI with Aβ deposition.

Effects of Dictation On the Written Word Spelling of Junior Secondary School JSS III Students in Jigawa State

This study attempted to investigate the effects of dictation on the written word spelling of Junior Secondary School JSS III students in Jigawa state. The study was motivated by the difficulty faced by learners of English as L2 in spelling of words especially the irregular spelling in their essays. Two research questions were set and answered. The target population was the JSS III students in Jigawa State. The study was conducted in the 2022/2023 academic session. Experimental research design was adopted for the study. 150 students were randomly sampled from two JSS within two senatorial districts in the state and were equally assigned as experimental and control groups. The instruments used were the selected and modified words from JSS course books which were the English words selected and modified from JSS course books which were used for the pre-test and post-test respectively. The research questions were answered in form of table showing the frequency and percentage. The major findings of the study showed that 48% of the participants in the experimental group spelt more irregular words while only 33% spelt the same words in the control group after the treatment. The study recommended that teachers of English as a second language should be trained so that they would be more sensitive to dictation strategies that enable them to teach JSS students to acquire ability of spelling more regular and irregular words.

What spelling errors can tell us about the development of processes involved in children's spelling.

Spelling is an essential foundation for reading and writing. However, many children leave school with spelling difficulties. By understanding the processes children use when they spell, we can intervene with appropriate instruction tailored to their needs. Our study aimed to identify key processes (lexical-semantic and phonological) by using a spelling assessment that distinguishes different printed letter strings/word types (regular and irregular words, and pseudowords). Misspellings in the test from 641 pupils in Reception Year to Year 6 were scored using alternatives to binary correct versus incorrect scoring systems. The measures looked at phonological plausibility, phoneme representations and letter distance. These have been used successfully in the past but not with a spelling test that distinguishes irregularly spelled words from regular words and pseudowords. The findings suggest that children in primary school rely on both lexical-semantic and phonological processes to spell all types of letter string, but this varies depending on the level of spelling experience (younger Foundation/Key stage 1 and older Key stage 2). Although children in younger year groups seemed to rely more on phonics, based on the strongest correlation coefficients for all word types, with further spelling experience, lexical processes seemed to be more evident, depending on the type of word examined. The findings have implications for the way we teach and assess spelling and could prove to be valuable for educators.

Action of the law of analogy in occasional word formation (based on the lyrics by E.A. Evtushenko and A.A. Voznesensky)

The article views analogy as one of the basic laws of language development. The action of the law of analogy is studied on the material of the occasional word creation of the poets of the 60-ies of the XX century E.A. Evtushenko and A.A. Voznesensky. The relevance of the study of occasionalisms is stipulated by insufficient knowledge of the interaction of regular and occasional word formation and the role of analogy in creating a poetic image. The main research method is the word-formation analysis of occasional units, which made it possible to analyze the derivational mechanism based on assimilation to ordinary regular models. Contextual analysis is applied, revealing the semantic side of the new lexeme. Component analysis was used to detect syntagmatic connections of occasional units. The author of the article notes the importance of the law of analogy not only in the choice of formants, but also in the procedure of the derivational process. The action of the law in the formation of occasional steps of word-formation nests is substantiated. The conditional entry of new units into the usual system and their ability to fill word-formation gaps are analyzed. In the course of the research, a lexical and word formation phenomenon of a different order was discovered a word formation paradigm, reflecting the processes of one word formation stage. The productivity of some root morphemes is traced in connection with their frequency in usage and participation in the formation of value concepts. The results of the analysis of language units confirm the importance of the law of analogy in the creation of occasionalisms and the expression of the authors assessment in general. In general, the results of the analysis of linguistic units confirm the high degree of significance of the law of analogy in the creation of occasionalisms and their use in poetic texts. The role of analogy as text formation means and a tool for constructing poetic imagery is emphasized. The conclusion is made about the systematic nature of the formation of lexical-derivational and semantic connections in the array of occasional vocabulary of E.A. Evtushenko and A.A. Voznesensky.

Characterization of reading errors in languages with different orthographic regularity: an Italian–English comparison

The study examined whether a classification of errors based on Hendriks and Kolk’s (1997) proposal would effectively characterize the reading profile of children learning two orthographies varying for regularity, such as Italian and English. The study considered both an age-match and a grade-match comparison. Offline analysis of error production was carried out for two lists of stimuli: List 1 including regular words varying for frequency and matched non-words and List 2 including low-frequency words varying for regularity. In List 1, Italian-reading children made more multiple attempts characterized by a slow and progressive approach to the target (sounding-out behavior) than English-reading children, while the latter made relatively more word substitutions and non-word lexicalizations. As for List 2, Italian-reading children made relatively more multiple attempts and progressive approaches to the target compared to the English-reading children (with more sounding-out behaviors and syllabications), while the opposite occurred for phonological-visual errors, word substitutions, morphological, and semantic errors. Both groups showed a high proportion of phonological-visual and regularization errors (stress assignment in the case of Italian-reading children). Overall, the use of an error coding system specifically tuned to the characteristics of the orthographies investigated allowed a more comprehensive identification of reading difficulties which allowed the different strategies used by children of different languages to emerge more clearly (more reliance on sub-lexical routines in Italian readers and on lexical routines in English readers). These results call for more attention to error patterns in the identification of reading difficulties in children of different languages including those learning a transparent orthography where error analyses have largely been ignored.

Exploration of phonological jokes in Maryam Apaokagi's selected comedy skits

The majority of studies on Nigerian comedy are discourse- and pragmatics-related, despite the impact of phonology on humour creation as seminal studies have shown. These seminal studies describe phonological jokes to mean ambiguous utterances whose humour lies in their multiple phonological interpretations. However, comedy skits from Nigeria show that there are more dimensions to phonological jokes. Therefore, this study investigated the phonological jokes in comedy skits from Maryam Apaokagi, using Chomsky and Halle’s Distinctive Features and McGraw and Warren’s Benign Violation Theory. Twenty skits were purposively selected from the artist’s YouTube channel. Four strategies were identified in the data: minimal pairs, phonological restructuring, phonological ambiguity, and phonological extension. Four instances each of minimal pairs and phonological restructuring were identified; the former replaced phonemes in words, thus, changing their meanings, while the latter re-arranged phoneme sets and syllables to achieve new structures. There were two instances of phonological ambiguity where strings of sounds had multiple meanings; homophony was engaged to achieve rhythm and humour. Phonological extension had twenty-eight instances; it occurred when one character produced a syllable, and another extended it by providing a longer but partially similar word. Four types of phonological extensions were identified, and these were extension into regular words, popular names, concepts and other languages. The jokes portrayed socio-cultural and economic situations in Nigeria like poverty, promiscuity, high living costs, and burglary. Apaokagi used comedy to teach patience and tolerance. The comprehension of these jokes thrived on shared background knowledge between the artist and the audience.

Indian sign language recognition using convolution neural network

The goal of the project is to create a machine learning model that can classify the numerous hand motions used in sign language fingerspelling. Communication with deaf and dumb persons is frequently difficult. A variety of hand, finger, and arm motions that assist the deaf and hard of hearing in communicating with others and vice versa. Classification machine learning algorithms are taught on a set of image data in this userindependent model, and testing is done on a completely other set of data. For some people with particular needs, sign language is their only means of communicating their thoughts and feelings. It enables individuals to understand the world around them by visual descriptions and hence contribute to society. As a result, our model aids us in solving the problem more broadly. By watching the user’s hand gestures, this transforms sign language to regular words.

Mathematics symbol instruction and senior secondary students’ achievement in word problems: A quasi-experimental study

An assessment of the possible effect of mathematics symbol instruction on achievement in word problems was the main thrust of the study. Two null hypotheses were tested in the study.<b> </b>The non-equivalent group pre-test-post-test quasi-experimental research design was adopted. The multistage sampling technique was used to select a sample of 387 participants from 6,740 senior secondary class one students in the 81 government-owned coeducational secondary schools in Calabar education zone of Cross River State. The treatment class was exposed to mathematics symbol instructional strategy for solving word problems while the control class was exposed to regular word problem teaching, otherwise called the conventional method. “Students mathematics achievement test” was the instrument used for data collection after validation by experts. The reliability coefficient of 0.90 was determined using the Kuder-Richarson 20 formula. Primary data were obtained after informed consent from the participants. The null hypotheses were all tested at the .05 alpha level using the analysis of covariance. Findings revealed a significant effect of the mathematics symbol instructional strategy on students’ word problem achievement in secondary schools. Male students perform significantly better in word problems than their female counterparts when taught using the mathematics symbol instruction. These findings discussed fundamental theoretical, practical, and research implications. It was recommended, among other things, that mathematics teachers concentrate on demystifying the abstraction in mathematics by deliberately adopting mathematics symbol instructional strategy in interpreting mathematical statements and sentences into their symbolic notations before engaging in their computation.

Phonological and orthographic processing in basic literacy adults and dyslexic children.

The aim of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that, compared to typically reading children matched on regular word reading, adults with basic literacy (either adult literacy students or adult basic education students) struggle on phonologically demanding tasks but are relatively performant on orthographic demanding tasks, and hence present a performance pattern similar to that of dyslexic children. Using various reading and phoneme awareness tests, we therefore compared the adults to both typically reading children from Grades 3 and 4 and dyslexic children, these two groups being matched to the adults on regular word reading. The dyslexic children were also compared to either chronological age- or reading level-matched children. The hypothesis was only partly supported by the data, as results depended on the subgroup of adults considered. While the literacy students presented poorer phoneme awareness and a somewhat stronger length effect in reading than the dyslexic children, the basic education students outperformed the latter on irregular word reading. The adults, and in particular the literacy students, also relied frequently on orthography in a complex phoneme awareness task. Taken together, these results suggest that adults with basic literacy rely more on visual memory than both dyslexic and typically reading children. This opens the question of whether the peculiar profile of these adults is intrinsic to adult literacy acquisition or is related to the way they are taught and trained to read and write. The results also highlight the need for better characterization of subgroups of adults with basic literacy.

Reducing the local alphabet size in tiling systems by means of 2D comma-free codes

The tiling systems define the family of recognizable picture languages as the projection of local picture languages, i.e., strictly-locally-testable (SLT) languages of order 2. A basic measure of the descriptive complexity of a picture language is given by the so-called alphabetic ratio, i.e., the size of the local alphabet divided by the size of the picture alphabet. The family of recognizable picture languages does not change when defined by the projection of SLT languages of order k>2, which use k by k tiles. In such a case, the natural question is how the alphabetic ratio changes We obtain the following main result: any recognizable picture language over an alphabet of size n is the projection of an SLT language over an alphabet of size 2n. Moreover, two is the minimal alphabetic ratio possible in general. The proof relies on a new family of comma-free picture, i.e., 2D, codes, for which a lower bound on numerosity is established; and on the relation between languages of encoded pictures and SLT languages. Our result reproduces in two dimensions a similar property (known as Extended Medvedev's theorem) of the regular word languages, concerning the minimal alphabetic ratio needed to define a language by means of a projection of an SLT word language.

WEWNĄTRZGRUPOWE PORÓWNANIE SKUTECZNOŚCI APARATÓW SŁUCHOWYCH W SZUMIE NA PODSTAWIE CZASÓW ODPOWIEDZI WERBALNEJ VRT

BackgroundVerbal response times (VRTs) are among the suggested markers for cognitive load during word recognition tasks. Measurements of VRT during hearing aid fitting can be a useful tool to obtain information about listening effort with different amplification parameters.Material and methodsA software program was developed to easily measure VRTs in speech recognition tests. The system plays 50 randomly chosen recorded words out of a set of 700 disyllables. Speech material can be presented together with pre-selected noise samples at different speech-to-noise ratios and processed with low-pass filters with selectable cut-off frequencies. The test is carried out in free field. A voice activity detector measures the time between the offset of the presented word and the onset of the repetition by the subject, which allows VRT and speech recognition scores to be quickly assessed. Tests were carried out with a group of 8 normal-hearing subjects to evaluate the effect of different filter parameters and a second group of 8 normal-hearing people to evaluate the effect of different speech-to-noise ratios on VRT. Finally, a group of 15 adult hearing-impaired subjects who used hearing aids were fitted under different conditions and the VRTs were compared between fittings.ResultsReducing the low-pass filter cutoff frequency or adding noise to the speech signal increased VRTs in normal hearing people, suggesting an inverse relationship between VRT and ease of listening. In the hearing-impaired group, VRTs with different fittings of the hearing aid showed differences that can be used as an indicator of listening effort.ConclusionsAdding a measurement of VRT to a regular word recognition test during hearing aid fitting could be useful for adjusting parameters or deciding between models or processing strategies, especially if recognition scores are high.