Textual Portions Research Articles

ALKORAN (1616) МАТІАША ЧИЖЕВСЬКОГО: ЗАГАЛЬНА СТРУКТУРА І ДОПОМОЖНІ ТЕКСТИ

The aim of the article is to present a detailed description of the textual structure of Matiasz Czyżewski’s Polish-language anti-Muslim pamphlet Alkoran, published (probably in Vilnius) in 1616 and directed against the Tatars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), and a publication of the auxiliary texts of this early printed book which remains basically unknown. This edition was previously known solely from the old bibliography, where merely its lengthy title was published. The scientific novelty of the present work is due to the fact that it presents a detailed description of the textual structure of Matiasz Czyżewski’s edition based on a well-preserved printed copy identified as a result of archeographic research and kept in the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. This printed copy made it possible to determine to what extent the textual material of each of the four main sections (chapters) of this edition was used in a somewhat later book by the author’s brother Piotr Czyżewski’s Alfurkan tatarski…, published by the Vilnius printing house of Józef Karcan in 1616/1617. The main conclusion of the comparative study is that the latter edition most actively used (in a significantly revised form) the textual portions of the second chapter of Matiasz Czyżewski’s brochure, which are directly dealing with the Tatars of the GDL, as well as relatively small fragments of the third and fourth chapters, which, respectively, describe transgressions of the Lithuanian Tatars and advised measures on how to prevent them. Small fragments of the first main section of the Alkoran pamphlet, which tells about Islam in general, are published in the attachment – those that are directly devoted to the Tatars of the GDL, as well as the three auxiliary texts: book’s dedication to the ambassadors to the 1616 Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as author’s afterword to the reader and his appeal to the Lithuanian Tatars.

ESTRUTURA RETÓRICA DE UMA REDAÇÃO DO ENEM

O presente trabalho fundamenta-se na Teoria da Estrutura Retórica do Texto (Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST). De acordo com Mann e Thompson (1988), a RST corresponde a uma ferramenta teórica profícua para a descrição das relações entre as cláusulas de um texto, a análise dos sentidos de conjunções no processo de combinação de orações, o estudo da coerência e a identificação das proposições relacionais que, embora não estejam muitas vezes marcadas, acabam por emergir da estrutura durante o processo de interpretação textual. Com o aparato teórico da RST, analisamos a composição estrutural e as proposições relacionais explícitas e inferidas que emergem em uma redação do ENEM selecionada pelo INEP como exemplo de texto que obteve nota máxima em 2017. Nosso estudo é um exercício de análise textual pautado na RST, com o objetivo de demonstrar como esse aparato teórico pode orientar a análise de uma produção textual de natureza tão específica, explicitando relações entre cláusulas, bem como entre porções textuais maiores, tais como período e parágrafos. Assim, observamos que a redação do ENEM apresentou estrutura retórica condizente com a tipologia textual dissertativo-argumentativa. Foram identificadas relações que estão diretamente envolvidas no desenvolvimento temático e argumentativo, tais como evidência, lista, conclusão e elaboração.

Ocorrências de anáforas encapsuladoras em redações do Enem

Este trabalho pretende verificar como as anáforas encapsuladoras – também conhecidas como encapsulamentos – são utilizadas como rótulos avaliativos no gênero “redação do Enem”. Primeiramente, destacamos a importância da referenciação pelas anáforas, por serem um meio relevante para a coesão textual. Depois, ressaltamos o papel dos encapsulamentos em sumarizar e rotular porções textuais, construindo objetos de discurso essenciais para a coesão e, no caso dos textos argumentativos, para o posicionamento do autor (Koch, 2004; Cavalcante, 2005; Bertucci, 2006). Nosso corpus é constituído de 31 redações nota 1000 no Enem de 2018. Após a seleção, quantificamos a ocorrência das anáforas encapsuladoras, distinguindo-as entre descritivas e opinativas. Verificamos que: i) apenas 2 redações não apresentavam os encapsulamentos sob análise; ii) houve uma ocorrência maior do tipo descritivo (79%); e iii) em apenas dois textos o tipo opinativo se sobressaiu. Do ponto de vista qualitativo, decidimos analisar dois casos. Em ambos, a análise corrobora a ideia de que essas anáforas são essenciais para a coesão do texto e, no caso do gênero redação do Enem, são essenciais também para o direcionamento argumentativo do texto. Não à toa, foram avaliados com a nota máxima no Exame.

Comic-Con: Can Comics of the Constitution Enable Meaningful Learning in Political Science?

ABSTRACTThis article explores the value and application of using comic images to teach difficult political texts. We presented either visual or textual portions of the Constitution to 71 American 18- to 22-year-olds using Survey Monkey Audience, measuring and comparing their knowledge of the Constitution before and after viewing. Respondents viewing the comic of congressional duties experienced statistically significant gains in pretest to posttest mean knowledge scores. Respondents viewing the text also experienced an increase in mean scores pretest to posttest; however, these changes were smaller and not statistically significant. This indicates that students may better comprehend content from visual depictions of difficult texts. We conclude by providing an example of one way that we use comics of political texts as a tool for student learning in an international civics exchange program.

Relações retóricas e tipos de argumentos: um estudo das correlações possíveis

Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar os tipos de argumentos utilizados em textos argumentativos e as relações retóricas emergentes desses argumentos, assim como as correlações possíveis entre as relações retóricas e os tipos de argumentos. O córpus da pesquisa é formado por 100 redações do gênero resposta argumentativa produzidas para o vestibular de verão/2013 da UEM. A tipologia dos argumentos utilizada na análise tem por base a Nova Retórica, de Perelman e Olbrechts-Tyteca (2005). No que diz respeito à taxonomia das relações retóricas, o trabalho se baseia em Mann e Thompson (1988). Os resultados demonstram correlações recorrentes entre tipos de argumentos e relações retóricas. Isso evidencia a possibilidade de mapear as relações discursivo-argumentativas existentes nas proposições relacionais que emergem das porções textuais do gênero analisado.

Leonardo da Vinci: Cause, effect, linearity, and memory

In this contribution, some textual portions of the Leonardo da Vinci’s work were analyzed with the aim to highlight how, moving from Aristotle and going beyond him, he combines the intermediate positions that, from the Greek philosopher, passing through Buridan, arrive to Newton. This has been performed following a path that passes through the formulation of the principle of causality, the use of the concept of linear relationship (pyramidal law) between cause and effect and the introduction of a duration of the impression (memory) of mechanical systems. In the framework of the studies aimed to a valorization of Leonardo as a scientist, which is a crucial aspect in the analysis of the Leonardo genius, the present work sheds a new light on his intuitions about some fundamental physics concepts as well as about the conceptual model that, several centuries later, will be formalized in the modern linear response theory.

Threading electronic mail: A preliminary study

Tools for processing email and other electronic messages should be able to recognize and manipulate threads, that is, conversations among two or more people carried out by exchange of messages. While user clients typically insert in messages structural information useful for recovering threads, inconsistencies between clients, loose standards, creative user behavior, and the subjective nature of conversation make threading systems based on structural information only partially successful. We propose that this situation is unlikely to change, and that threading of electronic messages be treated as a language processing task. Preliminary experiments show that a significant level of threading effectiveness can be achieved by applying standard text matching methods from information retrieval to the textual portions of messages.

Compression of mixed images using an image representation formed via segmentation

Abstract— This paper presents an approach for the compression of mixed‐image data (images which include text) using a segmentation‐based image representation. The mixed image to be compressed is approximated as a set of uniform regions encoded as a set of region boundaries (contours) and descriptions of the region interiors. In order to improve the visual quality of textual portions in the image approximation, coarsely quantized approximation error (corresponding only to the textual portions) is also encoded. The segmentation method used to form this representation combines a Gaussian texture model and a Gibbs‐Markov contour model in order to find regions with boundaries which correspond closely to the objects in the image. A mixed image, in general, is difficult for conventional transform coding methods because these methods typically discard high‐frequency components or quantize them coarsely. Structures such as edges in the image, however, are dependent upon these high‐frequency components. Therefore, the visual quality of structures such as text (which consists mostly of high‐contrast edges) in the image is severely degraded by conventional transform coding methods. Due to its ability to capture the semantically important structure in the image, segmentation‐based coding is a promising approach for these images. The effectiveness of the proposed approach for the compression of mixed images is demonstrated through experimental results.

Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth by Ann W. Astell

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The publication of these volumes prompts some general reflections on the direction of the Variorum Chaucer. The gap between the cutoff date of 1985 (p. xv) for citations in Andrew's work and the publication date must be a cause for some concern. In an age of advanced computer technology, such a hiatus is not easy to justify, even in a volume as substantial as this one. Clearly some further thought needs to be given to the factors that have occasioned such delay if future volumes are not to be in need of consider­ able revision by the time they are published. More fundamentally, one must wonder increasingly about the validity and purpose of the textual portions of this work. Is it in any real sense an edition at all? A variorum is, by definition, a record of annotation. The assembling of such commentary needs to be hung on some sort of textual peg. But the record of manuscript variants largely duplicates that in Manly-Rickert. Nor is it clear what value is served by the extensive, if unsystematic, collation of nonsubstantive printed editions, whose readings are of interest only at a small number of points. Would not much fruitless industry be avoided by simply keying the Commentary to the readings of a standard edition, like the Riverside, or even to those of a single manuscript, such as Hengwrt? For clearly the lasting value of this undertaking will be found only in the quality of its record of annotation, not in its text. And if future editors can match the standard of Andrew's scholarship, we will have much for which to thank the Variorum Chaucer. A. S. G. EDWARDS University of Victoria ANN W. AsTELL.job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii, 240. $32.95. Ann Astell's ambitious goal in this well-written, innovative, and carefully argued study is to outline a new theory of literary-historical development, a theory that will account for the phenomenon that literary historians refer to as "the decline of epic and the rise of romance." The crux of Astell's challenging thesis is that two great works, the biblical Book of Job and Boethius's De consolatione phi/osophiae (as it was interpreted by Gregory the Great and other authoritative Christian exegetes), served jointly as models for the medieval formal and philosophical redefinition of the "epic truth" of 160 REVIEWS Homer and Virgil, especially in a significant portion of those narratives we group under the rubric of "romance." Astell's detailed account ofhow "epic truth" made its way through Job and Boethius into "romances" and other works by Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and other writers is far too complex to summarize in the present brief review. I shall concentrate in­ stead on Astell's discussions of Chaucerian texts. In chapter 4, "Hagiographic Romance" (pp. 97-126), Astell treats the Clerk's tale of patient Griselda and the Man of Law's tale of Constance in light of the medieval explications ofJob and Boethius that have been set out in preceding chapters. Johan materials in The Clerk's Tale are of course not far to seek. Griselda echoes Job's "Naked came I out of my mother's womb" speech (Job 1:21) in The Clerk's Tale 871-72; Griselda's father, Janicula, echoes Job's cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:3) in lines 902903 ; and there is an explicit reference to Job, whose patience Griselda's is said to surpass in lines 932-38. Finding Boethius in The Clerk's Tale is another matter, however, and Astell fails to clinch her case because she is unable to cite unequivocal echoes of the De consolatione. In The Man ofLaw's Tale, Astell finds a "simultaneous confluence and opposition of Boethian and Johan themes" similar to that which she finds in The Clerk's Tale (p. 107). Reading The Man of Law's Tale as a satire, Astell concludes that Chaucer's primary satiric object was not the tale's sentimental and materialistic lawyer-narrator but "the popular piety" he is made to exemplify (p...