Language System Research Articles

Legal Communication in Multilingual Contexts

Legal communication in multilingual contexts is a growing concern in today’s interconnected world, where language diversity intersects with legal systems, cultural norms, and power dynamics. This paper examines the barriers and challenges posed by linguistic and cultural differences in legal proceedings, highlighting the complexities of translating legal terminologies and maintaining clarity for all parties. It examines the role of interpreters, translators, and cultural competence in facilitating effective communication, as well as the systemic shortcomings and risks of misinterpretation. Practical strategies for improving multilingual legal interactions, such as training in cultural competence and leveraging technology, are discussed. Future trends, including AI advancements and the integration of language technologies, offer promising opportunities to enhance multilingual legal services. The paper concludes with recommendations for bridging gaps between legal theory and practice to foster inclusive, fair, and effective communication in diverse legal settings. Keywords: Multilingual Legal Communication, Legal Translation and Interpreting, Cultural Competence, Language and Legal System, Artificial Intelligence in Legal Contexts.

Signify: An Enhancing ASL Communication Model with Deep Learning

Technology is now employed to solve practically all humanity's problems. The vast communication gap between the common people and the deaf community is one of the society's fundamental challenges. Computer-based American Sign Language (ASL) systems that translate gestures into text/speech are now being developed by researchers all over the world. This paper attempts to summarize the current state-of-the-art methodologies used by various researchers in the field of ASL systems, right from collecting the data, image processing and using it to translate the gestures. Moreover, the steps followed to develop a ASL system are discussed, and some of the existing ASL applications are reviewed.

Functional partitioning of sentence processing and emotional prosody in the right perisylvian cortex after perinatal stroke.

In healthy adults different language abilities-sentence processing versus emotional prosody-are supported by the left (LH) versus the right hemisphere (RH), respectively. However, after LH stroke in infancy, RH regions often support both abilities with normal outcomes. This finding raises an important question: How does the functional map of RH regions change to support both emotional prosody and also typically left-lateralized language functions after an early LH stroke? Does sentence processing simply become reflected into RH frontotemporal regions and overlap with emotional prosody processing? Or do these functions overlap less than would be expected with simple mirroring? In the current work we used task fMRI to examine precisely how sentence processing and emotional prosody processing are both organized in the intact RH of individuals who suffered a large LH perinatal arterial ischemic stroke (LHPS participants). We evaluated the activation of two fMRI tasks that probed auditory sentence processing and emotional prosody processing, comparing the overlap for these two functions in the RH of individuals with perinatal stroke with the symmetry of these functions in the LH and RH of their healthy siblings. We found less activation overlap in the RH of individuals with LH perinatal stroke than would be expected if both functions retained their typical spatial layout, suggesting that their spatial segregation may be an important feature of a functioning language system.

Etnograficzne materiały archiwalne jako źródło badań pogranicznych gwar przejściowych

ETHNOGRAPHIC ARCHIVAL MATERIALS AS A SOURCE OF THE STUDY OF TRANSITIONAL BORDER DIALECTS The paper presents materials from the Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland dating from the beginning of the 20th century, deposited in the Department of Contextual Documentation of Cultures (archive) of the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. Their brief review and analysis of the dialectal lexemes show the value of historical materials collected by nonprofessional linguists for research on historical multilingualism and the current sociolinguistic situation at language borders, especially on the problems of mixed, transitional, and mixed-transitional dialects. The analysis of dialect lexemes demonstrates that the manuscripts also preserved forms which are not registered in the known lexicographic sources and dialect atlases. Therefore, these materials represent a novelty in studies on the language interference at the borderland in the field of Belarusian and Polish dialects, as well as in studies of border dialects as a language system of the micro-area of the Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland.

Differential neural representations of syntactic and semantic information across languages in Chinese-English bilinguals

Bilingual individuals manage multiple languages that align in conceptual meaning but differ in forms and structures. While prior research has established foundational insights into the neural mechanisms in bilingual processing, the extent to which the first (L1) and second language (L2) systems overlap or diverge across different linguistic components remains unclear. This study probed the neural underpinnings of syntactic and semantic processing for L1 and L2 in Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 44) who performed sentence comprehension tasks and an N-back working memory task during functional MRI scanning. We observed that the increased activation for L2 processing was within the verbal working memory network, suggesting a greater cognitive demand for processing L2. Crucially, we looked for brain regions showing adaptation to the repetition of semantic information and syntactic structure, and found more robust adaptation effects in L1 in the middle and superior temporal cortical areas. The differential adaptation effects between L1 and L2 were more pronounced for the semantic condition. Multivariate pattern analysis further revealed distinct neural sensitivities to syntactic and semantic representations between L1 and L2 across frontotemporal language regions. Our findings suggest that while L1 and L2 engage similar neural systems, finer representation analyses uncover distinct neural patterns for both semantic and syntactic aspects in the two languages. This study advances our understanding of neural representations involved in different language components in bilingual individuals.

Part-of-Speech (POS) Tagging of Low-Resource Language (Limbu) with Deep learning

POS tagging is a basic Natural Language Processing (NLP) task that tags the words in an input text according to its grammatical values. Although POS Tagging is a fundamental application for very resourced languages, such as Limbu, is still unknown due to only few tagged datasets and linguistic resources. This research project uses deep learning techniques, transfer learning, and the BiLSTM-CRF model to develop an accurate POS-tagging system for the Limbu language. Using annotated and unannotated language data, we progress in achieving a small yet informative dataset of Limbu text. Skilled multilingual tutoring was modified to enhance success on low-resource language tests. The model as propose attains 90% accuracy, which is very much better than traditional rule-based and machine learning methods for Limbu POS tagging. The results indicate that deep learning methods can address linguistic issues facing low-resource languages even with limited data. In turn, this study provides a cornerstone for follow up NLP-based applications of Limbu and similar low-resource languages, demonstrating how deep learning can fill the gap where data is scarce.

Examining how topicality impacts pronoun resolution in second language processing.

In research on second language (L2) processing, the processing of reference has been highlighted as a domain of particular difficulty, but the source of the difficulty is not well understood. The present study examines whether differences in the pronominal systems of the first language (L1) and L2 impact processing. We take a novel approach, testing a group of intermediate-advanced L2 learners in both their L1 (Mandarin Chinese) and L2 (English), allowing us to directly examine whether L2 learners show similar or different patterns when processing the L1 and L2. We also test a group of L1 English speakers. The study focused on two topicality-related factors, subjecthood and pronominalization, that have been shown to increase the prominence of an entity in the discourse, making it more likely that an entity in subject position (subjecthood) or an entity that has been referred to with a pronoun (pronominalization) will be considered as an antecedent for a subsequent pronoun. We developed a picture verification task with visual-world eye-tracking in both English and Chinese. This task provides a measure of both pronoun interpretation and online processing. Results showed subtle differences in how subjecthood and pronominalization are weighted in English and Chinese as L1s: pronominalization played a stronger role in L1 Chinese than in L1 English both in the interpretation measure and in the eye-movement data. The results for the L2 English learners showed an interesting pattern in which their results were more similar to the L1 English results on the measure of pronoun interpretation, but were more similar to the L1 Chinese results in the eye-movement data. These results show successful use of discourse cues in L2 pronoun interpretation but differences between L1 and L2 speakers during processing. It is proposed that decreased sensitivity to morphosyntactic information that is not present in the L1 (case on pronouns) leads to differences in L2 referential processing, in line with proposals that L2 learners face challenges with integrating different kinds of linguistic information online, particularly morphosyntactic information.

Is there a multilingual advantage in gender agreement processing? Evidence from self-paced reading

ABSTRACT Do learners who have mastered two gender systems prior to learning a third have an advantage in gender processing over those who have mastered only one gender system? To address this question, we recruited two groups of adult Polish learners of L3/Ln Swedish with and without prior knowledge of German. They completed a self-paced reading task in Swedish that involved two types of gender marking: the indefinite article, which is realised similarly in Swedish and German, and the definite suffix, which is uniquely present in Swedish. We found that while both groups were sensitive to gender agreement violations involving the indefinite article, only learners with knowledge of German showed sensitivity to gender agreement violations involving the definite suffix. Therefore, knowledge of non-native German conferred an advantage for the processing of dissimilar rather than similar gender marking. We interpret these findings in light of morphological transfer from German that consists in the employment of the existing morphemes and assigning them new grammatical functions. More broadly, the study indicates that the gender system in a non-native language rather than the native language, might be more helpful for the acquisition of a new type of gender marking in L3/Ln.

School administrators’ and teachers’ pedagogical responses to demographic change based on their meaning-making of multicultural students in South Korea

ABSTRACT Public schools in South Korea have faced unprecedented changes because of demographic shifts, particularly the influx and growth of three types of ‘multicultural students’: children of married migrant women, foreign workers, and North Korean refugees. In this situation, teachers are challenged to implement educational policies and a standardised national curriculum for those unfamiliar with the Korean language, culture, and education system. This study, conducted between Fall 2022 and Summer 2023, involved interviews with 16 elementary and secondary school administrators and teachers from urban and rural regions. It revealed that teachers’ perceptions and biases about multicultural students significantly influenced their educational practices, resulting from interpretive processes and problematic framing. The data indicate that teachers’ meaning-making and pedagogical responses to multicultural students are insufficient for systematically addressing the structural inequalities and social injustices faced by these students. Ultimately, these teachers’ responses and practices fell short of providing equitable education that South Korea’s multicultural education policies aim for. The study concluded that comprehensive teacher training in cultural competence and bias awareness is essential for bridging the gap between policy and practice. It recommends the development of reflective practices, continuous professional development, and the creation of supportive school environments to enhance multicultural education’s effectiveness.

STATISTICAL INDICATORS OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LANGUAGE OF REGIONAL NEWSPAPERS IN KOSTROMA REGION TO ALL-RUSSIAN STANDARDS: A SYNTACTIC APPROACH

The paper is devoted to the analysis of complex sentences with subordinate clauses of condition, cause, goal, concession, consequence in regional newspapers of Kostroma Region in comparison with the data of similar studies conducted on the material of all-Russian periodicals. The grammar of the language, which is the backbone of the entire language system, is the most stable, standardised, which should be manifested at the syntactic level. The description of linguistic phenomena in the materials of regional periodicals in comparison with the all-Russia’s ones contributes to the forming of a general picture of the syntax of the modern Russian language. This paper shows on quantitative research data the correspondence of the syntax of regional newspapers with the language of all-Russia’s periodicals in the following aspects – the distribution of complex sentences with various types of subordinate clauses in the general system of conditionality and the peculiarities of using the means of their construction. It is shown that in the texts of regional newspapers of Kostroma Region, at the syntactic level, there are all the structural and semantic features of complex sentences with the meaning of conditionality – distribution by their types, the use of typed and non-typed means of communication, the phenomena of gradation, inversion, parcellation, phraseologisation of subordinate clauses. On the example of functioning of the most popular, semantically capacious and significant complex sentences, it is concluded that the syntactic media image of Kostroma Region reflects the general picture in modern Russian journalism, which indicates the stability of the system of complex sentences at the current stage of language development.

Empowering Agrifood System with Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of the Progress, Challenges and Opportunities

With the world population rapidly increasing, transforming our agrifood systems to be more productive, efficient, safe, and sustainable is crucial to mitigate potential food shortages. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as deep learning (DL) have demonstrated their strong abilities in various areas, including language, vision, remote sensing (RS), and agrifood systems applications. However, the overall impact of AI on agrifood systems remains unclear. In this article, we thoroughly review how AI techniques can transform agrifood systems and contribute to the modern agrifood industry. First, we summarize the data acquisition methods in agrifood systems, including acquisition, storage, and processing techniques. Second, we present a progress review of AI methods in agrifood systems, specifically in agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishery, covering topics such as agrifood classification, growth monitoring, yield prediction, and quality assessment. Furthermore, we highlight potential challenges and promising research opportunities for transforming modern agrifood systems with AI. We hope this survey can offer an overall picture to newcomers in the field and serve as a starting point for their further research. The project website is https://github.com/Frenkie14/Agrifood-Survey.

Grounding with Structure: Exploring Design Variations of Grounded Human-AI Collaboration in a Natural Language Interface

Selecting an effective utterance among countless possibilities that match a user's intention poses a challenge when using natural language interfaces. To address the challenge, we leveraged the principle of least collaborative effort in communication grounding theory and designed three grounded conversational interactions: 1) a grounding interface allows users to start with a provisional input and then invite a conversational agent to complete their input, 2) a multiple grounding interface presents multiple inputs for the user to select from, and 3) a structured grounding interface guides users to write inputs in a structure best understood by the system. We compared our three grounding interfaces to an ungrounded control interface in a crowdsourced study (N=80) using a natural language system that generates small programs. We found that the grounding interfaces reduced cognitive load and improved task performance. The structured grounding interface further reduced speaker change costs and improved technology acceptance, without sacrificing the perception of control. We discuss the implications of designing grounded conversational interactions in natural language systems.

Teaching grammar to elementary level Saudi EFL learnersTeaching Grammar to Elementary Level Saudi EFL Learners: Blending Theory and Practice

Grammar as a system of language has been a central component of most EFL teaching programmes. Modern day approaches to teaching grammar are premised on its potential in developing the discourse competence of the students in social, academic and professional contexts. The present study was designed to involve a theoretical review of the teaching of grammar in EFL contexts as well as an observation of a real-time classroom teaching to see how theoretical underpinnings were realized in actual practice. The observer’s report and the teacher’s post lesson reflections revealed that a contextualized focus on form, meaning, and use was crucial in helping students to comprehend the target grammar for its meaning making potential. The findings are expected to be useful to EFL practitioners as well as researchers interested in exploring further areas of grammar instruction from a practical perspective.

Why are the Category of "Unnecessary" Borrowings or Parallel Lexical Units Still Present in Standard Albanian Language?

Language, as a complete system of units and rules and at the same time a system not isolated, but open to changes, is the property of the society that uses it. Linguistic development and social development are accompanied by a mutual relationship between them, it would even be right to express the well-known definition that: there is no development that takes place in a society that does not leave its traces in the language system, especially in the system its lexicon. The developments that Albanian society has undergone in recent decades have made it possible for a relatively large number of borrowings to enter the Albanian language, mainly anglicisms. This phenomenon has caused a good part of Albanian linguists to be involved in the so-called cleaning process of relatively new borrowings or borrowings of the last decades in the Albanian language. Although discussions about the category of borrowed in the Albanian language constitute a very early linguistic reality, it should be noted that in the publications and scientific conferences of recent years it still continues to be treated as a matter of primary importance and as a growing phenomenon of continuous. Naturally, the perspectives of Albanian linguists on this field of study are different: some see the issue of borrowings as a very big damage done to the Albanian language, others see it as a natural state of language development, but not dangerous. for her. Despite the sometimes similar and approximate attitudes, but sometimes even contradictory, the aspect that unites most of the linguists who have dealt with this issue is related to the context in which the borrowed word is used, while the Albanian language has her answer. The questions we would raise in this context are: Should we call the phenomenon of the presence of "unnecessary borrowings" common in the Albanian language? The deep penetration into Albanian of these "parallel lexical units" or "synonyms" with the Albanian word should be seen and accepted as a natural development of the language and as a result of linguistic interaction in the conditions of global development, or should it be considered as a phenomenon that should be observed, even monitored, to some extent controlling its trends and developments?The aim of the paper is to create a description and reflection of the real situation of borrowings in Albanian, the place they have occupied in relation to the Albanian word and the approach of Albanian linguists and linguistics to this phenomenon. In another perspective, the paper aims to emphasize the irreplaceable role of the state and propose the creation of the missing law for the Albanian language in the Albanian legislation, with the aim of preserving the language from unnecessary linguistic elements that overlap the linguistic elements of its substratum autochthonous. Received: 16 June 2024 / Accepted: 5 October 2024 / Published: 05 November 2024

On Russian national corpus

The article describes the project of Russian National Corpus (RNC) – a powerful reference and information system in Russian language, created by a consortium of institutions belonging to the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the active participation of Russian IT-company Yandex. The history of the Corpus is presented in great detail: the author comments upon its main functionality and the most technologically advanced subcorpora – poetic, parallel, multimedian, providing examples of their use. Special attention is paid to the latest developments which allow us to introduce modern AI technologies in the RNC; this work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. One of the most impressive results is the so-called “panchronic corpus”, which encompasses the thousand-year history of the Russian language and provides searching tools within this data array. As of now, RNC is a crucial support for scientific research both in the field of linguistics and philology, as well as for the methodology of teaching Russian as first and second language and in the domain of IT technologies.

NSSC: a neuro-symbolic AI system for enhancing accuracy of named entity recognition and linking from oncologic clinical notes.

Accurate recognition and linking of oncologic entities in clinical notes is essential for extracting insights across cancer research, patient care, clinical decision-making, and treatment optimization. We present the Neuro-Symbolic System for Cancer (NSSC), a hybrid AI framework that integrates neurosymbolic methods with named entity recognition (NER) and entity linking (EL) to transform unstructured clinical notes into structured terms using medical vocabularies, with the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) as a case study. NSSC was evaluated on a dataset of clinical notes from breast cancer patients, demonstrating significant improvements in the accuracy of both entity recognition and linking compared to state-of-the-art models. Specifically, NSSC achieved a 33% improvement over BioFalcon and a 58% improvement over scispaCy. By combining large language models (LLMs) with symbolic reasoning, NSSC improves the recognition and interoperability of oncologic entities, enabling seamless integration with existing biomedical knowledge. This approach marks a significant advancement in extracting meaningful information from clinical narratives, offering promising applications in cancer research and personalized patient care.

Difficulties in translating youth slang from English into Russian

This paper discusses youth slang in the English language. The subject of the study is a number of difficulties in adapting and translating youth slang into Russian. The research material was based on slang units from the film «8 Mile», which are most often found on the Internet. For a complete analysis and understanding of the phenomenon being studied our own definition of the concept of «slang» is presented and the main difficulties of translation are highlighted. The functions of youth slang are regulated by standards. They, unlike a literary language, do not have a written encoding and live in the minds of native speakers. For a comprehensive and detailed description theoretical research methods and a comparison method were used. The selection of material was carried out using the continuous sampling method. This article aims to show different definitions of slang, an attempt is made to give our own definition of the concept of slang and to highlight the main problems that can mislead a novice translator when translating such lexical units. The novelty and significance of this paper are due to the complexity of the correct transmission of American youth slang, which is one of the most interesting language systems of modern linguistics. The following works that formed the basis of this scientific research should be mentioned. The theoretical basis of this article is the research of E. Partridge, I. R. Galperin, V. A. Khomyakov, I. V. Arnold. They managed to find a theoretical basis for the concept of slang. In the practical part, methods for describing slang units were used: comparative analysis, generalization, induction, continuous sampling. The research material was based on slang units from the Curtis Hanson film «8 Mile» with Eminem in the title role.

Otak Bilingual: Sinergi Dwibahasa dalam Meningkatkan Fungsi Eksekutif

Amidst the growing demand for proficiency in more than one language in today's global society, it is crucial to understand how bilingual abilities engage in various cognitive processes, particularly in executive functions from a neuropsychological perspective. The ability to acquire and use two languages affects high-level cognitive functions described through a tripartite model, including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Through a critical analysis of the literature, it is found that bilingual individuals often have an advantage in tasks requiring self-control and the management of complex information. This advantage is attributed to the need to manage and shift attention between two language systems, which intensively trains executive functions. This study also examines the neuropsychological implications of bilingual abilities, including structural and functional changes in the brain, particularly in the prefrontal cortex area. In conclusion, bilingualism not only affects linguistic abilities but also supports cognitive development. This research underscores the potential significance of bilingualism in education and personal development as a tool to enhance critical thinking skills and mental flexibility, which are valuable for learning and adapting to ever-changing environments.

Object color knowledge representation occurs in the macaque brain despite the absence of a developed language system.

Animals guide their behaviors through internal representations of the world in the brain. We aimed to understand how the macaque brain stores such general world knowledge, focusing on object color knowledge. Three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments were conducted in macaque monkeys: viewing chromatic and achromatic gratings, viewing grayscale images of their familiar fruits and vegetables (e.g., grayscale strawberry), and viewing true- and false-colored objects (e.g., red strawberry and green strawberry). We observed robust object knowledge representations in the color patches, especially the one located around TEO: the activity patterns could classify grayscale pictures of objects based on their memory color and response patterns in these regions could translate between chromatic grating viewing and grayscale object viewing (e.g., red grating-grayscale images of strawberry), such that classifiers trained by viewing chromatic gratings could successfully classify grayscale object images according to their memory colors. Our results showed direct positive evidence of object color memory in macaque monkeys. These results indicate the perceptually grounded knowledge representation as a conservative memory mechanism and open a new avenue to study this particular (semantic) memory representation with macaque models.

The role of generative language systems in increasing patient awareness of colon cancer screening.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer) in answering patients' questions about colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, with the ultimate goal of enhancing patients' awareness and adherence to national screening programs. 15 questions on CRC screening were posed to ChatGPT4. The answers were rated by 20 gastroenterology experts and 20 nonexperts in three domains (accuracy, completeness, and comprehensibility), and by 100 patients in three dichotomic domains (completeness, comprehensibility, and trustability). According to expert rating, the mean (SD) accuracy score was 4.8 (1.1), on a scale ranging from 1 to 6. The mean (SD) scores for completeness and comprehensibility were 2.1 (0.7) and 2.8 (0.4), respectively, on scales ranging from 1 to 3. Overall, the mean (SD) accuracy (4.8 [1.1] vs. 5.6 [0.7]; P < 0.001) and completeness scores (2.1 [0.7] vs. 2.7 [0.4]; P < 0.001) were significantly lower for the experts than for the nonexperts, while comprehensibility was comparable among the two groups (2.8 [0.4] vs. 2.8 [0.3]; P = 0.55). Patients rated all questions as complete, comprehensible, and trustable in between 97 % and 100 % of cases. ChatGPT shows good performance, with the potential to enhance awareness about CRC and improve screening outcomes. Generative language systems may be further improved after proper training in accordance with scientific evidence and current guidelines.