Semantic Aspects Of Language Research Articles

Parkinson’s disease psychosis associated with accelerated multidomain cognitive decline

BackgroundCognitive deficits are associated with poor quality of life and increased risk of development of dementia in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) psychosis. The trajectory of cognitive decline in PD...

The cognitive construction-grammar approach to teaching the Chinese Ba construction in a foreign language classroom

Abstract The present study introduces a novel instructional approach to teaching a Chinese construction to college students in a foreign language classroom. Based on the framework of the construction-grammar approach to language acquisition, this study tested the effect of construction-based teaching, which integrates formal and semantic aspects of language with contextually meaningful visual scenes, in Korean-speaking Chinese learners’ acquisition of the Chinese Ba construction. Two groups of Chinese learners, who were enrolled in second-semester college-level Chinese classes, received constructional (n = 33) or form-focused instruction (n = 33) for 13 weeks. Results from elicited production and grammaticality judgment tasks implemented preceding and following the instruction showed that the constructional instruction group had improvements to a greater extent than the form-focused instruction group. These findings underscore the validity of the construction-grammar approach as an effective teaching method in foreign language learning settings.

How does semantic pain and words condition pain perception? A short communication.

Language is one of the main tools with whom people describe their pain. The semantic value of words plays a fundamental role in the pain perception, intended as a complex process of modulation and processing in the brain. The priming effect is a cognitive process in which a certain stimulus can influence subsequent stimuli. It is therefore plausible that this effect plays a key role in the modulation and perception of pain. This study aimed to investigate the potential relationship between the semantic aspects of language, the priming effect, and the perception of pain. A narrative review of the literature was conducted. Sixteen studies were included and categorized in four groups based on the effect of the verbal suggestion on the experimental acute pain and chronic pain and on the effect of pain-related words in free pain and post-surgical subjects. There may be a link between language and pain, both at the behavioral and neural level. The processing of semantic information associated with pain influences the pain perception.

Neurocognitive Changes in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3: A Systematic Review with a Narrative Design.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), the commonest dominantly inherited ataxia worldwide, is characterized by disruption in the cerebellar-cerebral and striatal-cortical networks. Findings on SCA3-associated cognitive impairments are mixed. The classification models, tests and scoring systems used, language, culture, ataxia severity, and depressive symptoms are all potential confounders in neuropsychological assessments and may have contributed to the heterogeneity of the neurocognitive profile of SCA3. We conducted a systematic review of studies evaluating neurocognitive function in SCA3 patients. Of 1304 articles identified, 15 articles met the eligibility criteria. All articles were of excellent quality according to the National Institutes of Health quality assessment tool for case-control studies. In line with the disrupted cerebellar-cerebral and striatal-cortical networks in SCA3, this systematic review found that the neurocognitive profile of SCA3 is characterized by a core impairment of executive function that affects processes such as nonverbal reasoning, executive aspects of language, and recall. Conversely, neurocognitive domains such as general intelligence, verbal reasoning, semantic aspect of language, attention/processing speed, recognition, and visuospatial perception and construction are relatively preserved. This review highlights the importance of evaluating neurocognitive function in SCA3 patients. Considering the negative impact of cognitive and affective impairment on quality of life, this review points to the profound impairments that existing or future treatments should prioritize.

New evidence reveals weakening of association between language and thought in aMCI versus in normal aging

AbstractBackgroundClinical manifestation of prodromal AD is typically evaluated through measures that assess individual cognitive domains with less focus on their relationship. Further, while decades of research identify deterioration in episodic memory as well as semantic aspects of language, there has been less focus on other aspects of linguistic computation. We provide evidence that advances our understanding of how language deficits in aMCI extend to sentence production, and how relations between performances in cognitive functions, specifically language and cognition, may differ in aMCI vs. Healthy Aging (HA).MethodWe tested 24 individuals diagnosed with aMCI based on neurologic and neuropsychological evaluations, and 22 older adults with normal cognition (Healthy Aging (HA). All subjects were administered a multi‐domain cognitive screen (ACE‐R) and a psycholinguistic assessment of complex sentence production. The ACE‐R provided a Total Score and scores on attention and orientation, memory, fluency, language, and visuospatial measures (Mioshi et al 2006, Hsieh et al 2013, Monsch et al 1994).) The psycholinguistic test assessed Elicited Imitation of complex sentences with relative clauses (RC) in an experimental design varying syntactic and semantic factors (Table 1) (Lust et al 2017).ResultACE‐R Total score was significantly lower for aMCI than HA. aMCI also performed significantly worse than HA on the psycholinguistic test (Table 2). For HA, not aMCI, ACE‐R Total score significantly predicted successful sentence production on the psycholinguistic test (Table 3) (Figure 1). Similarly, for HA, not aMCI, the ACE‐R language score significantly predicted psycholinguistic test performance. In contrast, ACE‐R memory performance, which was significantly lower for aMCI than HA, did not predict linguistic performance for either group. Only ACE‐R phonemic fluency predicted linguistic performance for both groups. (Table 3).ConclusionResults suggest a weakening of associations between overall cognitive performance and performance on a linguistic measure for aMCI relative to HA suggesting that evaluation of associations between, not only within, cognitive domains strengthen detection of early changes in AD. This finding may be further expanded by linking this clinical manifestation to neuroscientific evidence of functional connectivity in AD pathophysiology and in normal aging (e.g., Brier et al 2014, Spreng and Turner 2013).

The Broader Role of Basal Ganglia in the Semantic Aspect of Language: an Interesting Finding in the Neuropsychological Assessment of Huntington's Disease

The patient was a 64-year-old man with movement disorder and dysarthria, which was referred to the Speech Therapy Clinic of Hazrat Rasoul Hospital affiliated with Iran University of Medical Sciences. The level of education of the patient was PhD in political science and his job was to teach part-time at the university as well as high school management. The onset of obvious symptoms in this patient dates back to about 4 years and 7 months ago. At that time, he was not able to keep the names of his students and colleagues as before, and he experienced the first problems and long pauses during speech.

Materiality and Discursivity in the Study of Organizations: Agency, Metaphors and Structures

In this article I draw upon the distinction between the semiotic and the semantic aspect of language in order to understand the role of material forces and discourse in shaping organizations. This helps finding complementarities between approaches more focused on language and discourse when studying institutions, and approaches centered on social structures as material causes for human agency, such as critical realism. The notion of metaphor, in particular, helps addressing various problems with the critical realist notion of structure. The critical realist notion of structure thus enriched can, in turn, help explaining how social forces shape language. The distinction between the semiotic and the semantic aspect of language also leads to a more general approach towards organizations in terms of which other theories can be interpreted.

Why is the synesthete's “A” red? Using a five-language dataset to disentangle the effects of shape, sound, semantics, and ordinality on inducer–concurrent relationships in grapheme-color synesthesia

Grapheme-color synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which viewing a grapheme elicits an additional, automatic, and consistent sensation of color. Color-to-letter associations in synesthesia are interesting in their own right, but also offer an opportunity to examine relationships between visual, acoustic, and semantic aspects of language. Research using large populations of synesthetes has indeed found that grapheme-color pairings can be influenced by numerous properties of graphemes, but the contributions made by each of these explanatory factors are often confounded in a monolingual dataset (i.e., only English-speaking synesthetes). Here, we report the first demonstration of how a multilingual dataset can reveal potentially-universal influences on synesthetic associations, and disentangle previously-confounded hypotheses about the relationship between properties of synesthetic color and properties of the grapheme that induces it. Numerous studies have reported that for English-speaking synesthetes, “A” tends to be colored red more often than predicted by chance, and several explanatory factors have been proposed that could explain this association. Using a five-language dataset (native English, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean speakers), we compare the predictions made by each explanatory factor, and show that only an ordinal explanation makes consistent predictions across all five languages, suggesting that the English “A” is red because the first grapheme of a synesthete's alphabet or syllabary tends to be associated with red. We propose that the relationship between the first grapheme and the color red is an association between an unusually-distinct ordinal position (“first”) and an unusually-distinct color (red). We test the predictions made by this theory, and demonstrate that the first grapheme is unusually distinct (has a color that is distant in color space from the other letters' colors). Our results demonstrate the importance of considering cross-linguistic similarities and differences in synesthesia, and suggest that some influences on grapheme-color associations in synesthesia might be universal.

The conceptual model of DFD-technology

The presence of large number of models and methods for structural modeling of business processes and systems has made urgent the development of standardized language for structural analysis and design, suitable for modeling as organizational management, and software systems (similar to UML for the object-oriented systems’ design). The paper proposes a draft of such a language based on data flow diagrams (DFD diagrams) as the most frequently used in functional structural modeling. As part of the work in this direction a conceptual model language is proposed, named DFD-technology, integrating structural models for different purposes based on DFD-diagrams, and reflecting functional, informational and behavioral aspects of the modeled object. The article also analyzes the syntax, semantic and pragmatic aspects of the introduced unified modeling language. For a formal description of the syntax, it is proposed to use the apparatus of the mixed grammars, a combination of graph and regular grammars. The article gives a grammar description to generate a simple dialect of DFD technology, informally described semantic aspects of language, particularly the semantics of relations between objects of the language. Thus, the paper proposed a solution of unification and standardization problem of structural modeling languages, based on the integrated DFD-technology. The conceptual model of the technology is prepared, the syntax of the standardized language, using the technique of the mixed grammar and the semantic aspects of the language are described in detail. It should be noted that the proposed methods in the article and models occupy the central place in modern business processes theory.

Broca's area: From speech to music

Since 1861. Broca's area was considered as an anatomic region of brain endued for speech articulation. It is believed that it is responsible for controlling motor speech movements and related movements of the lips, tongue, larynx and pharynx. Broca's area has a primary role in speech motor programming, as well as in the phonetic, phonological, syntactic and semantic aspects of language, but it is also considered as a cortical region underling the aquisition of grammatical rules. In addition to the production process, Broca's area is involved in the process of understanding a language, as well as in achievement of other language functions. However, there are various controversies about the connection between Broca's area and language functions. The lesions of this area do not always lead to Broca's aphasia, and in addition, patients with Broca's aphasia do not always have a lesion of Broca's area. Also, it was found that some of language functions, that were earlier considered to be controlled only by the activity of Broca's area, are realized through the interaction of this area with other areas of the cortex, and activated by certain subcortical areas. Although a number of studies showed the activation of Broca's area during the performance of language tasks, there are studies that have shown that this area is also activate during non-linguistic tasks. Thus, this area has a certain role in imitation of the movement, capturing, manipulating objects, working memory, recognizing familiar smells, music and other cognitive functions. Therefore, recent studies, researching the role of Broca's area in language acquisition, raise the question of redefining the basic functions that have been attributed to Broca's area.

Schizophrenia Patients Have Communication and Language Dysfunctions Mediated by the Right Hemisphere – Preliminary Study

Introduction Apart from cognitive impairments in schizophrenia, language dysfunction have been recognized in the earliest reports of the disorder. It has been of great importance in schizophrenia research since many symptoms of the illness are expressed in terms of language or are direct language dysfunctions themselves. It is known that patients with schizophrenia have difficulty to process semantic aspects of language, combining semantic and syntactic information as well as creating lexico-semantic associations. On the other hand, their ability to read and spell single words as well as vocabulary skills acquired early in life remain spared. There is evidence implying that language functions mediated by the right hemisphere may be disturbed in schizophrenia patients Objectives To assess language and communication dysfunctions with schizophrenia patients with the use of standardized neuropsychological tests battery the Right Hemisphere Language Battery – Polish Version (RHLB-PL). Methods 40 schizophrenia patients and 39 healthy controls were enrolled to the study. All of the participants were assessed by the Right Hemisphere Language Battery – Polish Version (RHLB-PL) and schizophrenia patients by PANSS. Results Schizophrenia patients performed poorer in most of higher order language functions mediated by the right hemisphere. They not only experienced difficulties with comprehending implicit information (p=.034), understanding humor (p=.002), giving interpretation of metaphors (p=.000), understanding emotional (p=.000) and language prosody (p=.000) and discourse (p=.000), but also had problems to withhold inappropriate commentaries in course of assessment (p=.000). Conclusions The results indicate that there are significant differences between schizophrenia – patients and normal controls in extralinguistic processing.

Atypical Right Hemisphere Specialization for Object Representations in an Adolescent with Specific Language Impairment

Individuals with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) show abnormal spoken language occurring alongside normal non-verbal abilities. Behaviorally, people with SLI exhibit diverse profiles of impairment involving phonological, grammatical, syntactic, and semantic aspects of language. In this study, we used a multimodal neuroimaging technique called anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) to measure the dynamic functional brain organization of an adolescent with SLI. Using single-subject statistical maps of cortical activity, we compared this patient to a sibling and to a cohort of typically developing subjects during the performance of tasks designed to evoke semantic representations of concrete objects. Localized patterns of brain activity within the language impaired patient showed marked differences from the typical functional organization, with significant engagement of right hemisphere heteromodal cortical regions generally homotopic to the left hemisphere areas that usually show the greatest activity for such tasks. Functional neuroanatomical differences were evident at early sensoriperceptual processing stages and continued through later cognitive stages, observed specifically at latencies typically associated with semantic encoding operations. Our findings show with real-time temporal specificity evidence for an atypical right hemisphere specialization for the representation of concrete entities, independent of verbal motor demands. More broadly, our results demonstrate the feasibility and potential utility of using aMEG to characterize individual patient differences in the dynamic functional organization of the brain.

Say It Like You Mean It: Mothers’ Use of Prosody to Convey Word Meaning

Prosody plays a variety of roles in infants' communicative development, aiding in attention modulation, speech segmentation, and syntax acquisition. This study investigates the extent to which parents also spontaneously modulate prosodic aspects of infant directed speech in ways that distinguish semantic aspects of language. Fourteen mothers of two-year-old children read a picture book to their children in which they labeled pictures using dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, small, hot, cold). Recordings of the mothers' input to their children were analyzed acoustically and antonyms within each dimension were compared. Mothers modulated aspects of their prosody including amplitude and duration of target words and sentences to distinguish dimensional adjectives. Mothers appear to recruit prosody in the service of word learning.

An integrated neural model of semantic memory, lexical retrieval and category formation, based on a distributed feature representation

This work presents a connectionist model of the semantic-lexical system. Model assumes that the lexical and semantic aspects of language are memorized in two distinct stores, and are then linked together on the basis of previous experience, using physiological learning mechanisms. Particular characteristics of the model are: (1) the semantic aspects of an object are described by a collection of features, whose number may vary between objects. (2) Individual features are topologically organized to implement a similarity principle. (3) Gamma-band synchronization is used to segment different objects simultaneously. (4) The model is able to simulate the formation of categories, assuming that objects belong to the same category if they share some features. (5) Homosynaptic potentiation and homosynaptic depression are used within the semantic network, to create an asymmetric pattern of synapses; this allows a different role to be assigned to shared and distinctive features during object reconstruction. (6) Features which frequently occurred together, and the corresponding word-forms, become linked via reciprocal excitatory synapses. (7) Features in the semantic network tend to inhibit words not associated with them during the previous learning phase. Simulations show that, after learning, presentation of a cue can evoke the overall object and the corresponding word in the lexical area. Word presentation, in turn, activates the corresponding features in the sensory-motor areas, recreating the same conditions occurred during learning, according to a grounded cognition viewpoint. Several words and their conceptual description can coexist in the lexical-semantic system exploiting gamma-band time division. Schematic exempla are shown, to illustrate the possibility to distinguish between words representing a category, and words representing individual members and to evaluate the role of gamma-band synchronization in priming. Finally, the model is used to simulate patients with focalized lesions, assuming a damage of synaptic strength in specific feature areas. Results are critically discussed in view of future model extensions and application to real objects. The model represents an original effort to incorporate many basic ideas, found in recent conceptual theories, within a single quantitative scaffold.

A Computational Model of the Lexical-Semantic System Based on a Grounded Cognition Approach

This work presents a connectionist model of the semantic-lexical system based on grounded cognition. The model assumes that the lexical and semantic aspects of language are memorized in two distinct stores. The semantic properties of objects are represented as a collection of features, whose number may vary among objects. Features are described as activation of neural oscillators in different sensory-motor areas (one area for each feature) topographically organized to implement a similarity principle. Lexical items are represented as activation of neural groups in a different layer. Lexical and semantic aspects are then linked together on the basis of previous experience, using physiological learning mechanisms. After training, features which frequently occurred together, and the corresponding word-forms, become linked via reciprocal excitatory synapses. The model also includes some inhibitory synapses: features in the semantic network tend to inhibit words not associated with them during the previous learning phase. Simulations show that after learning, presentation of a cue can evoke the overall object and the corresponding word in the lexical area. Moreover, different objects and the corresponding words can be simultaneously retrieved and segmented via a time division in the gamma-band. Word presentation, in turn, activates the corresponding features in the sensory-motor areas, recreating the same conditions occurring during learning. The model simulates the formation of categories, assuming that objects belong to the same category if they share some features. Simple exempla are shown to illustrate how words representing a category can be distinguished from words representing individual members. Finally, the model can be used to simulate patients with focalized lesions, assuming an impairment of synaptic strength in specific feature areas.

The functional organisation of the fronto-temporal language system: Evidence from syntactic and semantic ambiguity

Spoken language comprehension is known to involve a large left-dominant network of fronto-temporal brain regions, but there is still little consensus about how the syntactic and semantic aspects of language are processed within this network. In an fMRI study, volunteers heard spoken sentences that contained either syntactic or semantic ambiguities as well as carefully matched low-ambiguity sentences. Results showed ambiguity-related responses in the posterior left inferior frontal gyrus (pLIFG) and posterior left middle temporal regions. The pLIFG activations were present for both syntactic and semantic ambiguities suggesting that this region is not specialised for processing either semantic or syntactic information, but instead performs cognitive operations that are required to resolve different types of ambiguity irrespective of their linguistic nature, for example by selecting between possible interpretations or reinterpreting misparsed sentences. Syntactic ambiguities also produced activation in the posterior middle temporal gyrus. These data confirm the functional relationship between these two brain regions and their importance in constructing grammatical representations of spoken language.

Modo comunicativo utilizado por crianças com síndrome de Down

the communication of children with Down syndrome (DS) is frequently impaired due to difficulties in the phonological, syntactic and semantic aspects of language. In order to compensate these difficulties, many children use gestures for a longer period of time than children who present typical development (TD). to verify the performance of children with DS regarding their communicative profile (verbal, oral and gestural) during a play situation and a spontaneous interaction with an adult. 28 children with DS were studied in two different play situations: with a speech-language therapist and with the adult caregiver. Pragmatic theories were used to analyse the data. To determine the statistical significance of the results, the statistical tests of Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon and the confidence interval were used with a significance of 5%. the verbal communication mean was used mostly during the interaction with the caregivers and the gestural communication mean was used mostly during the interaction with the therapists. considering that the verbal communication mean is the one which is socially more used, the play situation with the caregiver was the most effective. However, although less verbal communicative acts were produced during the interaction with the speech-language therapist, the child used gestures to communicate, that is, the lack or little verbal communication did not stop the child from communicating with the interlocutor.

What it is said versus how it is said: Comprehension of affective prosody in men with Klinefelter (47,XXY) syndrome

Difficulties in social communication in individuals with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY chromosomal pattern) have largely been attributed to deficits in left hemisphere-mediated, language functions. This study examined the ability of XXY men to decode emotions from tone of voice, a pragmatic aspect of social communication that may be associated with right hemisphere functioning. A total of 26 XXY men and 20 men from the general population completed tasks involving emotion discrimination in speech, based on verbal content or tone of voice. The XXY group displayed relative difficulties in discriminating emotions in tone of voice, and, to a lesser extend, in verbal content. This finding suggests that the XXY chromosomal pattern may not only be associated with difficulties in semantic aspects of language, but with prosodic aspects, as well. Our findings may contribute to the development of more comprehensive models addressing the role of the X chromosome in normal and abnormal development of social communication.

P1-059 Semantic aspects of language in mild cognitive impairment: a cross-sectional study

P1-059 Semantic aspects of language in mild cognitive impairment: a cross-sectional study

Assessing the SSTH and GTVH: A view from cognitive linguistics

AbstractDespite its strong cognitive orientation in recent years, humor research still has paid relatively little attention to the paradigm of Cognitive linguistics (CL), which in light of its dynamic view on cognitive and semantic aspects of language in use, seems to provide an adequate framework for the analysis of humor. With regard to the “cognitive construal” of human experience as one of the basic notions of CL, this paper describes for three types of humorous texts in what ways construal operations are exploited, combined, and embedded in humorous discourse, as well as the way in which they relate to the achievement of humorous effects. It is demonstrated, accordingly, that CL contributes to a holistic account of humor as a highly marked and complex, yet structurally not irregular kind of language use. In this respect, this contribution is particularly critical about the category of Logical Mechanisms, defined in the GTVH as humor-specific operations that guide the process of incongruity resolution in humor interpretation. Instead, the present account advocates a prototype model of construal operations, in which incongruity and resolution appear as two perspectives of the same cognitive construal.