Topic Continuity Research Articles

The Continuity of Head Nouns: The Difference in Relativizability between Korean and Chinese

The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy cannot explain the difference in relativizability between Chinese and Korean in authentic discourse. Korean exhibits a higher preference for relativization compared to Chinese and this article aims to account for this difference from the perspective of topic continuity. Specifically, the continuity of head nouns within relative clauses is stronger in Korean than in Chinese. By analyzing the parameters of referential distance and potential interference, this study finds that the head nouns in Korean relative clauses display a broader range on the continuum of continuity compared to those in Chinese relative clauses. Furthermore, the difference in the strength of continuity of head nouns between Chinese and Korean relative clauses is attributed to the typological distinction between the Component-Integral Languages and Component-Metonymic Languages postulated within the framework of the Event-Domain Cognitive Model.

Exploring and explaining variation in phrase-final f0 movements in spontaneous Papuan Malay.

This study investigates the variation in phrase-final f0 movements found in dyadic unscripted conversations in Papuan Malay, an Eastern Indonesian language. This is done by a novel combination of exploratory and confirmatory classification techniques. In particular, this study investigates the linguistic factors that potentially drive f0 contour variation in phrase-final words produced in a naturalistic interactive dialogue task. To this end, a cluster analysis, manual labelling and random forest analysis are carried out to reveal the main sources of contour variation. These are: taking conversational interaction into account; turn transition, topic continuation, information structure (givenness and contrast), and context-independent properties of words such as word class, syllable structure, voicing and intrinsic f0. Results indicate that contour variation in Papuan Malay, in particular f0 direction and target level, is best explained by turn transitions between speakers, corroborating similar findings for related languages. The applied methods provide opportunities to further lower the threshold of incorporating intonation and prosody in the early stages of language documentation.

A Mood Semantic Awareness Model for Emotional Interactive Robots.

The rapid development of natural language processing technology and improvements in computer performance in recent years have resulted in the wide-scale development and adoption of human-machine dialogue systems. In this study, the Icc_dialogue model is proposed to enhance the semantic awareness of moods for emotional interactive robots. Equipped with a voice interaction module, emotion calculation is conducted based on model responses, and rules for calculating users' degree of interest are formulated. By evaluating the degree of interest, the system can determine whether it should transition to a new topic to maintain the user's interest. This model can also address issues such as overly purposeful responses and rigid emotional expressions in generated replies. Simultaneously, this study explores topic continuation after answering a question, the construction of dialogue rounds, keyword counting, and the creation of a target text similarity matrix for each text in the dialogue dataset. The matrix is normalized, weights are assigned, and the final text score is calculated. In the text with the highest score, the content of dialogue continuation is determined by calculating a subsequent sentence with the highest similarity. This resolves the issue in which the conversational bot fails to continue dialogue on a topic after answering a question, instead waiting for the user to voluntarily provide more information, resulting in topic interruption. As described in the experimental section, both automatic and manual evaluations were conducted to validate the significant improvement in the mood semantic awareness model's performance in terms of dialogue quality and user experience.

The role of cognitive control and referential complexity on adults' choice of referring expressions: Testing and expanding the referential complexity scale.

This study aims to advance our understanding of the nature and source(s) of individual differences in pragmatic language behavior over the adult lifespan. Across four story continuation experiments, we probed adults' (N = 496 participants, ages 18-82) choice of referential forms (i.e., names vs. pronouns to refer to the main character). Our manipulations were based on Fossard et al.'s (2018) scale of referential complexity which varies according to the visual properties of the scene: low complexity (one character), intermediate complexity (two characters of different genders), and high complexity (two characters of the same gender). Since pronouns signal topic continuity (i.e., that the discourse will continue to be about the same referent), the use of pronouns is expected to decrease as referential complexity increases. The choice of names versus pronouns, therefore, provides insight into participants' perception of the topicality of a referent, and whether that varies by age and cognitive capacity. In Experiment 1, we used the scale to test the association between referential choice, aging, and cognition, identifying a link between older adults' switching skills and optimal referential choice. In Experiments 2-4, we tested novel manipulations that could impact the scale and found both the TIMING of a competitor referent's presence and EMPHASIS placed on competitors modulated referential choice, leading us to refine the scale for future use. Collectively, Experiments 1-4 highlight what type of contextual information is prioritized at different ages, revealing older adults' preserved sensitivity to (visual) scene complexity but reduced sensitivity to linguistic prominence cues, compared to younger adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

What corpus data reveal about the Position of Antecedent Strategy: anaphora resolution in Spanish monolinguals and L1 English-L2 Spanish bilinguals.

This study investigates the acquisition of anaphora resolution (AR) in Spanish as a second language (L2). According to the Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS), in native Spanish null pronominal subjects are biased toward subject antecedents, whereas overt pronominal subjects show a "flexible" bias (typically toward non-subject but also toward subject antecedents). The PAS has been extensively investigated in experimental studies, though little is known about real production. We show how naturalistic production (corpus methods) can uncover crucial factors in the PAS that have not been explored in the experimental literature. We analyzed written samples from the CEDEL2 corpus: L1 English-L2 Spanish adult late-bilingual learners (intermediate, lower-advanced and upper-advanced proficiency levels) and a control group of adult Spanish monolinguals (N = 75 texts). Anaphors were manually annotated via a fine-grained, linguistically-motivated tagset in UAM Corpus Tool. Against traditional assumptions, our results reveal that (i) the PAS is not a privileged mechanism for resolving anaphora; (ii) it is more complex than assumed (in terms of the division of labor of anaphoric forms, their antecedents and the syntactic configuration in which they appear); (iii) the much-debated "flexible" bias of overt pronouns is apparent since they are hardly produced and are replaced by repeated NPs, which show a clear non-subject antecedent bias; (iv) at the syntax-discourse interface, the PAS is constrained by information structure in more complex ways than assumed: null pronouns mark topic continuity, whereas overtly realized referential expressions (overt REs: overt pronouns and NPs) mark topic shift. Learners show more difficulties with topic continuity (where they redundantly use overt pronouns) than with topic shift (where they normally disambiguate by using overtly realized REs), thus being more redundant than ambiguous, in line with the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (PPVH) (Lozano, 2016). We finally argue that the insights from corpora should be implemented into experiments. The triangulation of corpus and experimental methods in bilingualism ultimately provides a clearer understanding of the phenomenon under investigation.

Grammar (morphosyntax) and discourse

Abstract The present work attempts to examine the relationship between grammar and discourse. (i) First, it compares Warrongo (an ergative language that has antipassives and an S/O pivot) and English (an accusative language that has passives and an S/A pivot). Despite these polar opposite morphosyntactic characteristics, Warrongo and English behave almost in the same way in discourse – in terms of new mentions, lexical mentions and topic continuity. There are, however, two differences in discourse. First, Warrongo antipassives and S/O pivot have much higher functional loads than English passives and S/A pivot. Second, Warrongo antipassives have a use that English passives do not have. (ii) Then, the present work shows that grammar and discourse are not independent of each other and that they share one principle. The hierarchy of “O > S > A” is attested in grammar and discourse crosslinguistically and irrespective of the morphosyntactic types of the languages concerned.

Is L1 Transfer Operative at the Syntax-Discourse Interface? The Acquisition of Null and Overt Subjects in L2 Turkish

Recent studies on L2 acquisition focus on how interface-related properties are acquired at the end state grammars. Proposed as part of this theme, the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Sorace, 2011) claims that the syntax-discourse interface is particularly challenging to acquire, irrespective of the L1 and L2 of the speakers. On the other hand, the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) predicts that L2 acquisition is L1-constrained and UG is directly accessed. This study tests these assumptions on the acquisition of null and overt subjects in L2 Turkish to understand whether L1 transfer operates in the domain that needs the mapping of syntax on the discursive knowledge. This was tested in a study on advanced Korean and Japanese L2 Turkish speakers (n=27) by employing contextualized grammaticality judgment task (CGJT). In this task, participants were asked to judge whether the contextualized sentences they read were pragmatically odd or not (for each condition n=4). The discursive constraints (topic continuity and topic shift) on the use of null and overt subjects were not violated in the first two conditions. However, the latter two conditions violated the discursive constraints, rendering unacceptable null and overt subject constructions. The results of the CGJT revealed that the L2 participants were insensitive to the discourse of null and overt subject distribution. Since the very same constraints that regulate the null and overt subject distribution hold both in the L1 and L2 of the speakers, this finding suggests that L1 transfer is not operative at the syntax-discourse interface, which is in line with the claim that the properties at this interface cannot be fully acquired as postulated by the Interface Hypothesis.

07. The Revival of Trends and Social Values of the Contemporary Ghazal in the Perspective of Classical Ghazal

This article talks about the literature of every era under the ever changing influence of civilization and society. The revival of trends and social values exist accidents or mishaps of the period may decrease their importance but they cannot uproot them. In classical and contemporary Ghazal the revival and continuity of topics, trends and social values can be seen clearly in contemporary Ghazal like classical Ghazal’s era also deeply influence by the changing trends of the era. Now under the influence of new trends and ever changing thoughts the preference is given to observation too. We see the new trends and topics of contemporary Ghazal are being reformed by the same resultant same social issues or conditions which are found in the classical Ghazal.

Analysis of Topic Continuity in Malay Folklore Batu Batangkup

This study is about topic continuity in the Batu Batangkup Malay folklore text. This study aims to describe the level and degree of topic continuity in grammatical devices in the said text. The research method used is a quantitative-descriptive method by applying the documentation method in data collection and interactive model in data analysis. The data in this study were the grammatical devices in clauses, which consist of zero anaphora, third-person pronouns, possessive pronouns, defined noun phrases, and undefined noun phrases that are sourced from the selected text. The results showed that the representation of grammatical devices consists of zero anaphora, third-person pronouns, possessive pronouns, defined noun phrases, and undefined noun phrases. Of the five grammatical sets, zero anaphora has the highest level of topic continuity (4.62), while defined noun phrases have the lowest level of topic continuity (9.19). Four of the grammatical devices have low topic continuity, namely third-person pronouns (7.28), possessive pronouns (8.40), undefined noun phrases (9.13), and defined noun phrases (9.19). The highest degree of continuity starts from the grammatical level of zero anaphora, third-person pronouns, possessive pronouns, undefined noun phrases, and defined noun phrases.

Direct object anaphora resolution in L1 English-L2 Spanish

Abstract This study investigates the written production of direct object (DO) anaphora in L2 Spanish by adult English native speakers. It focuses on the use of clitics and full DPs in topic continuity, where highly salient topics are typically recovered by clitics in native Spanish. A combination of pragmatic factors in subject anaphora resolution (referential ambiguity and distance) and morphosyntactic factors in the acquisition of clitics (gender and animacy) was analyzed in 5 subcorpora from the CEDEL2 (Corpus Escrito del Español L2). Following Learner Corpus Research methodology, 773 anaphoric DOs and their antecedents were tagged across 150 texts (from low-intermediate to upper-advanced proficiency). Results showed that as learner proficiency increases, the predominant anaphoric strategy shifts from redundant DP overuse to felicitous pronominalization. Clitic avoidance is the general strategy intimately related to clitics’ morphosyntactic deficits at advanced levels, but also to pragmatic principles supporting the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (Lozano, 2016).

What topic continuity problem?

ABSTRACT A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to ‘reengineer’ a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there's only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things.

Формирование креативности студентов через использование электронных учебников

Research relevance: article is talking about formation of students' creativity using e-books, especially usual paper books and their usefulness, the growing level of science, and the lack of literature in Kyrgyz language, possibilities in using of websites such as Okuma.kg, Ibooks.oshsu.kg, Biblioteka.oshsu.kg and reasons for need to use electronic issues. Research purpose: to emphasize importance of students, teachers, programmers, designers, Internet bloggers and other teams’ joint work for creation of e-books, which make up the teaching and methodological basis for computer classes. Research materials and methods: to recommend on content of electronic textbooks; becoming them with modern educational material obtained through mobile phones or computer technology; continuity of topics in the texts of materials and practical skills; rules of conducting lessons in any language; topics, checking, evaluation of students independent work. Conclusions: problem of insufficient textbooks, textbooks in schools, colleges and in universities can be solved by active development of modern electronic books, creation of electronic databases on a wide range of educational disciplines and knowledge.

Преподавание финансовой грамотности в образовательных организациях Липецкой области: анализ результатов мониторинга

The article was devoted to a comparative analysis of the features of teaching financial literacy in preschool, general and professional educational organizations of the Lipetsk Region in Russia. The results of the monitoring of the place and role of aspects of teaching financial literacy in the educational practices of organizations in the Lipetsk Region showed a controversial picture. On the one hand, monitoring revealed the presence in the educational programs of most organizations of modules in the direction of financial literacy. On the other hand, the total amount of hours allocated for the development of financial literacy is not significant and is mainly implemented in extracurricular activities. It was concluded that the greatest problems are present at the level of general education, where the absence of separate financial literacy courses in educational practices is noticeable. Educational and outreach activities to improve financial literacy are actively implemented in the segments of educational and extracurricular activities, remaining in most organizations outside of elective courses. The results of the monitoring allow us to speak about the readiness of the education system in the Lipetsk Region to act as one of the institutions for improving the level of financial literacy, provided that the place of the financial literacy course in educational activities increases, as well as the formation of conditions for the continuity of topics and practices of teaching the course at all levels of education.

A longitudinal study of topic continuity in Chinese EFL learners’ written narratives

Abstract This paper reports a longitudinal study of topic continuity in Chinese EFL learners’ English written narratives by tracking their dynamic change of referential choices over two years. The proportional distribution of referential forms were calculated and texts produced by learners were analyzed. The calculation and analysis yielded the following findings. Firstly, while the general distribution of referential forms follows Givón’s cross-linguistic topic continuity scale, indicating the dominant role of discourse context in referring, quite a few instances deviate from this scale, suggesting the modulating effect of multiple factors, including L1 influence and articulators’ cognitive pressure. Secondly, with an increase in English exposure, L2 learners’ use of the typical referring form in each context displayed an increasing tendency over time. Finally, the developmental paths of L2 referential choices exhibited individual variability. These findings pointed to variation in interlanguage and the modulating effect of non-linguistic or internal cognitive factors on reference production.

A corpus analysis of two by-passives in Japanese from the viewpoint of information structure

There are two types of by-passives in Japanese: ni-passive and niyotte-passive. In order to investigate the functional similarities and dissimilarities between them, a corpus analysis was performed in terms of anaphoric and cataphoric co-referencing under the framework of Givón. In consequence, it has been revealed that both the ni-passive and the niyotte-passive are selected in order to maintain topic continuity by promoting the topical logical object to the grammatical subject. Yet, it is also demonstrated that the ni-passive correlates with global topic while the niyotte-passive is pertinent to local topic.

Discourse-Pragmatic Functions for Shared and Thematic Information Structures

This paper investigates that brief connections between usages of left-dislocations in American discourse and discourse functions for developing conversation statuses based on conversation analyses in pragmatics.It also reveals that speakers’ intentions are shown in a conversation for maintaining topic continuity as a tool of discourse function.It is hard to account that word order is manipulative; however, hypotheses that we can bear out discourse functions technically are demonstrated.As the point, the aspect proves that the conversation analyses are correlated with a discourse speakers talk unconsciously to construct good relationships between friends and new classmates.It may be difficult to find theories of discourse structures and information statues; however, we must try to appeal and reach new analyses.

The Child With Severe Chronic Illness in the ICU: A Concise Review.

Children with severe chronic illness are a prevalent, impactful, vulnerable group in PICUs, whose needs are insufficiently met by transitory care models and a narrow focus on acute care needs. Thus, we sought to provide a concise synthetic review of published literature relevant to them and a compilation of strategies to address their distinctive needs. English language articles were identified in MEDLINE using a variety of phrases related to children with chronic conditions, prolonged admissions, resource utilization, mortality, morbidity, continuity of care, palliative care, and other critical care topics. Bibliographies were also reviewed. Original articles, review articles, and commentaries were considered. Data from relevant articles were reviewed, summarized, and integrated into a narrative synthetic review. Children with serious chronic conditions are a heterogeneous group who are growing in numbers and complexity, partly due to successes of critical care. Because of their prevalence, prolonged stays, readmissions, and other resource use, they disproportionately impact PICUs. Often more than other patients, critical illness can substantially negatively affect these children and their families, physically and psychosocially. Critical care approaches narrowly focused on acute care and transitory/rotating care models exacerbate these problems and contribute to ineffective communication and information sharing, impaired relationships, subpar and untimely decision-making, patient/family dissatisfaction, and moral distress in providers. Strategies to mitigate these effects and address these patients' distinctive needs include improving continuity and communication, primary and secondary palliative care, and involvement of families. However, there are limited outcome data for most of these strategies and little consensus on which outcomes should be measured. The future of pediatric critical care medicine is intertwined with that of children with serious chronic illness. More concerted efforts are needed to address their distinctive needs and study the effectiveness of strategies to do so.

(In)felicitous use of subjects in Greek and Spanish in monolingual and contact settings

This paper focuses on subject distribution in Greek and Chilean Spanish, both null subject languages, as evidenced in the oral production of monolingual and bilingual speakers. Narratives elicited from 40 monolinguals and 76 bilinguals of different types, namely, first- generation immigrants, heritage speakers, and L2 speakers, were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to explore potential differences in expressing subject reference between the groups in monolingual and contact settings. The qualitative analysis of contexts of topic continuity and topic shift showed no overextension of the scope of the overt subject pronoun expected to be found in the bilingual performance according to the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011; 2012) and previous research. The findings also show that the redundancy of lexical subjects observed in topic continuity contexts mostly involved felicitous (pragmatically appropriate) constructions. Moreover, while null subjects in topic shift were found to be mostly felicitous in both monolinguals and bilinguals, cases of ambiguity were observed in the bilingual performance in this discourse context.

A comparison between English demonstratives and Vietnamese demonstratives in argumentative essays

In English and Vietnamese, demonstratives are considered one of the most important linguistic items for their ability to enhance writing coherence. Crucial as they are, few investigations have been conducted to analyze the differences in their uses in English and Vietnamese written discourse. This research attempts to investigate the differences in the use of Vietnamese demonstratives and English demonstratives in model Vietnamese (MV) and model American English (MA) argumentative essays. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative analyses, it focuses on the frequency and pragmatic uses of proximal and distal demonstratives in the two languages. It was discovered that English essays had significantly more proximal and cataphoric uses of demonstratives than Vietnamese essays. While English proximal demonstratives this(these) indicated topic shifting and distal demonstratives that(those) signaled topic continuity, a contrary pattern was observed in Vietnamese. Moreover, in investigating the referential uses of demonstratives, it was revealed that the use of Vietnamese demonstratives differed from English in the sense that they could act as discourse connectives facilitating the interpretation process of the readers. The study’s results contribute to the cross-language analysis and comparison of demonstratives and provide implications for the teaching of English demonstratives in academic writing in Vietnam.

Anaphora resolution in L2 and 2L1 Hungarian

The paper tests the antecedent preferences for the null pronoun, the personal pronoun and the demonstrative subject in L2 and 2L1 Hungarian (with Romanian as the other language), by means of an offline picture selection task. In the null subject condition, both groups show subject bias, confirming previous hypotheses and research. An evident object bias is observable with the demonstrative, again confirming the low accessibility status of demonstratives. The results differ in the case of the overt personal pronoun subject. While it can have both topic shift and topic continuity interpretation in both languages, previous research suggests that in Romanian the former is favoured over the latter, whereas the reverse is true for Hungarian. Whereas the L2 group shows no bias in the personal pronoun condition, thus possibly showing transfer from L1, the 2L1 group shows a strong subject bias, placing the personal pronoun on equal footing with the null pronoun.