Superordinate Term Research Articles

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication.

Across languages, words carve up the world of experience in different ways. For example, English lacks an equivalent to the Chinese superordinate noun tiáowèipǐn, which is loosely translated as "ingredients used to season food while cooking." Do such differences matter? A conventional label may offer a uniquely effective way of communicating. On the other hand, lexical gaps may be easily bridged by the compositional power of language. After all, most of the ideas we want to express do not map onto simple lexical forms. We conducted a referential Director/Matcher communication task with adult speakers of Chinese and English. Directors provided a clue that Matchers used to select words from a word grid. The three target words corresponded to a superordinate term (e.g., beverages) in either Chinese or English but not both. We found that Matchers were more accurate at choosing the target words when their language lexicalized the target category. This advantage was driven entirely by the Directors' use/non-use of the intended superordinate term. The presence of a conventional superordinate had no measurable effect on speakers' within- or between-category similarity ratings. These results show that the ability to rely on a conventional term is surprisingly important despite the flexibility languages offer to communicate about non-lexicalized categories.

Latvian environmental term purvs: Problems and solutions in Latvian-English-Latvian translations of helonyms

When translating helonyms from Latvian to English, translators encounter several terms with synonymic meanings that can be used as equivalents of the Latvian term purvs, although they specify the type of wetland more accurately: for example, bog, fen, marsh, mire, and swamp. As natural environments may vary significantly among different geographical locations, a wetland habitat found in one region may not exist in another. Currently, there is no comprehensive classification system that encompasses all types of wetlands around the world; and therefore, the equivalence of wetland names in the environmental terminology among various languages is often unclear. The present paper investigates whether the English translations of Latvian helonyms and the Latvian translations of the United States (US) helonyms are accurate and consistent regarding the available wetland terminology in each language. A total of 21 helonyms are analysed in the study but 4 are presented in the paper: Raganu purvs, Platenes purvs, Manchac Swamp and Suisun Marsh. The method of data collection used in the paper is term excerption, and the methods used for data analysis are contrastive and qualitative. The sources for excerpted terms referring to Latvian and the US helonyms are online tourism websites in both Latvian and English. The precision of the translation of helonyms and the type of wetland habitat were verified using the websites of the Nature Conservation Agencies of both countries and other texts related to the environment. The results suggest that when translating helonyms from Latvian to English, it is necessary to know the specific type of wetland habitat to be able to choose the appropriate English language term. In translations of helonyms from English into Latvian, the most frequently used word is the superordinate term purvs.

SEMIOTIC BROADENING OF SIGN: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE BLACK COLOR-SIGN

The purpose of writing this article is to show the symmetrical function of linguistics semantics and semiotics. This article explores how semantic broadening in natural languages can be generalized to semiotics, the study of signs and symbolic communication. This study demonstrates that signs, whether members of verbal or non-verbal systems, can be studied similarly to semantic broadening. After introducing the process of semantic broadening, the discussion of the function of this process in semiotics is narrowed down to a case study of the black color-sign. The research method of this analysis is based on qualitative methodology and by collecting data based on a simple assumption which shows that semiotic broadening is a superordinate term that can have explanatory adequacy and can be expanded to verbal and non-verbal signs.

Galvenie problēmjautājumi projekta pētījuma „Izglītības terminu skaidrojošā tiešsaistes vārdnīca” īstenošanas sākumposmā

The authors of the article represent a project research group developing a new dictionary of terms in the field of education. During the project implementation, it is planned to develop an online dictionary with 3000 entries which would include the term in Latvian, its explanation with cross-references to the superordinate term, the subordinate term, and coordinate terms (if existent) and the equivalents of the term in English, German, French and Russian. This publication was created with the aim to describe the development of the Explanatory Online Dictionary of Educational Terms by identifying the main problems in the early stages of the research. The object of the research is the list of the educational terms created specifically for this project from the publications during the last twenty years (doctoral theses, monographs, political and planning documents, normative documents, teaching standards and programmes, dictionaries, glossaries, etc.) according to the principle of all-inclusiveness. The article’s methodology comprises the identification of problematic cases and typological description of these cases (mostly in relation to the selection of the terms and eventual development of the term list). The search for solutions has been revealed related to several subfields of linguistics, morphology, lexicology, word-formation, semantics, terminology and terminography. As the emerging terminographic publication is unique in the Latvian linguistics, this article makes almost no comparison with other lexicographical publications. Developing a reference material that meets today’s requirements we have looked for the technical solutions for the use of the online vocabulary and carefully developed the conceptual plan whic terminologically encompasses all levels of education and all subfieldsin the broadest entirety of the concept system. The results of the previous stages of the research, the development of the concept of the dictionary, wide collection of educational terms and arrangement in three large groups of terms (education policy and management, education actors and psychology, education science, pedagogy), have allowed for revealing the problematic issues of creation and use of terms. Additional research, conversations with the professionals of the field, involvement of the experts of Terminology Commission to decide on the best, most advisable term are needed to find solutions to the issues.

What is mind blanking: A conceptual clarification

The investigation of so-called mind blanking has been recently established in the context of mind wandering research. Unfortunately, the description of the term 'mind blanking' and its experimental assessment are often ambiguous. More specifically, two distinct phenomena have been conceptually blended and both characterized using the term 'mind blanking' in experimental studies: the absence of task-focus and thought, versus complete lack of conscious experiences. At least in part, this confusion can be traced back to the writings of William James, who referred to 'thought' as a superordinate term to address different conscious experiences. Applying the technique of so-called experience sampling, experimental studies, up to now, probably assessed the absence of thought, but not a complete lack of conscious experiences. There is no clear evidence yet for instances of the latter phenomenon occurring during non-pathological waking state. Possibly, such evidence could be revealed in the future using a conceptually more refined experience sampling.

Explicit and implicit offensiveness in dialogical film discourse in Bridgit Jones films

Abstract The paper discusses the concept of offensiveness, both explicit and implicit, in film dialogical discourse based on three parts of a romantic comedy. The differences between explicitness and implicitness on the one hand, and between implicitness and (in)directness on the other are presented in the theoretical part. Indirectness and implicitness are treated in the study as independent concepts that instantiate covert meaning. On the other hand, explicitness and implicitness are viewed as gradual concepts that allow some overlap; thus, direct implicitness and indirect explicitness emerge as possible options. Furthermore, the category of offensiveness is presented as a broad category, a superordinate term that subsumes offensive language, typically realised through explicitly offensive words, such as swearwords, and (non)offence, encoded by rhetorical devices. Offensive language can have the function of offending the target addressee, i.e., to cause offence, or to build, inter alia, a jocular, intimate or friendly atmosphere. Offensiveness can thus embrace propositions that lead to offence or convey other, non-offensive meanings. Examples of both offensive language (explicit/direct forms) and subtypes of offence (figurative forms), as well as a combination of both (e.g., figurative forms such as ironic comments that contain swearwords), are gleaned from the corpus of three parts of the eponymous romantic comedy. The analysis has shown that figurative forms are often conflated (to create metaphorical irony, ironic hyperbole, and the like), the implicit forms of offensiveness occur almost as frequently as explicit forms and are distributed equally across gender, varying forms of offensiveness play the whole gamut of functions, disparagement being only one of them.

Hyponyms of Insect in Ovoko Lect

Earlier researches have focused on hyponymy in different languages. There appears to be lack of research in the study of hyponyms of insect in a dialect of Igbo. As such, this study examines the hyponyms of insect in Ovoko lect. The objectives of the study are to identity hyponyms of insects in Ovoko lect and classify them based on their superordinate terms or hypernyms. The study employs componential analysis in the analysis of data which were drawn from introspection and confirmed by selected native speakers of Ovoko lect. The study discovers that there are so many hyponyms of insect in the lect under study and all the hyponyms of insect therein are hyponyms in other levels. The study also shows that all the co-hyponyms in every superordinate term, though have their peculiar features, share some features in common which include them under such superordinate term. The researchers, therefore, recommend more study on the topic to help expand the vocabulary of the Igbo language.

Правова основа переходу частки учасника у статутному капіталі товариств з обмеженою та додатковою відповідальністю.

The article focuses on study of legal basis for the transfer of a participant’s share in the authorized capital of limited liability and additional liability companies to another person. It has been confirmed that the “transfer of equity interest of an economic partnership” essence as a legal category of the Commercial Law science has not been carefully investigated. Additionally it is stated that clarification of the issue what is posed as a subject of the contracts – share or equity rights – has a significant meaning in definition of the subject of the purchase agreements, gift agreements and other agreements, aimed at the property transfer. It has been proven that a share in the authorized capital constitutes as such a subject, but not equity rights that are testified by it. It is proposed to understand the legal concept of the “transfer of a share” as a superordinate term which includes alienation, interest sale, levy of execution on partnership share, inheritance, legal succession and other grounds for such a transition. The legal basis for the organization and implementation of the transfer of a share in the authorized capital of limited liability and additional liability companies has been analyzed. The shortcomings of the legal basis of this process are identified, which may include irregularities in certain issues, in particular, regarding the definition of the subject matter of the agreement on the alienation of a share in the authorized capital and the introduction of the institution of a corporate agreement on the non-application possibility of the provisions of the legislation regarding the preferential right of other participants to acquire a share in the authorized capital. The advantages of the new Law of Ukraine “On Limited Liability and Additional Liability Companies” have been analyzed in relation to the regulation of the participant’s priority right to acquire a share (part of a share) of another shareholder of a company that is sold to a third party. First of all, the problems of the legislative development that are connected with the fact that there are certain norms in the Law of Ukraine “On Limited Liability and Additional Liability Companies” have been revealed which create potential threats for subjects in a corporate legal relationship, namely, this refers to the existence of a threat of non-compliance with the rules concerning the priority right of other participants to acquire a share by means of the conclusion by the alienator of any other contracts, save as purchase agreement, in particular, free-of-charge exchange or gift contracts in this area and secondly, the possibility of leveling up legislative provisions regarding the priority right to acquire a share (part of a share) by concluding the corporate agreement with other shareholders of the company, which will include a provision on the non-application of priority right. As a result of the study, the proposals aimed at improving the legal basis for the transfer of a participant’s share in the authorized capital of specified economic organizations have been formulated.

NEGATIVE SOCIAL PHENOMENA, SOCIALLY PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA, PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR, RISK BEHAVIOUR WITH FOCUS ON SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT

On one hand, the article is aimed at terminological and content interpretation of designations of socially unacceptable behaviours. When studying both Czech and foreign specialized literature, we noticed terminologically fragmented and unequal designations of behaviours (often the same or similar) with a common characteristic of being socially unacceptable or negatively evaluated and perceived by the society. Additionally to the risk behaviour, understood by us as a superordinate term, we found also the following designations of socially unacceptable behaviours: problem behaviour, deviant behaviour, delinquent behaviour, antisocial, disocial, asocial behaviour, socially pathological phenomena, etc. On the other hand, the article has the purpose to present selected theoretical concepts and constructs explaining the causes of risk behaviour. The theoretical concepts searching the causes of risk behaviour are mostly focused on one area of variables - biological, psychological or sociological. But we believe that the human personality and behaviour must be viewed from multiple sides, that multiple factors are simultaneously involved in the emergence and incidence of risk behaviour, and that one form of risk behaviour influences the origination of another risk behaviour.

Igbo verbs of cooking: A lexical semantic analysis

ABSTRACTFood passes through different processes before it becomes a finished edible product. These processes are judged to be related because they are derived from the same semantic field, which involves the heating process known as sí (cook). This paper investigates the verbs of cooking in the Igbo language using hyponymy as a tool for descriptive analysis. The objective is to investigate the Igbo verbs of cooking food vis-à-vis their relationship of inclusion and exclusion within a lexical field. The result shows that there is only one super-ordinate term sí in all the Igbo verbs of cooking with many sub-ordinate terms (hyponyms). However, each food item has its own set of co-hyponyms within a semantic field. Therefore, hyponymy in Igbo verbs of cooking is determined by the type of food and the process (es) involved in the cooking. Again, there is mutual complementation of the verb's image schema with the noun for it to be selected.

The Interpretation of “Botlokotsebe” V/S “Bosenyi”

The present paper is based on the findings from a study conducted to examine the interchangeable use of the concepts 'botlokotsebe' (mischief) and 'bosenyi' (crime) as an English equivalent term 'crime'. This study is thus a survey in which questionnaires were used to collect data from 165 (of which 15 are experts in the language practice) Sesotho speakers. The respondents were intentionally selected from language users in Motheo and Thabo Mofutsanyana districts in South Africa. Documents from different domains (where these terms are appearing) were also analysed to assess the everyday use and usage of these terms in distinct contexts. The results show that 'botlokotsebe' cannot denote criminal activity but 'bosenyi' is the relevant equivalent term to describe any crime. The implications of these findings are discussed. The study also provides an insight as to how Sesotho language users should be careful and cautious in implementing certain terms without following relevant sources. It also proposed that 'bosenyi' be regarded as superordinate term referring to criminal activities.

Repetitions which are not repetitions: the non-redundant nature of tautological compounds

In English morphological literature, the term ‘tautological compound’ has been typically used to refer to two distinct – but closely related – phenomena: (1) compounds composed of a hyponym and a superordinate term (such as oak tree); and/or (2) compounds based upon two synonymous units (such as subject matter). Such combinations are one of the quirkiest – and least researched – phenomena of English compounding. Their oddity can be attributed to two main factors. First, as their name, ‘tautological compound’ implies, at face value such combinations can be considered as prime examples of the redundancy of language. Second, they do not follow normal compound-forming rules in the sense that both constituents can function as the semantic head (as opposed to ‘normal’ English compounds, which follow the Right-Hand Head Rule).Perhaps it is the quirkiness of tautological compounds that accounts for the fact that not much has been said about them in traditional accounts of compounding, which typically relegate them to a marginal area of the English language. However, there is more to tautological compounds than meets the eye. What the present study wishes to demonstrate is that the term ‘tautological compound’ is a misnomer, as such combinations are far from being tautological or redundant in their meaning. Accordingly, the article first clarifies the notion of tautological compound, and then aims to give an account of the various roles that such combinations play in language, thereby demonstrating their non-tautological and non-redundant nature – in order to assign this much-neglected category to its proper, well-deserved place within English word formation.

Genocide, and its Definition as the "Partial Elimination of a National Group"

This paper is primarily about the crimes committed by Argentina’s last military dictatorship and whether these deserve the legal qualification of crimes against humanity or “genocide.” This question has consequences which go beyond the field of law and affect society and collective psychology through the reconstruction of historical memory. From this perspective, this paper argues that the definition of Genocide set forth in international law is directly applicable in Argentine national law. It also examines the different problems with the use of this term. Finally, it aims to reconstruct the figure of Genocide from the original interpretation of the works of Raphael Lemkin, and establish the “national” group as the superordinate term and ‘ethnic’, ‘racial’ and ‘religious’ groups as cohyponyms, where “national” group includes and goes beyond the other three groups, and authorizes the inclusion of groups not explicitly covered by the 1948 Convention.

Assesing the Feature-Driven Nature of Similarity-based Sorting of Verbs

Our hypothesis is that the size (how many) and constitution (what verbs) of these groups can be used to derive the semantic features that characterize both individual lexical items and the domain as a whole. We investigated whether and how it is possible to discover such relations and patterns for the set of motion related verbs, based on verb clusters provided by the human subjects. The paper presents a computational method that aims to discover the most salient features and their degree of saliency. The approach adopted in this paper resembles vector-based semantic space models which rely on patterns of word co-occurrence to derive similarity estimates ([7], [8]). The difference from such approaches is that they aim to extract information either from the broader lexical or from the syntactic context of the target word, while our approach targets groupings based on closer semantic similarity within a well-defined conceptual and semantic domain (e.g., words describing human locomotion). In our formalisation, both the columns and the rows in the raw matrix are target words, i.e. it is a verb-verb matrix. Even though this approach might appear narrow and highly restricted to the domain it applies to, it is justified on the basis of research and intuitions in lexical semantics, as well as human categorization. Thus, studying the grouping of words that are partially synonymous with each other and can be subsumed under the same superordinate term, can be used to reveal the underlying features that characterize this semantic field and the basic (superordinate) term. Moreover, Semantic space models have been criticized exactly on the grounds of not being able to address the nature of the semantic relationship that underlies proximity of words in the semantic space [7]. We address this shortcoming by using a feature-verb matrix to estimate the weighting of features. Another difference between the current approach and existing approaches in cognitive science and psychology is that, while the latter have used human elicitation to verify the findings from semantic space models [9], we adopt a parallel experimental strategy: we seek to find out the extent to which a computational model based on human data can improve by using featural data elicited from the human data. The outline of the paper is the following. We first introduce the human sorting task experiment and its linguistic background in the next section. We then proceed, in section III with the computational method for computing feature weights and the clusters based on various combinations of the features.

The influence of categorical organization on verbal working memory

The aim of this study was to show the positive effects of categorical organization on verbal working memory (WM), in a modified version of a double task, such as the Listening Span Test (LST) (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Two experiments were performed comparing sentences with the typical definitional format (i.e., superordinate term, copula, and specification) to sentences simply describing objects or events. The results of the two experiments, with participants from children aged 6 to adults, revealed that word recall was better in Categorical sentences than in Descriptive sentences and are interpreted in terms of retrieval facilitation, due to pre-existing organization in semantic memory, at least from the age of 8 onwards. Recall performance was also better with sentences giving True statements than those giving False statements. Furthermore, Categorical False sentences are more effective in enhancing recall than Descriptive False sentences since they violate well-established semantic expectations. Such variables were also found to act among participants with a lower WM span, by this confirming that pre-existing organized information may compensate for less efficient WM.

Contrasting patterns of comprehension for superordinate, basic-level, and subordinate names in semantic dementia and aphasic stroke patients

It is well established that patients with semantic memory impairment show a relative sparing of general superordinate information as compared with more detailed item-specific information. The objective of the current study was to examine whether or not this superordinate superiority effect is also reliably observed in individuals with stroke. The participants were 3 patients with a diagnosis of semantic dementia (SD) and 4 left middle cerebral artery stroke patients. In the first experiment, participants were administered a series of spoken-word–picture matching tasks, in which picture identity was probed under two conditions: item name (e.g., goose, beetle, shark, hedgehog) and superordinate name (e.g., bird, insect, fish, mammal). The SD patients showed the predicted pattern of performance, identifying stimuli significantly more accurately by their superordinate term than by their specific name. By contrast, the stroke patients showed the reverse pattern of inferior performance in the superordinate condition in all versions of the experimental task. In a second experiment comparing comprehension of basic-level names (e.g., dog, bird, fish) and subordinate-level names (e.g., Dalmatian, sparrow, trout), stroke patients also showed a reversal of the normal basic-level effect, showing less accurate comprehension of basic-level names. The pattern of results documented among the stroke patients cannot be accommodated obviously or readily by existing models of conceptual knowledge. These contrasting abilities of SD patients, stroke patients, and normal healthy participants to process subordinate, basic-level, and superordinate names are considered in relation to disorders of executive processing and taxonomic categorization.

What characterises nursing care? A hermeneutical philosophical inquiry

The aim of this study was to identify some common characteristics associated with nursing care based on the historical text by the nursing pioneer, Rikke Nissen, and the modern philosophy of care, principally that of Kari M. Martinsen. The hermeneutic approach has been inspired by Gadamer's thinking. His philosophy influenced interpretation and reflection on the content of historical and modern text. Typical basic characteristics associated with nursing care can be grouped into three mutually reinforcing areas: (i) the notion of excellence in nursing care, (ii) the relationship between nursing care and moral values, and (iii) caring as an interpretational exercise. The most significant core element was the strong relationship between care and professional judgement (or clinical judgement), and the requirement of analytic cognition on different levels of abstraction in context with the patient. In the early days of nursing, care was a concept deeply rooted in Christian philosophy. Within modern nursing philosophy, care is conceptualized in a number of ways, depending on philosophical stance and world view. What seems absolutely necessary is to differentiate between the concept of care on the superordinate level and each individual philosopher's unique perspective on care. As a superordinate term, nursing care encompasses the patient's fundamental needs, as well as the patient's values and experience. Nursing care is characterized by the holistic view and the moral inherent in excellent nursing. Excluding the patient as a unique human being, should be regarded as noncaring and amoral practice. Whether nursing care represents a specific domain of knowledge is still an unanswered question, and something which has consequences for the application of a caring philosophy in nursing practice and the state of caring knowledge in nursing.

A Reader Responds to J. Jenkins's “Current Perspectives on Teaching World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca”

Jenkins (2006) refers to English as a lingua franca (ELF) as if it were a well-established variety of English with its own norms and regularities, similar in kind if not degree to so-called nativized varieties. In her opening paragraphs, she refers to the way World Englishes (WEs) have gained increasing acceptance, setting the scene for the parallel acceptance of ELF, which is merged with in collocations such as WEs and ELF. Although Jenkins claims to be using in its narrow sense of new Englishes in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (p. 159), she goes on to write the whole article as if ELF were a part of WEs, a cohyponym to the superordinate term. She refers to the consensus on and ELF that is emerging (p. 157) and repeatedly conflates ELF and indigenized varieties, sliding from one to the other as if the phenomena described were the same or comparable. This weaving in and out of the two concepts appropriates whole swathes of argumentation to the rhetorical position of ELF (as perceived by Jenkins) even in cases where the scholars concerned have explicitly dissociated their work from her position (e.g., Kachru, 2005, pp. 211220; Holliday, 2005, p. 164).

‘She had just cut/broken off her head’: Cutting and breaking verbs in Tzeltal

This paper describes the lexical resources for expressing events of cutting and breaking (C&B hereafter) in the Mayan language Tzeltal. This notional set of verbs is not a class in any grammatical sense; C&B verbs are formally undistinguishable from many other transitive state-change verbs. But they nicely reveal the characteristic specificity of Tzeltal verb semantics: C&B actions are finely differentiated according to the spatial and textural properties of the theme object, with no superordinate term meaning ‘either cut in general’ or ‘break in general’. The paper characterizes the semantics of these verbs and shows that in the great majority of cases it does not predict their argument structure.

Consciousness and the natural method

‘Consciousness’ is a superordinate term for a heterogeneous array of mental state types. The types share the property of ‘being experienced’ or ‘being experiences’—‘of there being something that it is like for the subject to be in one of these states.’ I propose that we can only build a theory of consciousness by deploying ‘the natural method’ of coordinating all relevant informational resources at once, especially phenomenology, cognitive science, neuroscience and evolutionary biology. I'll provide two examples of the natural method in action in mental domains where an adaptationist evolutionary account seems plausible: (i) visual awareness and (ii) conscious event memory. Then I will discuss a case, (iii), dreaming, where I think no adaptationist evolutionary account exists. Beyond whatever interest the particular cases have, the examination will show why I think that a theory of mind, and the role conscious mentation plays in it, will need to be built domain-by-domain with no a priori expectation that there will be a unified account of the causal role or evolutionary history of different domains and competences.