Language Representation Research Articles

Early language experience and modality affect parietal cortex activation in different hemispheres: Insights from hearing bimodal bilinguals

The goal of this study was to investigate the impact of the age of acquisition (AoA) on functional brain representations of sign language in two exceptional groups of hearing bimodal bilinguals: native signers (simultaneous bilinguals since early childhood) and late signers (proficient sequential bilinguals, who learnt a sign language after puberty). We asked whether effects of AoA would be present across languages – signed and audiovisual spoken – and thus observed only in late signers as they acquired each language at different life stages, and whether effects of AoA would be present during sign language processing across groups. Moreover, we aimed to carefully control participants’ level of sign language proficiency by implementing a battery of language tests developed for the purpose of the project, which confirmed that participants had high competences of sign language.Between-group analyses revealed a hypothesized modulatory effect of AoA in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in native signers, compared to late signers. With respect to within-group differences across languages we observed greater involvement of the left IPL in response to sign language in comparison to spoken language in both native and late signers, indicating language modality effects. Overall, our results suggest that the neural underpinnings of language are molded by the linguistic characteristics of the language as well as by when in life the language is learnt.

Patterns of language

ABSTRACT Neuroimaging studies have increasingly leveraged the information in multivariate patterns of brain activity, transitioning from voxel-by-voxel activation comparisons to multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) and decoding approaches. Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) has further advanced this field, enabling comparisons of representational structures across neuroimaging modalities and computational models, in particular in fMRI and EEG/MEG research. Recent applications have extended to brain connectivity estimation, enhancing our understanding of neural representations in language and cognition. This special issue, “Patterns Of Language”, showcases recent applications and methodological developments of multivariate analysis approaches in the neuroscience of language.

Enhancing the vision–language foundation model with key semantic knowledge-emphasized report refinement

Recently, vision–language representation learning has made remarkable advancements in building up medical foundation models, holding immense potential for transforming the landscape of clinical research and medical care. The underlying hypothesis is that the rich knowledge embedded in radiology reports can effectively assist and guide the learning process, reducing the need for additional labels. However, these reports tend to be complex and sometimes even consist of redundant descriptions that make the representation learning too challenging to capture the key semantic information. This paper develops a novel iterative vision–language representation learning framework by proposing a key semantic knowledge-emphasized report refinement method. Particularly, raw radiology reports are refined to highlight the key information according to a constructed clinical dictionary and two model-optimized knowledge-enhancement metrics. The iterative framework is designed to progressively learn, starting from gaining a general understanding of the patient’s condition based on raw reports and gradually refines and extracts critical information essential to the fine-grained analysis tasks. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated on various downstream medical image analysis tasks, including disease classification, region-of-interest segmentation, and phrase grounding. Our framework surpasses seven state-of-the-art methods in both fine-tuning and zero-shot settings, demonstrating its encouraging potential for different clinical applications.

The linguistic landscape of Kotabaru Malang Train Station: language representation in public space

The linguistic landscape of Kotabaru Malang Train Station: language representation in public space

English Language Representation in Korean Linguistic Landscapes

English Language Representation in Korean Linguistic Landscapes

Hand-aware graph convolution network for skeleton-based sign language recognition

Skeleton-based sign language recognition (SLR) is a challenging research area mainly due to the fast and complex hand movement. Currently, graph convolution networks (GCNs) have been employed in skeleton-based SLR and achieved remarkable performance. However, existing GCN-based SLR methods suffer from a lack of explicit attention to hand topology which plays an important role in the sign language representation. To address this issue, we propose a novel hand-aware graph convolution network (HA-GCN) to focus on hand topological relationships of skeleton graph. Specifically, a hand-aware graph convolution layer is designed to capture both global body and local hand information, in which two sub-graphs are defined and incorporated to represent hand topology information. In addition, in order to eliminate the over-fitting problem, an adaptive DropGraph is designed in construction of hand-aware graph convolution block to remove the spatial and temporal redundancy in the sign language representation. With the aim to further improve the performance, the joints information, bones, together with their motion information are simultaneously modeled in a multi-stream framework. Extensive experiments on the two open-source datasets, AUTSL and INCLUDE, demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art with a significant margin. Our code is available at https://github.com/snorlaxse/HA-SLR-GCN.

“Me aviento el English y el Spanish”: Spanish-English code-switching in Texas conjunto artist Nick Villarreal

Aims and objectives: This study focuses on Nick Villarreal (1951–2017), a bilingual and bicultural conjunto musician from San Antonio. It ascertains the frequency, formal features, and socio-pragmatic functions of the Spanish/English code-switching found in his songs. Methodology: Quantitative and qualitative approaches are utilized to explore Nick Villarreal’s use of code-switching in song lyrics. Data and analysis: Nick Villarreal’s commercially available discography (178 non-repeated tracks) was classified by matrix language. All instances of code-switching were identified and classified by type, syntactic category, and function. Song themes were inductively analyzed. Findings: Most of Nick Villarreal’s lyrics are in Spanish (73%), while 22% contain code-switching. Lexical insertions are the most common type of switches (65%). Villarreal also employs other contact phenomena, such as fully nativized borrowings, and syntactic and semantic calques. His virtuosity is apparent in his humorous bilingualism, especially in the creative nominalizations of English clauses as nicknames (e.g., la I-didn’t-do-it). The main function performed by switches is poetic—that is, stylistic uses of language, such as rhyming, joking, and puns. He conveys authenticity through code-switching and other enregistered linguistic sources such as border slang, or caló, and working-class/rural Mexican Spanish. He shows loyalty toward a working-class rural Spanish-speaking audience of conjunto that shares his background, while simultaneously appealing to second-generation Mexican Americans through his use of English and references to Anglo culture. Originality: Only recently have scholars begun to describe the linguistic features of borderland styles. This study focuses on an artist who has never received scholarly attention before but who turned his music into a meaningful vehicle for linguistic and cultural anti-assimilatory subversion. Implications: Villarreal employs strategies common to other borderlands bilingual musicians while innovating creatively. He actively stylizes the local to evoke a sense of authenticity and is thus a meaningful example of the intersection between language representation, class allegiance, linguistic attitudes, and cultural stance.

Mode of time as a linguistic concept: to the question of language representation in the literary text

Mode of time as a linguistic concept: to the question of language representation in the literary text

Multilingual Students’ Solution Strategies in Solving Linear Programming Problems: A Case of National Curriculum Vocational Level 3 Mathematics Students

This paper presents an exploratory case study that investigates multilingual students' solution strategies for linear programming problems at a technical vocational education and training (TVET) college in Gauteng. South Africa, like many developing nations, uses English as the language of instruction in technical vocational education and training in TVET colleges, despite the fact that many students lack the essential fluency to interact effectively with the curriculum. Where TVET lecturers and students speak the same home language, there is a disconnect between language policy and codeswitching, which is a frequent approach for achieving pedagogical goals. However, lecturers' training in multilingual realms in the classroom has frequently been framed in terms of linguistic issues, with a limited understanding of code-switching. The ability to combine two languages in the classroom in a systematic manner to promote learning has not been widely appreciated. Furthermore, codeswitching discourses are frequently veiled, with lecturers bringing the vernacular into the classroom. The authors of this study advocate for the discontinuity framework, which claims that in order to learn mathematics, pupils must first acquire the essential language. A purposive sample of 18 National Certificate (Vocational) Level 3 bilingual students was given the linear programming challenge. Data were gathered through a test and semi-structured interviews. The inductive content analysis, which was used for collection and analysis, revealed that students were unable to complete the linear programming task successfully because to a lack of relevant linear programming vocabulary (register) caused by language barriers. We thus recommend that lecturers use the mathematics register in their discussions with students about mathematics to demonstrate the complex and precise ways of expressing mathematical ideas; for example, lectures may re-voice their students' language representations so that these expressions more closely approximate the precision of the mathematics register.

VirRep: a hybrid language representation learning framework for identifying viruses from human gut metagenomes

Identifying viruses from metagenomes is a common step to explore the virus composition in the human gut. Here, we introduce VirRep, a hybrid language representation learning framework, for identifying viruses from human gut metagenomes. VirRep combines a context-aware encoder and an evolution-aware encoder to improve sequence representation by incorporating k-mer patterns and sequence homologies. Benchmarking on both simulated and real datasets with varying viral proportions demonstrates that VirRep outperforms state-of-the-art methods. When applied to fecal metagenomes from a colorectal cancer cohort, VirRep identifies 39 high-quality viral species associated with the disease, many of which cannot be detected by existing methods.

Differences in perceptual representations in multilinguals' first, second, and third language.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the differences in perceptual representations among multilingual individuals. In Experiment 1, the immediate sentence-picture verification paradigm was used to investigate perceptual representations in the working memory stage. The results suggest a match effect within the first language (Cantonese), but not within the second language (Mandarin) or the third language (English), showing perceptual representations only in first language comprehension. In Experiment 2, the delayed sentence-picture verification paradigm was used to investigate perceptual representations in long-term memory. Similarly, the results suggest a match effect within the first language (Mandarin), but not within the second language (English). The findings of both experiments suggest that the first language was perceptually represented, regardless of whether it was Cantonese or Mandarin, regardless of the processing in working memory or long-term memory. No evidence was found for perceptual representations in the later-learned languages, regardless of high or low proficiency. Our study has implications for theories of language comprehension and embodied cognition.

MULTI-THEORETICAL EXPLICATION OF EXPERIMENTAL TYPOGRAPHY: THE CONTEXT OF 21ST CENTURY LITERARY TEXTS

This study is a multi-theoretical explication of selected 21st-century literary texts with a focus on determining how literary pieces with experimental typography can be analyzed which places emphasis on a literary primer that can be produced from the textual analysis, interpretation, and explication of the texts analyzed. This research study examines the significance of experimental typography in selected literary texts, specifically focusing on Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me Novel, Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout, and shape poetry. The findings revealed that authors employ various types of experimental typography to convey additional layers of meaning in their works. The analysis of Tahereh Mafi's novel "Shatter Me" identifies the use of strikethrough, the management of space, and the unconventional use of mechanics as experimental typography techniques. In blackout poetry, the interaction between visual and textual elements through the use of semiotics plays a vital role in conveying the intended message. Shape poetry, on the other hand, integrates language, design, and visual representation to create a cohesive composition, offering a unique and visually engaging reading experience. Based on the findings, it is concluded that writers utilize multiple modalities manifested in experimental typography, embedding symbolism in literature. Readers must recognize these modalities and analyze their impact on literary elements to develop accurate interpretations. The study recommends further exploration of 21st-century literary analysis, emphasizing works incorporating experimental typography and innovative forms of literary expression. It suggests making a primer on experimental typography available to literature students to enhance their understanding of typography's expressive potential. Additionally, the study proposes exploring other modalities employed by modern writers and testing the primer's usability in schools to optimize its impact on students' learning experiences and curriculum enhancement. This research contributes to the understanding and appreciation of experimental typography in contemporary literature.

المردود القبيح للمتغيرات الفلسفية والاجتماعية في فنون ما بعد الحداثة

The Ugly Consequence of Philosophical, and Social changes in Postmodern Art has had a profound impact on Art, Thought, and Culture by challenging established Beliefs, and raising questions about the nature of Reality, and Knowledge. And as a Reflection of those changes that occurred in the twentieth century, The Arts in turn rejected traditional concepts such as objective truth, absolute meaning, and classical beauty, and adopted Pluralism, Deconstruction, Uncertainty, Decentralization, Individualism, and Futility over Philosophical Thought, resulting in fragmented and chaotic Artistic Expression, and emphasised criticism and questioning traditional Beliefs and Values, resulting in Art that is often critical and controversial. Postmodern art has embraced Cultural Pluralism by attempting to blend different values to express Social Conditions, and has completely distanced itself from Abstraction. Postmodern concepts have been formulated on the basis of a critique of modernism, which was based on the idea of the existence a History of Thought that moves usually on the basis of possessing understandable Concepts as complete Origins, and in Postmodern Art we found out a return to representational language, and differentiated consistency that suits different tastes as it carries different messages, and artistic trends became more interactive with Society and the Public, which gives the Artwork the characteristic of spread and integration with the surrounding environment, whether Social, Cultural, Economic, or Political. These changes have also led to diverse Arts that are rich in experiences, but are often difficult to understand and unconventional, which have led to criticism of these arts for being elitist and chaotic, yet they have contributed to the development of new and interesting Art Forms. In conclusion, Philosophical and Social Changes have played an important role in the formation of Postmodern Art, and the emergence of many new features accompanied by some negative consequences.

Digital libraries for minor languages in India: frameworks for addressing absences in policy and governance

PurposeGiven that Indian languages in general are under-represented on the internet and that languages of minority linguistic groups find very little space on digital platforms, it is imperative for institutions such as libraries to cater to smaller communities and their educational needs while also reaching out to them in their own languages. This study aims to deliberate on strategies for enlisting community support for gathering diverse learning resources in different languages and for enlisting participation in activities such as crowdsourcing in initiatives such as annotations and transliteration.Design/methodology/approachThis paper calls for interventions that imagine and create infrastructure for the flourishing of smaller libraries that can draw from and feed into large-scale national and international libraries. Offering a conceptual framework to rethink the country’s approach toward minor languages, it first offers an overview of policies and initiatives relevant to the concerns of minor languages in digital libraries in India. Based on the policy analysis, it then goes on to suggest starting points for policy designers and custodians of libraries to help them work toward better representation of languages in their resources.FindingsThe existing frameworks analyzed here for the greater or representation of minor Indian languages reveal a culture of silence toward the issue of language. With some advocacy, these frameworks can be mined to craft different ways that are critical not just for enriching libraries but also for preservation of cultural heritage of the communities concerned, thus adding a larger social dimension to the question of access.Originality/valueWhile a lot of socio-political discourse on minority languages in India exists, this study pushes for their bearing on digital libraries, educational frameworks and cultural heritage.

A schoolscape in the north of Sweden. Visual representations of the national minority languages Finnish, Meänkieli, and Sami

A schoolscape in the north of Sweden. Visual representations of the national minority languages Finnish, Meänkieli, and Sami

The Evolving Landscape of Spanish Language Representation in U.S. Media: From Overt to Covert Discrimination

Despite the continuously expanding presence of Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, media representation of the Spanish language and that of its speakers has remained relatively scarce. At present, however, a growing interest in reaching and cashing in on this influential consumer group is forcing significant changes in the mass media communication landscape. Not only are an increasing number of movies and TV shows working with more diverse casts (ethnically, culturally, linguistically, etc.), but there also seems to be a heightened presence of Latinx characters in leading or supporting roles. This tendency, however, does not necessarily mean that mainstream media is becoming more inclusive and less anglocentric. In fact, a careful look at the storylines of individuals who are perceived to be Spanish speakers will reveal that they mostly portray stereotypical roles and behaviors. When their stories are told, they are all too often infused with unwarranted messages that portray Latinxs as lazy, unskilled, unintelligible in speech, hypersexual, or simply too ‘foreign’ to fit in. Whether overtly or covertly expressed, the negative impact of these persistent transgressions has the potential to shape real-world ideologies, attitudes, and prejudices. This paper adopts a critical raciolinguistic perspective, which underscores the co-naturalization of language and race, to highlight the role of media in reinforcing discrimination against the Spanish language and its speakers. In our analysis of six recently popularized TV shows (i.e., East Los High, Family Guy, Gentefied, Jane the Virgin, One Day at a Time, and That ‘70s Show), we examine the perpetuation of racialized stereotypes toward Latinx characters’ linguistic practices with regard to (i) the environment in which they exist, (ii) their mannerisms, (iii) speech patterns, and (iv) interactions with other characters. We demonstrate how these shows’ blending of seemingly harmless linguistic ideologies with stereotypical and sensationalized representations grounded in colonial hierarchies reproduces hegemonic interests, perpetuates social inequalities, and places racialized Spanish speakers at a disadvantage.

Echoes of Culture: Relationships of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes With Contemporary English, Historical English, and 53 Non-English Languages

Attitudes are intertwined with culture and language. But to what extent? Emerging perspectives in attitude research suggest that cultural representations in language are more related to implicitly measured (vs. explicitly measured) attitudes, and that such relationships persist across history and diverse languages. We offer a comprehensive test of these ideas by correlating (a) attitudes toward 55 topics (e.g., Rich/Poor, Dogs/Cats, Love/Money) from ~100,000 U.S. English-speaking participants with (b) representations of those same topics in word embeddings from contemporary English text, 200 years of English books, and 53 non-English languages. Strong and robust relationships emerged between representations in contemporary English and implicitly but not explicitly measured attitudes. Moreover, strong correlations with implicitly measured attitudes persisted across 200 years of books, and most non-English languages. Results provide new insights into the nature of implicitly measured attitudes and how they are intertwined with cultural representations that are relatively hidden in patterns of language across time and place.

Polymodality of perception and its reflection in fiction text: Сognitive and semiotic perspectives

The issues related to the polymodality of perception and various forms of intermediality are widely discussed in linguistics whereas the aspect of their interrelation is seldom considered. This research is aimed at tracing the participation of various modes of perception in the process of interaction with the world, the reflection of this process in our consciousness and memory in the form of various images up to the manifestation of those images in the intermedial relations in fiction text. The study draws on cognitive semiotics, text linguistics, polymodality and intermediality. The theoretical analysis sugessts that the polymodality of perception results in the formation of synesthetic mental images represented in the phenomenon of intermediality. The empirical material of the research includes text fragments from the works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Joyce Cary and Adam Thorpe containing samples of linguа-artistic and linguа-musical techniques of writing as forms of intermediality. The intermedial analysis of the empirical material shows how the polymodality of perception determines the specificity of the authors’ creative thinking represented in the choice of language means that activate musical and visual images in the readers’ minds. As a result, such fiction texts are constituted as related to a specific art whose forms and devices are used in it. The analysis has also revealed that in the process of verbal representation of musical or artistic images language exploits all forms of its semiotic signs: symbols (for naming colours, shades of light, sounds of music), indices (allusions to works of art or their authors) and icons (the use of forms and devices characteristic of other arts). The study confirms the productivity of exploring intermedial interaction in the cognitive and semiotic perspectives to demonstrate the relations between perception, conceptualization and the embodiment of the results in fiction text.

Algorithm for Automatic Layout of Graphic Language and Its Application in Graphic Design

When using traditional algorithms to describe graphic languages, the results obtained are not accurate due to the lack of strict standards. In this case, the size and position of the graphic display cannot be accurately determined. Aiming at these problems, we propose a new automatic typesetting algorithm for graphic languages. Use the constant method to calculate the display size of buffered images in graphic design. The ant colony algorithm is used to solve the optimal solution, so that the optimal display position of the graphics in the graphic design can be obtained. Graphics are powerful. For example, excellent graphics such as the presentation of forms, the expression and transmission of information, often make people feel relaxed and empathetic, shorten the distance between each other, and make communication smoother. As a result, graphic languages have become an important part of modern graphic design and are used more and more frequently. This paper attempts to analyze the representation of graphic language, aiming to demonstrate its important role in graphic design.

Song and poetic text Bella ciao in a mosaic of languages, cultures and arts

The development of textology and intertextuality opens up new perspectives in the interpretation of famous texts, including the song of the Italian Resistance participants Bella ciao . Its numerous polymodal representations in different languages and arts account for the need to systematize them on uniform methodological grounds. The material of the article is the song and poetic text in Italian dialects and in the common Italian neo-standard, its translations into Romance languages, interpretations in Russian, Caucasian and other languages, as well as multimedia and polychannel versions. The goal of the article is to discuss intertextual, semantic and semiotic parameters of the text; to establish the parameters of internal and external intertextuality of the versions of the original text; and to characterize the precedent phenomena serving as the basis for the development and transformation of their aesthetics. The study aims to build and interpret the precedent links and associations of the song Bella ciao in its intertextual transformations; to determine its specificity in the semiocultural conditions of reading and interpretation and at the same time to evaluate its place in the context of Italian and world culture. The methodology is based on a set of methods at the intersection of linguosemiotic, functional and semantic approaches focusing on such parameters of the text as precedence, variation, correlation of linguistic and non-linguistic codes, comparison of the original and translations, polycode, polymodal and translation transformations. The study has established that, as a result of numerous intertextual transformations, the original text expressing unique Italian cultural meanings acquires new interpretations acting as a starting point or the development of both precedent and new plots. It is used as a polycoded intersemiotic model for the creation of new interpretations and, in the long term, becomes a tool for the preservation and reproduction of cultural memory.