Semantic Narrowing Research Articles

Semantic Volte Face of English Words in Nepal

With the spread of English globally and its contact with the local languages, English words have undergone some changes in their pronunciation, forms, meanings, and functions. This paper attempted to explore the changes in the meaning of English words in Nepal. From different literary texts, I purposively selected thirty English words that I found unique in their meanings, four English language teachers who could provide information about the semantic changes of some English words, and my own experiences. The selected words were categorized into five themes: semantic broadening, semantic narrowing, amelioration, pejoration, and semantic shifts, which were then analyzed and interpreted. The study reveals that English words in Nepal have changed their meanings from narrow to broad, from positive to negative and vice versa, and to something different or new in meanings, which are the variety markers of Nepali English (NE). The results of the study are useful for teaching profession, World Englishes, corpus linguistics, contact linguistics, contact literature, semantics, and pragmatics.

Современные тенденции словообразования веб-сленга (на материале французского языка)

The paper examines the main trends in web slang word formation using the material of the French language. The work cites various sources: dictionaries of linguistic terms, scientific articles, thesis abstracts. These sources are analysed from the viewpoint of their scientific relevance, modernity, fundamentality, scientific authority of their authors. The research aims to describe the current trends in the word formation of French web slang. The research is novel in that it is the first attempt in Russian linguistics to conduct a comprehensive study of the main ways of web slang formation in the French-speaking sector of IT specialists. As a result of the research, the notion of “web slang” has been clarified and the main ways of web slang word formation have been identified. These include affixation, subdivided into suffixation and prefixation; compounding; clipping, subdivided into apocope and aphaeresis; abbreviation, subdivided into acronyms and blending; a contaminated way of word formation: clipping + suffixation; semantic shift; semantic broadening; semantic narrowing; eponymy; lexical borrowing; hybrid vocabulary; onomatopoeia; erratography. Based on a detailed comparative analysis of lexical units of this language system, some considerations have been made regarding the most and least popular ways of word formation in the French language.

Translation as a form of dialogue: artistic translations by V. Narbut and M. Zenkevich

The subject of the study is the mechanisms of semiotic development of aesthetic systems by acmeists of the "left wing" in the act of literary translation. The main hypothesis of the work is that the poetics of Narbut and Zenkevich seriously influenced the specifics of their translation activities, leading to the projection of semantic motif-figurative structures into the semantic space of translated texts. The work uses a linguosemiotic methodology, which, firstly, assumes an understanding of translation in the pragmatic and communicative aspect as an act of aesthetic communication, and secondly, allows to identify a system of semantic correlations between different texts based on the philosophical and aesthetic base of Acmeist poets. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that the article for the first time analyzes Narbut's translations in projection on the specifics of his military revolutionary poetry and reveals the mechanisms of "semantic narrowing" of the physiological theme in Zenkevich's translations (in comparison with his lyrics). In conclusions of the study the author establishes a number of patterns of translation activity of Narbut and Zenkevich. Thus, the work shows that a semantic pattern is formed in the military revolutionary lyrics of Narbut, which includes an apocalyptic myth, the motive of the ascension /ascension, performative structures, national toponymy. This semantic complex with all its elements is also represented in Narbut translations, which allows us to conclude that Narbut uses a direct projection strategy in his translation activities. Zenkevich's translations, correlated with the theme of war, are based on a fundamentally different model. Zenkevich's aesthetic-poetic system is much more ambitious in its philosophical scope than the translated texts themselves, which leads to a strategy of "semantic narrowing" of physiological "acmeistic" themes.

An Evaluation of English-to-Yoruba Translations of some Concepts by Selected Radio News Bulletins

This study examines translations of selected official names/titles contained in news broadcasts in the Yorùbá-speaking part of Nigeria, interrogating their adequacy and appropriateness. Sixty-five concepts/titles extracted from one hundred news bulletins presented by five radio stations across the Yorùbá-speaking states of Nigeria are examined. The study is prompted by an intuitive feeling of inaccuracy and inappropriateness of important words in news broadcasts in Yorùbá and predicated upon the fact that misinformation can be as pernicious as lack of information. The renderings of the concepts in Yorùbá are compared with their original versions in English, revealing translation weaknesses such as semantic narrowing, expansion, wordiness, and sometimes even unwitting distortions. It concludes by emphasizing the adoption of appropriate translation strategies and a more rigorous engagement with the texts as a way of guarding against unintended distortions and misinformation.

SEMANTIC CHANGE OF VERB MEANING

Semantic change refers to any change in the word meaning and that change happens over the course of many years. Semantic change is studied in historical linguistics and semantics also it is called by different names as semantic shift, lexical change, semantic progression and there are many types of semantic changes amelioration, pejoration, broadening, semantic narrowing, bleaching, metaphor and metonymy. Language learner’s also causes to semantic change while interpreting the expression or words because people have different background, diverse nations have diverse culture. In this article some features of the semantic progression of verbs are explained.

False friends and lexical borrowing: A linguistic analysis of false friends between English and Arabic

Abstract This theoretical study aims at raising awareness of the existence of lexical false friends (FFs) in English and Arabic as genetically unrelated languages. It also provides a general categorization for FFs from a semantic point of view. A sample of more than fifty FF pairs is examined by contrasting their form, pronunciation and meaning. The analysis reveals that English Arabic FFs are of two types: Chance FFs (occur by coincidence) and semantic FFs(exist via lexical borrowing), the former being more frequent than the latter. This taxonomy is in line with those introduced by Chamizo-DomA­nguez (2008) and Roca-Varela (2015). Semantic FFs can be total (due to semantic shift, ellipsis, or figurative extension) or partial (through the process of semantic narrowing). Chance FFs are more problematic in the sense that they cause various degrees of embarrassment and confusion due to the fact that some constituents of FF pairs involve taboo and offensive words. Thus, such lexical FFs are considered potential agents that may create misunderstanding, miscommunication and confusion among L2 learners.

Zur diachronen Untersuchung syntaktisch-semantischer Mittel von Zeitrelationen in ausgewählten historischen Bibeltexten

Abstract This article treats the semantic-syntactic means by which time relations can be expressed in various Bible translations or editions. The prose texts the author examines stem from different time periods, ranging from the Old High German Tatian to today’s Bible editions. The analysis is diachronic and focuses on the Gospel of Matthew. In addition, the author compares the current Luther Bible, which has largely remained true to the 500-year tradition, with corresponding passages in selected modern Bible texts. Such a synoptic comparative study of the translations of one and the same source text enables new insights into the changed structure of the relationships between the sentences. The author shows that the externally identical or similar and etymologically related linguistic means change over time: they either come to express different sentence and event relations or they are subject to semantic narrowing.

Active Processes in the Vocabulary and Word Formation of the Russian Language in the Era of Coronavirus: Linguo-Cognitive Aspect

Semantic, lexical and derivational features of the emergence and spread of new phenomena in the speech practice of Russian speakers of the latest period associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are investigated. A linguo-cognitive interpretation of active processes in Russian vocabulary and Russian word formation of the era of coronavirus as formats of knowledge about the changed reality and the new conditions of communication associated with these changes is given. The methods of linguo-cognitive description of the “language of culture” and the method of analyzing active processes at different levels of the language system and methods of its speech implementation are used. The research materials are a dynamic and actively developing Russian-language segment of Internet communication and text data of the Russian National Corpus. Special attention is paid to three groups of new phenomena in the vocabulary of the Russian language associated with the mental and cultural development of the “coronavirus” conceptual space by native speakers: lexical-semantic, lexical and lexical-word-formation innovations. It is shown that active processes of the semantic type find their expression in the phenomena of “new polysemy” and “new homonymy”, as well as non-usual semantic narrowing. It is concluded that new words and expressions not only capture the emergence of new realities of life with coronavirus, but also contribute to the understanding of the changed social reality.

Resources and methods of neosemantization of the modern Ukrainian vocabulary

This article focuses on the dynamic processes at the lexical level. The research data, e.g., academic dictionaries and dictionaries of new words, online media texts, and specialized professional sites, the Ukrainian journalism, and posts by Facebook users, indicate the emergence of a large number of new meanings of various word classes words well-known in the modern Ukrain- ian language practice. Some of them are already included in dictionaries, and, therefore, have acquired definitions used in this study. Examples not attested in lexicographic sources are reinterpreted in accordance with their new meanings. The author focuses on the ability of the language to update its vocabulary within its own resources through semantic derivation, hidden borrowings, and the use of the available derivation model referring to a new concept. A phenomenon of semantic derivation is outlined and the mechanisms of its main types, e.g., metaphorical and metonymy transfer of meaning, amplification and semantic narrowing, are explicated. The paper looks into the basis for such a unit assimilation process, i.e., the main groups of modern hidden borrowings and resources. The author considers the phenomenon of the reuse of an existing derivation model as a way of updating the semantics of a word and classifies neosemantisms not only by the method of creation but also by lexical and word-formation categories and types of polysemy. The use of neosemantisms in Standard Ukrainian proves their functional and word-formation activity, which shows a constant qualitative development of the language and an increase of its naming resources. Keywords: neosemantism, semantic derivation, polysemy, hidden borrowing, recurrent derivational model, homonym.

Automatic analysis of summary statements in virtual patients - a pilot study evaluating a machine learning approach

BackgroundThe ability to compose a concise summary statement about a patient is a good indicator for the clinical reasoning abilities of healthcare students. To assess such summary statements manually a rubric based on five categories - use of semantic qualifiers, narrowing, transformation, accuracy, and global rating has been published. Our aim was to explore whether computer-based methods can be applied to automatically assess summary statements composed by learners in virtual patient scenarios based on the available rubric in real-time to serve as a basis for immediate feedback to learners.MethodsWe randomly selected 125 summary statements in German and English composed by learners in five different virtual patient scenarios. Then we manually rated these statements based on the rubric plus an additional category for the use of the virtual patients’ name. We implemented a natural language processing approach in combination with our own algorithm to automatically assess 125 randomly selected summary statements and compared the results of the manual and automatic rating in each category.ResultsWe found a moderate agreement of the manual and automatic rating in most of the categories. However, some further analysis and development is needed, especially for a more reliable assessment of the factual accuracy and the identification of patient names in the German statements.ConclusionsDespite some areas of improvement we believe that our results justify a careful display of the computer-calculated assessment scores as feedback to the learners. It will be important to emphasize that the rating is an approximation and give learners the possibility to complain about supposedly incorrect assessments, which will also help us to further improve the rating algorithms.

Penyempitan Makna Amelioratif pada Nomina dalam Bahasa Inggris

Semantic change is a language phenomenon which may be found in a society. A kind of semantic change which which is remarkable to be examined is semantic narrowing. A positive meaning namely amelioration may be discovered through semantic narrowing. In addition, semantic narrowing in English is frequently discovered i nouns. Therefore, factors which can stimulate the process are necessary to be elaborated. Aim of the study was to examine nouns’ ameliorative semantic narrowing in English. Methods applied in the study were descriptive synchronic-diachronic methods. The methods were used to describe portrayal relating to the condition in past and present. Data in the study were six nouns which were collected from the video clips relayed on the television programs. Semantic narrowing found in the study were caused by several factors: (a), meaning change due to environmental change (b) meaning change due to language users’ response, and (c) meaning change due to association. The results showed that semantic narrowing has a correlation with homonymy and polysemy. Therefore, meaning change may have related or non-related meaning from the previous meaning. Longer period of the process and the society agreement have become challanges which should be realized due to acceptance of the new meaning.

SEMANTIC CHANGES IN TRANSLATION OF EUPHEMISM AND DYSPHEMISM IN TEMPO MAGAZINE

This research aims at identifying the semantic changes in the translation of euphemism and dysphemism of news text of Tempo Magazine. This research used a descriptive qualitative method and took the data from bilingual Tempo Magazine edition 2019 with Indonesian in a source language and its translation into English. The result shows that 6 types of semantic change occur in the translation of euphemism and dysphemism of Tempo Magazines such as semantic broadening, semantic narrowing, semantic metaphor, semantic pejoration, semantic amelioration, and semantic metonymy. When euphemism or dysphemism are translated into the same categories, they undergo semantic broadening, narrowing, metonymy or metaphor. While semantic change pejorations occur when euphemism is translated into dysphemism and semantic change ameliorations occur when dysphemism is translated into euphemism. Even though there are changing of the meaning from the earlier one to the new one in the translation of euphemism and dysphemism, the sense relation still tied the words up so they still have a relation between them

An Evaluation of English-to-Yoruba Translations of Some Concepts by Selected Radio News Bulletins in South-Western Nigeria

This study examines translations of selected official names/titles contained in news broadcasts in the Yoruba-speaking part of Nigeria, interrogating their adequacy and appropriateness. Sixty-five concepts/titles extracted from one hundred news bulletins presented by five radio stations across the Yoruba-speaking states of Nigeria are examined. The study is prompted by an intuitive feeling of inaccuracy and inappropriateness of important words in news broadcasts in Yoruba and predicated upon the fact that misinformation can be as pernicious as lack of information. The renderings of the concepts in Yoruba are compared with their original versions in English, revealing translation weaknesses such as semantic narrowing, expansion, wordiness, sometimes even unwitting distortions. It concludes by emphasising the adoption of appropriate translation strategies and a more rigorous engagement with the texts as a way of guarding against unintended distortions and misinformation. Keywords: Yoruba, English, translation, news broadcasts, accuracy, distortion, DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/88-05 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Semantic narrowing in risk talk: The prevalence of communicative path dependency

This study concerns risk talk. Recent studies draw attention to the significance of communication for the development of intelligent (reflexive) as opposed to compliance-focused, secondary forms of risk management, but also show that risk management systems do not necessarily produce reflective forms of risk talk. To develop an understanding of why reflective risk talk is (un)able to unfold, we study, through a Luhmannian lens, the communicative practices via which reflections on product quality problems as risk unfold in the setting of a division of a multinational manufacturing firm. The study shows how a technical product quality issue ended up being reduced to a financial risk calculation. In so doing, the study makes three contributions. First, we complement the prevailing focus on the role of risk tools and experts in the organisational life of risk management with an analysis of the ways communicative practices constitute organisational risk management. Second, by explicating the ways in which risk semantics in use can narrow the organisational understanding of risks, we show how pluralistic understandings of risks are easily lost at the interfaces of cross-functional communication. Third, we offer an explanation as to why risk talk may not engender the intended reflectivity. Rather than attributing this to secondary risk management, we propose that reflective risk talk is sometimes hampered by ‘communicative path dependency’, meaning that some organisations fail to change risk talk because of communicative practices that rather than to develop, delimit and perpetuate the observable and addressable space for talking about risks.

An Evaluation of English-to-Yoruba Translations of Some Concepts by Selected Radio News Bulletins in South-Western Nigeria

This study examines translations of selected official names/titles contained in news broadcasts in the Yoruba-speaking part of Nigeria, interrogating their adequacy and appropriateness. Sixty-five concepts/titles extracted from one hundred news bulletins presented by five radio stations across the Yoruba-speaking states of Nigeria are examined. The study is prompted by an intuitive feeling of inaccuracy and inappropriateness of important words in news broadcasts in Yoruba and predicated upon the fact that misinformation can be as pernicious as lack of information. The renderings of the concepts in Yoruba are compared with their original versions in English, revealing translation weaknesses such as semantic narrowing, expansion, wordiness, sometimes even unwitting distortions. It concludes by emphasising the adoption of appropriate translation strategies and a more rigorous engagement with the texts as a way of guarding against unintended distortions and misinformation. Keywords: Yoruba, English, translation, news broadcasts, accuracy, distortion, DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/88-05 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Semantic Analysis of English Loanwords in Communication on the Social Networking Website Facebook

This paper is concerned with the semantic analysis of Еnglish loanwords at a lexeme level in communication on facebook. This quantitative research was accomplished within the scope of contact linguistics and indirect borrowing with the aim of determining the degree of semantic adaptation of English loanwords in the receiving language. The results show that the majority of lexemes complete the process of integration at the level of primary adaptation (79.03%), owing to the time-consuming nature of secondary adaptation, which demands an integration of loanwords into the receiving language. Due to the fact that loanwords are borrowed in specific contexts and tend to transfer only one aspect of its original meaning into the receiving language, the semantic narrowing is the most frequently found mechanism of primary adaptation (82.44%). The majority of loanwords [170/202] are adapted by narrowing the number of original meanings. The prominence of meaning specification is illustrated by 74.69% of loanwords borrowing only one lexeme meaning or submeaning. On the other hand, 5 mechanisms of secondary adaptation are: widening of semantic field [20/65]; widening of the number of original meanings [17/65]; pejoration [2/65]; ellipsis [25/65] and metaphor [1/65].

Exploring Register Variation in Korean Popular Music (K-Pop)

In sociolinguistics, language varieties are one of interesting topics discussed, and among those varieties, there is a variety called register. This study itself investigates one of register features namely English terms in Korean Popular Music (K-Pop). The topic is chosen due to the high number of English terms in K-Pop (at least 105 terms) and the difficulties in understanding their meanings. The objectives of this study are (1) describing the form of the terms, (2) describing the formation of the terms, and (3) explaining the specificity of the meanings by comparing the meanings of the terms with the meanings on the dictionary. This study was conducted through several phases called data gathering, data analysis and result presentation of data analysis. Overall, the results reveal several prominent findings. First, most of the terms are in a form of word, meanwhile the terms in phrase are limited. Second, there are several types of term manufacturing, and the most dominant one is compounding. Third, most of the terms’ meanings have been changed from meanings on the dictionary, and they are classified as semantic narrowing.

Root Variation vs. Root Extension – a Putative -i-Infix?

Many PIE roots containing have semantically adjacent counterparts without it. A close examination of these pairs suggests that the appearance of -i- is neihter incidental, nor does it arise from phonological constraints, but reveals an early stem-building process. In the following article I discuss the collected material, comprising 77 i-containing roots (plain phonological variants uncounted) opposed to their non-infixed counterparts (including secondary root variants), either of the same meaning, or showing contextual semantic narrowing. I further attempt to integrate the process of the presumably morphological intrusion of -i- into the root in a plausible morpho-semantic context in PIE. Some opaque cases left apart, at least two separate functions of i-infixation come to light. Firstly, it is found in intransitives or frequently clear states/inchoatives as opposed to non-infixed transitives or factitives, and it shows striking affinity both in the semantic operations and the lexical material to Caland networks; in other cases, it could have been linked to the hic-et-nunc -i-, which had left traces at different slots in the morphological system of PIE.

Typology of title transformations in self-translations of Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories

Abstract This article is dedicated to the issue of the adequacy of self-translations of Vladimir Nabokov’s small forms of fiction. Different types of transformations of short-story titles in the creative work of the bilingual writer were chosen as the object of the research. The article is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, uniting aspects of linguistic, literary and cultural studies in the investigation of the self-translation phenomenon, an approach that provides for scientifically-grounded conclusions. The authors of the paper build a typology of structural and semantic changes reflecting the features of Nabokov’s interpretations of his own texts. Contrastive comparative, structural, intertextual and cognitive methods were employed as the main research methods. This complex approach to text analysis used in the paper permits an expansion of the idea of the semantics and poetics of separate texts as well as a collection of stories as a whole. The authors pay special attention to investigation of the following types of correlation between the original title and its equivalent: semantic specification, semantic narrowing, semantic broadening and modulation. The authors note that Nabokov in many cases does not follow his own principles of “literality”. The specializing character of correlation between the original text and the translation is predetermined by the author’s aspiration to convey the exact sense and to emphasize separate connotative shades of meaning, while devices of modulation and semantic broadening perform the function of an author’s comment.

Ditransitives in Middle English: on semantic specialisation and the rise of the dative alternation

This article discusses the plausibility of a correlation or even a causal relation between two phenomena that can be observed in the history of English ditransitives. The changes concerned are: first, the emergence of the ‘dative alternation’, i.e. the establishment of a link between the double object construction (DOC) and its prepositional paraphrase, and second, a reduction in the range of verb classes associated with the DOC, with the construction's semantics becoming specialised to basic transfer senses. Empirically, the article is based on a quantitative analysis of the occurrences of the DOC as well as its prepositional competitors in thePenn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition (PPCME2). On the basis of these results, it will be argued that the semantic narrowing and the increasing ability of ditransitive verbs to be paraphrased by ato-prepositional construction (to-POC) interacted in a bi-directional causal manner.