Linguistic Understanding Research Articles

Uncovering suggestions in MOOC discussion forums: a transformer-based approach

The field of natural language processing has experienced significant advances in recent years, but these advances have not yet resulted in improved analytics for instructors on MOOC platforms. Valuable information, such as suggestions, is generated in the comment forums of these courses, but due to their volume, manual processing is often impractical. This study examines the feasibility of fine-tuning and effectively utilizing state-of-the-art deep learning models to identify comments that contain suggestions in MOOC forums. The main challenges encountered are the lack of labeled datasets from the MOOC context for fine-tuning classification models and the soaring computational cost of this training. For this study, we manually collected and labeled 2228 comments in Spanish and English from 5 MOOCs and scraped 1.4 million MOOC reviews from 3 platforms. We fine-tuned and evaluated 4 pretrained models based on the transformer architecture and 3 traditional machine learning models to compare their effectiveness in the suggestion mining task in this domain. Transformer-based models proved to be highly effective in this task/domain combination, achieving performance levels that matched or exceeded those deemed appropriate in other contexts and were significantly greater than those achieved by traditional models. Domain adaptation led to improved linguistic understanding of the target domain; however, in this project, this approach did not translate into an observable improvement in suggestion mining. The automated identification of comments that can be labeled as suggestions can result in considerable time savings for instructors, especially considering that less than a quarter of the analyzed comments contain suggestions.

Using drama to enrich a genre-based pedagogy for teaching academic writing across content areas

Drama has the potential to enrich and enliven established approaches to literacy learning, engaging students and expanding their possibilities for meaning-making. Drama-rich pedagogy is well-established as an effective tool in supporting language and literacy development. However, research to date has not explored the possibilities of using drama to enrich established genre-based approaches to teaching writing. This article reports on findings from an interventionist case study in an Australian primary school examining how a Year Three/Four teacher used drama-rich pedagogy to support students’ academic writing of a scientific explanation text. The findings indicate three key pedagogical benefits of employing drama to build conceptual understandings of the field of study and relevant academic language as part of a genre-based pedagogy for teaching writing. Firstly, drama experiences can make visible students’ prior knowledge of a topic, allowing teachers to identify, interrogate and transform students’ misconceptions through reflective dialogue on embodied experience. These embodied and interactive experiences also support the development of shared understandings of key concepts and language. Finally, drama experiences provide embodied and interactive contexts in which students can move from common sense to more abstract/technical understandings of the topic of study which they can apply in writing their own texts. In sharing these findings, this article aims to illustrate how drama can be used to develop the conceptual and linguistic understandings required by genre pedagogy in engaging, embodied ways that draw productively on the diverse resources that students bring to their learning.

The Grammatical Dispute Regarding the Attachment of "Kama" in the Qur'an and Its Impact on Tafsir (Exegesis) Literature

The issue of the attachment of "Kama" is one of the matters that has occupied grammarians and exegetes; grammarians have differed regarding the attachment of "Kama" in several places in the Qur'an. This study is centered on the following question: How does the grammatical disagreement over the attachment of "Kama" affect the interpretation of the verses? This study aims to analyze the attachment of "Kama" in various Quranic contexts, present the grammatical disputes surrounding it, and explore the impact of these disputes on the exegesis literature. The goal is to propose a grammatical perspective that contributes to guiding the parsing of Quranic verses by relying on an analytical methodology in the study. Furthermore, the scientific significance of this study lies in enhancing the linguistic understanding of the Quranic context, providing interpretative insights into Quranic texts, reducing discrepancies in multiple grammatical explanations, and enriching linguistic and grammatical studies related to the Qur'an. Findings indicate that there is a disagreement among grammarians in four instances of the evidence of "Kama" in the Qur'an. Such plurality of opinions in this matter does not imply an error in any of these views but rather reflects the depth, precision, and richness of the Quranic context. The correctness of a single word's attachment to more than one element is considered one of the miraculous aspects of the Qur'an. Ultimately, this analysis recommends expanding the scope of research to include the study of the attachments of words similar to "Kama" in the Qur'an, such as the words "Mithl" (like) and "Ka'anna" (as if).

FACT-CHECKING IN THE AGE OF MISINFORMATION: LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES FOR ACCURATE REPORTING

Fact-checking journalism has become a common practice to counteract misinformation. In an era of widespread disinformation, the factuality of information is crucial. This research explores linguistic strategies for fact-checking accurate reporting. With a focus on factuality, linguistic approaches are analyzed to identify effective methods in combating misinformation. Specifically, we studied whether there are differences in perceptions based on Linguistic Strategies for Accurate Reporting, dan how often fact-checkers conduct fact-checking. It integrates linguistic understanding with journalism practice to strengthen the reliability of information presented to the public.

Fostering Educator Buy-in of Language and Literacy in the Science Classroom

This paper describes a project to build linguistic awareness among science educators at multiple levels: pre-service K–12 teachers, in-service K–12 teachers, and university faculty in both education and STEM fields. Educational linguists from a language-focused non-profit research organization created modules on teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students for a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program for middle school science educators at a large urban U.S. university. The module content, which was integrated into three science education methods courses, was designed around three key principles: linguistic understanding, critical language awareness, and pedagogical modeling. A critical component to the project’s success was fostering “buy-in” from the various groups of educators through multiple means, including piloting materials with in-service science teachers, training university faculty on the language and literacy materials, and revising content based on feedback from the MAT program faculty and students. The findings demonstrate that over time, the educators re-examined their roles as teachers of language and literacy and reassessed their thinking related to science instruction, highlighting the efficacy of incorporating language development content into training and professional development for STEM educators at multiple levels.

A Type-1 fuzzy framework based on SVD-QR for predicting the strength of tablets produced using Consigma-25 continuous tablet production plant

In this research paper, the tablet strength as an indication of tabletability and tablet quality was examined and modelled as a function of different process parameters. The effects of the different process parameters of the various units of ConsiGmaTM −25 (i.e., wet granulation, drying, milling, blending and tabletting) were statistically examined. Then, a type-1 fuzzy based modelling framework based on the singular value decomposition-QR (SVD-QR) approach was developed and trained to mathematically map these parameters to the tablet strength. This structure was developed in a way that allows users to predict the tablet strength for tablets produced using different process parameters. Based on the results obtained, the statistical analyses show significant effects of the process parameters on the tablet quality. Furthermore, the proposed framework developed can be used to anticipate the tablet's strength successfully, where the performance measures in terms of the coefficient of determination and mean square error are 0.86 and 0.066, respectively. In addition, it can also provide users with linguistic understanding that can help in understanding as well as controlling the line.

Komponensial dan Sintagmatik untuk Mengidentifikasi Struktur Kalimat Dalam Surah Luqman

Surah Luqman, the 31st chapter of the Quran, is situated in the 21st juz and comprises 34 verses. This Meccan surah is the focus of our research, which employs a semantic approach (ilm adh-dilalah) to analyze syntagmatic components, particularly in verses 12-15. The study utilizes a literature review methodology, concentrating on componential analysis and syntagmatic relationships between lexical elements. Our objective is to gain a profound understanding of sentence structures, explore meaning relationships among syntagmatic components, and analyze semantic field implications. The research findings demonstrate that applying componential and syntagmatic analyses provides enhanced comprehension of sentence structures and their inherent meaning relationships. The examined verses offer deep insights into the moral messages and practical guidance in Surah Luqman, especially concerning gratitude to Allah, avoiding polytheism, kindness to parents, and performing prayers. This study contributes to the linguistic understanding of sentence structures within a religious context and enriches the interpretation of these verses from a linguistic perspective. By bridging linguistic analysis with Quranic exegesis, this research opens new avenues for interdisciplinary studies in Islamic linguistics and hermeneutics, potentially informing both scholarly discourse and practical application of Quranic teachings.

Empirical Approaches to Portuguese Linguistics - New insights from studies in various areas of grammar

Over the last two decades, empirical methods have become increasingly prominent in linguistics. Even traditionally more introspective theoretical frameworks have begun to embrace empirical methods to test their hypotheses. This special collection unites works applying state of the art empirical methods to the study of Portuguese and its varieties, to highlight the applicability of these methods to Portuguese linguistics. In doing so, this collection aims to show the potential and the possible limitations of these methods. This special collection brings together contributions on different varieties of Portuguese from the subfields of phonology, morpho-syntax, syntax and semantics, using a variety of empirical methods: The methods range from classic corpus linguistics and sociolinguistic field methods to psycholinguistic experiments. The aim of this collection is to illustrate how these methods can be applied to the study of Portuguese in all linguistic subfields. By explicitly addressing how empirical methods contribute to furthering our understanding of Portuguese linguistics, we want to increase awareness for empirical methods and their applicability to the study of Portuguese, and ultimately encourage researchers to make greater use of them.

Inheritance of Consonant Phonemes from PAN to Mandailing Language

This study aims to examine the inheritance of consonant phonemes from Proto-Austronesian (PAN) to Mandailing Language (BM), as part of the Austronesian language family. The method used is the comparative historical method with a focus on analyzing basic Swadesh vocabulary collected from native speakers in Panyabungan, Mandailing Natal. The diachronic analysis shows that BM preserved some phonemes from PAN while undergoing significant changes in some consonants. The results show patterns of phonetic changes of PAN to BM consonants, including changes of /b/ to /b/ or /m/, /k/ to /h/ in the penultima position, /z/ to /j/ in the ultima position, /l/ to /n/ in the ultima position, and changes of /h/ to missing in the ultima position. These changes provide deep insights into phonological evolution in BM, indicating a PAN linguistic heritage with innovative variations in word phonology and morphology. The findings support the theory of language evolution and make an important contribution to the understanding of Austronesian historical linguistics.

LANGUAGE CONCEPTS «DAY» AND «NIGHT» IN THE POETIC WORLD OF F.I. TYUTCHEV (THE EXPERIENCE OF CORPUS RESEARCH)

The present study is devoted to the interpretation of linguistic concepts “Day” and “Night” in the artistic texts of the classic of Russian poetry F.I. Tyutchev. The research is carried out in an interdisciplinary aspect based on the linguistic understanding of the concept and the interpretation of this concept in the literary study of the poetic text. In addition, the research uses corpus linguistics methods and corpus technologies for the analysis of a work of art. The relevance of the topic selection is due to the increasing interest of scientists in corpus studies of literary text. The research has a scientific novelty, which is justified by the insufficient development of algorithms for corpus research of poetic text, especially in terms of identifying concepts and their interpretation. The paper comprehensively reveals the theoretical foundations of the study of concepts in various aspects: linguistic, literary, corpus. The works of Kazakhstani scientists on the concepts on the basis of which the theoretical basis of the study is being built are reflected. The structure of the concept, its types and relationship with the author's idea are revealed. In the practical part, the interpretation of the concepts “Day” and “Night” in the lyrics of F.I. Tyutchev is presented, a corpus study is conducted to identify the frequency of use of a particular concept, the relationship of the concept with the thematic focus of the poem and its ideological content, interesting observations and conclusions are made. In addition to the theoretical substantiation of the problem of interpretation of artistic concepts in a poetic text, the paper presents an algorithm for the study of the concepts “Day” and “Night” in F.I. Tyutchev's poems, based on work with the RNC (Russian National Corpus).

An Analysis of the Mediating Role of Language in Education in the Context of Internationalisation of Education

In the context of the internationalization of education, multilingual language learning and teaching play a fundamental and very important role in the education system, where different groups learn a uniform curriculum based on different cultural backgrounds and linguistic understandings. This thesis analyses the reason for the imbalance of educational resources for minorities in the educational process. Multilingual teaching materials and related materials are outdated or unavailable. Groups learning through "bridge" languages do not acquire languages through their mother tongue, which makes the acquisition process difficult. On this basis, the thesis proposes to improve pedagogical diversity by increasing teachers' motivation to learn and teach multilingualism. The second is that the creation and enrichment of multilingual corpora and teaching materials can enhance research on multilingualism. The third is a way to reduce the quality gap with the majority population in education by promoting cooperation between universities companies and institutions.

The rational roles of experiences of utterance meanings

ABSTRACT The perennial question of the nature of natural-language understanding has received renewed attention in recent years. Two kinds of natural-language understanding, in particular, have captivated the interest of philosophers: linguistic understanding and utterance understanding. While the literature is rife with discussions of linguistic understanding and utterance understanding, the question of how the two types of understanding explanatorily depend on each other has received relatively scant attention. Exceptions include the linguistic ability/know-how views of linguistic understanding proposed by Dean Pettit and Brendan Balcerak Jackson. On these views, to tacitly linguistically understand a sentence just is to possess the linguistic ability/knowledge-how needed to derive/infer what is said by different utterances of the sentence. Despite their focus on linguistic understanding, both views can straightforwardly explain utterance understanding as the output of a derivation/inference from a representation of the sentence uttered. Here, I take issue with these approaches to utterance understanding and then develop an alternative. More specifically, I distinguish two kinds of utterance understanding, experiential and doxastic, and then argue that experiences of what is said by utterances play distinct rational roles in the two kinds of utterance understanding. I conclude by addressing a recent challenge to my proposal.

Language of Political Campaign: Unraveling the Linguistic Landscape in Billboard Advertisements

Billboard advertisements for legislative and senatorial campaigns are integral to the cityscape leading to the general elections, reflecting local political dynamics. This study examines the linguistic landscape in billboard advertisements for legislative and senator campaigns heading for the general election in Indonesia. A qualitative method was employed, gathering data from billboard advertisements across various city areas. Analysis was conducted on the language usage, stylistic features, word choice, sentence structure, and visual representations in these billboard advertisements. Findings indicate a variation in language usage, with standard Indonesian predominating but also a presence of local language mixtures. Stylistic features range from persuasive to informative, while word choice tends toward positively connotated terms. Sentence structures tend to be simple and direct, while visual representations emphasize the candidates and symbols reflecting political aspirations. These results depict candidates' complex communication strategies influencing voter opinions and attitudes. A profound understanding of this linguistic landscape is crucial for political observers and candidates to comprehend local political campaign dynamics and effective communication strategies. This study added a new dimension to understanding how political communication is manifested in public spaces. By focusing on billboards as an outdoor media, which often serves as a daily backdrop for many people, this study explores how language can effectively capture voters' attention and influence their political attitudes. Thus, this study is expected to significantly enrich the understanding of political linguistics and communication strategies in the context of election campaigns.

Towards Understanding Neural Machine Translation with Attention Heads’ Importance

Although neural machine translation has made great progress, and the Transformer has advanced the state-of-the-art in various language pairs, the decision-making process of the attention mechanism, a crucial component of the Transformer, remains unclear. In this paper, we propose to understand the model’s decisions by the attention heads’ importance. We explore the knowledge acquired by the attention heads, elucidating the decision-making process through the lens of linguistic understanding. Specifically, we quantify the importance of each attention head by assessing its contribution to neural machine translation performance, employing a Masking Attention Heads approach. We evaluate the method and investigate the distribution of attention heads’ importance, as well as its correlation with part-of-speech contribution. To understand the diverse decisions made by attention heads, we concentrate on analyzing multi-granularity linguistic knowledge. Our findings indicate that specialized heads play a crucial role in learning linguistics. By retaining important attention heads and removing the unimportant ones, we can optimize the attention mechanism. This optimization leads to a reduction in the number of model parameters and an increase in the model’s speed. Moreover, by leveraging the connection between attention heads and multi-granular linguistic knowledge, we can enhance the model’s interpretability. Consequently, our research provides valuable insights for the design of improved NMT models.

Text on Book Cover: Blurb as a Genre

This article examines the annotation to book editions as a genre of publishing discourse. The aim is to provide an overview of the existing linguistic understanding of the genre’s characteristics, its functional-pragmatic communicative specificity, as well as the features related to the linguistic and cultural traditions of book publishing. The material consists of scientific articles and monographs in Russian and English published from the early 2000s to the present, selected based on keywords. The first review of the degree of research and current directions in the study of the declared genre revealed a problem of an unsettled terminological designation of this genre both in domestic and foreign practice. An approach to differentiating existing terms is proposed and justified. The functions of texts in the genre of publishing annotation are summarized and systematized, with the functional duality of informing and persuasive impact proposed as the foundation. A small number of comparative and diachronic studies were identified, the results of which would be useful for justifying the ongoing transformation process within the studied genre, according to some linguists. The conclusion is drawn that the annotation to book editions is shifting from being a reference apparatus to the realm of marketing communication, advertising, and book promotion.

Mobilenet V3-transformer, a lightweight model for image caption

Image captioning is a task of generating natural language descriptions for images, which is important and challenging in computer vision. This task involves both visual and linguistic understanding, which makes it complex and difficult to solve. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient image captioning model, named MobileNet V3-Transformer (Mob-Tran), which combines the advantages of both convolutional and transformer architectures. Our model uses the improved MobileNet V3 and the transformer’s encoder as the encoder to extract and enhance visual features from images, and uses the transformer’s decoder as the decoder to generate captions based on the encoded features. The MobileNet V3 model used in this experiment has had its classifier removed. This experiment combined automatic and human evaluation to evaluate multiple models, including MobileNet V3-Transformer, using ten automatic evaluation metrics (BLEU_1, BLEU_2, BLEU_3, BLEU_4, CIDEr, ROUGE, METEOR, Model Storage Size, Model Training Time and Model Inference Time) and five human evaluation criteria (Grammaticality, Adequacy, Logic, Readability, and Humanness). The experimental results demonstrate that our model is capable of producing high-quality image captions with low complexity and high efficiency.

ASYNCHRONOUS AND SYNCHRONOUS СONTENT OF BLENDED LEARNING FOR PROSPECTIVE ENGLISH UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

The architecture of blended learning (BL) in the training of prospective English teachers in higher education establishments was illuminated, particularly emphasizing the synchronous and asynchronous content and learning modes, which are an integral basis for the development of their professionally oriented communicative competence (POCC). A multi-faceted methodological approach – encompassing analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization – served as the analytical lens for scrutinizing the extant scientific literature, undertaking categorical evaluations of core concepts, and delineating their interrelations. BL was positioned as a purposeful process of dissemination and assimilation of knowledge, enhancing an array of speech fluency, linguistic understanding, sociocultural awareness, educational and strategic competences, cognitive activities of Master’s degree students. It offers a nuanced hybridization of distance (remote) and traditional (conventional) learning paradigms, effectively enriching the learning process while enabling their independent (self-study) learning. A functional scheme of the content area of BL covers three generic notions and is considered as a multifarious interactive space that serves as a catalyst for educational synergy, fostering holistic interactions between students, teachers, and the curriculum, where two subcategories of asynchronous learning mode are distinguished: collaborative (group-based) and independent (individual-based). The research introduced a pedagogical blueprint encompassing a repertoire of synchronous and asynchronous learning modes that can be configured in the following varieties: synchronous-group, asynchronous-group, synchronous-individual, asynchronousindividual, virtual-synchronous and face-to-face-synchronous.

A Review of Interlanguage Fossilization in English Learning

The phenomenon of interlanguage fossilization, which is commonly observed during the process of acquiring a foreign language, signifies a barrier to further progress in language proficiency. This paper presents a comprehensive review and analysis of the phenomenon of interlanguage fossilization in the context of second language acquisition. Interlanguage fossilization refers to the stagnation of language learning progress, hindering further linguistic development in foreign language acquisition. The paper explores the defining characteristics, various types, and current research status related to interlanguage fossilization. It investigates the specific causes and manifestations of this phenomenon in second language acquisition, focusing on English language learning. The study further proposes practical measures to address interlanguage fossilization and enhance learners' proficiency. These measures include continual upgrading of teachers' knowledge base in fundamental English concepts, communicative skills, linguistic understanding, and knowledge of Anglo-American cultural backgrounds. Additionally, learners are encouraged to adopt a correct mindset, recognizing language learning as a long-term, continuous process requiring consistency and systematicity. The paper emphasizes the importance of vocabulary memorization, progressive learning approaches, repetition, and extensive practice to internalize the language and achieve effective and accurate language output. By implementing these strategies, learners can overcome interlanguage fossilization and make significant progress in their English language proficiency.

Exploring Hindko Indexicals: A Pragmatic Analysis with Implications for Language Teaching

The study aims to address the challenges faced by English language teachers and learners in multilingual contexts by examining the deictic expressions in Hindko, an under-documented and endangered language. In a world where linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened, documenting lesser-known languages like Hindko becomes imperative to preserve cultural heritage and enrich linguistic understanding. This research focuses on the comparative analysis of deictic expressions in Hindko and English, specifically exploring person, spatial, and temporal deixis. By elucidating the differences between these languages' deictic systems, the study aims to equip English language teachers with insights into potential pitfalls Hindko-speaking learners may encounter when acquiring English deixis. Moreover, the research identifies common errors made by Hindko-speaking learners and provides strategies for addressing these challenges in English language teaching. Additionally, the study enhances linguistic knowledge by delving into the intricacies of marking numbers and gender on Hindko indexical, offering learners and language teachers a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity and cultural nuances. Through its findings, this research contributes to the broader scope of English Language Teaching by fostering cross-linguistic awareness, promoting cultural sensitivity, and enhancing language instruction in diverse educational settings. Keywords: Deixis; deictic expression_indexical.

Commonsense Knowledge in Foundation and Large Language Models

The development and continuous expansion of the transformer deep-learning architecture have produced enormous effects across various domains, including but not limited to natural language processing. The power of deep learning models has sparked a fresh interest in commonsense knowledge, which has been aided by transformer-based language models. Most of the recent research has concentrated on delving into the commonsense already built into these models' pre-trained parameters and finding ways to fill in any gaps in commonsense utilizing knowledge graphs and fine-tuning. In order to broaden a limited commonsense knowledge network that was originally generated solely from visual data, we are building on the demonstrated linguistic understanding of extremely large transformer-based language models. Compared to language models that are fine-tuned on a huge starting corpus, few-shotprompted pre-trained models are able to acquire the context of an initial knowledge graph with less bias. It has also been demonstrated that these models can contribute novel ideas to the visual knowledge networkIt is a new development in the field of commonsense knowledge generation that, as far as we can tell, can lead to a fivefold decrease in cost when compared to the current state of the art. Fuzzy language names assigned to the produced triples are another addition. Applying knowledge graphs as a framework, the procedure is comprehensive. It implies that the triples are expressed in natural language, analyzed, and then added to the commonsense knowledge network as triples again.