Structure Of Utterances Research Articles

Semantic structure of thematic utterances as a phatic unit for establishing initial speech contact (on examples from Russian and Bulgarian literary texts)

Semantic structure of thematic utterances as a phatic unit for establishing initial speech contact (on examples from Russian and Bulgarian literary texts)

Intonation cues to English public discourse perception

The study considers the discourse functions of intonation and identifies a few problems and contradictions in the current theories of intonation functioning. Particular attention is paid to such issues as the multiple functions of nuclear tones, pitch declination in utterances and perceptual identification of spoken paragraphs. An attempt has been made to handle these problems in the context of English public speeches delivered in the format of TED talks. The purpose of the auditory analysis of discourse intonation in these talks is to check the perceptual reliability of intonation cues in processing spoken discourse and the possibility of using intonation as an on-line perception strategy. The methods applied in the research are descriptive, auditory and comparative, supported by a certain amount of quantitative data. The results obtained in the auditory analysis show that intonation cues work most effectively at the level of intonation groups and utterances but are not self-sufficient in paragraph identification. The leading function of nuclear tones in public discourse organization turns out to be the information structuring of utterances, which is occasionally interrupted by the attitudinal function. Pitch declination has been found to be one of the most important cues to the integrity and cohesion of utterances, with an average length of three-four intonation groups. Multiple declinations in spoken utterances are infrequent and are triggered by particular types of syntactic relations in elongated sentences. The study contributes to the linguistic description of discourse intonation, and its results can be beneficial for language teaching practice and automated speech synthesis.

Vocal and early speech development in Korean-acquiring children with hearing loss and typical hearing

ABSTRACT This study investigated the vocal and early speech development of Korean-acquiring children with hearing loss (HL) who underwent early auditory amplification compared to their typical hearing (TH) counterparts. The research focused on phonological characteristics of child vocalisation based on samples collected from naturalistic home environments. One-day home recordings using a Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) recorder were obtained from 6 children with HL and 12 children with TH who ranged from 17 to 23 months of age in Korean monolingual environments. Child volubility, canonical babbling ratio (CBR), consonant distributions, and utterance structures of vocalisations were evaluated through qualitative and quantitative analyses of vocalisation samples collected from LENA recordings. The findings revealed that children with HL displayed comparable vocalisation levels to children with TH, with no significant differences in volubility and CBR. In consonant and utterance shape inventories, noticeable quantitative and qualitative differences were observed between children with HL and those with TH. The study also suggested both universal and language-specific production patterns, revealing the early effects of ambient language on consonant distributions and utterance structures within their vocalisation repertoire. This study emphasised the role of auditory input and the importance of early auditory amplification to support speech development in children with HL.

REFLECTION OF UZBEK-RUSSIAN BILINGUISM IN THE SPEECH OF RESIDENTS OF UZBEKISTAN

This article presents a study on the implementation of Uzbek-Russian bilingualism in the speech of residents of Uzbekistan. The study is based on the analysis of language data collected during a survey of residents of various regions of the country. The article examines the influence of bilingualism on the lexical composition, grammar and structure of utterances of the Uzbek-speaking population who use Russian in everyday communication. Particular attention is paid to the mechanisms of language switching and the influence of context on the choice of language in specific communication situations. The results obtained allow us to better understand the dynamics of the use of two languages in the multilingual society of Uzbekistan and deepen knowledge about the language practice of the country's residents.

The Predictability of Naturalistic Evaluation of All-Day Recordings for Speech and Language Development.

The study aimed to investigate the predictive potential of language environment and vocal development status measures obtained through integrated analysis of Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) recordings during the prelinguistic stage for subsequent speech and language development in Korean-acquiring children. Specifically, this study explored whether measures from both LENA-automated analysis and human coding at 6-8 months and 12-14 months of age predict vocabulary and phonological development at 18-20 months. One-day home recordings from 20 children were collected using a LENA recorder at 6-8 months, 12-14 months, and 18-20 months. Both LENA-automated measures and measures from human coding were obtained from recordings at 6-8 months and 12-14 months. The number of different words, consonant inventory, and utterance structure inventory were identified from recordings of 18-20 months. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed to investigate whether measures related to early language environment and child vocalization at 6-8 months and 12-14 months were predictive of vocabulary and phonological measures at 18-20 months. The results showed that the two main LENA-automated measures, conversational turn count (CTC) and child vocalization count, were positively correlated with all vocabulary and phonological measures at 18-20 months. Multiple regression analysis revealed that CTC during the prelinguistic stages was the most significant predictor of a number of different words, consonant inventory, and utterance structure inventory at 18-20 months. Also, adult word count in LENA-automated measures, child-directed speech ratio, and canonical babbling ratio measured by human coding significantly predicted some vocabulary and phonological measures at 18-20 months. This study highlights the multifaceted nature of language acquisition and collectively emphasizes the value of considering both quantitative and qualitative aspects of language input to understand early language development in children.

Strengthening the Prohibitive Illocutionary Function Through Conversation Implicatures of the Main Characters of the Web Series My Lecturer My Husband Season 2

Conversational implicature is able to strengthen the contradictory illocutionary function. This paper aims to describe information on strengthening the illocutionary function through conversational implicatures by analyzing the language and sentence structure of the main character's utterances. This research use desciptive qualitative approach. The object of this research is implicitly determined through the utterances of the main characters Arya and Inggit who play “My Lecturer My Husband Season 2” taken from webseries media. The data taken was in the form of words and sentences implied in Arya's conversation/dialogue with Inggit. Data collection techniques used free-involved listening (SBLC), notes/transliteration techniques, and content analysis techniques. Method triangulation is used to examine several combinations of methods/techniques in research related to testing the credibility and validity of data. The process of data analysis was carried out by describing all the uses of conversational implicatures in strengthening the speech of contradictory/unusual illocutionary functions. The results of this study indicate that the language variations in the utterances conveyed by the main characters Arya and Inggit in the webseries "My Lecturer My Husband Season 2" prove that there are many implicit/hidden utterances uttered by the two of them with specific intentions. Conversational implicatures in the webseries "My Lecturer My Husband Season 2" include conversational implicatures forbidding, refusing, complaining, and affirming as well as strengthening the illocutionary function of changes in sentence structure (prohibition-asking), (prohibition-threats), (prohibition-innuendo), (prohibition-command), (ban-affirmation).

Viewing Intentional Teaching Gestures: The Impact on Learners’ Japanese Output

Intentional Teaching Gestures are gestures that have been created as a pedagogical tool for second language teaching and learning and are used in many Japanese programs. Despite their widespread use, little is known about their impact on students’ oral language production. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the effect of Intentional Teaching Gestures on students’ Japanese production. This paper reports on the quality of students’ oral language production from two Story Re-tell tasks, one with and one without viewing Intentional Teaching Gestures (ITG), after learning Japanese as a second language with ITG. Thematic analysis was undertaken of the Story Re-tell transcription data from 170 primary school participants. Findings identify that viewing ITG whilst doing Story Re-tell positively impacted learners’ oral production. The breadth of benefits included increases in the quantity of output that students produced, the expanded informational content included in their stories, and students’ increased use of a range of verbs and particles in their utterances. Viewing ITG also provided support for students’ structuring of utterances, supported self correction, and led to an improvement in their overall oral performance. These benefits have wide ranging pedagogical implications for Japanese teachers and learners.

Natural language processing-driven framework for the early detection of language and cognitive decline

Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology has the potential to provide a non-invasive, cost-effective method using a timely intervention for detecting early-stage language and cognitive decline in individuals concerned about their memory. The proposed pre-screening language and cognition assessment model (PST-LCAM) is based on the functional linguistic model Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) to analyse and represent the structure and meaning of utterances, via a set of language production and cognition parameters. The model is trained on a DementiaBank dataset with markers of cognitive decline aligned to the global deterioration scale (GDS). A hybrid approach of qualitative linguistic analysis and assessment is applied, which includes the mapping of participants´ tasks of speech utterances and words to RRG phenomena. It uses a metric-based scoring with resulting quantitative scores and qualitative indicators as pre-screening results. This model is to be deployed in a user-centred conversational assessment platform.

Generic structure and pragmatic acts in Yoruba traditional weddings in Southwestern Nigeria

This paper investigates the generic structure and pragmatic acts (practs) in Yoruba traditional weddings from southwestern Nigeria. Three purposively selected weddings are qualitatively analysed, using the Generic Structure Potential and a modified form of the pragmatic act theory. The study reveals that the practs of praying, instructing, pleading and counselling are deployed within nine structural elements. These practs incorporate psychological and non-verbal acts as well as contextual features such as reference, metaphor, shared situational and cultural knowledge. The paper shows that the generic structure and pragmatic functions of utterances offer valuable insights into the procedure and discourse of Yoruba traditional weddings.

Enriching the dialogue state tracking model with a asyntactic discourse graph

Dialogue state tracking is a key component of a task-oriented dialogue system. Recently, pretrained language models are widely used to track a dialogue state by generating or extracting values from a dialogue. These models have a shortcoming that they can explicitly encode contextual information of a dialogue. In this paper, we present a Syntactically ENriched Discourse Dialogue State Tracking model (SEND-DST) that fully leverages the discourse and syntax information of a dialogue. Our model consists of two parts: a dialogue encoding module and a slot-value extraction module. To provide a model with syntactic structures of utterances and the discourse flow of a dialogue, we devise a Syntactic Discourse (SD) graph using the dependency trees of the utterances. Experimental results show that SEND-DST achieves state-of-the-art results on multiple datasets, such as MultiWOZ 2.1, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Besedni red v slovenskem narečnem diskurzu

Besednemu redu se v slovenskem jezikoslovju v preteklosti ni posvečalo veliko pozornosti, čeprav je prva razprava na to temo izšla že v letih 1891–1892. Napisal jo je Matija Murko, ki je obravnaval besedni red pri naslonkah in naslonskem nizu. Večina razprav je v preteklosti analizirala besedni red v umetnostnih besedilih, šele v zadnjih petnajstih letih pa se na Slovenskem pojavljajo tudi razprave o besednem redu v spontanih govorjenih besedilih.Pričujoči prispevek obravnava besedni red v govorjenem narečnem jeziku glede na pravila stalne stave v slovenskem knjižnem jeziku, pri čemer se osredotoča samo na izbrana pravila stalne stave. Analiza besedil iz vseh slovenskih narečnih skupin je pokazala, da besednoredne značilnosti slovenskih narečnih govorjenih besedil lahko razdelimo v tri skupine. Prva skupina značilnosti, kot npr. izhodiščni položaj naslonk v izreku, je značilna za besedila iz vseh narečnih skupin, zato lahko rečemo, da gre za splošno značilnost slovenskega narečnega diskurza. Druga skupina zajema značilnosti, ki jih najdemo samo v besedilih določene narečne skupine, npr. ločena stava členka ne in glagola v primorskih narečjih ter stava preteklega deležnika glagola biti na koncu izreka v panonski narečni skupini. Tovrstne značilnosti lahko razumemo kot posebne značilnosti posameznih slovenskih narečnih diskurzov. Tretja skupina značilnosti pa so tiste značilnosti, ki jih sicer najdemo v besedilih vseh narečnih skupin, vendar pa se razlikujejo v pogostosti rabe, npr. stava levega ujemalnega pridevniškega prilastka in desnega samostalniškega prilastka in predložne zveze v samostalniški besedni zvezi ter stava osebne in neosebne glagolske oblike na koncu izreka. Pogostost rabe je v takih primerih tisto merilo, ki pokaže, ali je besednoredna značilnost ustaljena in jo zato lahko razumemo kot ustaljeno besednoredno različico v narečju oziroma narečno besednoredno pravilo ali pa je sporadična in kot taka rezultat osnovne zakonitosti govorjenega jezika, tj. kratkega načrtovalnega časa, ki ne dopušča premišljenega strukturiranja izrekov.

Syntactic Theory Perception on Language Acquisition

This paper focuses on identifying the syntactic theory perception on acquiring first language. The paper highlights the role and function of language syntactic structure in childhood on acquiring first language from birth and using it in communicative situations in reality later. The paper, however, emphasizes the impact of grammatical development, focusing mainly on nativist and usage-based, on acquiring first language. The paper bases its hypotheses and assumptions on Chomsky’s universal grammar and transformation grammar theories. The study, moreover, exposes language as a symbolic system and how it is formed in mind from birth, focusing mainly on the difference between human language and animal sounds. A brief idea about linguistic and communicative competence is presented to associate them to first language acquisition. the study concludes that grammar, which is part of the syntactic theory, is concerned with discovering the principles and sets of rules used for governing the structures of utterances and sentences. These principles and sets of rules constitute what is called linguistic competence of language. This linguistic competence is what helps children acquire their first language.

Predicting Speech and Language Development at 18-20 Months from Automated Language ENvironment Analysis Measures

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore whether automated measures from Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) at 6-8 months and 12-14 months of age predict speech and language development at 18-20 months.Methods: One-day home recordings from 18 children were collected using a LENA recorder at 6-8, 12-14, 18-20 months. Three automated measures; adult word count (AWC), conversational turn count (CTC), and child vocalization count (CVC); were obtained from recordings at 6-8 and 12-14 months. Number of different words (NDW), consonant inventory, and utterance structure inventory were identified from recordings of 18-20 months. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were performed to investigate whether automated measures of LENA at 6-8 and 12-14 months were predictive of speech and word measures at 18-20 months.Results: The results showed that CTC and CVC were positively correlated with all speech and word measures at 18-20 months. Multiple regression analysis revealed that CTC at 6-8 months could significantly predict NDW, consonant inventory, and utterance structure inventory at 18-20 months. Also, CTC, AWC, and CVC at 12-14 months could predict NDW at 18-20 months and CTC at 12-14 months could predict consonant inventory and utterance structure inventory at 18-20 months.Conclusion: This study highlights that conversational interactions between infants and caregivers have positive effects on children’s later speech and language outcomes and confirms that early language environment plays a critical role in child speech and language development.

Common Errors in English Aphasic Discourse

The article generalizes the results of research directed onto singling out the common errors in speech of aphasic patients. Aphasia is characterized by partial or complete loss of speech and is caused by damage in the language areas (Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas). A lesion in the middle part of the patient’s left frontal lobe results in Broca’s aphasia and the damage to the left posterior superior temporal gyrus is referred to as Wernicke’s aphasia. The major causes of aphasia are strokes, cortical vein thrombosis, traumas of skull and brain, brain infections, tumors, etc. The research is based on the language-in-use descriptive approach to discourse analysis and presents an investigation of 40 documentary video recordings of aphasic patients’ speech (free narration and dialogues); the overall duration of the recordings is 180 minutes. The inclusion criterion was aphasia of any type in adulthood. All the patients are English-speaking people (English being their native language) recovering from aphasia. The analysis was done according to the following criteria: intelligibility, coherence, cohesion, grammatical structure of utterances, prosody and intonation, thus combining formalist (or structuralist) and functionalist research paradigms. The research has shown that the most common errors that aphasic patients make when speaking are as follows: syntactic errors, articulatory errors, lexical misuse and slow speech rate. Syntactic and articulatory errors prevail (55% and 50% of all the studied cases respectively), whereas 37.5% of the speakers demonstrated slow speech rate. The speech of 75% of people with aphasia is incoherent. The patients’ verbal performance is marked with extensive use of pronouns and repetition of words and phrases.

Translating Arabic Poetic Riddles into English: An Approach in Qualitative Studies

A riddle is a question that usually occurs in prose and poetic form. The composition of poetic riddles is complicated since it encompasses trick structure of English utterances that require more efforts and deep thinking on the part of readers to reach the intention of the riddle maker. The present study investigated the interpretation of utterances in poetic riddles when translated into English. The main objective was to extend the tricky utterances in poetic riddles to obtain the intention of the riddle maker through translation. To achieve this target, a Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1986; 1995) was adopted to cognitively interpret how the poetic riddles worked through translation. Then, Bach’s (1994) Ambiguity was also used to explain the meaning that fell under a word, phrase or even a statement. Finally, Gutt’s (1991; 1998; 2000) notion on the directness and indirectness of the interpretation was employed. Overall, the results showed that Arabic poetic riddles included ambiguous words as well as implicit meanings that require decoding to gain the intent word made by the riddle maker. Furthermore, Arabic poetic riddles are full of attribute words to help getting the intent word.

Functions of Russian verb-derived discourse markers slušaj and smotri from the perspective of information management and interpersonal regulation

While a significant amount of research related to discourse markers in the Russian language has been devoted to particles, very few scholars have focused on verb-derived discourse markers such as slušaj (‘listen’), smotri (‘look’), znaeš’ (‘y'know’), ponimaeš’ (‘d'you understand’), and vidiš’ (‘d'you see’). In this paper, I focus on slušaj and smotri, exploring their functions of information management and interpersonal regulation in talk-in-interaction. Based on data collected from YouTube interview videos, I examine the features of slušaj and smotri in terms of speaker roles, position in utterances, utterance structure, and lexical co-occurrence. A qualitative analysis supported by quantitative results shows how slušaj and smotri perform their information management and interpersonal functions in requesting/providing information, reformulating utterances, establishing contact, and indicating empathy. Considering the similarities and differences observed from the analysis, the results of this study suggest that slušaj is likely to be an interpersonal marker typical of response utterances, while smotri is an information-oriented marker leading a hearer to understand an utterance.

Sentence topics in Italian: An analysis on the CHROME Corpus

The present study deals with the phonetic description of sentence topics in Italian tourist guides’ speech. Topical coherence characterizes the communicative strategies that human experts adopt when delivering contents to the visitors of cultural sites. Topical progression, which ensures temporal, spatial, and referential continuity, is frequently expressed by sentence topics as well. The relevant literature generally supports the idea of a topic accent and a rising-falling (or “hat”) contour is described as the most frequent for the unmarked topic in Italian utterance structures, but other realizations are also possible. The hypothesis that we want to test in this work is whether this variability is due to specific factors. Hence, we investigate phonetic realization of sentence topics as a function of syntactic features -structure, function and weight- and textual-pragmatic features -discourse role considering ±aboutness, ±contrastiveness, ±givenness-. Specifically, tonal events, i.e., accents and boundaries, phonetic phrasing, and disfluency phenomena were investigated. Results show that both syntactic and pragmatic factors play a role in the phonetic realization of topics, though they act at different levels. In particular, disfluencies are found to be affected by syntactic weight and givenness, while tonal events seem to depend mainly on the discourse role.

Morphological Means in Russian: Clarification of the Concept

The concept of “morphological / grammatical means” is widely used in studies on the Russian language, although there is no generally accepted interpretation. This work analyzes the reflection of this concept in Russian studies and clarifies the status of those linguistic units that are traditionally referred to as morphological means: form-building affixes, alternating sounds (internal inflection), stress, supplementary word stems, auxiliary words, intonation, as well as word order. Our research has shown that these linguistic units have different functional status in the morphological structure of the Russian language. First, these are categorical, or actually morphological, means, represented by formative affixes and auxiliary words. They are carriers of morphological meanings in the structure of abstracted morphological forms – the basic units of inflectional Russian morphology. Secondly, a non-categorical means, syncretic and accidental for morphology, are supplementary stems that contain not only lexical, but also morphological meaning and thus duplicate the expression of morphological information in a word form with a form-building affix. Thirdly, these are linguistic units that are not elements of the morphological structure, but have morphological significance, which is manifested in their ability to differentiate homonymous morphological forms in the structure of word forms (alternating sounds and stress) or utterances (intonation). Word order can also perform a similar function. The study allows us to clarify the definition of the concept under consideration: morphological means are linguistic units that are carriers of morphological meanings and constituents of morphological forms.

Le discours argumentatif chez Christine de Pizan: genèse de l’énoncé complexe

The aim of this study is to characterize the structuring of complex utterance in Christine de Pizan’s writing and to situate the syntax of this utterance in relation to that of the authors of her time. We will examine mainly the role of this complex utterance structure in argumentative text. Two particular syntactic aspects are thus taken into consideration: on the one hand, the topicalization of a clause, which makes it possible to connect clausal content with a comment, in particular in refutative pattern, on the other hand, the correlative structures, strongly influenced by Latin prose, whether it be the classical oratory period or the mediaeval legal Latin. With regard to the first point, it will be observed how the articulation of the topic and the commentary leads to a hierarchisation of the clause, which distinguishes Christine’s syntax from that of many authors of that time, whose writing is characterized on this point by anacoluthon. The examination of these aspects of the argumentative text shows the presence of two opposing tendencies in Christine’s prose, on the one hand the use of simple linking of clauses by “enunciative linking” without clear hierarchisation, on the other hand the more or less marked integration of topicalized dependent clause, construction which is coherent with the progressive structuring of a unit corresponding to the “complex sentence”.

Rhetorical Codes of Political Discourse: the Realization of the Strategic Potential of Acrothesis

Pragmatics and expressiveness of texts are formed through rhetorical devices. However, when evaluating the potential of specific rhetorical devices, one should consider the discourse characteristics of the text. Modern linguistics draws attention to the suggestive nature of the rhe-torical devices that form the structure of utterances. In this regard, there is an increasing interest in in-depth analysis of rhetorical techniques used to implement high impact strategies. A systematic study of rhetorical devices within a certain discourse would give a clearer idea of their rhetorical function. Specific strategies can be understood by examining rhetorical devices in the context of the pragmatics and the genre of a given text. Thus, information about a specific rhetorical device is converted from separate independent facts into a conditional sign unity, or a code. Given the discourse specificity of this code, linguists describe it as “rhetorical.” By analyzing the text, we identify the rhetorical code of the discourse in question. The more rhetorical devices used in the discourse are considered, the more rhetorical codes can be used to form new speech strategies. In this article, we consider the implementation of acrothesis in political discourse. Acrothesis is a rhetorical device based on the relationship of affirming something at the expense of denying its opposite. It is implemented through utilizing homogeneous members of the sentence with the obligatory negation of the opposite in meaning. Perceiving the structure and content of the rhetorical device reveals the perlocutionary purpose of the utterance, and analyzing the rhetorical device allows us to understand its properties and to identify which speech strategies are implemented by using acrothesis. Primarily, these are strategies of persuasion, persuasion, and manipulation. Principles of implementing speech strategies are important for understanding the structure of political discourse.