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There has been a growing effort to replace manual extraction of data from research papers with automated data extraction based on natural language processing, language models, and recently, large language models (LLMs). Although these methods enable efficient extraction of data from large sets of research papers, they require a significant amount of up-front effort, expertise, and coding. In this work, we propose the ChatExtract method that can fully automate very accurate data extraction with minimal initial effort and background, using an advanced conversational LLM. ChatExtract consists of a set of engineered prompts applied to a conversational LLM that both identify sentences with data, extract that data, and assure the data's correctness through a series of follow-up questions. These follow-up questions largely overcome known issues with LLMs providing factually inaccurate responses. ChatExtract can be applied with any conversational LLMs and yields very high quality data extraction. In tests on materials data, we find precision and recall both close to 90% from the best conversational LLMs, like GPT-4. We demonstrate that the exceptional performance is enabled by the information retention in a conversational model combined with purposeful redundancy and introducing uncertainty through follow-up prompts. These results suggest that approaches similar to ChatExtract, due to their simplicity, transferability, and accuracy are likely to become powerful tools for data extraction in the near future. Finally, databases for critical cooling rates of metallic glasses and yield strengths of high entropy alloys are developed using ChatExtract. Efficient data extraction from research papers accelerates science and engineering. Here, the authors develop an automated approach which uses conversational large language models to achieve high precision and recall in extracting materials data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the issue of language in psychiatry has been raised more frequently. The concern for choosing the appropriate words has resulted in developing language recommendations regarding the way we should speak about treating mental health disorders. The lexeme psychiatryk 'mental hospital' has been mentioned among words that contribute to preserving the negative stereotypes of psychiatric care. Thus, the paper focuses on the ways in which this word is evaluated across the Internet. Since the author analyses specific utterances - the ways language is used, she employs the framework of linguistic pragmatics to account for the broad context of each utterance (the speaker's intentions, utterance type, the assumed hearer, etc.). In the majority of the analysed cases, we can observe such uses of the words that uphold the negative stereotype of institutionalized psychiatric care, and the hospitals themselves (in examples that exhibit playfulness, bordering on colloquialism and derision) are represented as appalling, pathological or funny and incomprehensible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualizes Okudzhava's song "And We to the Doorman" (AWD), initially marginal in the Soviet poetic mainstream. It explores its shifts in tone, irregular rhythms, colloquial language, and semi-criminal undertones. AWD's structure, with uneven stanzas and no clear refrain, reveals underlying symmetry and recurring themes. The meter is predominantly iambic but varies. Unconventional verse endings and various rhyme schemes, including distant chains, characterize its prosody. The narrative touches on social cohesion and class conflict. The style reflects a challenging attitude toward privilege, employing rhetorical devices and indirect threats. The melody aligns with thematic elements, featuring repetitive patterns and a spoken quality. Semantically, AWD presents an ambiguous message on class struggle and moral issues. In sum, this analysis uncovers Okudzhava's song's formal complexities, thematic nuances, and stylistic innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between language and identity was an issue of huge debate over the last few years. It is observed, mainly in educational institutions, that the interrelation between identity and language does exist in various conversational interactions to portray modes of thinking and venues of interacting with knowledge. This issue has gained momentum among researchers and experts. This paper endeavors to shed light on the feasibility of transportable identities that engage and motivate learners of English. It aims to showcase how transportable identities can generate genuine discourse in classroom settings. The current study might enrich the existing literature, especially in the Algerian context, knowing that transportable identities were not addressed before in Algeria. The data gathered will provide empirical evidence of the viable impact of transportable identities within conversational interaction. Hence, this study is a reasonable attempt to improve the quality of both English as a Foreign Language learning and teaching. To equate with research objectives, an exploratory study was conducted to address the following research question: "To what extent can English as a Foreign Language conversational interaction, supported by transportable identities, generate authentic classroom discourse and, by extension, enhance learning?" Research findings obtained confirmed that conversational interaction that engages learners' transportable identities engendered genuine discourses and impacted their proficiency positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanica Olomucensia is the property of Palacky University in Olomouc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Chat generative pretrained transformer (ChatGPT) is a conversational language model powered by artificial intelligence (AI). It is a sophisticated language model that employs deep learning methods to generate human-like text outputs to inputs in the natural language. This narrative review aims to shed light on ethical concerns about using AI models like ChatGPT in writing assistance in the health care and medical domains. Currently, all the AI models like ChatGPT are in the infancy stage; there is a risk of inaccuracy of the generated content, lack of contextual understanding, dynamic knowledge gaps, limited discernment, lack of responsibility and accountability, issues of privacy, data security, transparency, and bias, lack of nuance, and originality. Other issues such as authorship, unintentional plagiarism, falsified and fabricated content, and the threat of being red-flagged as AI-generated content highlight the need for regulatory compliance, transparency, and disclosure. If the legitimate issues are proactively considered and addressed, the potential applications of AI models as writing assistance could be rewarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has observed that the Colloquial Singapore English particle lah conveys many different, and sometimes contradictory, pragmatic effects. In this paper, I focus specifically on how lah, pronounced in a low falling tone, behaves differently with assertions and directives—although it emphasizes the truth of assertions, it weakens the authoritative force of directives. In addition, it can be used in a non-emphatic way with confirmation-seeking statements. I propose that the particle conveys the not-at-issue or side comment that the lah-marked proposition directly follows from the evidence it is based on, which is interpreted by the addressee as an attempt by the speaker to justify her utterance. The different pragmatic effects of the particle then result from how this not-at-issue comment is interpreted in relation to the speech act of the utterances they mark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Linguistica Asiatica is the property of Acta Linguistica Asiatica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Doxa Comunicación is the property of Fundacion Universitaria San Pablo - CEU and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Chán Buddhist literature is not only an important source for the study of religious thought during the Chinese late medieval and early modern periods, but also constitutes a treasure trove for investigating the development of the colloquial language of the respective periods, both in terms of semantics and syntactic constructions. Since the editors of Chán Buddhist literature—such as the Recorded Saying and Transmission of the Lamp texts—claimed to convey the "living words" of the patriarchs and masters, numerous vernacularisms were integrated in the dialogue sections of the texts, and the use of traditional Buddhist terminology was often reduced to a minimum. Frequently, Chán Buddhist texts are among the earliest sources in which these colloquialisms surfaced. In this paper, we focus on expressions which derive from the colloquial language of the late Táng and Sòng periods, and which were integrated in Chán Buddhist literature, often assuming a particular metaphorical meaning in the rhetorical structure of the texts. We reconstruct their original meaning, their use in the Chán texts, as well as their further development in Sinitic languages and dialects. Besides contributing to a better understanding of the vocabulary used in the enigmatic language of Chán literature and the metaphorical mapping of originally colloquial expressions in a religious context, in this preliminary study, we also hope to contribute to a better understanding of the development of semantic items from the perspective of historical linguistics, their complex paths of metaphorical extensions, as well as their usage in local linguistic contexts. In addition, the case studies also illustrate the transformative force of religion on the development of language, and the complex interplay between religious ideas and linguistic expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the issues that determine the security of business transactions, whose proper functioning is endangered by so-called usurers. It discusses crimes under Art. 304 § 1-3 of the Penal Code. The offense of usury, regulated in Art. 304 § 1 of the P.C., provides for the criminal liability of persons who, by taking advantage of the compulsory position of another natural person, legal entity, or organizational unit without legal personality, conclude a contract with it, imposing an obligation on it to perform disproportionate to the consideration. Article 304 § 2 and 3 of the P.C. regulate new types of usury, introduced into the legal system by the amendment of May 14, 2020, which penalizes behavior directed against consumers, consisting in demanding excessive interest or non-interest costs for providing a benefit with the obligation to return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Elia: Studies in Applied English Linguistics / Estudios de Lingüística Inglesa Aplicada is the property of Elia: Estudios de Linguistica Inglesa Aplicada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Juznoslovenski Filolog is the property of Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts, Institute for the Serbian Language and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Shepherd's purse is a common weed in Poland. Its various colloquial and dialectal names can be found in the literature dedicated to herbalism, yet there is no linguistic study on this subject. This issue is discussed in this paper. Using an online survey, the contemporary Polish names of the plant have been collected. The material is composed of 33 names analysed in terms of classification into variants of Polish, geographical distribution, semantic motivation. A unit used within a limited geographical area is chleb babajagi, with its centre in Greater Poland. The names chlebek świętojański, Boży chlebek, babi chlebek, chleb, chlebek, chlebki are colloquial in turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Croatica et Slavica Iadertina is the property of University of Zadar, Department of Croatian & Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the medical domain, user-generated social media text is increasingly used as a valuable complementary knowledge source to scientific medical literature. The extraction of this knowledge is complicated by colloquial language use and misspellings. However, lexical normalization of such data has not been addressed effectively. This paper presents a data-driven lexical normalization pipeline with a novel spelling correction module for medical social media. Our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art spelling correction methods and can detect mistakes with an F1 of 0.63 despite extreme imbalance in the data. We also present the first corpus for spelling mistake detection and correction in a medical patient forum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes if it is possible to grow an I-Thou relation in the sense of Martin Buber with an artificial, conversational agent developed with Natural Language Processing techniques. The requirements for such an agent, the possible approaches for the implementation, and their limitations are discussed. The relation of the achievement of this goal with the Turing test is emphasized. Novel perspectives on the I-Thou and I-It relations are introduced according to the sociocultural paradigm and Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism, polyphony inter-animation, and carnavalesque. The polyphonic model, the associated analysis method, and the support tools are introduced. Some ideas on how the polyphonic model may be used for the implementation of a computer application able to analyze some features of the existence of an I-Thou relation are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we want to make a contrastive presentation, in French and in Romanian, upon the way the unstressed pronominal forms having the function of complement in the Dative are used in proverbs. We also want to emphasize the similarities and the differences between the two languages – when we speak about the morpho-syntactic and the semantic levels. Such differences and similarities occur especially when it comes to the possession relationship. Most part of our study is dedicated to presenting some special values of the unstressed pronominal forms in the possessive Dative – including the variant of the Dative with an attributive function and the ethical Dative. We have done this research in order to establish to what extent the use of such constructions varies. We shall also emphasize the specific constructions in Romanian where the Dative has a neutral value and the analytic Dative is thought as a prepositional group in the colloquial language. In order to illustrate this phenomenon in a better way, we relied our study on a corpus of proverbs and adages which were selected from specialized collections and electronic versions of some dictionairies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper investigates a colloquial construction in Mandarin Chinese in which a secondary predicate may be preceded by the enclitic ta (它 ta 'it') and the classifier 個 ge 'GE.' The paper argues that ge heads a dependent clause, where the enclitic is the subject of the secondary predicate. Therefore, first, the classifier is not used as a counting unit in this numeral classifier language; and second, in addition to PRO, another form of the subject for a dependent clause is attested in secondary predicate construction in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated and analysed the structures and functions of 3-word to 6-word lexical bundles of 120 English argumentative writing by Chinese EFL students and employed the framework based on Biber et al.'s structural classification and Hyland's functional classification of lexical bundles. It was found that there was generally a negative correlation, both structurally and functionally, between the frequency and the length of lexical bundles although there were some fluctuations in certain specific categories. Results indicated that the participants did not have a good command of lexical bundles, affecting the quality of English argumentative writing in various ways. First, the sampled students used limited types of lexical bundles frequently. They generally lacked lexical richness when employing specific lexical bundles to express their opinions and text-oriented lexical bundles to convey transitional signals. Second, they relied heavily on the anticipatory it structure and did not have the consciousness of using hedges and boosters when expressing their attitude. Third, they virtually did not use lexical bundles involving attributive clauses. Fourth, they are inclined to use colloquial language in writing. The paper includes implications for instruction of effective use of lexical bundles in argumentative writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication, which is generally defined as an act of transferring information from a human to another human, involves a linguistic code as their means. In these linguistic codes the encoder (speaker) encodes some ideas and concepts that get decoded by decoder (hearer). Every social set up or group develops its own terms and Jargon to convey ideas and concepts quickly. These terms and jargon simplify communication for insiders1 but make it complex for outsiders2. The data was collected through observation and interviews with the participants. The findings of the study show that jargon is an important aspect of communication in AMU, and it is constantly evolving to meet the needs of its speakers. The study also highlights the importance of pragmatic competence in understanding jargon and its use in different contexts. These ideas and concepts are highly pragmatic in nature and their development seems as a journey which starts from literal meaning and reaches to pragmatic meaning via context. This paper discusses how the lexicalized concept of an utterance changes into an ad hoc concept and how pragmatic inference operates in these changes, in special reference to AMU campus jargon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yod is the property of INALCO: Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the topic of academic language in the context of educational success of (mostly) immigrant children. However, most studies focused on academic language only and did not consider the role of other linguistic resources such as colloquial language for the development of academic language. In this paper, we will discuss the interplay between both registers by presenting an analysis of students' (n = 3) utterances during a collaborative task in history class. Data was collected in a College for Higher Vocational Education (upper secondary level; ISCS 10) in Vienna where one of the researchers was working as a history teacher. The interaction analysis and interpretation focus on strategies students employ to solve the exercises. The following strategies are identified and explained: mutual explanation for a better understanding of, e. g., technical terms, collective planning and monitoring of the writing process as well as orientation along the structure of other texts. Since colloquial and academic language seem interrelated in these strategies, this paper combines the concept of academic language and linguistic repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was actively involved in the political affairs of the Ireland of his life-time. Even though he belonged to the higher social classes, namely, the Anglo-Irish ruling minority, he sought to make the whole of the Irish population aware of their economic and political conditions, so that his "Countrymen" or "Fellow-Servants" (as he addressed the whole of the Irish) may pursue to improve their situation. In order to become closer to his intended audience, he decided to use several personae or fictional characters. One of these was the drapier, as the identity chosen in most of the series of seven Letters known as The Drapier's Letters (1724). Although he adopted many colloquial expressions and the register that a shop-keeper would employ, he was fully aware of the legal implications both of the whole issue at large and also of the particular proposals that he was making. This apparent inconsistency was meant to provide the Irish with the tools which he found necessary for them in their struggle to attain better political and economic conditions. It may be hypothesized that one of the aspects illustrating Swift's use of both colloquial language and the legal register is the connector whereas: on the one hand, as a discourse marker with its everyday meanings; on the other hand, with legal senses. The present paper seeks to explore and systematise these uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotionalization is increasingly used in the daily news. However, communication scholars have only just begun to explore how journalists use emotionalization in coverage of scientific and environmental topics. This study contributes to filling this research gap by investigating emotionalization in reporting on honey bee colony losses. The aim of the study is to analyze the amount of emotionalization that took place, as well as to observe changes over time. Emotionalization is assessed in two ways; by analyzing to what extent journalists (1) explicitly mentioned discrete emotions in news stories (joy, hope, fear, anger, etc.) and/or (2) used rhetorical devices to evoke emotions (affective vocabulary, metaphors, colloquial language, superlatives, etc.). Results from a quantitative content analysis of four Austrian newspapers in 2010/2011, 2013/2014, and 2017/2018 show that the coverage is highly emotionalized across all three time periods studied. Emotionalization occurs far more often by using rhetorical devices than by explicitly mentioning positive or negative emotions. Interestingly, the incorporation of emotional elements and scientific expertise in the news items do not exclude one another. Hence, there seems to be no strict dichotomy between rational/objective and emotional reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses lexical imitation and creation in contemporary Romanian, as two important processes of developing the individual and collective lexis, along with the various forms of borrowing and the internal lexicalgrammatical techniques of vocabulary enrichment. Setting the perimeter of the investigation entails: 1) clarifying the two concepts and, due to the complexity of the phenomena and the diversity of occurrences both in the specialised language, in the non-specialized language, as well as in the colloquial and argotic language, a typological approach will follow. The subsequent objective 2) consists in the identification and description of the lexical-semantic mechanisms involved in lexical imitation and creation. Furthermore, as lexical imitation and lexical creation are substantial sources of expressiveness, my endeavour also involves 3) studying their special role in the dynamics of the slang, depending on the degree of communicational complicity determined by such special lexical items. The accomplishment of these objectives requires a chiefly linguistic methodology and the instruments used pertain mainly to the semantic and lexicalparadigmatic patterns of analysis. Given the necessity of considering the context, the discursive parameters and the quantification of the expressiveness of the argotic terms, the present investigation will require instruments of pragmastylistics and sociolinguistics analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the interplay between language and intercultural communication with a special focus on the importance of working knowledge of foreign languages other than English for a satisfactory experience during longer sojourns abroad. Its authors present a revised understanding of the role of lingua franca English and a local language (here Polish) in intercultural relationships, especially the crucial influence of local languages on conversational control and social integration while in a foreign land. Our study has shown that lingua franca English is insufficient to successfully function abroad, and individuals deciding to resettle need to invest in learning a local language which, in the longer perspective, emerges as a medium for in-depth intercultural communication pertaining to self-positioning, relation building and meaning-making of the new semiotic budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the social meaning of style- shifts between standard and neo- standard Italian in a corpus of 200 recent TV commercials. As marketeers make good use of stylistic choices to address their target audience with positive values, such as spontaneity and authenticity, advertising offers highly suitable data to find out which social and stylistic meaning linguistic features express. In this paper, every commercial was divided in different scenes or «spot elements», and the influence of different socio -variational factors on the choice between standard and neo - standard features was calculated using a multivariate method, viz. the conditional inference tree. The results confirm the hypotheses that morphosyntactic variants coming from colloquial varieties and regional features are used to imitate interactions from daily life, for celebrity endorsements and by products that flaunt their locally based, genuine identity. The extensive use of these variants in particular contexts suggests that neo- standard features are used to express informal, authentic real-life situations. Nevertheless, in the more descriptive spot elements and in commercials targeted to a children's audience the standard language is preferred, which suggests that standard Italian has still maintained its traditional prestige. These findings confirm that both varieties are considered appropriate for each of their own different stylistic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the properties of the Romanian presumptive mood and the role it plays in the distribution of the epistemic indefinite vreun. We focus on the morphologically complex future-based paradigm, which includes forms based on the literary and colloquial variants of the future auxiliary. The colloquial forms are shown to have lost the ability to express purely temporal meanings, being used exclusively with modal-evidential readings. We further argue that the future-based presumptive is closely related to epistemic modals, with which it shares the ability to express indirect inferential evidentiality. We capitalize on their contrasting behavior in factive settings to explain the interaction with the epistemic determiner vreun. Specifically, we argue that the key property that makes the (colloquial) future-based presumptive a suitable licensor for vreun is its incompatibility with contexts where the modalized proposition is established to hold. We discuss a similar pattern in some American Spanish varieties, where the so-called epistemic future has lost its ability to determine temporal (future) orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lexikos is the property of Bureau of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper addresses the question to what extent Flemish subtitlers reproduce Belgian-Dutch colloquialisms of the spoken source text in the subtitles. Next to the official Belgian Standard Dutch language, Colloquial Belgian Dutch or tussentaal is frequently spoken on Flemish television. In this context, it is particularly interesting to investigate whether the subtitlers copy those spoken colloquialisms to the subtitles or whether they translate them into standard language. This study compares the language used in twenty television programs to the corresponding subtitles in order to verify the linguistic choices of the subtitlers. In addition, it will be examined whether the subtitles contain more lexical colloquialisms than morphological or syntactic colloquialisms, and whether the program genre influences these choices. The results reveal that Colloquial Belgian Dutch lexemes are more often reproduced in subtitles on Flemish television than morphological and syntactic colloquialisms. Furthermore, it is shown that especially the subtitles of entertainment and comedy programs contain tussentaal. Based on these results, we conclude that the demotization process in Flanders is not confining itself to the spoken registers, since it also manifests itself in certain written contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Socjolingwistyka is the property of Instytut Jezyka Polskiego PAN and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the rapidly evolving domain of conversational agents, the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into Chatbot Development Platforms (CDPs) is a significant innovation. This study compares the efficacy of employing generic and fine-tuned GPT-3.5-turbo models for designing dialog flows, focusing on the intent and entity recognition crucial for dynamic conversational interactions. Two distinct approaches are introduced: a generic GPT-based system (G-GPT) leveraging the pre-trained model with complex prompts for intent and entity detection, and a fine-tuned GPT-based system (FT-GPT) employing customized models for enhanced specificity and efficiency. The evaluation encompassed the systems' ability to accurately classify intents and recognize named entities, contrasting their adaptability, operational efficiency, and customization capabilities. The results revealed that, while the G-GPT system offers ease of deployment and versatility across various contexts, the FT-GPT system demonstrates superior precision, efficiency, and customization, although it requires initial training and dataset preparation. This research highlights the versatility of LLMs in enriching conversational features for talking assistants, from social robots to interactive chatbots. By tailoring these advanced models, the fluidity and responsiveness of conversational agents can be enhanced, making them more adaptable and effective in a variety of settings, from customer service to interactive learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Getting all students involved in a class can be a difficult task. Getting students excited about reading, writing, and learning can be an even more difficult task. Fortunately, using dialogues is an easy strategy that any teacher can implement in any grade in any subject area to get students up, moving, and actively engaged in the learning process. Dialogues are essentially two-person plays or skits that students act out in pairs. Each dialogue focuses on a specific topic and introduces key vocabulary terms and concepts in a way that students can understand, using day-to-day conversational language. In addition, all students love using dialogues because they appeal to various interests. The "science-y" students love the content, the lit/drama students love the format, and the class comics love the humor! AND they can be personalized and modified to meet the needs of specific students and educational goals and can be used with other strategies such as exit slips, labs, content review, and more. In short, dialogues are an easy way to create an inclusive classroom where every student is engaged and successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Respectus Philologicus is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studies in Polish Linguistics is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper deals with authentic written and spoken utterances of ordinary Czech people of the turn of the 19th century, as recorded in linguistic works by the Czech philologist and translator František Jan Tomsa (1751-1814). It analyses the examples published in the books Elementarwerk der böhmischdeutschund lateinischen Sprache (1784), Von den Vorzügen der čechischen Sprache (1812), Über die Veränderungen der čechischen Sprache (1805), and Über die Bedeutung, Abwandlung und Gebrauch der čechischen Zeitwörter (1804), which are at least partly written with scholarly precision and often provide accurate information about who said what when, and in what situation. Thus they represent a unique source of information not only about the manner of speaking of ordinary Czech people at the beginning of the National Revival period and about the differences between the language spoken in Prague and in the country, but also about the usual topics of conversation, including the history of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the use of informal writing in Persian has grown significantly due to the increasing expansion of cyberspace and social media and platforms, and the tendency of users to bring the written language closer to colloquial speech. But on the other hand, proper tools to process this language register are not developed very much. One of the tools for low level processing of textual data is an inflectional analyzer. However, such tools are not developed for this register yet. Informal words have their own structures, stems, morphemes and clitics and they also make use of formal structures and units. Moreover, this register also consists of formal words so any analyzer for informal words should have the potential to analyze formal words, too. In this paper, it is tried to cover all inflectional structures of informal Persian language to build an inflectional analyzer. A corpus of most of its known sub-registers is constructed to extract words, morphemes and inflectional rules and morphotactics. A part of this corpus is used for testing the analyzer. After extracting 1786 unique words of the test part, inflectional analyzer f-measure is equal to 97.67%. This tool can be used in computational processing of Persian language and it can also be used in teaching Persian, specifically colloquial Persian to non-Persian learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of biological materials and bio‐inspired materials science is well established; however, surprisingly little knowledge is systematically translated to engineering solutions. To accelerate discovery and guide insights, an open‐source autoregressive transformer large language model (LLM), BioinspiredLLM, is reported. The model is finetuned with a corpus of over a thousand peer‐reviewed articles in the field of structural biological and bio‐inspired materials and can be prompted to recall information, assist with research tasks, and function as an engine for creativity. The model has proven that it is able to accurately recall information about biological materials and is further strengthened with enhanced reasoning ability, as well as with Retrieval‐Augmented Generation (RAG) to incorporate new data during generation that can also help to traceback sources, update the knowledge base, and connect knowledge domains. BioinspiredLLM also has shown to develop sound hypotheses regarding biological materials design and remarkably so for materials that have never been explicitly studied before. Lastly, the model shows impressive promise in collaborating with other generative artificial intelligence models in a workflow that can reshape the traditional materials design process. This collaborative generative artificial intelligence method can stimulate and enhance bio‐inspired materials design workflows. Biological materials are at a critical intersection of multiple scientific fields and models like BioinspiredLLM help to connect knowledge domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this article I explore the relationship between core academic language skills (CALS) - a construct representing a set of high-utility language skills needed to manage the linguistic features prevalent in academic texts across content areas - and schooling outcomes. There has long been an understanding that there is a distinction between academic language and colloquial language, originally described by Jim Cummins (1976) as cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS). The construct has only recently been operationalised (Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, Barr, Meneses & Dobbs, 2015) as the individual skills and competencies that underlie CALP. The CALS construct describes an empirically testable set of competencies that address this need. This has been used in the development of an assessment instrument aimed at South African learners - the CALS-I-ZA (MacFarlane, Barr & Uccelli, 2022) - and I investigate whether a measurable link exists between this assessment and schooling outcomes for a sample of Grade 6 learners in 2 public schools in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Schooling outcomes have been measured using the Gauteng Provincial Common Assessments - a provincial examination intended to measure schooling outcomes on a comparable assessment instrument. The study reported on here shows a moderately strong correlation between the CALS-I-ZA and the provincial common examinations (r = 0.64 and r = 0.65). This predictive relationship between CALS and schooling outcomes leads to an argument for direct instruction in CALS as an embedded feature of pedagogy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out with the main objective of investigating the impact of the English language lexeme on modern colloquial Sinhala and exploring the specific mechanisms of neologism and borrowing. Among the major findings, the impact of English on colloquial Sinhala has been identified in the processes of the acronym, coinage, alphabetic abbreviation, clipping, blending, generification, and borrowing as the dominant processes that come under the umbrella term of neologism. As borrowing mechanisms, loan words, loan shifts and loan blends followed by other subsequent mechanisms like loan translations, loan renditions and loan creations have been established with colloquial Sinhala. Participatory observation, chunk recordings and secondary data sources are methodological instruments of this research. The Englishinfluenced lexical items in modern colloquial Sinhala have been critically analysed and categorized logically with the final concluding remark that the English language's influence on modern colloquial Sinhala is inordinate with special reference to lexical categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay delves into the multifaceted nature of the Tagalog word ano, examining its usage in various contexts and its impact on communication within Tagalog-speaking communities. Three cases of ano are discussed in the essay. The first case pertains to ano accompanied by ostension; the second, pertains to ano accompanied by context clues; and the third, pertains to ano without any ostension or context. In Tagalog communities, ano, despite the lack of ostension or context, is sometimes still used in everyday conversations, presenting the problem of how meaning or understanding of the word ano is still possible. The third case of ano will be further divided into two: IT-ano (ibang tao-ano) and HIT-ano (hindi ibang tao-ano) providing the difference between strangers and acquaintances. By relying on Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of what it means to understand through language-game, this essay discusses how a vague word such as ano gives rise to meaning and understanding. This approach to clarify meaning will relate to the levels of social interaction found in Virgilio Enriquez's idea of pakikipagkapwa. The analysis will proceed by referring to hypothetical scenarios involving the use of the term ano situated in the everyday conversational use of language by Filipinos. The mode of analysis takes the perspective of the author, who is a native speaker of Tagalog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Analisi: Quaderns de Comunicacio i Cultura is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For proper assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of language disorders in Mandarin children, it is important to have measures that closely track the course of normal development. The current study uses a large collection of spontaneous conversational language samples to track the developmental course of five language measures: mean length of utterance (MLU), the MLU of the five longest utterances (MLU5), vocD, number of repetitions, and number of retracings. We used cross-validation-based linear regression to estimate the relationship between age, gender and each of the five variables derived from the conversational language samples in 101 typically developing Mandarin-speaking children aged 3 to 7. Each of the five measures showed significant age-related effects during the period from age 3 to age 7. As norm-referenced measures of language development in children speaking Mandarin, these developmental data could inform clinical therapists regarding assessments and interventions for children with language disorder or impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Linguistica Asiatica is the property of Acta Linguistica Asiatica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Motivated by the quasi-categorical reduced forms of disyllabic words produced in Chinese conversational speech, a frequency-based selection procedure of typical pronunciation by disyllabic word type and reduction degree is proposed in this paper. This variant-selection algorithm utilizes techniques of free phone recognition and phonetic similarity score calculation to account for Chinese syllable structure. Four reduction types are suggested by considering the presence of a within-word syllable boundary: Citation form-like reduction, marginal segment deletion, nuclei merger, and syllable merger. The results show that the most frequent reduction types for disyllabic words in Chinese conversation are citation form-like reduction and syllable merger. In particular, high-frequency disyllabic words preferentially take the extreme syllable-merger form. As shown in the analysis, segmental reduction in Chinese disyllabic words is morphology-dependent. It is also related to the prosodic position at which a disyllabic word is produced as well as the temporal quality of the word. Finally, in the automatic speech recognition experiments, the performance was improved by adding a small number of variants selected by the algorithm to the pronunciation dictionary of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the authors' university, interpreting pedagogies reflect the situated-learning theories proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991) and others especially in specialized areas such as health and legal interpreting. This paper reports on a project where health interpreting students in a language-neutral cohort were given the opportunity to practise interpreting with the aid of authentic material involving paramedic-patient interactions. Authentic audiovisual clips were posted online. Pauses and blank screens were inserted at points where the speakers took turns, to allow student interpreters to record their interpretation with minimal disruption. Recordings were anonymized and detailed feedback was given by language-specific markers following performance-based criteria. Formative feedback was passed on for students to reflect on their performance. Error analysis was carried out to measure students' performance when interpreting natural language. Student responses were gauged using pre- and post-intervention surveys. Students enjoyed being able to face actual challenges of interpreting 'in the setting', with the added advantage of receiving formative feedback that enabled them to reflect upon and improve their performance. One of the main challenges identified was that of interpreting informal paramedic discourse in a manner that was culturally [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]