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Lexical Items (lexical + item)
Selected AbstractsComing back to life: From indicator to stereotype and a strange story of frequency1JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 4 2009Jessi Elana Aaron In the history of Spanish there are five forms, originally from the same lexical item, co-existing:,así,,asín,,ansí,,asina, and,ansina, all meaning ,like that'. Standard Modern Spanish includes only one of these:,así. This is not the case, however, in New Mexican Spanish. This corpus-based study examines the patterns of synchronic variation in New Mexican Spanish, as well as the near death and transformed rebirth of forms other than standard,así,in literature. Multivariate analysis suggests a decline in non-standard variants in New Mexico, associated with rural activities and objects, and with older, less-educated speakers. The synchronic idiosyncrasy of stereotypes is confirmed, while the quantitative diachronic patterns found may prove to be a regular pattern for developing stereotypes in literary texts: a slow decline in frequency followed by a sharp rise. [source] Consequences of the Serial Nature of Linguistic Input for Sentenial ComplexityCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005Daniel Grodner Abstract All other things being equal the parser favors attaching an ambiguous modifier to the most recent possible site. A plausible explanation is that locality preferences such as this arise in the service of minimizing memory costs,more distant sentential material is more difficult to reactivate than more recent material. Note that processing any sentence requires linking each new lexical item with material in the current parse. This often involves the construction of long-distance dependencies. Under a resource-limited view of language processing, lengthy integrations should induce difficulty even in unambiguous sentences. To date there has been little direct quantitative evidence in support of this perspective. This article presents 2 self-paced reading studies, which explore the hypothesis that dependency distance is a fundamental determinant of reading complexity in unambiguous constructions in English. The evidence suggests that the difficulty associated with integrating a new input item is heavily determined by the amount of lexical material intervening between the input item and the site of its target dependents. The patterns observed here are not straightforwardly accounted for within purely experience-based models of complexity. Instead, this work supports the role of a memory bottleneck in language comprehension. This constraint arises because hierarchical linguistic relations must be recovered from a linear input stream. [source] A neuroanatomically grounded Hebbian-learning model of attention,language interactions in the human brainEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 2 2008Max Garagnani Abstract Meaningful familiar stimuli and senseless unknown materials lead to different patterns of brain activation. A late major neurophysiological response indexing ,sense' is the negative component of event-related potential peaking at around 400 ms (N400), an event-related potential that emerges in attention-demanding tasks and is larger for senseless materials (e.g. meaningless pseudowords) than for matched meaningful stimuli (words). However, the mismatch negativity (latency 100,250 ms), an early automatic brain response elicited under distraction, is larger to words than to pseudowords, thus exhibiting the opposite pattern to that seen for the N400. So far, no theoretical account has been able to reconcile and explain these findings by means of a single, mechanistic neural model. We implemented a neuroanatomically grounded neural network model of the left perisylvian language cortex and simulated: (i) brain processes of early language acquisition and (ii) cortical responses to familiar word and senseless pseudoword stimuli. We found that variation of the area-specific inhibition (the model correlate of attention) modulated the simulated brain response to words and pseudowords, producing either an N400- or a mismatch negativity-like response depending on the amount of inhibition (i.e. available attentional resources). Our model: (i) provides a unifying explanatory account, at cortical level, of experimental observations that, so far, had not been given a coherent interpretation within a single framework; (ii) demonstrates the viability of purely Hebbian, associative learning in a multilayered neural network architecture; and (iii) makes clear predictions on the effects of attention on latency and magnitude of event-related potentials to lexical items. Such predictions have been confirmed by recent experimental evidence. [source] Computer-Assisted Reading: The Effect of Glossing Format on Comprehension and Vocabulary RetentionFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2001Serafima Gettys Two glossing methods are compared. The first method provides readers with sentence-level translation equivalents of the second-language (L2) words. The second method connects the words with their meanings through basic dictionary forms. The main purpose of the study was to determine which of the two glossing formats is more beneficial for text comprehension and vocabulary retention. The results of the study show that retention of lexical items is better aided by reading the text with dictionary-form equivalents of the L2 words, because it involves a deeper level of cognitive processing. The situation is less clear-cut regarding the effect of the two glossing formats on global comprehension. The pedagogical implications of the data obtained are discussed. [source] Lexis that rings a bell: on the influence of auditory support in vocabulary acquisitionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2010Andreas Bürki This empirical study investigated the effectiveness of auditory support in vocabulary learning by comparing acquisition and retention of lexical items studied using a traditional paired-associates memorisation technique to results achieved using an audio-supported paired-associates technique. The subjects were 88 Korean university students. Results indicated that the audio-supported vocabulary learning approach leads to significantly higher rates of acquisition. This advantage was retained over the two months following treatment. The largest difference was noticed in pronunciation. Furthermore, it was found that success in the audio-supported approach was not significantly dependent on learning preferences, and that the approach enjoyed a higher level of acceptance among subjects than non-auditory paired-associates memorisation. [source] Martha Stewart behaving Badly: Parody and the symbolic meaning of style1JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 5 2009Jennifer Sclafani This study addresses the issue of how to correlate social meaning with linguistic style through an investigation of the parodic speech genre. The analysis examines two parodies of lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart and compares linguistic strategies used in parodies of Stewart to her own linguistic performance on her talk show. Features considered include phonological characteristics, lexical items, politeness strategies, and voice quality. A comparative quantitative analysis of aspirated and released /t/ as employed by Stewart and her parodist reveals that a variable feature of Stewart's style is rendered categorical in the parody. It is demonstrated that both parodies exploit elements associated with Stewart's ,Good Woman' image in order to expose Stewart as a ,Bad Woman', a reputation she earned for her 2003 insider trading conviction. This study suggests that parodic performance may serve to strengthen and even iconize indexical connections between stylistic variants and their social meaning in particular contexts. [source] Think really different: Continuity and specialization in the English dual form adverbsJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2002Sali Tagliamonte This paper analyses variation between -ly and -ř in English dual form adverbs by examining conversational data from York, U.K. Using multivariate analysis and the comparative method we assess the constraint ranking, significance and relative importance of external factors (age, sex, education level) and internal factors (lexical identity, function and meaning). The results show that -ly is dominant and has increased dramatically in apparent time. However, cross-tabulations with individual lexical items reveal that this correlation with speaker age is restricted to a single item,really. In conjunction with evidence from the history of English, we suggest that this does not reflect ongoing developments in English adverb formation, but is the result of continuous renewal in the encoding of ,intensity'. In contrast, separate analysis of the other adverbs shows that variation between -ly and zero is retained in part as a socio-symbolic resource, in particular for marking less educated male speech. Underlying this social meaning however, is a linguistic constraint which operates across all speakers. The zero adverb encodes concrete, objective meaning,a tendency which can be traced back 650 years or more. This provides yet another example of the interface between social and historical developments in language variation and change. [source] Computer,Mediated Negotiated Interaction: An Expanded ModelMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 1 2003Bryan Smith This study examines task,based, synchronous computer,mediated communication (CMC) among intermediate,level learners of English. The research specifically explores (a) whether learners engage in negotiated interaction when they encounter new lexical items, (b) whether task type has an effect on the amount of negotiation that transpires, and (c) how this computer,mediated negotiation compares to that noted in the face,to,face literature. Fourteen nonnative,nonnative dyads collaboratively completed 4 communicative tasks using ChatNet, a browser,based chat program. Each dyad completed 2 jigsaw and 2 decision,making tasks, which were each "seeded" with 8 target lexical items. The chatscripts reveal that learners do in fact negotiate for meaning in the CMC environment when nonunderstanding occurs. Furthermore, task type was found to have a definite influence on the extent to which learners engaged in negotiation, but not necessarily in the same way that has been observed in the face,to,face literature. Though the negotiation that occurs in the CMC environment proceeds in ways that are roughly similar to face,to,face negotiation, the observed differences call for a new model of computer,mediated negotiation. This new model is presented as a more accurate tool for describing computer,mediated negotiated interaction than those offered to chart face,to,face negotiation episodes. [source] Situated Language Understanding as Filtering Perceived AffordancesCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 2 2007Peter Gorniak Abstract We introduce a computational theory of situated language understanding in which the meaning of words and utterances depends on the physical environment and the goals and plans of communication partners. According to the theory, concepts that ground linguistic meaning are neither internal nor external to language users, but instead span the objective-subjective boundary. To model the possible interactions between subject and object, the theory relies on the notion of perceived affordances: structured units of interaction that can be used for prediction at multiple levels of abstraction. Language understanding is treated as a process of filtering perceived affordances. The theory accounts for many aspects of the situated nature of human language use and provides a unified solution to a number of demands on any theory of language understanding including conceptual combination, prototypicality effects, and the generative nature of lexical items. To support the theory, we describe an implemented system that understands verbal commands situated in a virtual gaming environment. The implementation uses probabilistic hierarchical plan recognition to generate perceived affordances. The system has been evaluated on its ability to correctly interpret free-form spontaneous verbal commands recorded from unrehearsed game play between human players. The system is able to "step into the shoes" of human players and correctly respond to a broad range of verbal commands in which linguistic meaning depends on social and physical context. We quantitatively compare the system's predictions in response to direct player commands with the actions taken by human players and show generalization to unseen data across a range of situations and verbal constructions. [source] | ||||||||||