Semantic Field Research Articles

An Oath for Vengeance? A vendetta with the testimony of the goddess Allāt in an Ancient North Arabian inscription from Jordan

Abstract This paper deals with a new Ancient North Arabian (ANA)-Safaitic inscription from the north-eastern basaltic region of Jordan. Its author registers a revenge-taking action for a man called S1 TR. In contrast to the usual type of Safaitic inscriptions that deal with revenge, we encounter here a case of revenge in which the Arabian goddess Allāt is called for s2 hdt ‘testimony’. The onomastic and lexical components, with special focus on the lexeme s2 hdt and its semantic field, are investigated and analyzed in light of the Semitic lexicon.

Semantic Fields and Castilianization in Galician: A Comparative Study with the Loanword Typology Project

This study examines the correspondence between the borrowability indices from the Loanwoard Typology (LWT) project and Castilianization indices from the Atlas Lingüístico Galego (ALGa) across seven semantic fields. To this end, we identified all Castilianisms in the ALGa and conducted a quantitative analysis to compare these indices. Results obtained indicate a mismatch between the rankings of the LWT project and the ALGa. For example, the field ‘The body’ has the highest level of Castilianization according to the ALGa but the lowest borrowed score in the LWT project. Moreover, Castilianization levels in the ALGa show greater dispersion than borrowability levels from the LWT project. In fact, in each semantic field, many concepts (52.2%) have low levels of Castilianization, between 0% and 10%, and only a few concepts have high levels. A more detailed analysis of three semantic fields (‘The body’, ‘Agriculture and vegetation’, and ‘The physical world’) suggests that explanations based solely on semantic criteria (such as the existence of an unalterable central lexicon) are insufficient; other factors such as prestige, urbanization, cultural modernity, frequency of word usage, and perhaps other intralinguistic factors should be taken into account.

MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF THE LEXICAL-SEMANTIC FIELD OF ANDREY SHEPTYTSKYI'S PASTORAL LETTERS USING MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS

This article explores the lexical and semantic field of Andrey Sheptytsky's pastoral letters using machine learning algorithms. To study the lexical and semantic field, such algorithms as Word2Vec, TF-IDF, CBOW, Bag-of-Words and Skip-Gram are used. The texts of this prominent figure are studied through the prism of modern methods of natural language processing, which allows for a more detailed identification of the peculiarities of their vocabulary and semantics. The article discusses the process of creating computer models for text analysis, as well as the use of machine learning algorithms for automatic processing and classification of lexical items in pastoral letters. The results obtained allow us to better understand the specifics of the author's language and mentality, as well as to identify patterns in the use of relevant words and expressions in his work. This work opens up new possibilities for the study of pastoral texts and deepening our understanding of their semantic properties.

The terms of living beings in the hadiths of the infallibles in the Taj Al-Arous dictionary-A study in light of the theory of semantic fields

لقد ارتبط العنوان بالحديث الشريف للمعصومين عليهم السلام، ولا أرى حديثهم إلا امتداداً لكلام الله عز وجل، يأمرون بما يأمر وينهون عمّا نهى عنه، وقد انبثقت علوم العربية لخدمة القرآن الكريم وخدمة الحديث الشريف وتمت دراسة هذه الأحاديث في بحثنا هذا في ضوء نظرية الحقول الدلالية لأن علم الدلالة أشرف علوم العربية والتي تنطلق منه فروعها الأخرى ومنها الصوت والصرف والنحو وغيرها من علوم اللغة العربية الأخرى.

EXTENTION OF THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF MYTHONIM “ODYSSEY” IN THE ADVERTISING DISCOURSE OF ITALY 2000-2021

The object of this article is mythonyms that move into another class of proper names - pragmatonyms or verbal trademarks. The subject of the article was chosen mythonyms from the ancient Greek poem “The Odyssey” by Homer, which are widely used in modern advertising and commercial practice in Italy to name various products: furniture, interior items, clothing, jewelry, food, technical and medical equipment. The purpose of the article is to refute the generally accepted idea that the meaning of an onym (in our case, a mythonym) is impoverished during transonymization into a verbal trademark. The article identified mythonyms from the Odyssey that most often become pragmatonyms - Odysseus, Penelope, Polyphemus. As a result of their analysis, it was demonstrated that peripheral semes of meaning that are not relevant in the mythonym are actualized in the Italian advertising discourse of 2000-2021. Thus, the semantic field of the mythonym, functioning as a trade name, expands and enriches, and not vice versa. The article highlighted the following updated components of meaning: Odysseus - masculinity and freedom, Penelope - thriftiness and beauty, Polyphemus - creative force in the service of man. In the last mythonym, the core meaning of “the destructive power of the savage” completely changed the meaning to “civilizational power of creation”, and the vector of assessment changed. In this case, advertising discourse reflects the linguistic and cultural tendency that exists in Southern Italy to master and appropriate the symbolic space of Mediterranean culture not so much through the figure of Odysseus, but through the Sicilian Polyphemus. The study used a two-stage corpus analysis method: a continuous sample of product names to identify mythonyms from the Odyssey (68 product names) and a representative sample of products with the names Odysseus, Penelope, Polyphemus.

Understanding Contextual Aspects of the Word ‘Look’ in Corpus of Contemporary American English: Semantics Study

This research investigates the contextual aspects and lexical semantics of the word "look" within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). By examining how "look" functions across different contexts, this study aims to uncover the multifaceted nature of its meaning and usage. The research is grounded in semantic theory, drawing on the works of Leech, and other prominent linguists to explore how meaning is constructed and conveyed through language. Key focuses include the categorization of "look" across various parts of speech, such as verbs, nouns, and interjections, and the examination of its idiomatic, non-idiomatic, and compositional meanings. The study employs a qualitative research methodology, analyzing linguistic data from COCA to identify patterns and themes in the usage of "look." This research aims to elucidate the complex interplay between context and meaning, offering insights into the cognitive processes involved in language comprehension and production. The findings highlight the significance of semantics in understanding language, particularly how specific words can convey a wide range of meanings depending on their contextual usage. Overall, this research contributes to the field of lexical semantics by providing a comprehensive analysis of the word "look," demonstrating its versatility and the intricate mechanisms by which meaning is negotiated in language. The research has implications for linguistic theory, language education, and the development of more precise language processing systems.

‘Punitive’ Expeditions in German Colonial Contexts in Africa

AbstractThe debate on the restitution of African cultural heritage has brought greater attention to the history of colonial violence, especially to the dispatch of so‐called ‘punitive’ expeditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Expanding knowledge on the genealogy of this particularly brutal form of military campaign, this article explores the historical semantics of the German term ‘Strafexpedition’ and its contextual use in the organ of militarist colonial propaganda at the time in Imperial Germany, the Deutsches Kolonialblatt. Through a content analysis of the occurrence of the term and its correlate, this study aims to bridge the fields of semantics and colonial historiography and lays the groundwork for a macro‐history of events of spoliation and plunder in German colonial contexts.

FREQUENT CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS BY THE FORMATION OF THE IRAQ IMAGE IN THE GERMAN FEDERAL MEDIA

The conceptual metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon defining our perception and evaluation has a rich research tradition. Against the background of modern selective ideologized information and information fatigue of the mass addressee, interest in conceptual metaphor as a tool for discursive construction of social reality, including the formation and replication of the media image of the country, its stereotyping, is increasing. The purpose of the study is to identify the leading conceptual metaphors in the formation of the image of Iraq in the German federal media, to characterize their nominative fields, to identify the features they introduce into the portrait of the country. Methodology. The material of the analysis is the publications of the German federal media devoted to Iraq in the period from 2019 to the present. The object of the analysis is the contexts selected by the continuous sampling method for the implementation of frequency conceptual metaphors. Contextual, definitional analysis and quantitative calculations are used. Results. As the main conceptual metaphors involved in the formation of the image of Iraq, the metaphors "Iraq is a place of uncontrolled power", "Iraq is a living being", "Iraq is an incomplete whole", "Iraq is a theater" are highlighted. The first metaphor is dominant in terms of frequency and density of the nominative field; the least productive is the last of the named metaphors. Metaphors are implemented by constituents of certain semantic fields, and they introduce significant features into the created portrait of the country. Practical implications. The results obtained contribute to the further development of imagology, the study of discursive, metaphorical construction of reality, the relationship of mental, linguistic and social processes; they can be used in the training of specialists in the field of political communication, monitoring of media and social processes, and can also be useful to political technologists.

Linguistic Representation of Gender Stereotypes in Spanish

The purpose of this study was to analyse gendered speech standards and patterns in Spanish, considering lexical and grammatical features. The following methods were used in the study: deductive, content analysis, and structural. Furthermore, the lexical materials of researchers who have addressed the issue of gender stereotypes in speech were considered. The results of the study showed that in Spanish, gender stereotypes can transmit and reinforce inequalities between men and women through the use of certain words, phrases, word combinations, and constructions. This is due to the way language is used and understood in society. Linguistic gender stereotypes in Spanish develop in the grammatical, lexical, and semantic fields, considering speech customs that can both strengthen and weaken the role of the individual. The content analysis revealed that gender-neutral templates are beginning to be actively used in the modern Spanish environment, leading to the inclusiveness of the language. With the global development of attitudes towards gender roles, speech stereotypes are changing, most notably in statements, addresses and forms of politeness. However, to effectively overcome linguistic inequality in speech, it is necessary to comprehensively implement the ideology of inclusiveness and gender culture in the fields of education, society, and government, using practical mechanisms that consider race, class, culture, and the role of each person in society.

SEMANTIC FIELD “POWER” IN’S NOVEL “THE ARC FOR THE UNINVITED” BY VLADIMIR MAKSIMOV

The article presents a comprehensive description of the semantic field ‟Power” in the novel by the well-known Russian prose writer of the 2nd half of the 20th century, Vladimir Yemelyanovich Maksimov. The purpose of the study is to identify the structural and semantic features of the field, the communicative and pragmatic properties of its nuclear components, which are semantic dominants of the text and actively participate in organising the artistic narrative, depicting characters and events, and explicating the conceptual content of the study. An analytical review of the main linguistic studies devoted to the study of the phenomenon of authority in Russian culture and linguistic consciousness, and the scientific description of semantic fields in the system of language and speech is carried out. Modelling the field structure of the novel is based on the principles of discourse analysis of the text, and it is determined by the specifics of the writer’s linguistic personality, the individual originality of the artistic picture of the world, the genre-stylistic and plot-compositional features of the work, and the linguacultural situation of the depicted era. The component composition of the field, its core, centre and periphery, and microfields are consistently characterised. Semantic connections and intersections of field components are determined with contextual conditionality of additional meanings revealed. The semantic field ‟authority” combines four microfields: the central part of the field structure includes the microfields ‟state authority” and ‟God power”, the peripheral zone includes the microfields ‟family authority” and ‟authority and power of natural elements”. The core of the field includes the key lexemes of authority, power and the leader. The semantic dominants of the text, being components of the analysed field structure, contribute to the development of action in space and time, create narrative polyphony, reflect the author’s position, and convey the bright features of the writer’s linguistic personality.

Dynamics of Ecological Issues Reflection in Semantic Content of Lexeme ‘zelenyy’ [green] (Dictionary Definitions and Associative Experiments)

This article aims to identify the dynamics of the semantic scope of the lexeme ‘zelenyy’ [green] based on dictionary definitions and modern associative experiments. In the dictionaries of the XX century, the lexeme ‘zelenyy’ [green] was not associated with the semantic field of “Ecology”. However, in XXI century dictionaries, there is a tendency for the semantic derivative of this word to enter the sphere of designations for various phenomena related to environmental protection. A comparison of dictionaries’ associative norms from different years and modern associative experiments revealed a noticeable dynamic in the ecological component of the associative field of “Zelenyy” [Green]. Correlations between the dynamics of semantic processes and the linguistic consciousness of Russian students are traced. It is established that there is a leading expansion of the ecological component in linguistic consciousness compared to the dynamics of the word’s semantic scope. The differences found can be explained not only by external factors (ecological processes and changes in the state’s environmental policy) but also by value changes in the consciousness of the younger generation. The analysis of associative fields reveals a conceptual shift in the content of the word, namely, a transformation of its content from the sphere of physical objects and processes to the sphere of evaluative relationships. The ambivalent evaluation of the stimulus recorded in the modern experiment reflects the contradictory characteristics of the “green movement” and allows for predicting further derivational trends in the semantics of the lexeme ‘zelenyy’ [green].

The Words for “Blue” in Old Frisian

Abstract The Old Frisian lexicon contains two words for ‘blue’: wēden, related to OE wǣden (MoE woaden arch.), OHG weitīn (MoG waiden arch.), and MLG wêden, with adjectival suffix *-īna stemming from PGmc *waida-, waidina- ‘woad, plant yielding blue dye’. The other one is blāw, a loanword through Middle Dutch or Middle Low German (from French), which is cognate with OE blǣhǣwen, OHG blāo, plāo, and ON blár, from PGmc *blēwa- < IE *bhel- ‘shining’ (cf. Lat. flavus ‘golden yellow’). This article analyses the occurrences of the words wēden and blāw in the Old Frisian text corpus in order to determine and contextualize the various semantic fields covered by these lexemes.

A Mediterranean Thesaurus: Substratal Plant Names and Landscape Terms in Latin and Romance (An Experimental Approach)

Abstract In this paper we investigate lexical materials in Latin and Romance that appear to stem from ancient substrata in the Mediterranean. We focus on plant names and landscape related vocabulary, e.g., words for ‘berries’, ‘shrubbery, herbs and trees’, and words for ‘rocky’ and ‘swampy’ terrains, as both of these semantic fields are parts of the lexicon considered to be of very archaic origin. After investigating evidence for potential cognates in languages in the Mediterranean and exploring the geolinguistic distribution of the investigated words, we try to form conclusions about the involved strata and their chronological organization. We identify two important strata: an older Eurafrican layer (Hubschmid 1960) and a widely attested Euskaro-Caucasian layer associated with the arrival of Neolithic farming (see the discussion in Bengtson (2017a/2022, 2017b) and Bengtson/Leschber (2019, 2021, 2022)). The so-called ‘Mediterranean Thesaurus’ (in memory of Johannes Hubschmid) aims to establish a compilation of lexical data featuring words with unclear or highly disputable etymologies in the languages around the Mediterranean Sea. As a first step, we are collating words in an open-ended table and their geolinguistic/dialect-geographical distribution across the ranges of the Mediterranean languages, some of which are geolinguistically remote areas. We trace two main questions: (a) whether there are characteristic semantic fields that can be more often identified (such as plant names and topography); (b) whether we can highlight typical phonetic features and sound clusters in these words. Since the period of the Swiss and Italian etymological pioneers of the 20th century (Johannes Hubschmid, Giovanni Alessio, Carlo Battisti, Vittorio Bertoldi, Jakob Jud, Laura Lombardo, Alfredo Trombetti and many others), there has been great scientific progress in human genetics and archaeology that is increasingly revealing the prehistory of the Mediterranean. We recognize the work of these etymologists who – under much more demanding circumstances – offered suggestions about the origin of etymologically difficult words. Several hypotheses have been revisited in order to include or to reject the contribution of a specific substrate to the linguistic substrata of the macro-area. Our aim is to explore the prehistory of the Mediterranean area to understand the ethnogenesis of its peoples and their rootedness in millennia past, and to find evidence for a tentative stratification of substratum languages.

Алгоритмы поиска вербальных маркеров идентичности в современном научном дискурсе

The article is devoted to the study of identity verbalization specifics via Data Mining. The research material consists of English texts from Internet scientific repositories and e-libraries devoted to various concepts of youth identity. A methodology based on the use of modern natural language processing and machine learning tools was developed and tested as part of the research. The analysis was carried out using the Natural Language Toolkit library for tokenization and POS-tagging procedures for calculating the frequency of tokens from the «identity» environment. Word Embeddings, pre-trained Word2Vec model and K-means algorithm were used for the subsequent analysis and clustering of words based on their semantic proximity. Gensim library and Scikit-learn library were used to work with the Word2Vec model. As a result, it was proved that in English scientific discourse young person’s identity is verbalized within 9 semantic categories: behavior, communities, communication, education, identity, language, practice, complexity, science, the most common of which are education (33%), language (21%) and communities (18%). N-grams analysis made it possible to identify semantic fields, establish their attributes, and evaluate texts’ similarity, which provided the most accurate vector space search for semantically close n-grams. Optimization made it possible to establish a similarity measure to rank phrases according to the query, as well as assign each n-gram a certain ranking weight. Improvements can be achieved by adding statistical word weighting, such as TF-IDF. The proposed system is capable of searching in a large text array of related phrases with a similar meaning.

The “negative income tax” as a steering mechanism: the semantic field of the NIT around Milton Friedman in his pre-monetarist period (1939–1948)

This paper explores the intellectual history of Universal Basic Income (UBI), specifically focusing on Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax (NIT) as a precursor. Examining Friedman’s work in the 1940s, the study reveals the polysemic nature of early NIT proposals and underscores the significance of Friedman and Stigler’s engagement with concepts like Abba P. Lerner’s Social Dividend and Kenneth Boulding’s adjustable tax plan, the latter often overlooked in the literature. Contrary to the prevailing view of NIT as solely a poverty alleviation policy, this research also positions it, at this moment, as a macroeconomic steering mechanism. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s categories, theoretical analysis emphasises the importance of exploring diverse “layers of meaning” in early NIT debates, shedding light on nuances that echo contemporary discussions on UBI.

Prolegomena to the study of Youxi Sanmei 遊戲三昧 Buddhist sacred play between agonism and mimicry

ABSTRACT This article outlines a genealogical profile of an elusive doctrinal concept that, after being discussed in several Mahāyāna sutras, had a significant impact on East Asian Buddhist traditions. This notion is known as ‘playful samādhi’, in Chinese youxi sanmei 遊戲三昧, which translates to Sanskrit vikrīḍita samādhi. The compound youxi 遊戲 (‘playful’ – ‘at play’) was cited in Chinese sutras and Buddhist documents, in renowned and widely diffused collections of gongans/kōans 公案, was expounded and commented on by Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200–1253) in its Japanese version yuge 遊戲 and was explored by modern scholars and interpreters as Ryōsuke Ōhashi 大橋良介 and Wu Rujun 吳汝均, who compares youxi 遊戲 with Schiller’s Spieltrieb . Given the significance of ‘playful samādhi’ across different epochs and cultures, I believe a clarification of the term is especially needed. Furthermore, explicit reference to contemporary scholarship on play studies can help uncover its philosophical implications, shedding new light on a complex notion that defies a univocal interpretation and reunites in its semantic field both the aesthetic and religious dimensions.

‮ממולח טוהר‬‎: Qumranic and Medieval Exegesis

Abstract The phrase ‮ממולח טוהר‬‎ appears four times in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, describing the firmament and the angels’ garments. John Strugnell, followed by most scholars, proposed that the phrase be understood as “purely blended.” An examination of the context in which the phrase appears in the Songs supports the possibility that its use began as a reference to the brightness of the firmament and was then extended to apply to the angels’ garments. Our review of the semantic field of the four roots common to the descriptions of the preparation of the incense, the garments, and the firmament—‮דק״ק‬‎, ‮מל״ח‬‎, ‮רק״ע‬‎, and ‮שח״ק‬‎—(a semantic field that was already recognized by the medieval Hebrew grammarians) strengthens the claim of Jean Carmignac, rejected by most scholars, that ‮ממולח‬‎ means “thin and fine.” In my opinion, the phrase ‮ממולח טוהר‬‎ is to be understood as “characterized by a thin, fine brightness.”

Image design for kazakhstan children’s sports uniform

The relevance of the research topic lies in the popularization of Kazakhstani children's sports team’s image in the world as a significant part of human capital by means of uniform design. The purpose of the study is theoretical and methodological substantiation of Kazakhstani children's sports uniform design identity. The scientific novelty of the research lies in conducting an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis of the structural components of children's sports team’s image in Kazakhstan. The research methodology is based on Kazakh and foreign scientists' works in the field of pedagogy, psychology, analytical psychology, personal development, motivation, acmeology, epistemology, brand building, semantics, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, ethnography and costume studies. The study’s results made it possible to identify the mechanisms to form the value bases of the image for young athletes’ uniforms in Kazakhstan. An interdisciplinary, theoretical, and methodological analysis of children's sports uniform design made in this research will contribute to the popularization of Kazakhstan's young athletes’ image in the world. The practical significance of the research is based on the studying Mimioriki brand’s contribution to creating the image of Kazakhstan uniforms for the children's sports team.

SEFANet: Semantic enhanced with feature alignment network for semantic segmentation

To address the issues of poor segmentation accuracy and insensitivity to details in semantic segmentation, this paper proposes a novel image semantic segmentation framework SEFANet. Specifically, SEFANet adopts encoder-decoder structure, and incorporates a novel perceptual enhancement mechanism called Multi-scale Spatial Integration Module (MSIM) at the encoder. MSIM is based on group convolution to boost spatial semantic features and refine spatial-gradient semantic features within the multi-scale structure. This module enhances feature extraction across different network levels, leading to improved edge detection and segmentation abilities. In the decoder, SEFANet introduces a pixel-level Interleaved Feature Alignment Module (IFAM), which leverages rich semantic information in low-dimensional features and the strategy of Semantic Offset Field. Meanwhile, IFAM warps the high-dimensional feature map into low-dimensional features, completing the calibration process through convolution operations. Experimental results on the Pascal VOC2012 val dataset and the Cityscapes val dataset confirm the effectiveness and generalization of the proposed semantic segmentation. Additionally, the results further demonstrate that SEFANet improves the poor segmentation accuracy and insensitivity to details, and achieves a competitive performance compared with other semantic segmentation methods.

Komponensial dan Sintagmatik untuk Mengidentifikasi Struktur Kalimat Dalam Surah Luqman

Surah Luqman, the 31st chapter of the Quran, is situated in the 21st juz and comprises 34 verses. This Meccan surah is the focus of our research, which employs a semantic approach (ilm adh-dilalah) to analyze syntagmatic components, particularly in verses 12-15. The study utilizes a literature review methodology, concentrating on componential analysis and syntagmatic relationships between lexical elements. Our objective is to gain a profound understanding of sentence structures, explore meaning relationships among syntagmatic components, and analyze semantic field implications. The research findings demonstrate that applying componential and syntagmatic analyses provides enhanced comprehension of sentence structures and their inherent meaning relationships. The examined verses offer deep insights into the moral messages and practical guidance in Surah Luqman, especially concerning gratitude to Allah, avoiding polytheism, kindness to parents, and performing prayers. This study contributes to the linguistic understanding of sentence structures within a religious context and enriches the interpretation of these verses from a linguistic perspective. By bridging linguistic analysis with Quranic exegesis, this research opens new avenues for interdisciplinary studies in Islamic linguistics and hermeneutics, potentially informing both scholarly discourse and practical application of Quranic teachings.