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The present article suggests a pragmatic-funcional approach to analyse diminutive and augmentative de-rivatives in Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo and El País. More specifically, the focus of interest is on studying their connotative meanings (emotional and expressive). Special attention is paid to the syncretic meaning of the investigated derivatives according to the context in which they appear. The polysemic character of diminutives and augmentatives constitutes a problem when it is necessary to identify their true meaning. In this case, linguistic and extralinguistic factors (social and cultural) should be considered.

Head position at any point in time plays a fundamental role in shaping the auditory information that reaches a listener, information that continuously changes as the head moves and reorients to different listening situations. The connection between hearing science and the kinesthetics of head movement has gained interest due to technological advances that have increased the feasibility of providing behavioral and biological feedback to assistive listening devices that can interpret movement patterns that reflect listening intent. Increasing evidence also shows that the negative impact of hearing deficits on mobility, gait, and balance may be mitigated by prosthetic hearing device intervention. Better understanding of the relationships between head movement, full body kinetics, and hearing health, should lead to improved signal processing strategies across a range of assistive and augmented hearing devices. The purpose of this review is to introduce the wider hearing community to the kinesiology of head movement and to place it in the context of hearing and communication with the goal of expanding the field of ecologically-specific listener behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article suggests a pragmatic-funcional approach to analyse diminutive and augmentative derivatives in Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo and El País. More specifically, the focus of interest is on studying their connotative meanings (emotional and expressive). Special attention is paid to the syncretic meaning of the investigated derivatives according to the context in which they appear. The polysemic character of diminutives and augmentatives constitutes a problem when it is necessary to identify their true meaning. In this case, linguistic and extralinguistic factors (social and cultural) should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any theoretical analysis of a fragment of reality is carried out by means of abstract models and aims to capture the specificity of a phenomenon. Theorising may nevertheless prove insufficient if its descriptive analysis is not doubled by the establishment of regularities, so that the current state of the phenomenon and its subsequent evolution may be explained. This general framework also includes linguistic intensification, which reveals one’s permanent need to evaluate everything that enters one’s sphere of perception: objects, beings, states, processes etc. The means of expressing “intensity” are most diverse and, implicitly, sensitive to any type of nuancing of the speaker, because it uncloses the shape its mental representation socially takes. This paper aims to highlight a certain aspect in the complex act of evaluation, namely expressing highest/lowest intensity by means of suffixes. The study relies on the analysis of two modern related languages, Romanian and Spanish, and the corpus has been essentially selected from the most modern form of human communication, the computer-mediated one.

The central novel observation of this paper is that the Tense-marker qaʕɪd in North Hail Arabic has developed diminutive, augmentative and nunation morphological patterns, each of which is rooted in the morphological spine of qaʕɪd, expressing a certain discourse interpretation, as an interpretive-interface related consequence. Arguing it has pragmaticalised, a sub-deep type of grammaticalisation, qaʕɪd exhibits the diminutive pattern qweɪʕɪd when marking DEVALUE information while it displays an augmentative pattern qwa:ʕɪd when marking VALUE information, providing evidence that diminutive and augmentative, in a cross-linguistic manner, don’t merely express size, but encode a degree of speaker attitude. Entertaining the Split-CP system and implementing the Criterial approach within generative, minimalist tenets, this discourse function of qaʕɪd is activated, hence, achieved in narrow syntax by movement of the pragmaticalised instance of qaʕɪd, qweɪʕɪd and qwa:ʕɪd, to a C-layer in the left periphery, the locus of the relevant discourse value. Further investigations show that qweɪʕɪd and qwa:ʕɪd are potential host for a nunation marker ‘-ɪn’, which functions as a Focus marker, a discourse feature being spelled out at PF-interface as a nunation marker on qweɪʕɪd and qwa:ʕɪd. Moreover, given the morphological templates the pragmaticalised qaʕɪd develops, the research implements a touch of evaluative morphology approach, arguing that the morphological affixes contributing to the diminutivised and augmented forms of qaʕɪd carry an evaluative endowment at the pragmatic interface and attract the stem of qaʕɪd at the morphosyntax interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Due to the high prevalence of communication disorders, augmentative and alternative communication methods are one the options ahead to solve the problems of these people. Since there are no complex tools for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders, we decided to design communication assistant software for these children that produces sound output. Materials and Methods: In the first step, 337 basic Persian words were selected based on an extensive literature review on basic words of Persian-speaking children and consultation with experts. To evaluate the Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and the Content Validity Index (CVI), nine speech and language pathologists commented about the appropriateness of the words and 247 words remained. Then, the images of the remaining words were designed by a graphic designer, and, their CVI was evaluated by 6 speech and language pathologists. In the next step, words were audio recorded by an experienced speaker in the studio. Then, a programmer designed the AAC software as a cross-platform software based on the words and their images using the C # programming language. Results: According to Lawshe’s model, for nine experts, the words with a CVR value of >0.78 have remained. In addition, the CVI of the final 247 words was 0.95 and the total CVI for images was estimated as 0.8. Conclusion: The results revealed that the designed electronic AAC system has a good content validity for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders.

This article is devoted to the study of non-substantive augmentatives as part of the semantic-derivative category of the intensity of a non-procedural feature in modern Russian. The study is based on data extracted from the General Internet Corpus of the Russian Language (hereinafter referred to as GIKRYA), namely, from its LiveJournal subcorpus. The analyzed material is distinguished by expressiveness, emotionality and evaluativeness, which is reflected in its high linguo-creativity and allows studying not only ordinary, but also potential derivatives. The article analyzes the functional and semantic features of suffixes-augmentators of nouns, highlights the typical meanings of the most productive formants – -ищ-, -ин(а), -уг(а) (орф. -юг(а)), -юк(а). Substantive augmentatives are often used in statements with multiple intensification, interacting in context with lexical markers of feature intensification. The frequency of such use of the studied derivatives allows us to conclude that augmentative suffixes have a weak potential for intensification, and, therefore, should be attributed to the periphery of the semantic-word-building category of intensity.

Any theoretical analysis of a fragment of reality is carried out by means of abstract models and aims to capture the specificity of a phenomenon. Theorising may nevertheless prove insufficient if its descriptive analysis is not doubled by the establishment of regularities, so that the current state of the phenomenon and its subsequent evolution may be explained. This general framework also includes linguistic intensification, which reveals one’s permanent need to evaluate everything that enters one’s sphere of perception: objects, beings, states, processes etc. The means of expressing “intensity” are most diverse and, implicitly, sensitive to any type of nuancing of the speaker, because it uncloses the shape its mental representation socially takes. This paper aims to highlight a certain aspect in the complex act of evaluation, namely expressing highest/lowest intensity by means of suffixes. The study relies on the analysis of two modern related languages, Romanian and Spanish, and the corpus has been essentially selected from the most modern form of human communication, the computer-mediated one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to systematically describe the diminutive/augmentative mechanism through noun inflection in Kirundi. By applying the cognitive theory of space representation to the size of the static and bounded object (without considering its geometric shape), three results were obtained. First, the diminutive/augmentative is expressed by means of the secondary noun classification with derivational purpose. Then, the marks of secondary classes in the singular (-ki-, -ka-, -ru-) represent a mode of occupation of the continuous space while those of the plural (-bi-, -tu-, -bu-) serve as support for a mode of occupation of discontinuous space. Finally, taking the primary noun class as a mark of the normal reference size, the diminutive/augmentative mechanism distinguishes two degrees from the normal size of the object considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledgeable, human–machine interaction sight system has the benefits of low interference, lower permeability, and no interface attachment. The smart vision system has been critical in human–computer interaction to grow and advance technologies and research. The Human–Computer Interaction based Visual Feedback System (HCIVFS) is very quickly relative to the conventional collaborative mode. Such challenges may also affect the smart machine's view and the general use of sensation communication. The fundamental premise of the computer's sight communication architecture requires practical stability. This article explores the quality of the intellectual computer's enabling communication. The Rule of Fitts has also been included in this paper for three points-to-clicks applications. The proposed algorithm's reliability is analyzed in operations, visualization, and computer vision algorithms. There is a fair recommendation for an immersive configuration of the input method for intellectual sight by computer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Due to the high prevalence of communication disorders, augmentative and alternative communication methods are one the options ahead to solve the problems of these people. Since there are no complex tools for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders, we decided to design communication assistant software for these children that produces sound output. Materials and Methods: In the first step, 337 basic Persian words were selected based on an extensive literature review on basic words of Persian-speaking children and consultation with experts. To evaluate the Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and the Content Validity Index (CVI), nine speech and language pathologists commented about the appropriateness of the words and 247 words remained. Then, the images of the remaining words were designed by a graphic designer, and, their CVI was evaluated by 6 speech and language pathologists. In the next step, words were audio recorded by an experienced speaker in the studio. Then, a programmer designed the AAC software as a cross-platform software based on the words and their images using the C # programming language. Results: According to Lawshe's model, for nine experts, the words with a CVR value of >0.78 have remained. In addition, the CVI of the final 247 words was 0.95 and the total CVI for images was estimated as 0.8. Conclusion: The results revealed that the designed electronic AAC system has a good content validity for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present and analyse phonaesthemic alternations as they appear in Flemish dialects of Dutch, that is when a root-initial consonant or consonant cluster is replaced by a post-alveolar affricate /ʧ/ or /ʤ/ in order to create a phonaesthemically marked variant of a neutral base word. Although no longer productive in Flemish dialects, we show that such phonaesthemic alternations exhibit strong functional similarities to those found in other languages, in particular the evaluative notions of diminutivity and augmentativity. We also show that, formally speaking, Flemish phonaesthemic alternations differ from those attested in other languages in only targeting a single consonant or consonant cluster. We then put forward the hypothesis that Flemish speakers may have copied this mechanism to produce phonaesthemic alternations from Picard speakers, corroborating the notion that phonaesthemic alternations may emerge from language contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aphids are one of the most economically important pests to California's Central Coast lettuce industry. Aphids vector the lettuce mosaic virus and are crop contaminants in the packaging of the product. Lettuce aphid, Nasonovia ribisnigri (Mosley) (Hemiptera: Aphididae), is one of the predominant aphid species in lettuce, and it poses unique management challenges forming colonies inside the lettuce head. Current management practices rely on repeated foliar insecticide applications to reduce aphid densities per plant. Some organic growers have explored the release of laboratory-reared beneficial insects to manage aphids in their commercial fields. This project sought to document the effects of drone-released lacewing eggs on lettuce aphid densities in organic romaine lettuce fields. Commercially reared lacewing eggs were released at a rate of 74,131 eggs/ha and organic-certified insecticides were sprayed following their respective label recommendations. Our results could be interpreted as preliminary evidence that drone release of lacewings could reduce aphid densities (15.6–150.0 aphids/lettuce head) when compared to the untreated plots (32.1–257.9 aphids/lettuce head). Aphid densities were also decreased after the application of foliar organic-certified insecticides (11.77–143.5). Traditionally, the cost of labor has limited the use of beneficials in the lettuce production system, but the use of drones for these releases may make this strategy more attractive. Based on our calculations, spraying an organic-certified insecticide is less expensive (direct operational costs of U.S. $ 116.36/ha) than releasing beneficial insects by hand ($ 185.40) or by drone ($ 176.00) when mimicking the conditions of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although outcomes are a critical component of evidence-based practice, measuring augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) outcomes remains problematic. This is, in part, because there is no consensus on how to operationally define AAC communication outcomes. To gain greater insight into AAC communication outcomes, we used the communicative competence framework to determine which areas of AAC intervention have received the greatest attention and how these outcomes are being measured. The following data were charted from the 77 studies that met the inclusion criteria for the scoping review: study design, study participants, study communication target (e.g., language, word learning, etc.), and communication outcome measurements. Across the included studies, researchers used a variety of standardized and non-standardized measures to assess outcomes. Seventy-seven percent of the studies assessed social skills and 62% assessed linguistic skills. A limited number of studies measured operational (14%), strategic (4%), and psychosocial (18%) skills. Using the communicative competence framework enabled us to identify gaps in the research that has been conducted to date.