Unique Text Research Articles

Amazement and Trepidation: Implications of AI-Based Natural Language Production for the Teaching of Writing

AI-based natural language production systems are currently able to produce unique text with minimal human intervention. Because such systems are improving at a very fast pace, teachers who expect students to produce their own writing—engaging in the complex processes of generating and organizing ideas, researching topics, drafting coherent prose, and using feedback to make principled revisions that both improve the quality of the text and help them to develop as writers—will confront the prospect that students can use the systems to produce human-looking text without engaging in these processes. In this article, we first describe the nature and capabilities of AI-based natural language production systems such as GPT-3, then offer some suggestions for how instructors might meet the challenges of the increasing improvement of the systems and their availability to students.

Lorenzo Opimo of Bologna, Teaching Doctor of the Servites during the Reformation, and His Sentences Lectures at the University of Paris in 1370–71 (Part I)

The beautiful Latin MS 198 of the John Rylands Library preserves one of two currently known manuscript copies of the Servite Lorenzo Opimo of Bologna’s Scriptum on the Sentences, the only such text by a Servite that survives. In 1494, the Chapter General of the Servite Order made Lorenzo the order’s teaching doctor, since the representatives declared that his work, primarily his questions on the Sentences, would be required reading for Servite students and masters of theology. No doubt as a result, Lorenzo’s Scriptum was printed in Venice in 1532. To most medieval intellectual historians, the printing, the author, and even the religious order are virtually unknown. This two-part article puts this unique text in its doctrinal and institutional context. Part I argues that Lorenzo delivered his Sentences lectures at the University of Paris in 1370–71, presents and analyses the tradition of the three textual witnesses, and offers a question list.

A MODEL OF THE ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN SUB-CORPUS OF TEXTS OF NATO, UN AND WTO OFFICIAL AND BUSINESS DOCUMENTS

A MODEL OF THE ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN SUB-CORPUS OF TEXTS OF NATO, UN AND WTO OFFICIAL AND BUSINESS DOCUMENTS

Topical Issues of the Theory of Supertext: Literary Aspect. Text Unity as Supertext

In this article, the subject of research is a system of integrated texts (supertext) as textual unity. The purpose of the study is to specify the terminology and clarify the features of some aspects of textual unity, in particular, to clarify the concepts of the core and its structural components, as well as to solve some other theoretical questions, the answers to which today determine clarity in the identification, classification and interpretation of supertexts. In questions of the theory of supertext, the methodological basis of the study was the work of V. N. Toporov, N. A. Kupina and G. V. Bitenskaya, N. E. Mednis, A. G. Loshakov, in questions of the theory of the literary cycle — the work of M. M. Girshman, I. V. Fomenko, V. V. Vinogradov, A. A. Slyusar, Yu. V. Lebedev, V. G. Odinokov, A. S. Yanushkevich, M. N. Darwin, V. I. Tyupa, L. E. Lyapina, E. Yu. Afonina, O. G. Egorova, and others, in questions of the theory of collective-author text unity — the work of Yu. M. Lotman. The study clarifies the concept of the core of text unity, describes the components of different forms of text unity, based on their classification proposed by A. G. Loshakov, and refined by this scientific work. All this speaks of the novelty of the study, which continues the general theory of supertext. The development of the theory of such a variety of supertext as text unity not only contributes to the further study of its various aspects, clarification of their functions, but also indicates new approaches to large text formations, since, generated by creative writers, they not only recreate the world, but also form a picture world assimilated by the perceiving consciousness.

Revision of Internal Structure and Ordering of the Qurʼānic Sūras 105 al–Fīl and 106 Quraysh: Structural and Rhetorical Analysis

The article analyses two suras of the Qur’an (Q. 105 and Q. 106) within the scope of the hypothesis that they initially constituted a textual unity. This assumption was presented by some reports of early Muslim traditions. Several modern researchers also mentioned the thematic coherence of these two suras. Structural analysis of the rhyming endings in both suras and distribution of their thematic units give new insights about supposed previous initial composition of the text. Rhetorical side of the revelation was also analysed according to the concept of emotional plots. These new arguments reinforce the idea that Q. 105 and Q. 106 were revealed as one distinctive piece of the Qur’anic text.

“The process of four” in samizdat: Novosibirsk version

One of the most significant and well-known samizdat publications – the collection "The Process of Four" – is considered in several aspects: as inheriting the traditions of the previous samizdat collection "The White Book", as revolutionary (an array of letters in defense of the accused) for the beginning of the human rights movement in the USSR and as a unique text , which has its own, special handwritten version. The personality of this original copy creator – the scientist from Novosibirsk Academgorodok A.I. Fet – is interpreted as playing an important role in terms of the manuscript “The Process of Four” existence, its study and interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the process of creating its copy in the late 60s, which took place not only against the background of the persecution of differently minded in Akademgorodok, where the copy of the collection was printed, but also in parallel with the work of A. I. Fet on studying, translating and printing works of famous biologists, psychologists, philosophers, also intended for samizdat. It is emphasized and substantiated that the creation of this copy of “The Process of Four” by A. I. Fet, but it is stipulated that this copy could have been partially printed by him, and the manuscript included ready-made parts (blocks) of the original text. The views of A. I. Fet on dissidence and human rights activities, characterized by unorthodoxity and originality are elucidated, numerous works from the collection of his scientific, philosophical and journalistic heritage are cited. This allows not only to take a different look at the context and circumstances of this collection typescript creation, but also to highlight some moments in the history of early samizdat in the USSR in the second half of the 1960s and its representatives’ activities.

Проблема определения руководителей литературного кружка «Основа» (1925-1930 гг.)

The aim of the research is to identify the names of the heads of the “Osnova” literary circle, which existed in Orekhovo-Zuyevo in 1925-1930, later became the core of the Orekhovo-Zuyevo Association of Proletarian Writers and played a prominent role in the literary process of the Eastern Moscow region. Scientific novelty of the research lies in shedding light on the previously unexplored issue of Moscow writers’ headship of a provincial creative community of worker correspondents, which was the “Osnova” circle. Consideration of the issue involved a scrupulous study by the author of the paper of the necessary materials from the archive of the “Kolotushka” newspaper (Orekhovo-Zuyevo), the archive of V. Bogatyrev, the first head of “Osnova”, other sources. As a result of the research, the names of Moscow literary figures who headed the “Osnova” circle from 1925 to 1930 have become known, the unique texts of literary works by the circle members published in the “Kolotushka” newspaper, separate editions of Moscow writers’ collections, texts of plays created for the Orekhovo-Zuyevo Workers’ Theater have been found.

Canonicalizing BigSMILES for Polymers with Defined Backbones.

BigSMILES, a line notation for encapsulating the molecular structure of stochastic molecules such as polymers, was recently proposed as a compact and readable solution for writing macromolecules. While BigSMILES strings serve as useful identifiers for reconstructing the molecular connectivity for polymers, in general, BigSMILES allows the same polymer to be codified into multiple equally valid representations. Having a canonicalization scheme that eliminates the multiplicity would be very useful in reducing time-intensive tasks like structural comparison and molecular search into simple string-matching tasks. Motivated by this, in this work, two strategies for deriving canonical representations for linear polymers are proposed. In the first approach, a canonicalization scheme is proposed to standardize the expression of BigSMILES stochastic objects, thereby standardizing the expression of overall BigSMILES strings. In the second approach, an analogy between formal language theory and the molecular ensemble of polymer molecules is drawn. Linear polymers can be converted into regular languages, and the minimal deterministic finite automaton uniquely associated with each prescribed language is used as the basis for constructing the unique text identifier associated with each distinct polymer. Overall, this work presents algorithms to convert linear polymers into unique structure-based text identifiers. The derived identifiers can be readily applied in chemical information systems for polymers and other polymer informatics applications.

Tuitéame cómo pasó: narrating Mauthausen, transmitting trauma, and witnessing in @Deportado4443

ABSTRACT In January 2015, the Twitter account @Deportado4443 began sharing the harrowing story of Antonio Hernández Marín (1907–1992), whose exile from Spain following the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Nazi capture and eventual deportation to the Mauthausen camp in Austria was communicated through 140-character posts and images to the account’s 40,000 followers. This essay theorizes the use of Twitter as a groundbreaking format for the purposes of twenty-first-century witnessing of concentration camp atrocities. Three dimensions of the Twitter account @Deportado4443 are essential to its reconfiguration of narratives about the Spanish Civil War, the Republican exile and the Nazi camp: its virtual platform as a way to transmit a familial-personal history; its use of the fragment to relate the trauma of the camp in its brute simplicity to readers; and its significance for the theorization of witnessing. These three characteristics of @Deportado4443 are all inextricably linked to its social media format as a Twitter account. @Deportado4443 reaches a mass audience as it shares repressed memories of Republican Spain, thus crafting a unique text that implicates its 2010s readers as potential witnesses to events occurring during the 1940s. The essay ultimately examines the possibilities and limitations of this Twitter project not only as a way to access the history of the Spanish Civil War and of Republicans in the Nazi concentration camps, but also to alter our understanding of the notion of the witness.

Principles of libretto translation and problems of multimodal text interpretation

The multimodal nature of texts to music involves the complex interaction of verbal, auditory, in some cases visual and other components, which determines the functioning of the textual unity. In this regard, the translation of multimodal texts, and in particular the translation of opera librettos, puts forward special requirements for the translator, due to which even the knowledge of the subject area, terminology and style of the source text is not always sufficient to achieve high quality translation. Based on the analysis of the translation principles of one of the most prominent translators of opera librettos Viktor Kolomiitsov (1868-1936) and his translated texts, the article aims to determine the basic requirements to the translation of libretto as a multimodal text, combining the verbal and auditory components in the text unity. It also aims to answer the research question: what exactly is the special feature of multimodal text translation focused on auditory mode, and in case of opera libretto translations - what resources can be used to perform the translation? The material for the study included the texts to L. Beethoven and R. Wagner’s works and their translations. The comparative analysis of V. Kolomiytsov’s translations and several other translators’ approaches allowed us to confirm the assumption about the complexity of auditory multimodal texts translation, identify the main problems of libretto translation, and demonstrate different translation solutions in the transfer of the rhythmic logic of the source text, its syntactic features, alliteration and vocabulary. The procedure of text analysis involved elements of philological and comparative analyses of translations, as well as statistical calculations. It was revealed that the connection of the verbal component with the melodic line, its accents and rhythm predetermines the structure of the text to vocal works. For the translator, this means additional limitations, which are quite difficult to overcome. Equirhythmic translation correlated with music is one of the most difficult types of translation, in which preservation of “form” (rhyme, meter, number of syllables, coincidence of accents, etc.) plays an important role and predetermines the quality of auditory multimodal text translation.

Negotiating Meaning Relationships in the Rhetorical Structure of EFL Argumentative Writing through Text Cohesion

Being a configuration of logically interconnected statements realized in moves and stages, an argumentative essay is built around the notion of textual unity achieved through lexico-grammar and semantic associations. The study attempted to analyze the role of cohesion in the rhetorical structure of undergraduate EFL students. Hence, the 13 moves in the three-stage argument structure were analyzed on a preset framework of cohesion analysis. Discourse analysis as a research method was used to ascertain how cohesion functioned in the rhetorical structure of these argumentative essays. The results revealed the presence of cohesive associations between the different moves of the rhetorical structure which corresponded with the move length. Referential and Lexical cohesion had a more frequent and dense presence than the co-referential element in the sample texts; however, the relatively low incidence of conjunctives pointed towards the relative scarcity of rhetorical functions in students' writing. The study proposes a research initiative that could use frameworks other than the present study or compare two or more sub-genres for the use of cohesion in the rhetorical structure.

Novel quotes: Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Byzantine sacro-profane florilegia

Abstract The quotes in the sacro-profane florilegia have so far been neglected as documents for the 9th-century readership of the Greek novels. This article uses the quotes as intertextual links to the originals and reconstructs the excerption: mapped back onto the novels, the quotes highlight the excerptors’ points of interest and the patterns that connect them. Excerption is thus fully understood as reading practice. The quotes were collected not only because they could provide wisdom when decontextualised, but also because they played a relevant role in the excerptors’ analysis and interpretation of the novels. The florilegia are therefore unique texts in revealing the experience of reading the novels in the 9thcentury.

Forming Student Teams to Incorporate Soft Skills and Commonality of Schedule

It is widely recognized that students’ learning can be enhanced and facilitated when students have the opportunity to work together in teams. As a consequence, the pursuit of a methodology to form optimal student teams continues to challenge academics. Based on a review of related literature, we propose a model that includes new approaches to two team criteria. The first is a discrete optimization approach to commonality of schedule. To facilitate team meetings, we offer an exact formulation to ensure students on a given team share a minimum number of common time slots during which they are available. The second team criterion is sufficient soft skills. Using a unique text analysis approach, we ensure that each team includes students with adequate soft skills, such as leadership and interpersonal skills. Our analytic approach enhances the students’ learning experience and class performance and simplifies the faculty task of forming teams. History: This paper was refereed.

Dishing up Distinction: Language Materiality and Multimodal Coherence in Elite Foodways

This paper arises as part of a discourse-focused commodity chain analysis of elite foodways in the international airline industry. At the center of this critical intervention sits the business class airline meal as an epitomic manifestation of contemporary class privilege. As both a fraught social hieroglyphic and a complex semiotic assemblage, “premium” airline dining is articulated across different sites and through a range of different communicative practices and modes. With this in mind, we examine the language materiality of plateware (crockery), flatware (cutlery), glassware, and other tableware used for staging and promoting airline meal services. The specific object of our analysis is the transmodal interplay between words and things which helps generate both the cohesion and coherence of meals. This kind of textual unity and “inter-semiotic harmony” is key for the performative production of order which is, in turn, central to the classist production of distinction and (elite) status.

Healing by Spiritual Possession in Medieval Japan, with a Translation of the Genja sahō

From the mid-10th century onward, in cases of illness, the Japanese aristocracy relied on new Buddhist healing methods based on spiritual possession techniques. This essay examines the features and procedures according to which monks and mediums operated the healing. This method, of Indian origin, was imported in Japan through Esoteric Buddhism, and was adapted in order to fit healing purposes. The author focuses his analysis on the role played by an invisible “spirit” who acted to catch the ill-causing demon within the patient’s body and expelled this malign entity from it. The article ends with a translation of a unique ritual text entitled Genja sahō 驗者作法, which describes these rituals in detail.

Automation Assemblages in the Internet of Things: Discovering Qualitative Practices at the Boundaries of Quantitative Change

Abstract We examine consumers’ interactions with smart objects using a novel mixed-method approach, guided by assemblage theory, to discover the emergence of automation practices. We use a unique text data set from the web service IFTTT, (“If This Then That”), representing hundreds of thousands of applets that represent “if–then” connections between pairs of Internet services. Consumers use these applets to automate events in their daily lives. We quantitatively identify and qualitatively interpret automation assemblages that emerge bottom-up as different consumers create similar applets within unique social contexts. Our data discovery approach combines word embeddings, density-based clustering, and nonlinear dimensionality reduction with an inductive approach to the thematic analysis. We uncover 127 nested automation assemblages that correspond to automation practices. Practices are interpreted in terms of four higher-order categories: social expression, social connectedness, extended mind, and relational AI. To investigate the future trajectories of automation practices, we use the concept of the possibility space, a fundamental theoretical idea from assemblage theory. Using our empirical approach, we translate this theoretical possibility space of automation assemblages into a data visualization to predict how existing practices can grow and new practices can emerge. Our new approach makes conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions with implications for consumer research and marketing strategy.

SUPERSYNTACTIC INTEGRITY WITH THE MEANING OF CONTRAST

The relation of comparison is a category of a universal nature in languages, which is expressed at all levels of language, including the text. The fact that the textual unity of this relationship comes through supersyntactic integrity (SSB) is a uniquely complex process that needs to be studied. In linguistics, there are opinions about the existence of semantic types of text, among which very few scholars have expressed their views on the expression of the relation of comparison through the text unit. They dwell on comparative texts with the meaning similarity in general way. Therefore, this article analyzes the comparative SSI with the meaning contrast, its type of SSBs representing the comparative relation and identifies their specific features. The article describes the types of SSBs in the comparative context, the phenomena that give rise to them (such as antithesis and differentiation), the differences between these phenomena on the example of different systematic languages (Uzbek and English). Based on the studied sources and the analyzed examples, comparative SSI were divided into two types such as SSIs with the meanings contrasting and differentiating . In the above first type of SSBs, which represent a comparative relation, it was proved on the basis of the analysis of examples that the comparative component is expressed in an incomplete form, and the second type in a complete form.

MIDV-2020: a comprehensive benchmark dataset for identity document analysis

Identity documents recognition is an important sub-field of document analysis, which deals with tasks of robust document detection, type identification, text fields recognition, as well as identity fraud prevention and document authenticity validation given photos, scans, or video frames of an identity document capture. Significant amount of research has been published on this topic in recent years, however a chief difficulty for such research is scarcity of datasets, due to the subject matter being protected by security requirements. A few datasets of identity documents which are available lack diversity of document types, capturing conditions, or variability of document field values. In this paper, we present a dataset MIDV-2020 which consists of 1000 video clips, 2000 scanned images, and 1000 photos of 1000 unique mock identity documents, each with unique text field values and unique artificially generated faces, with rich annotation. The dataset contains 72409 annotated images in total, making it the largest publicly available identity document dataset to the date of publication. We describe the structure of the dataset, its content and annotations, and present baseline experimental results to serve as a basis for future research. For the task of document location and identification content-independent, feature-based, and semantic segmentation-based methods were evaluated. For the task of document text field recognition, the Tesseract system was evaluated on field and character levels with grouping by field alphabets and document types. For the task of face detection, the performance of Multi Task Cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks-based method was evaluated separately for different types of image input modes. The baseline evaluations show that the existing methods of identity document analysis have a lot of room for improvement given modern challenges. We believe that the proposed dataset will prove invaluable for advancement of the field of document analysis and recognition.

Our Own Images and Truths?: The Futures and Failures of the Queer Appalachia Project

Abstract In August of 2020, a Washington Post article, written by author Emma Eisenberg, convincingly alleged that popular LGBTQ+ Instagram account @queerappalachia had engaged in financial dishonesty, the unapproved use of artists’ works, and an overall lack of transparency regarding their mutual aid efforts. Simply put, Queer Appalachia harmed the very same people that they claimed to represent—Appalachians who are queer, BIPOC (black, Indigenous, [and] people of color), working-class, and/or disabled. For all of these harms and failures, however, the Queer Appalachia Instagram account and ’zine, Electric Dirt, remain unique texts that challenge the metronormative and whitewashed stereotypes of Appalachia. I use theories of queer archives and contemporary understandings of race in Appalachia to explore how the Queer Appalachia Instagram account and Electric Dirt still provide invaluable subversions of the popular caricatures of the region. I additionally interrogate the controversy around Queer Appalachia, looking at how capitalist appropriation of mutual aid, digital blackface, and faulty metaphors of “decolonization” harmed many communities in Appalachia. My aim is not to vindicate Queer Appalachia but to highlight the group's successes and failures, salvage the important work that they have done, and hopefully provide a helpful model for future endeavors in Appalachia and beyond.

Sylvie, or the End of Romanticism

This article attempts to explain the special place that Sylvie occupies in both Nerval’s œuvre and the general context of nineteenth-century French prose. The structure of the nouvelle is examined through a close reading of two key motifs: vines intertwined with roses, and flowing water. The different iterations of these motifs are interpreted as expressing the impossibility of recovering the symbolical and sentimental values that the author-narrator cherished in the past. This structure is identified as one of the factors that allowed Sylvie to be well received in neoclassical circles. It is suggested that this construction is also what caused Proust’s fascination with, and scepticism towards, the nouvelle. The article concludes that Sylvie should be considered a unique text which opens the way for a new type of writing, whilst also closing it down. The nouvelle’s referential logic is different from that of Romantic, neoclassical or realist works. Indeed, the reason why it cannot be taken as a model is that it presents the reader with a particular kind of réel, which is inseparable from the crisis of Romanticism.