Thematic Relationships Research Articles

Neuroanatomical distinctions within the semantic system during sentence comprehension: Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging

To make sense of a sentence, we must compute morphosyntactic and semantic–thematic relationships between its verbs and arguments and evaluate the resulting propositional meaning against any preceding context and our real-world knowledge. Recent electrophysiological studies suggest that, in comparison with non-violated verbs (e.g. “ …at breakfast the boys would eat…”), animacy semantic–thematically violated verbs (e.g. “ …at breakfast the eggs would eat…”) and morphosyntactically violated verbs (e.g. “ …at breakfast the boys would eats…”) evoke a similar neural response. This response is distinct from that evoked by verbs that only violate real-world knowledge (e.g. “ …at breakfast the boys would plant…”). Here we used fMRI to examine the neuroanatomical regions engaged in response to these three violations. Real-world violations, relative to other sentence types, led to increased activity within the left anterior inferior frontal cortex, reflecting participants’ increased and prolonged efforts to retrieve semantic knowledge about the likelihood of events occurring in the real world. In contrast, animacy semantic–thematic violations of the actions depicted by the central verbs engaged a frontal/inferior parietal/basal ganglia network known to mediate the execution and comprehension of goal-directed action. We suggest that the recruitment of this network reflected a semantic–thematic combinatorial process that involved an attempt to determine whether the actions described by the verbs could be executed by their NP Agents. Intriguingly, this network was also activated to morphosyntactic violations between the verbs and their subject NP arguments. Our findings support the pattern of electrophysiological findings in suggesting (a) that a clear division within the semantic system plays out during sentence comprehension, and (b) that semantic–thematic and syntactic violations of verbs within simple active sentences are treated similarly by the brain.

The Bones of the Others: The Hemingway Text from the Lost Manuscripts to the Posthumous Novels (review)

Reviewed by: The Bones of the Others: The Hemingway Text from the Lost Manuscripts to the Posthumous Novels Linda Patterson Miller The Bones of the Others: The Hemingway Text from the Lost Manuscripts to the Posthumous Novels. By Hilary K. Justice.Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006. 162 pp. Cloth $39.00. Most scholars recognize Hemingway as a writer who wrote what he knew, which means he wrote what he lived—sometimes even as he was living it. Many scholars also recognize how readers too often misread Hemingway's texts, drawing direct parallels between Hemingway's personal life and the narrative life so as to perpetuate biographical fallacies that ignore artistic nuance. Hemingway himself, as Hilary K. Justice argues in The Bones of the Others: The [End Page 140] Hemingway Text from the Lost Manuscripts to the Posthumous Novels, came to understand that fame defined his reading public's expectations for his work, a recognition that then inhibited his ability to write truly, or truthfully. This idea that "fame became of him" is not a new insight. What is stunningly new about Justice's book is her recognition that Hemingway's conflict between his private and public selves (what she calls the "Writer" who writes Personal books versus the "Author" who writes what people see as Authentic books) determined the overarching stylistic and thematic configurations of his life's work (which she defines in the aggregate as the "Hemingway Text"). As Hemingway's fame escalated following the publication in 1926 of The Sun Also Rises (which thrust him into the public arena as an Author), he began to devise artistic innovations that would allow him to mine the mother-lode of personal material that had inspired his stories written between 1923 and 1927. He would side-step personal exposure as a writer to the degree that he discovered ways to embed and perhaps to deflect the personal material within the text. These acts of transformation, as Justice describes it, began to transcend individual texts by cross-referencing multiple texts, thus creating the larger meta-text that Hemingway himself could not have anticipated as a young writer. He "could not yet have the perspective on his own creative process to articulate what in retrospect would become obvious: that in his Personal writing, he would always represent his emotional response to his current situation by refracting it through his past, finding emotional points of contiguity between his present and his past, and using this doubled emotional intensity to make his readers 'feel more than they understand,' the purpose of Hemingway's 'theory of omission'" (4–5). In the first chapters of her book Justice illustrates how Hemingway used this refractive process in his early stories, best seen as paired entities (the Nick Adams stories as aligned with the marriage tales, for example). Justice convincingly argues that Hemingway often worked almost simultaneously on two different stories, perhaps with one in the early generative stages as he worked to complete the other. This alignment allowed Hemingway to transform one narrative's conflict into the other narrative's resolution, thus deflecting the real personal issues in the material at hand. As Justice recognizes, Hemingway's difficulty in completing books during his later, post-World War ii period resulted from his juggling several works simultaneously, to the degree that "the experiences that informed [his] early works, as well as his experiences since writing them" complicated [End Page 141] his collective artistic consciousness even as it led to an increasingly intricate and more opaque style as a high modernist. As Hemingway summed it up for Harvey Breit in 1950, "'In writing I have moved through arithmetic, through plane geometry and algebra, and now I am in calculus. If they don't understand that, to hell with them'" (57). He would also declare in The Garden of Eden manuscript the importance of knowing "'how complicated it is'" so as to "'then state it simply'" (55). Hilary Justice's book cannot be easily "dissected" primarily because its thesis underscores the interdependent stylistic and thematic relationships of all of Hemingway's writing. To the degree, then, that the reader must regard Hemingway's work collectively and also non-sequentially...

Hard Times as Bodie: the allegorical functionality in E.L. Doctorow’s <i>Welcome to Hard Times</i> (1960)

“Welcome to Hard Times” (1960), E.L. Doctorow’s first novel, differs from the rest of his oeuvre because it is not set in a metropolitan context like New York. References to historical events that contain an apparent “mixture” of “factual” and fictional elements that are typical of Doctorow’s oeuvre are less prominent than in his other fiction, though definitely not absent. An analysis of the pioneer setting, the town Hard Times, reveals that other settings (including metropolitan ones like New York) are not merely representations of specific contexts, but portrayals with allegorical elements. Criticism of Doctorow’s fiction does not sufficiently point out the rationale of Doctorow’s fiction in relation to his first novel: it is not just the basic level that contains the true topicality but also the underlying causal and thematic relationships. This article sets out to explore “Welcome to Hard Times” as a case in point. The objective of this article is therefore also to show that an analysis of this novel provides a valuable basis for understanding the allegorical character of his fiction. Angus Fletcher’s theoretical analysis, “Allegory: the theory of a symbolic mode” (1964), serves as a useful starting point for the analysis of the allegorical value of space and the town Hard Times as a microcosmic or symbolic society, as well as the “daemonic agents” in the town and the role of causality.

Neural correlates of processing syntactic, semantic, and thematic relationships in sentences

Event-related potentials were measured as subjects read sentences presented word by word. A small N400 and a robust P600 effect were elicited by verbs that assigned the thematic role of Agent to their preceding noun-phrase argument when this argument was inanimate in nature. The amplitude of the P600, but not the N400, was modulated by the transitivity of the critical verbs and by plausibility ratings of passivised versions of these sentences (reflecting the fit between the critical verb and the inanimate noun-phrase as the verb's Theme). The P600 was similar in scalp distribution although smaller in amplitude, than that elicited by verbs with morphosyntactic violations. Pragmatically unlikely verbs that did not violate thematic constraints elicited a larger N400 but no P600 effect. These findings support the theory that the cost of syntactic processing on a verb is influenced by the precise thematic relationships between that verb and its preceding arguments.

The Effects of Repeated Exposure on Liking and Judgments of Musical Unity of Intact and Patchwork Compositions

This study examined the effects of repeated hearings on 74 participants’ responses to two types of musical compositions. Intact compositions consisted of short classical piano solos. Patchwork compositions were created by combining excerpts from three different musical works. The findings showed that listeners’ ratings of unity and liking for intact compositions were initially higher than those for patchwork compositions. With repeated hearings, however, ratings of patchwork compositions increased linearly while ratings of intact compositions showed a general downward trend. After four repeated hearings, ratings of patchwork compositions even exceeded those of the intact compositions. These trends across repeated hearings were contrary to what would be predicted if listeners were focusing on thematic relationships. Implications for Berlyne’s two-factor arousal theory and competing theories are discussed.

The role of animacy and thematic relationships in processing active English sentences: Evidence from event-related potentials

Recent event-related potential studies report a P600 effect to incongruous verbs preceded by semantically associated inanimate noun–phrase (NP) arguments, e.g., “ eat” in “ At breakfast the eggs would eat…”. This P600 effect may reflect the processing cost incurred when semantic–thematic relationships between critical verbs and their preceding NP argument(s) bias towards different interpretations to those dictated by their sentences’ syntactic structures. We have termed such violations of alternative thematic roles, ‘thematic role violations.’ Semantic–thematic relationships are influenced both by semantic associations and by more basic semantic features, such as a noun’s animacy. This study determined whether a P600 effect can be evoked by verbs whose thematic structures are violated by their preceding inanimate NP arguments, even in the absence of close semantic–associative relationships with these arguments or their preceding contexts. ERPs were measured to verbs under four conditions: (1) non-violated (“ At breakfast the boys would eat…”); (2) preceded by introductory clauses and animate NPs that violated their pragmatic expectations but not their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the boys would plant…”); (3) preceded by semantically related contexts but inanimate NPs that violated their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the eggs would eat…”); (4) preceded by semantically unrelated contexts and inanimate NPs that also violated their thematic structures (“ At breakfast the eggs would plant…”). Pragmatically non-thematic role violated verbs preceded by unrelated contexts and animate NPs evoked robust N400 effects and small P600 effects. Thematically violated verbs preceded by inanimate argument NPs evoked robust P600 effects but no N400 effects, regardless of whether these inanimate arguments or their preceding contexts were semantically related or unrelated to these verbs. These findings suggest that semantic-thematic relations, related to animacy constraints on verbs’ arguments, are computed online and can immediately impact verb processing within active, English sentences.

Critical elements and outcomes of a residential family-based intervention for aphasia caregivers

Background: Families living with aphasia often have unmet needs despite intervention provided in hospital and rehabilitation environments (Denman, 1998; Michallet, Le Dorze, & Tétreault, 2001). Michallet and colleagues found that families living with aphasia need information and support throughout the care continuum. If needs are unmet during the early stages of rehabilitation they persist, and as families deal with the long term sequelae of aphasia, new needs emerge in relation to communication and role changes. Few recent interventions have addressed the complex needs experienced by caregivers of people with aphasia (e.g., Hinckley & Packard, 2001; Hinckley, Packard, & Bardach, 1995; Pound, Parr, & Duchan, 2001). Aims: This research aimed to identify the critical elements and outcomes of a residential intervention for families living with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Narrative data were collected from 19 spouses, siblings, and adult children of persons with aphasia who attended a residential intervention over 3 years. Data collected from participants during and following the intervention were triangulated with field notes recorded by 34 students trained in field observation techniques. All narrative data were transcribed, coded, and analysed using procedures described by Luborsky (1994). Outcomes & Results: Data analysis revealed four critical intervention elements: (a) an emotionally and physically safe environment; (b) respite from the demands of caregiving; (c) peer learning; and (d) participation of families with different amounts of time post aphasia onset. Outcomes from the perspective of the participants included: (a) a renewed sense of hope; (b) improved ability to access their social support resources; (c) improved ability of caregivers to monitor their well-being; (d) greater acceptance of the family's altered state; and (e) emergence of a new social support network. Analysis of thematic relationships showed a web of interconnections between all critical elements and outcomes of the intervention. A central intervention element was learning from peers with different levels of caregiving experience. Conclusions: Some aspects of caregiver learning appear to depend on interventions that are structured to maximise reflective learning from peers. Professionals may underestimate the value of such learning in intervention for caregivers of persons with aphasia.

Curvature of co-links uncovers hidden thematic layers in the World Wide Web.

Beyond the information stored in pages of the World Wide Web, novel types of "meta-information" are created when pages connect to each other. Such meta-information is a collective effect of independent agents writing and linking pages, hidden from the casual user. Accessing it and understanding the interrelation between connectivity and content in the World Wide Web is a challenging problem [Botafogo, R. A. & Shneiderman, B. (1991) in Proceedings of Hypertext (Assoc. Comput. Mach., New York), pp. 63-77 and Albert, R. & Barabási, A.-L. (2002) Rev. Mod. Phys. 74, 47-97]. We demonstrate here how thematic relationships can be located precisely by looking only at the graph of hyperlinks, gleaning content and context from the Web without having to read what is in the pages. We begin by noting that reciprocal links (co-links) between pages signal a mutual recognition of authors and then focus on triangles containing such links, because triangles indicate a transitive relation. The importance of triangles is quantified by the clustering coefficient [Watts, D. J. & Strogatz, S. H. (1999) Nature (London) 393, 440-442], which we interpret as a curvature [Bridson, M. R. & Haefliger, A. (1999) Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature (Springer, Berlin)]. This curvature defines a World Wide Web landscape whose connected regions of high curvature characterize a common topic. We show experimentally that reciprocity and curvature, when combined, accurately capture this meta-information for a wide variety of topics. As an example of future directions we analyze the neural network of Caenorhabditis elegans, using the same methods.

In Iberia and beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures

In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures. Bernard Dov Cooperman, ed. USA: Associated UP, 1998. x+390 pages. As Bernard Dov Cooperman explains in his Introduction, this collection of essays-the proceedings of a symposium held in 1991 at University of Maryland at College Park-endeavors to give reader a sense of breadth and scope of Spanish Jewish studies today, of range of scholarly disciplines used in field, and of new approaches and insights which characterize recent work in (2-3). In spite of fact that several years have elapsed since these papers were originally presented, topics they explore continue to be among most current in field of Sephardic studies. Dwayne E. Carpenter (The Portrayal of Jews in Learned's de Santa Maria [15-42]) examines in which Jews are protagonists (the corresponding illuminations for six of these are included), as well as those in which they are subjects of incidental references, and concludes that Alfonso does not go out of his way to malign Jews, especially in widely diffused stories involving Jews, but neither does he provide positive portrayals (24). Carpenter's study ends with a very useful enumerative appendix, References to Jews in Cantigas (31-34). Bernard Septimus (Hispano-Jewish Views of Christendom and Islam [43651) discusses reasons why Spanish Jews, unlike their European coreligionists, tended to prefer life under Christian rather than Islamic rule. In Economic Life of Jews of Murviedro in Fifteenth Century (67-95), Mark D. Meyerson illustrates that Jews to play significant roles in economy of Murviedro after a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept through Valencia in 1391. Moreover, while anti-Jewish sentiment was intensifying throughout Spain during fifteenth century, in Murviedro the variety of Jewish economic activity created a complex network of economic interdependence among Jews, Christians, and Muslims-a network characterized far more by cooperation and stability than by competitiveness and conflict (86). In a study which reaches a similar conclusion concerning Jews of northeastern Spain, Benjamin R. Gampel (Does Medieval Navarrese Jewry Salvage Our Notion of Convivencia [97-122]) re-evaluates concept of convivencia between Jews and Christians in socio-economic context of late fifteenth-century Navarre, a region in which Jews continued to have relationships with all religious and social classes within their society (117) until they were ordered, in 1498, to convert or face exile. Isaac Benabu (Poetry in Two Languages: The Kharja and Its Muwassah [12342]) focuses on Golden Age of Andalusian Hebrew poetry in his analysis of linguistic and thematic relationships between several of Yehuda ha-Levi's Hebrew muwassahs and their corresponding Hispano-- Romance kharjas. Eleazar Gutwirth (Widows, Artisans, and Issues of Life: Hispano-Jewish Bourgeois Ideology [143-73]) dispels myth that late-medieval Spanish Jews were mainly aristocrats by establishing that their financial, domestic, and literary activities more accurately depict existence of a Jewish bourgeois i. …

The utility of computerized visual communication for improving natural language in chronic global aphasia: Implications for approaches to treatment in global aphasia

A computerized communication system (C-VIC) was employed as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool to identify propositional language abilities in a chronic, globally aphasic patient. The patient demonstrated the ability to construct sentences during training according to abstract syntax-like rules by manipulating iconic symbols representing nouns and verbs. Further, he produced correct symbolic order to express the thematic relationships in sentences. The effect of C-VIC as a therapeutic intervention to improve the patient's natural language abilities was examined using pre- and post-training assessments. Improvements specific to training were observed but neither improvements in natural language nor generalization to production of multiple sentences using C-VIC was found. The results are discussed with regard to current debates concerning treatment approaches and the use of augmentative communication devices for globally aphasic patients.

On-Line Processing of Filler–Gap Constructions in Aphasia

Two experiments were conducted exploring on-line processing of filler–gap constructions in aphasia. An auditory–auditory lexical decision paradigm was used to investigate whether Broca's and Wernicke's aphasic patients show, as do normals, reactivation of the filler at the gap site. Experiment I investigated the processing of a number of filler–gap constructions including wh-questions, relative clauses as subject, relative clauses as object, and embedded wh-questions. Broca's aphasics showed reactivation of the filler at the gap site, whereas Wernicke's aphasics did not. Experiment II examined object relative clauses and their processing by Broca's aphasics. In addition, we investigated whether the presence (or absence) of the relative pronoun played any role in on-line processing. Broca's aphasics performed as did normals. In addition, their performance was unaffected by the presence or absence of the relative pronoun. The results of these experiments suggest that Broca's aphasics do not have an impairment in processing or representing thematic relationships of NP arguments to predicates or relating traces to their antecedents.

Database tomography for technical intelligence: A roadmap of the near-earth space science and technology literature

Database Tomography (DT) is a system which includes algorithms for extracting multi-word phrase frequencies and performing phrase proximity analyses (relating physical closeness of the multi-word technical phrases to thematic relationships) on any type of large textual database. As an illustration of the DT process applied to the published literature, DT was used to derive technical intelligence from a near-earth space (NES) database derived from the Science Citation Index and the Engineering Compendex. Phrase frequency analysis (the occurrence frequency of multi-word technical phrases) provided the pervasive technical themes of the space database, and the phrase proximity analysis provided the relationships among the pervasive technical themes. Bibliometric analysis of the NES literature supplemented the DT results by identifying: the recent most prolific NES authors; the journals which contain numerous NES papers; the institutions which produce numerous NES papers; the keywords most frequently specified by the NES authors; the authors whose works are cited most frequently in the NES papers; and the particular papers and journals cited most frequently in the NES papers.

Semantic transparency and translucency in compound blissymbols

Blissymbolics is a graphic symbol system used for communication by individuals whose speech is nonfunctional. The transparency and translucency of Blissymbolics have been viewed in the context of the visual relationship between symbols and their referents. This article suggests a new perspective in the study of Blissymbolic transparency and translucency that is semantic conceptual. At present, only compound symbols are discussed. Semantic transparency/translucency is conceived in this article as representing the relationship between the composite meaning of symbol components and the symbol referent. This relationship is measured by guessability, and by subject rating of degree of agreement between the composite meaning of symbol components and the symbol referent. We hypothesized that semantic transparency/translucency is affected by referent prototypicality or uniqueness, and by the interpretation of thematic relationships of symbol components. In the present study, we investigated the effect of referent prototypicality. An experiment administered to nondisabled adult subjects demonstrated the contribution of referent prototypicality to semantic transparency/translucency. Implications for Blissymbol codability are discussed.

The Dead and the Quick: Structural Correspondences and Thematic Relationships in Propertius 4.7 and 4.8

THE JUXTAPOSITION of the seventh and eighth poems in Propertius' fourth book has caused concern to many. How is it that Cynthia, dead and buried in the first poem, returns in the second in the fulness of life? Early critics seek a solution in the dates of composition. 4.8, they say, is an early poem, misplaced.l Recent solutions have been sought along more literary lines; critics have hinted at a relationship between the two poems, evident in similarities of style and content,2 underpinned by the use of Homeric myth.3 In what follows I attempt to track down this relationship by a close examination of structure and theme. I believe it will be possible to demonstrate that the poems are written as a pair, and that the poet intends that we should read them as a pair. If that is so, it is reasonable to ask why. With what purpose in mind has the poet so constructed them? How does it affect our reading? Does it, for instance, offer any answer to the apparent conundrum of the order of the poems? In preparation for an answer to these questions I shall look for pairs of poems, or sections of poems,4 elsewhere in the corpus, that relate to each other in a way comparable to 4.7 and 8. An understanding of the literary techniques common to these groupings will, I believe, help us to grasp the poet's purpose in 4.7 and 8. Both elegies open with introductions (one couplet in 4.7, two in 4.8)5 that detach the poet/lover from the beloved. In 4.7 the poet puts forward a general

Naming disorders and semantic representations

The status of semantic conceptual structures in aphasia was investigated with relation to naming disorders in spontaneous and constrained speech production. A battery of six tasks was administered to 25 control subjects and 25 aphasics: spontaneous speech production (from which the percentage of nouns was calculated), confrontation naming, understanding class relationships (verbal and pictorial), and understanding thematic relationships (verbal and pictorial). Results indicated the important role of taxonomic abilities for naming, while other conceptual structures (i.e., thematic relations) do not seem to play any important role in the process of naming. These results are discussed in terms of the internal organization of semantic information.

Selective deficit of conceptual structures in aphasia: Class versus thematic relations

Conceptual structures in aphasia were investigated by means of a nonverbal test. The understanding of class and thematic relationships was demonstrated to be selectively impaired according to varieties of aphasic deficit. Broca's aphasics showed difficulty evaluating a thematic relationship and did not differ from normal controls as far as class relationships were concerned. The opposite happened for Wernicke's aphasics whose defect seems to be selectively restricted to class relationships.

"Dubliners": Portraits of the Artist as a Narrator

Joyce's explicit statements concerning his artistic intentions in Dubliners are not very useful as basis for interpretation. Admittedly, they identify some of themes in collection; but they do not provide insight into its challenges. We read book at very superficial level if we assume it narrates a chapter of moral history of Ireland, with Dublin serving as the centre of paralysis. Joyce's outline for arrangement of stories, moreover, lists only obvious categories: childhood, adolescence, mature life, and public life. 2 Yet it is upon evidence of these remarks from his correspondence that many arguments for unity have been founded. Critics who have taken this point of departure have usually had to supplement their arguments for narrative and thematic relationships with source studies, intricate symbolic systems, and biographical backgrounds. Ultimately, they have oversimplified difficult question of sequence; and they have neglected fact that Joyce relocated some of stories when he was getting book ready for publication. They have concluded, for example, that The Dead is nihilistic coda and that Joyce conceived it as protest against his native land; or, as in work of Homer 0. Brown, they have said that final story in Dubliners reverses meaning of book by celebrating self-knowledge and self-acceptance and breaks link between Joyce and narrator of earlier stories. 3 Professor Brown's point is certainly tenable; and it makes sense both in terms of Joyce's exile from, but continuing love for, Ireland. Dubliners, however, supports another theory, one which proposes that stories are studies in growth of Joyce's developing and maturing consciousness and that his exploration of this growth-imaging also his formal interest in narrative art-gives book coherence. For purposes of orientation in discussion of Dubliners, perhaps we should begin with an observation which Joyce made in 1900: Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes, men and women as we meet them in real world, not as we apprehend them in world of faery. 4

The Suicide of the Artist: Henry Adams' Life of George Cabot Lodge

AMID the explosion of interest in Henry Adams in the last twenty years, Adams' last work, The Life of George Cabot Lodge, has been widely ignored.' This neglect is unfortunate because The Life is vital to an understanding of Adams' late writings. This study traces the genesis of The Life of Lodge and analyzes its thematic relationships to The Education of Henry Adams and Adams' late essays on the Dynamic Theory of History. I