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Looks at the effectiveness of writing and other communication in the library profession. Characteristics of library writing; Syllables that are contained in words used in libraries; Categories of library jargon and obscure language used in libraries; Details on modern specialization; Danger of specialized language to libraries' future.

This study investigates participation problems in teams with mixed language proficiencies. Utilising an in-depth single case study approach and drawing on interactional data and interviews, it explores participation in team meetings. It takes a positioning theory approach, and analyses how the least proficient speaker is subtly positioned in various ways: as silent, different, difficult and incompetent. It argues that these positionings contribute to the marginalisation of his contributions in team meetings and in effectively silencing him and that this occurred through interactional patterns in which his contributions were a) ignored, b) dismissed outright and c) treated with only token interest. The paper ends by considering the range of factors, both interactional and attitudinal, that seem to have contributed to this silencing, including cultural stereotypes that seem to influence the dynamics of the interactions. • Less-proficient team members are marginalised in intercultural teams. • They are positioned as difficult, different & incompetent independent of expertise. • Contributions are silenced interactionally, excluding them from influencing tasks. • Repetition perpetuates positionings and prevents repositioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the analysis of morphologically induced new hybrid blending patterns in Spanish due to the influence and contact with English. Our data-driven approach does not separate word creation from grammatical phenomena but considers hybrid blends – a completely new emerging pattern itself in Spanish – as the output of speakers’ or users’ word creativity and manipulation that may be subject to morphological laws. However, the limited number of existing examples as well as the understandable lack of records for such recent data led us to analyze them in terms of tendencies and probabilities. We pay special attention to the ordering of the source words according to foreign or native origin; the presence of full forms and the distribution of full words and splinters, clipping and overlapping of the source words, as well as the semantic patterns and relations between the source words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of mixed languages in daily conversations, referred to as “code-switching”, has become a common linguistic phenomenon among bilingual/multilingual communities. Code-switching involves the alternating use of distinct languages or “codes” at sentence boundaries or within the same sentence. With the rise of globalization, code-switching has become prevalent in daily conversations, especially among urban youth. This lead to an increasing demand on automatic speech recognition systems to be able to handle such mixed speech. In this paper, we present the first steps towards building a multilingual language model (LM) for code-switched Arabic-English. One of the main challenges faced when building a multilingual LM is the need of explicit mixed text corpus. Since code-switching is a behaviour used more commonly in spoken than written form, text corpora with code-switching are usually scarce. Therefore, the first aim of this paper is to introduce a code-switch Arabic-English text corpus that is collected by automatically downloading relevant documents from the web. The text is then extracted from the documents and processed to be useable by NLP tasks. For language modeling, a baseline LM was built from existing monolingual corpora. The baseline LM gave a perplexity of 11841.9 and Out-of-Vocabulary (OOV) rate of 4.07%. The gathered code-switch Arabic-English corpus, along with the existing monolingual corpora were then used to construct several LMs. The best LM achieved a great improvement over the baseline LM, with a perplexity of 275.41 and an OOV rate of 0.71%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on how auto mechanics students in an upper secondary school in Sweden use teasing in everyday peer interactions to comment on one another's language use. Data are drawn from video-ethnographic work during two years in a Vehicle engineering programme taught in and through a foreign language, English. The analyses concern how and in what ways normative expectations on language can be seen to play a role in building an English-speaking classroom community. A linguistic ethnographic approach is taken in order to explore how students’ teasing activities are organized to invoke broader language ideologies. It is found that students deploy teasing as a way of co-constructing shifts between different second language registers, linked to classroom language ideologies. It is here argued that engaging in teasing and other joking activities should be seen as conditional for identity construction and peer group participation at the English medium instruction Vehicle programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the last few decades, use of foreign labor in the Norwegian fishing fleet has increased. As fishing is a high-risk occupation, this article investigates a prevalent question regarding how the increased share of foreigners affects communication and safety on Norwegian fishing vessels. The article shows that multilingual crews and varying language proficiencies are not perceived by the fisheries actors themselves as risk factors in terms of safety in everyday operations. Fishing experience, hybrid language and body language compensate for language challenges and contribute to fishers' feeling of safety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An increasing focus on integrative approaches is one of the current trends in impact assessment. There is potential to combine impact assessment with various other forms of assessment, such as risk assessment, to make impact assessment and the management of social risks more effective. We identify the common features of social impact assessment (SIA) and social risk assessment (SRA), and discuss the merits of a combined approach. A hybrid model combining SIA and SRA to form a new approach called, ‘risk and social impact assessment’ (RSIA) is introduced. RSIA expands the capacity of SIA to evaluate and manage the social impacts of risky projects such as nuclear energy as well as natural hazards and disasters such as droughts and floods. We outline the three stages of RSIA, namely: impact identification, impact assessment, and impact management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: What personality factors make for a successful hybrid L2 learning experience? While previous studies have examined online learning in comparative terms (i.e. Which format is better: in class or hybrid?), this study examines certain personality and cognitive factors that might define the ideal hybrid language learner. All informants studied introductory Spanish with multimedia materials supported by synchronous chat (video, voice, text). Personality and cognitive traits were probed using the Big Five Inventory scale (BFI 1 [1] BFI is the Big Five Inventory Scale (John et al., 2008) that measures personality traits according to five main categories: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness and neuroticism. ) and the Shipley Institute of Living scale (SILS 2 [2] SILS is the Shipley Institute of Living Scale (Senior, 2001; Zachary, 1991) that measures verbal and abstract intelligence. ), respectively. The results were correlated with course outcomes and learner preferences for online, chat, or in-class activities. Exit interviews were conducted with an eye to offering a richer understanding of how hybrid students viewed online learning. The quantitative data revealed that conscientiousness (per BFI) had a significant, positive correlation with final grades. Low-verbal learners (per SILS) registered a definite preference for working with online materials, as opposed to learning in class or chatting online. The results suggest that students who are conscientiousness learners perform well within the hybrid-learning environment; low-verbal learners, in particular, value the online materials which create the possibility to work online at one''s own pace. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the modern world, speech technologies must be flexible and adaptable to any framework. Mass media globalization introduces multilingualism as a challenge for the most popular speech applications such as text-to-speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition. Mixed-language texts vary in their nature and when processed, some essential characteristics must be considered. In Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, the use of Anglicisms and other words of foreign origin is constantly growing. A particularity of peninsular Spanish is that there is a tendency to nativize the pronunciation of non-Spanish words so that they fit properly into Spanish phonetic patterns. In our previous work, we proposed to use hand-crafted nativization tables that were capable of nativizing correctly 24% of words from the test data. In this work, our goal was to approach the nativization challenge by data-driven methods, because they are transferable to other languages and do not drop in performance in comparison with explicit rules manually written by experts. Training and test corpora for nativization consisted of 1000 and 100 words respectively and were crafted manually. Different specifications of nativization by analogy and learning from errors focused on finding the best nativized pronunciation of foreign words. The best obtained objective nativization results showed an improvement from 24% to 64% in word accuracy in comparison to our previous work. Furthermore, a subjective evaluation of the synthesized speech allowed for the conclusion that nativization by analogy is clearly the preferred method among listeners of different backgrounds when comparing to previously proposed methods. These results were quite encouraging and proved that even a small training corpus is sufficient for achieving significant improvements in naturalness for English inclusions of variable length in Spanish utterances. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this work, we address some issues related to products of graphs and products of modal logics. Our main contribution is the presentation of a necessary and sufficient condition for a countable and connected graph to be a product, using a property called intransitivity. We then proceed to describe this property in a logical language. First, we show that intransitivity is not modally definable and also that no necessary and sufficient condition for a graph to be a product can be modally definable. Then, we exhibit a formula in a hybrid language that describes intransitivity. With this, we get a logical characterization of products of graphs of arbitrary dimensions. We then use this characterization to obtain two other interesting results. First, we determine that it is possible to test in polynomial time, using a model-checking algorithm, whether a finite connected graph is a product. This test has cubic complexity in the size of the graph and quadratic complexity in its number of dimensions. Finally, we use this characterization of countable connected products to provide sound and complete axiomatic systems for a large class of products of modal logics. This class contains the logics defined by product frames obtained from Kripke frames that satisfy connectivity, transitivity and symmetry plus any additional property that can be defined by a pure hybrid formula. Most sound and complete axiomatic systems presented in the literature are for products of a pair of modal logics, while we are able, using hybrid logics, to provide sound and complete axiomatizations for many products of arbitrary dimensions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article examines the complexity of hybrid logics over transitive frames, transitive trees, and linear frames. We show that satisfiability over transitive frames for the hybrid language extended with the downarrow operator ↓ is NEXPTIME-complete. This is in contrast to undecidability over arbitrary frames (Areces et al. (1999) ). We also show that adding the @ operator or the past modality leads to undecidability over transitive frames. This is again in contrast to the case of transitive trees and linear frames, where we show these languages to be nonelementarily decidable. Furthermore, we establish 2EXPTIME and EXPTIME upper bounds for satisfiability over transitive frames and transitive trees, respectively, for the hybrid language and complement them with an EXPTIME lower bound for the modal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Light Warlpiri and Gurindji Kriol are mixed languages which are spoken in northern Australia. They systematically mix the lexicon and morpho-syntax of a traditional Australian language (Warlpiri and Gurindji) and an Australian contact variety (Kriol), bringing systems from the source languages into functional competition. With respect to argument disambiguation, both Warlpiri and Gurindji use a case marking system, whereas Kriol relies on word order. These two systems of argument marking came into contact and competition in the formation of the mixed languages. The result has been the emergence of word order as the dominant system of argument disambiguation in the mixed language, the optionality of the ergative marker, and a shift in the function of the ergative marker to accord discourse prominence to the agentivity of a nominal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Aspects of the semantics of colour terms in English-lexifier Atlantic creoles have been observed by creolists, and have generally been attributed to West African substrate influence. This paper explores, through lexicographic evidence, the basic colour term inventories displayed by English-lexifier Caribbean varieties, and one West African variety, from the perspective of research on the universals of colour terms initiated by Berlin and Kay. It is argued that West African substrate influence (revisited from the perspective of cross-linguistic research on colour terms) and considerations from a universalist perspective best account for the colour term systems displayed by English-lexifier Atlantic creoles, although possible superstrate influence is also briefly explored. Insights from the research on universals of colour terms, such as colour term hierarchies and trajectories, the salience of certain categories, and the relationship between technological complexity and colour term inventories, prove useful in a discussion of colour terms that is framed within an account of creole development that admits multiple contributing factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Phonologically conditioned allomorphy is sometimes determined by universal marking conditions derived from low-ranked constraints, which is viewed as an effect of the emergence of the unmarked (TETU) in optimality theory. In this paper we present two case studies that make crucial use of allomorph selection as TETU but also of an additional property of the lexical representation of allomorphs, namely lexical ordering of allomorphs. The first case is the puzzling selection of definite marker in Haitian Creole (analyzed as an instance of anti-markedness in previous OT works), which yields to an appropriate analysis in terms of allomorph ordering. In the second case study, gender allomorph selection in Catalan, we propose a constraint Respect that ensures compliance with idiosyncratic lexical specifications, which further interacts with allomorph selection. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Various linguists have been taking seriously the notion that pidgin languages provide a window on certain facets of language evolution. Hence, for example, the contention that protolanguage is similar to pidgin languages as regards lexical and structural properties. Hence, too, the contention that, like processes participating in the formation of pidgins, language evolution is a gradual process that involves competition and selection. The present article seeks to appraise the notion that it is possible to draw firm conclusions about language evolution from data about properties of pidgin languages. It assesses in some depth the heuristic potential of the putative pidgin window on language evolution. In doing so, it identifies a number of fundamental difficulties that will have to be overcome in constructing a pidgin window capable of yielding new insights into language evolution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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This paper discusses McCormick's sociolinguistic study Language in Cape Town's District Six [McCormick, K., 2003. Language in Cape Town's District Six. Oxford University Press, Oxford] and locates it within the fields of South African sociolinguistics and language contact studies. McCormick's work raises pertinent questions about sociolinguistic historiography, fieldwork methodology, bilingualism, (socio-)linguistic meaning, and the permeability of linguistic boundaries in language contact. McCormick approaches bilingual speech first and fore- most from a code-switching perspective, broadly combining Myers-Scotton's markedness model with conversation-analysis approaches (Gumperz/Auer). However, there is also evidence in the data that conversational language use in this bilingual working-class community can be interpreted within the framework of mixed languages and bilingual convergence. This raises important questions about norm formation and stabilization in language contact situations, and about the diachronic trajectories of bilingual speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the point of view of information processing the immune system is a highly parallel and distributed intelligent system which has learning, memory, and associative retrieval capabilities. In this paper we present two immunity-based hybrid learning approaches for function approximation (or regression) problems that involve adjusting the structure and parameters of spatially localized models (e.g., radial basis function networks). The number and centers of the receptive fields for local models are specified by immunity-based structure adaptation algorithms, while the parameters of the local models, which enter in a linear fashion, are tuned separately using a least-squares method. The effectiveness of the procedure is demonstrated through a nonlinear function approximation problem and a nonlinear dynamical system modeling problem. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper discusses a written linguistic system, evidenced in medieval mixed-language business texts, that was replaced by Early Modern English. This variety routinely mixed Romance (Anglo-Norman, Medieval Latin) with Germanic (Middle English) languages, in an orderly way. I examine medieval mixed-language business writing from the point of view of suffix mergers, as the lack of language-specific suffixes resulted in code-intermediate states; that is, an inability to decide whether a given world in a given context belonged to English, French or Latin. The question raised is whether without hindsight one could predict, on formal structural grounds rather than social, economic or political grounds, that one system was about to be superseded by another. I conclude that code-intermediate states do not, of themselves, presage the abandonment of the mixed-language business variety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The phonemic inventory of Light Warlpiri reflects a near-maximal amalgamation of the source language phonologies. • Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates. • Light Warlpiri stops are differentiated by VOT word-initially. • Light Warlpiri stops are differentiated primarily by Constriction Duration word-medially. • Light Warlpiri speakers' productions are reflected in segmental perception. This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) medially, by incorporating English-like VOT differentiation and Constriction duration differences found in Kriol and also in a number of traditional Indigenous Australian languages. The results also show that Light Warlpiri speakers perceptually differentiate stops and fricatives at the same POA, but that voicing distinctions in fricatives are more difficult to discriminate than voicing distinctions in stops. The large phonological inventory of Light Warlpiri combines most features of the source languages, allowing speakers of Light Warlpiri to maintain sufficient phonemic contrasts to accommodate vocabulary items in Light Warlpiri sourced from English/Kriol as well as Warlpiri. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]