Words Research Articles

Developing Chinese lexical representations in Korean learner’s mind

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The present research explores whether Korean learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels employ distinct processing strategies when processing Chinese words with identical or different orthographic representations. Design/methodology/approach: In this research, two experimental studies were carried out to examine how Korean learners with different Chinese language proficiency process orthography, pronunciation, and meanings of Chinese written words. Data and analysis: Reaction times and error rates were analyzed for each study. Revised hierarchical model (RHM) and Ontogenesis Model (OM) are the major models used to analyze and discuss the results. Findings/conclusions: The findings of the phonological task reveal that intermediate-level participants utilize first language mediators to access second language (L2) words, whereas high-level participants can directly activate L2 phonological representations without first language interference. Conversely, in the semantic task, participants from both proficiency levels seem to adopt the word association model regardless of orthographic representations. Originality: The originality of the present study lies in its examination of the processing strategies employed by Korean learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels, specifically when processing Chinese words with identical or different orthographic representations. Significance/implications: These findings suggest that L2 proficiency does not guarantee the elimination of native language influence on L2 lexical processing and various factors can affect L2 lexical processing. To improve L2 lexical learning, it is recommended to start language learning early, increase vocabulary size, and enhance exposure to L2 words.

A dataset of behavioral measures on Chinese word production in picture naming

Most studies of language production have been conducted with speakers of alphabetic languages, but relatively little research has examined languages with non-alphabetic scripts, such as Chinese. Moreover, most work on language word production has investigated phonological output processing (i.e., speaking), whereas comparatively little research has focused on orthographic output, such as writing and typing. Work on non-alphabetic languages and/or written production is particularly promising, given that it speaks to universalities vs. specificity in terms of architectures and mechanisms underlying language processing across all world languages and modalities. The current article reports a dataset of word production in Chinese with spoken and written responses, which includes reaction times of 193,851 trials of naming 403 pictures obtained from 667 participants across 23 Chinese word production experiments. All data were collected in the same experimental environment and from participants with relatively homogenous characteristics, using the same protocols and parameters. The dataset enables researchers to explore how Chinese speakers produce spoken and/or written words, and to identify language-specific features underlying word production.

Word Sense Disambiguation applied to Assamese-Hindi Bilingual Statistical Machine Translation

Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is concerned with automatically assigning the appropriate sense to an ambiguous word. WSD is an important task and plays a crucial role in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. A Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system translates a source into a target language based on phrase-based statistical translation. MT plays a crucial role in a WSD system, as a source language word may be associated with multiple translations in the target language. This study aims to apply WSD to the input of the MT system to enhance the disambiguation output. Hindi WordNet was used by selecting the most frequent synonym to obtain the most accurate translation. This study also compared Naïve Bayes (NB) and Decision Tree (DT) to test and build a WSD model. NB was more appropriate for the WSD task than DT when evaluated in the Weka machine learning toolkit. To the best of our knowledge, no such work has been carried out yet for the Assamese Indo-Aryan language. The applied WSD achieved better results than the baseline MT system without embedding the WSD module. The results were analyzed by linguist scholars. Furthermore, the Assamese-Hindi transliteration system was merged with the baseline MT system for the translation of proper nouns. This study marks a remarkable contribution to Assamese NLP, which is a low computationally aware Indian language.

Semantic and functional features of hybrid words in the modern Kazakh language

Semantic and functional features of hybrid words in the modern Kazakh language

Indigenous living and its relationship with the landscape

"This article seeks to weave relationships between living, the landscape, and the original peoples, especially the Mbyá Guarani[1] from Southern Brazil. We seek to relate the beings and elements that make up the landscape and are present in their narratives of origin and in the constructive forms they create to inhabit this landscape by transforming its components into architecture and places of conviviality. An ethnographic approach was used, including observations, dialogs, and journeys through the landscapes. Publications by indigenous and non-indigenous authors are interdisciplinary theoretical references that help these reflections. It is understood that the relationship between indigenous peoples and the landscape is ancestral, linked to their memories, narratives, and cosmologies. The constructive forms through which they inhabit the landscape reveal affection and a feeling of belonging and kinship with the elements that are part of it. In conclusion, it is perceived that the experienced wisdom of indigenous peoples about the landscape since time immemorial offers lessons to rethink our relationship with the planet as a whole. [1] Note on the spelling of indigenous terms: words in indigenous languages do not have a plural, so when referring to a people we use a capital letter in the singular (e.g.: the Guarani); while the use as an adjective is in lower case (e.g.: Guarani school). The other terms are based on the Guarani Lexicon by Dooley (2013). The forms used by the Guarani authors are respected and, in the case of quotations from other authors, the form used by them is maintained."

Video research in language classrooms: activities and target language use in early language learning

ABSTRACT A compulsory foreign language in Finland starts now in Grade 1 instead of Grade 3. The change has forced teachers to adopt new teaching methods. As young learners are not yet literate, teaching should focus on oral skills and awareness of diversity. Video data from 19 early foreign language lessons of five English, German, or French teachers in Grades 1 and 2 were analyzed to investigate what methods and activities were employed and how the target language was used. The teachers used various engaging, multisensory activities that were mostly teacher-led and done together with the whole class. Two teachers used plenty of target language while three used mostly Finnish. Besides singing, pupils generally produced single target language words while prefabricated longer expressions were rarer. It is important for teachers to consider activities from the perspective of language use so that pupils’ exposure to and practice of the target language are maximized.

Revisiting the Latin vocabulary of Terminologia Histologica: I. Nouns.

Almost 20% of the Latin nouns (193/993) in Terminologia Histologica (TH), the international standard nomenclature for human histology and cytology, display linguistic problems, particularly in the areas of orthography, gender, and declension. Some anatomists have opposed efforts to restore the quality of the Latin nomenclature as pedantry, preferring to create or modify Latin words so that they resemble words in English and other modern languages. A Latin microanatomical nomenclature is vulnerable to the criticism of anachronism, so the requirement for the use of authentic Latin, including derivation of new words from Greek and Latin words rather than from modern languages, if possible, may be even greater than it is for the anatomical nomenclature. The most common problem identified here appears to have been caused by derivation of Latin nouns by addition of -us and -um second declension endings to English words. Many Latin nouns (128) in TH contain one of six morphemes that have been treated this way even though the original Greek words are either first declension masculine or third declension neuter nouns. Ironically, deriving Latin nouns directly from Greek morphemes often results in words that look more familiar to speakers of Romance and Germanic languages than those derived indirectly through modern languages (e.g., astrocyte, collagene, dendrita, lipochroma, osteoclasta and telomere instead of astrocytus, collagenum, dendritum, lipochromum, osteoclastus, and telomerus).

Anorexia nervosa through the lens of a severe and enduring experience: 'lost in a big world'.

Severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN), is a serious and persistent illness, despite 'state of the art' treatment. Criteria have been theoretically proposed, but not tested, and may not adequately capture illness complexity, which potentially inhibits treatment refinements. The clinical reality of death as an outcome for some people who experience SE-AN (1 in 20) and broadening access to voluntary assisted dying, further complicates the field, which is undeveloped regarding more fundamental concepts such as nosology, treatment, recovery definitions and alternative conceptualisations of SE-AN. The present paper is in response to this and aims to build upon qualitative literature to enhance phenomenological understandings of fatal SE-AN. A published book, being the legacy of a 32-year-old professional artist offers a rich account of a life lived with AN, for 18years with continuous treatment. A polysemous narrative via the interrelationship between the languages of the artist's words and visual art is translated via interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), offering rich insight into the SE-AN experience. The process of analysis induced three superordinate themes (1) Disappearing Self (2) Dialectical Dilemma (3) Death and Dying: Finding Meaning. Two cross cutting themes traversed these themes: (a) Colour and (b) Shifting Hope, where the former produced a visual representation via the 'SE-AN Kaleidoscope'. Collectively the themes produce a concept of SE-AN, grounded in the data and depicted visually through the artist's paintings. The picture of SE-AN revealed in the analysis extends upon conceptualisations of SE-AN, highlighting key processes which are thus far under explored. These factors are implicated in illness persistence eliciting opportunities for further research testing including diagnostic considerations and treatment directions. In SE-AN, distorted body image extends to a global distortion in the perception of self. Additional criteria for the severe and enduring stages of illness related to (1) self and identity processes (2) measures of 'global impoverishment' across life domains are proposed for consideration in the future testing of putative defining features of SE-AN.

How first- and second-language emotion words influence emotion perception in Swedish–English bilinguals

Abstract Emotional experiences are often dulled in one's second language. We tested whether emotion concepts are more strongly associated with first language (L1) than second language (L2) emotion words. Participants (140 L1-Swedish–L2-English bilinguals) saw a facial expression of an emotion (cue) followed by a target, which could either be another facial expression, an L1 emotion word, or an L2 emotion word. Participants indicated whether the cue and target represented the same or different emotions as fast as possible. Participants were faster and more accurate in both the L1 and L2 word conditions compared to the face condition. However, no significant differences emerged between the L1 and L2 word conditions, suggesting that emotion concepts are not more strongly associated with L1 than L2 emotion words. These results replicate prior research showing that L1 emotion words speed facial emotion perception and provide initial evidence that words (not only first language words) shape emotion perception.

The role of translation equivalents in bilingual word learning.

Bilingual environments present an important context for word learning. One feature of bilingual environments is the existence of translation equivalents (TEs)-words in different languages that share similar meanings. Documenting TE learning over development may give us insight into the mechanisms underlying word learning in young bilingual children. Prior studies of TE learning have often been confounded by the fact that increases in overall vocabulary size with age lead to greater opportunities for learning TEs. To address this confound, we employed an item-level analysis, which controls for the age trajectory of each item independently. We used Communicative Development Inventory data from four bilingual datasets (two English-Spanish and two English-French; total N=419) for modeling. Results indicated that knowing a word's TE increased the likelihood of knowing that word for younger children and for TEs that are more similar phonologically. These effects were consistent across datasets, but varied across lexical categories. Thus, TEs may allow bilingual children to bootstrap their early word learning in one language using their knowledge of the other language. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Bilingual children must learn words that share a common meaning across both languages, that is, translation equivalents, like dog in English and perro in Spanish. Item-level models explored how translation equivalents affect word learning, in addition to child-level (e.g., exposure) and item-level (e.g., phonological similarity) factors. Knowing a word increased the probability of knowing its corresponding translation equivalent, particularly for younger children and for more phonologically-similar translation equivalents. These findings suggest that young bilingual children use their word knowledge in one language to bootstrap their learning of words in the other language.

The Association Between Linguistic Characteristics of Physicians' Communication and Their Economic Returns: Mixed Method Study.

Web-based health care has the potential to improve health care access and convenience for patients with limited mobility, but its success depends on active physician participation. The economic returns of internet-based health care initiatives are an important factor that can motivate physicians to continue their participation. Although several studies have examined the communication patterns and influences of web-based health consultations, the correlation between physicians' communication characteristics and their economic returns remains unexplored. This study aims to investigate how the linguistic features of 2 modes of physician-patient communication, instrumental and affective, determine the physician's economic returns, measured by the honorarium their patients agree to pay per consultation. We also examined the moderating effects of communication media (web-based text messages and voice messages) and the compounding effects of different communication features on economic returns. We collected 40,563 web-based consultations from 528 physicians across 4 disease specialties on a large, web-based health care platform in China. Communication features were extracted using linguistic inquiry and word count, and we used multivariable linear regression and K-means clustering to analyze the data. We found that the use of cognitive processing language (ie, words related to insight, causation, tentativeness, and certainty) in instrumental communication and positive emotion-related words in affective communication were positively associated with the economic returns of physicians. However, the extensive use of discrepancy-related words could generate adverse effects. We also found that the use of voice messages for service delivery magnified the effects of cognitive processing language but did not moderate the effects of affective processing language. The highest economic returns were associated with consultations in which the physicians used few expressions related to negative emotion; used more terms associated with positive emotions; and later, used instrumental communication language. Our study provides empirical evidence about the relationship between physicians' communication characteristics and their economic returns. It contributes to a better understanding of patient-physician interactions from a professional-client perspective and has practical implications for physicians and web-based health care platform executives.

Quantitative methods for group bibliotherapy research: a pilot study

Background Bibliotherapy is under-theorized and under-tested: Its purposes and implementations vary widely, and the idea that ‘reading is good for you’ is often more assumed than demonstrated. One obstacle to developing robust empirical and theoretical foundations for bibliotherapy is the absence of analytical methods capable of providing sensitive yet replicable insights into complex textual material. This pilot study offers a proof-of-concept for new quantitative methods including VAD (valence–arousal–dominance) modelling of emotional variance and doc2vec modelling of linguistic similarity. Methods VAD and doc2vec modelling were used on conjunction with qualitative coding to analyse transcripts of reading-group discussions plus the literary texts being discussed, from two reading groups each meeting weekly for six weeks (including 9 participants [5 researchers (3 authors, 2 collaborators), 4 others] in Group 1, and 8 participants [2 authors, 6 others] in Group 2). Results In-text–discussion similarity was inversely correlated with emotional volatility in the group discussions (arousal: r = -0.25; p = ns; dominance: r = 0.21; p = ns; valence: r = -0.28; p = ns). Enjoyment or otherwise of the texts was less significant than other factors in shaping the significance and potential benefits of participation. (Texts with unpleasant or disturbing content that strongly shaped subsequent discussions of these texts were still able to sponsor ‘healthy’ discussions of this content.) Conclusions Our methods and findings offer for the field of bibliotherapy research both new possibilities for hypotheses to test, and viable ways of testing them. In particular, the use of natural language processing methods and word norm data offer valuable complements to intuitive human judgement and self-report when assessing the impact of literary materials. We also share observations on facilitation protocols, interpretative practices, and how our group reading model differs from other trials of group reading for wellbeing.

On the Chinese resistance to lexical borrowing: a writing-driven self-purification system

The Chinese language is known for its resistance to lexical borrowing. Transliterations can hardly be retained in this language that use pre-existing characters to simply transcribe the pronunciation of the source word in the donor language. This exclusion can be attributed to the ideographic nature of Chinese characters. Given the stable graphic-meaning correspondence, novel use of characters is expected to be consistent with their usage in previous literature, while the association between the graphic form and the phonetic form has always been loose, rendering it meaningless to use characters as a mere phonetic representation. Here writing is having an effect on the assimilation of loanwords, and more generally, the purist language ideology, which runs counter to the traditionally assumed derivative position of writing, thus shedding light on the implicit effect of writing on language ideology.

A Computational Approach to Identifying Cultural Keywords Across Languages.

Distinctive aspects of a culture are often reflected in the meaning and usage of words in the language spoken by bearers of that culture. Keywords such as душа (soul) in Russian, hati (heart) in Indonesian and Malay, and gezellig (convivial/cosy/fun) in Dutch are held to be especially culturally revealing, and scholars have identified a number of such keywords using careful linguistic analyses (Peeters, 2020b; Wierzbicka, 1990). Because keywords are expected to have different statistical properties than related words in other languages, we argue that a quantitative comparison of word usage across languages can help to identify cultural keywords. To support this claim, we describe a computational method that compares word frequencies across languages, and apply it to both linguistic corpora and word association data. The method identifies culturally specific words that range from "obvious" examples, such as Amsterdam in Dutch, to non-obvious yet independently proposed examples, such as hati (heart) in Indonesian. We show in addition that linguistic corpora and word association data provide converging evidence about culturally specific words. Our results therefore show how computational analyses and behavioral experiments can supplement the methods previously used by linguists to identify culturally salient words acrosslanguages.

Histoires de famille Remémoration, transmission et réinvention d’une langue a l’autre

As part of an artistic project combining writing and photography, we asked our students, future teachers of French as a foreign language, to tell and then write a story that had been passed down in their family from generation to generation. Drawing on references taken from Linguistics and Discourse Analysis in particular, we submit for analysis the texts and photographs from the "Histoire de famille" section of the "Voir avec tes yeux" project carried out during the 2019-2020 academic year with students in the Master FLE program at the University of Montpellier. Why might the appropriation of a foreign language be the ideal place to work on memory? Probably because it involves turning the neutral words of the foreign language into words for oneself, by transferring and translating part of the memory charge attached to the words of the mother tongue

Explicit expression of unconditionality using conjunctions in Chinese

This article discusses unconditionals in Chinese. Conjunctions with unconditional meaning, which serve for the explicit transmission of meaning in a sentence, are chosen as a subject of research. The purpose of the study is to find the conjunctions with explicit expression of unconditionality in the Chinese language. In addition to Chinese, the Russian language is also considered for a comparative analysis of conjunctions in different languages. A comparative analysis is carried out for all types of unconditionality after the description of each section. In this article not only conjunctions with unconditional meaning, but also correlates (words which clarify the meaning of the condition in the first part of the sentence) and the order of two clauses (main and dependent) are compared. The research methods include the search for conjunctions and correlatives from Chinese dictionaries and grammars for a further distribution of them in groups, consideration of conjunctions’ semantic, combination and stylistic features through dictionaries. As Chinese unconditional sentences have been little studied among Russian typologists, this article contains a certain scientific novelty. As a result, three types of unconditionals have been identified in total: absolute, irreal and real. Due to the differentiation of conjunctions in sentences with the absence of a condition, it was found out that a variety of similar words in the Chinese language is as rich as in the Russian one. At the end there are two tables with all the conjunctions both in Russian and in Chinese. In this article Russian is less emphasized because it has been researched earlier by other typologists. This material can be useful not only for sinologists, but also for the specialists in general linguistics.

Животъ, житиуе и жизнь в Учителното евангелие на Константин Преславски

In the article the use of the three lexemes for ‘life’ in Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel from the end of the 9th is analysed. The focus lies on their distribution, especially considering their contextual meaning. The systemised data are compared to those of the SJS and of the First Epistle against the Arians translated by the same Constantine. It is established that the Didactic Gospel – unlike the early Slavonic texts included in the Prague dictionary that show a higher degree of variation in the correlations between lexeme and meaning, but also unlike the First Epistle against the Arians, where жизнь dominates – presents a rather clear lexico-semantic differentiation in the translation correlates for Greek ζωή: for life as opposed to death животъ is used, for earthly life it is житиуе, and жизнь for eternal life. The distribution of the synonyms in the Didactic Gospel coincides to a large degree with that described in general diachronic analyses. This tendency may be observed in both the translated and the original parts of the Didactic Gospel, deviations occurring mainly in biblical quotations, probably due to the direct influence of the well-known sacred text. The material analysed shows that Constantine of Preslav understood very well the semantics of the words used in the language of the original, but also the semantic nuances of closely related words in the target language and used them according to the textual meaning.

Recognition of Wh-Question Sign Gestures in Video Streams using an Attention Driven C3D-BiLSTM Network

Human sign language is a visual and gestural means of communication used by people with hearing impairments to interact with others. It has the potential to enable interaction between individuals who struggle with verbal communication and those who lack the essential proficiency to comprehend sign language. Wh-questions constitute a substantial portion of daily sign language interactions. Automatic recognition of Wh-question words in sign language, encompassing interrogative words, has received limited attention in gesture recognition. In this context, a novel dataset named the American Question Sign Video dataset (AQSVd) has been introduced as a significant contribution. Recognizing Wh-question signs in video streams empowers individuals to effectively convey messages through hand movements and gestures, fostering inclusivity and accessibility in communication for deaf and hearing-impaired individuals. The paper proposes a Deep Convolutional-3D BiLSTM Multi-head Attention network for recognizing American Wh-Question word sign gestures in video streams. Incorporating Multi-head attention in the proposed model enhances its ability to capture intricate spatial and temporal features, essential for accurate gesture recognition. The proposed model is thoroughly evaluated across a range of datasets, such as INCLUDE50, WLASL-100, and our AQSVd dataset, achieving remarkable results. Specifically, our model demonstrated an outstanding 98.91% validation accuracy on the AQSVd dataset. The C3D-BiLSTM MHAttention model outperforms other state-of-the-art models, demonstrating its superiority in sign language recognition tasks. The proposed dataset and C3D-BiLSTM Multi-head Attention model contribute significantly to this field, offering potential benefits in education, human-robot interaction, and overall communication for the hearing-impaired community.

A Blessing in Disguise: Flanking Words Can Cancel Language Switch Costs.

Prior research has shown that a sentence context can decrease the necessity for language control relative to single word processing. In particular, measures of language control such as language switch costs are reduced or even absent in a sentence context. Yet, this evidence is mainly based on bilingual language production and is far from straightforward. To further investigate this issue in the comprehension modality, we relied on the lexical flanker task, which is known to introduce sentence-like processing. More specifically, Dutch-English bilinguals (n = 68) performed a classification task in mixed language blocks on target words that were either presented alone or flanked by unrelated words in the same language. While overall no L1 switch costs were observed, we only observed L2 switch costs in the no-flanker condition. This pattern of results indicates that the presence of flankers can reduce or even abolish switch costs, suggesting that the language control process can benefit from sentence(-like) processing compared to single word processing.

Lexical-semantic analysis of term characteristic words in the Azerbaijani literary language of 15th century

Lexical-semantic analysis of term characteristic words in the Azerbaijani literary language of 15th century