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Natural Language Processing (NLP) makes use of Artificial Intelligence algorithms to extract meaningful information from unstructured texts, i.e., content that lacks metadata and cannot easily be indexed or mapped onto standard database fields. It has several applications, from sentiment analysis and text summary to automatic language translation. In this work, we use NLP to figure out similar structural linguistic patterns among several different languages. We apply the word2vec algorithm that creates a vector representation for the words in a multidimensional space that maintains the meaning relationship between the words. From a large corpus we built this vectorial representation in a 100-dimensional space for English, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Basque, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and Estonian. Then, we calculated the fractal dimensions of the structure that represents each language. The structures are multi-fractals with two different dimensions that we use, in addition to the token-dictionary size rate of the languages, to represent the languages in a three-dimensional space. Finally, analyzing the distance among languages in this space, we conclude that the closeness there is tendentially related to the distance in the Phylogenetic tree that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of the languages from a common ancestor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper explores the notion of modality through a corpus of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) spontaneous speech corpus, based on the Speech Patterning Theory (CRESTI, 2000). Morpholexical modality indexes were identified in tone units within each corpus utterance. Through qualitative and quantitative methodologies, it was possible to conclude that: verbs are the major modality agent in BP and the epistemic modality is the most frequent type found. It was also observed that BP allows for multiple modal valency utterances and tone units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including the polemic issues in Applied Linguistics, the computational linguistics view of the lexicon, and the communication strategies in Portuguese and Spanish learning as foreign languages.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including fricative consonant and its allophones, diatopic distribution of lexical variants, and conversion and resocialization of former inmates.

A foreword to the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics' special issue "Corpus Studies: Future Directions" is presented.

This work assessed the concurrent and face validity of the MacArthur scale, which attempts to capture subjective social status in society, neighborhood and work contexts. The study population comprised a convenience sample made up of 159 adult participants of the ELSA-Brasil cohort study conducted in Minas Gerais between 2012 and 2014. The analysis was conducted drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and using corpus linguistic methods. Concurrent validity was shown to be moderate for the society ladder (Kappaw = 0.55) and good for the neighborhood (Kappaw = 0.60) and work (Kappaw = 0,67) ladders. Face validity indicated that the MacArthur scale really captures subjective social status across indicators of socioeconomic position, thus confirming that it is a valuable tool for the study of social inequalities in health Brazil.