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Language, in various spheres of interaction has a reciprocal relationship. This implies that language shapes our ideas and interactions much in the same way that interactions shape language. People think in the language they learn, solve their problems in that medium. They learn experiences in that medium and convey by way of opinions, advice, requests, instructions or commands which they have learned to others. The military, as a unit of society has its language which is necessary because of the delicate nature of its operation. The aim of this study is to examine the use of an alternative vocabulary which in this sense, refers to the registers or jargons which are peculiar to the military for its peculiar needs. The data which was sourced from observation and others mainly from Nairaland, includes English and French terminologies that are associated with the military. The data was analyzed using relevance theory. Finding shows that the military has been able to maintain a high level of confidence in its operations because it encodes and upgrades its lexicon. The study concludes that the initiative of the military to have its terminology is commendable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks requiring non-linguistic executive control skills, thereby generating an interest in the relationship between bilingual language processing and non-linguistic control abilities. Based on this, the present study further examined the bidirectional interaction between language control and non-linguistic control in unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. These bilinguals completed a Flanker task in three types of language control contexts (i.e., L1, L2, and Mixed language contexts) in the interleaved word-comprehension-to-Flanker sequence and performed a picture-word matching task in three types of non-linguistic executive control contexts (i.e., color, shape and color-shape mixed contexts) in the interleaved color-shape-switching-toword-comprehension sequence. The results showed that the Flanker effect in mixed language context was smaller than in single (L1 and L2) context, suggesting language control leads to a better non-linguistic control ability. Additionally, the language switching cost was found smaller in the mixed task context (color/shape switching), indicating that non-linguistic control can enhance the language control ability. Therefore, we conclude that there is a bidirectional interaction between language control and non-linguistic control even in unbalanced bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a sketch grammar of a new bilingual mixed language based on data gathered through interaction with its last native speakers. The language, which we call Posha of Çankırı, is spoken in central Turkey. The source languages are Turkish and Lomavren, another bilingual mixed language for which the source languages are Armenian and some Central Indo-Aryan varieties. In Posha of Çankırı, the mixing happens in the nominal morphology and in the lexicon while the verbal roots and verbal morphology are entirely from the ancestral language, Lomavren, albeit with certain minor changes. The Indo-Aryan layer of vocabulary is rather thin and the Indo-Aryan retentions in grammar can only be speculated. We show that the emergence of Posha of Çankırı has been initiated by language shift, but that its ultimate defining characteristic is L2 insertions into (some distorted version of) the L1. The study contributes to the documentation of lesser known new varieties and touches upon topics such as the mechanism involved in the emergence of bilingual mixed languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A curated high-quality dataset of 12,698 YouTube comments and replies in Hindi-English code-mixed language for misogynistic attitude detection is proposed. • The dataset provides for two tasks- first to identify optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral attitude in content and then labelling comments into the categories of suggestion, appreciation, criticism, offensive, or none. • A set of algorithmic models comprising techniques from machine learning, deep learning and transformer-based models are applied. • The mBERT model gives best performance on both subtasks, with macro average F1 scores of 0.59 and 0.52, and weighted average F1 scores of 0.66 and 0.65, respectively. • The experimental evaluation and results confirm the suitability of the dataset and the real-world applications and future extension possibilities of the work are discussed. Social media platforms are now not only a medium for expressing users views, feelings, emotions and sentiments but are also being abused by people to propagate unpleasant and hateful content. Consequently, research efforts have been made to develop techniques and models for automatically detecting and identifying hateful, abusive, vulgar, and offensive content on different platforms. Although significant progress has been made on the task, the research on design of methods to detect misogynistic attitude of people in non-English and code-mixed languages is not very well-developed. Non-availability of suitable datasets and resources is one main reason for this. Therefore, this paper attempts to bridge this research gap by presenting a high-quality curated dataset in the Hindi-English code-mixed language. The dataset includes 12,698 YouTube comments and replies, with each comment annotated under two-level categories, first as optimistic and pessimistic, and then into different types at second level based on the content. The inter-annotator agreement in the dataset is found to be 0.84 for the first subtask, and 0.79 for the second subtask, indicating the reasonably high quality of annotations. Different algorithmic models are explored for the task of automatic detection of the misogynistic attitude expressed in the comments, with the mBERT model giving best performance on both subtasks (reported macro average F1 scores of 0.59 and 0.52, and weighted average F1 scores of 0.66 and 0.65, respectively). The analysis and results suggest that the dataset can be used for further research on the topic and that the developed algorithmic models can be applied for automatic detection of misogynistic attitude in social media conversations and posts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we investigate a special type of CS below word level, which is observed in mixed compound words. In particular, we discuss mixed Italian–German compounds; this combination is particularly interesting since, in the two languages, the process of compounding follows different rules for what concerns the position of the head, as well as gender and number inflection. An Acceptability Judgment Task was administered to some bilingual speakers, who assessed the acceptability of mixed compounds inserted in both German and Italian clauses. Our conclusion is that it is possible to have mixed compounds, though this option is severely constrained, especially because of the different word order parameters exhibited by the two languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the emergence of a hortative marker in Guaraché, a new mixed language in Paraguay, the result of language mixing of the Indigenous Aché language and Paraguayan Guaraní. After settlement on reservations, the formerly nomadic Aché hunter-gatherers began shifting to the national language Guaraní, resulting in Guaraché, which is currently learned by children as their first language. Guaraché speakers have incorporated parts of the lexicon and morphology from Aché and Guaraní into their verbal repertoires, including parts of the Guaraní inflectional morphology. Thereby, they are modeling their use of the Guaraní 1pl.in marker ja-/ña- on a specific function that it has in Guaraní, hortative mood. Neither Aché nor Guaraní have grammatical hortative markers. Such a reanalysis and transfer of only one function of ja-/ña- suggests that a novel grammatical distinction is emerging between ja-/ña- for the hortative and the free pronoun ñande/nande for all other cases of 1pl.in. This paper analyzes hortative constructions in a corpus of recordings of naturally occurring interactions from children and adults. This case of grammaticalization is a strong indicator of a gradual transformation of Guaraché from language-mixing practices into a new mixed language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rumors can easily propagate through social media, posing potential threats to both individual and public health. Most existing approaches focus on single-language rumor detection, which leads to unsatisfying performance when these are applied to mixed-language rumor detection. Meanwhile, the type of mixed-language (mixture of word-level or sentence-level) is a great challenge for mixed-language rumor detection. In this paper, focusing on a mixed scene of Chinese and Tibetan, the research first provides a Chinese–Tibetan mixed-language rumor detection dataset (Weibo_Ch_Ti) that comprises 1,617 non-rumor tweets and 1,456 rumor tweets in two mixed-language types. Then, the research proposes an effective model with multi-extractors, named "MER-CTRD" for short. This model mainly consists of three extractors. The Multi-task Extractor helps the model to extract feature representations of different mixed-language types adaptively. The Rich-semantic Extractor enriches the semantic features representations of Tibetan in the Chinese–Tibetan-mixed language. The Fusion-feature Extractor fuses the mean and disparity semantic features of Chinese and Tibetan to complement feature representations of the mixed language. Finally, the research conducts experiments on Weibo_Ch_Ti. The results show that the proposed model improves accuracy by about 3%–12% over the baseline models, indicating its effectiveness in the Chinese–Tibetan mixed-language rumor detection scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language interference is common in today’s multilingual societies where more languages are in contact, and as a global result leads to the creation of hybrid languages. These, together with doubts on their right to be officially recognised, emerged the problem of their automatic identification and further elaboration in the area of computational linguistics. In this paper, we propose a first attempt to identify the elements of a Ukrainian-Russian hybrid language, Surzhyk, through the adoption of the example-based rules created with the instruments of programming language R. Our example-based study consists of: 1) analysis of spoken samples of Surzhyk registered by Del Gaudio (2010) in Kyiv area and creation of the written corpus; 2) production of specific rules on the identification of Surzhyk patterns and their implementation; 3) testing the code and analysing the effectiveness of the hybrid language classifier.

Israbic is a language variety that is spoken by a majority of the Druze community in Israel and is characterised by a mixture of Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. Longitudinal data of Palestinian Arabic/Israeli Hebrew code-switching from the Israeli Druze community collected in 2000, 2017 and 2018 indicate that Israbic went through a gradual process of language mixing. The process started with code-switching, was followed by a composite matrix language formation and ultimately resulted in a mixed language. Some linguists (see Backus, 2003 ; Bakker, 2003) claim that mixed languages cannot arise out of code-switching. Conversely, others (see Auer, 1999 ; Myers-Scotton, 2003) have proposed theoretical models to mixed languages as outcomes of code-switching, and some (see McConvell, 2008 ; McConvel and Meakins, 2005 ; Meakins, 2012 ; O'Shannessy, 2012) have provided empirical evidence under which mixed languages arise out of code-switching. This research sought to gather further empirical evidence showing that Israbic is another mixed language that arose out of code-switching. This study also wished to emphasise the uniqueness of Israbic, which is a mixture of closely related languages. Such mixtures are scarce in the literature (Auer, 2014). An examination of Israbic in relation to Auer's and Myers-Scotton's models and general definitions in the literature and comparisons of Israbic with other widely accepted mixed languages reveals that Israbic is an excellent example of a mixed language. However, such models and definitions are based on existing languages that have been subject to discussion in the literature. Of these languages, the majority arose from contact between languages from different language families, whereas this study is concerned with investigating a mixed language from the same language family. Thus, this raises the question as to whether such concepts have the same validity for closely related languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of Media Lengua examines production differences between mid and high vowels in order to identify the major correlates that distinguish these vowel types. The Media Lengua vowel system is unusual in that it incorporates lexical items originating in Spanish’s five-vowel system into a three-vowel system inherited from Quichua, resulting in high degrees of overlap between the front versus back, mid and high vowel pairs /e, i/ and /o, u/ in F1xF2 space. As Media Lengua speakers utilize and differentiate between all five vowels despite the large degree of acoustic overlap between mid and high vowels, this raises the question of what other correlates beyond F1 and F2 might be involved. To address this, our study looks at a range of variables, both acoustic and qualitative, in a multi-method approach using both factor analysis for mixed data and linear mixed effects regression modelling. Each method provides a unique view on the correlates of vowel differentiation in Media Lengua. Taken together, our results indicate that Media Lengua speakers rely on both social and linguistic contextual cues to distinguish mid from high vowels, which overlap in acoustic space (F1 and F2).

Analysis of spelling and content of Czech inscriptions found on the headstones in Volhynia is a part of complex research in the language of Czech speakers settled in this region. The researchers gathered a corpus of 71 inscriptions of various size and contrasted them with a collection published by Česlav Chytrý; his vast database, however, could not be included in the analysis due to unreliable transcriptions and illegible writing on the pictures. The inscriptions show two scripts in use - Cyrillic and Latin. There were 52 instances of predominant Latin script, 16 instances of Cyrillic and 3 hybrid examples. The analysis of grammar and spelling revealed tendencies to non-standard linguistic patterns, e.g., variable vowel length, confusing i/y characters, confusing voiced and voiceless consonants, inaccurate graphemes, and the influence of Ukrainian. Out of 52 Czech inscriptions, only 17 did not contain any non-standard features. Apart from a brief commentary on design of inscriptions, the content analysis focused on personal details of the deceased, their family relations and characteristics which had been appreciated (for instance, the most frequent adjectives were dear, good, and beloved). Moreover, the research reflected on images of death and afterlife grounded in the Christian concepts of life, Purgatory and Heaven. The inscriptions written in verse had been taken mostly from folk poetry, depicting family's grief as well as their hope in an afterlife. Other criteria for analysis included presentation of biographical details which had used both Roman and Arabic numerals and had been influenced by practices typical for Ukrainian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the idiolect of САШКО - a hyper-multilingual global nomad whose language repertoire draws on forty languages, ten of which he speaks with native or native-like proficiency. By analyzing grammatical and lexical features typifying САШКО's translanguaging practices (code-switches, code-borrowings, and code-mixes), as documented in the corpus of reflexive notes that span the last twenty-five years, the author designs САШКО's translanguaged grammar. Instead of being a passive additive pluralization of separated, autonomous, and static monolects, САШКО's grammar emerges as a deeply orchestrated, unitary, and dynamic strategy. From САШКО's perspective, this grammar constitutes a tool to express his rebellious and defiant identity; a tool that - while aiming to combat Western mono-culturalisms, compartmented multilingualisms, and nationalisms - ultimately leads to САШКО's linguistic and cultural homelessness. This paper - the last in a series of three articles - is dedicated to САШКО's mixed languages and translanguaged grammar typifying САШКО-lect in its integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Code switching, the use of mixed-language expressions, is gaining prominence in advertising targeting linguistic minorities. Two studies investigate the existence of linguistic rules governing the use of code switching and identify situations in which those rules have a greater impact on persuasion. The studies extend Myers-Scotton's 1995 model of code switching by revealing an interaction between linguistic correctness and type of processing. More specifically, breaking the linguistic rules of code switching results in less persuasive messages but only when consumers process the ads in a highly data-driven mode. When consumers do not engage in highly data-driven processing, breaking linguistic rules does not influence persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ponašymu – the mixed language code of Těšín Silesia This article describes the development of the linguistic situation in the border region of Těšín Silesia throughout its history, with particular emphasis on the so-called ponašymu – a mixed language code used in the Czech part of the region. It is based on a random combination of forms of the traditional Těšín dialect with the standard Czech language and, to a lesser extent, elements borrowed from the Polish and Slovak languages and from neighbouring Moravian dialects. An important element of the study is the analysis of selected material collected by the author during fieldwork in August 2018. Ponašymu – mieszany kod językowy czeskiego Śląska Cieszyńskiego Artykuł opisuje rozwój sytuacji językowej w pogranicznym regionie Śląska Cieszyńskiego na przestrzeni dziejów, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem tzw. ponašymu – mieszanego kodu językowego używanego w czeskiej części regionu. Oparty jest on na dowolnym łączeniu form tradycyjnego śląskiego dialektu cieszyńskiego ze standardowym językiem czeskim i w mniejszym stopniu elementami zapożyczonymi z języka polskiego, słowackiego i sąsiednich gwar morawskich. Ważnym elementem pracy jest analiza wybranych materiałów zebranych przeze mnie w trakcie badań terenowych w sierpniu 2018 r.

Copyright of Adeptus is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of 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.)

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]

After decades of debate in linguistic theory, the lexical/functional status of adpositions is still controversial. Lexicon-Grammar mixed languages such as Media Lengua, spoken in Northern Ecuador, are excellent testing cases for such grammatical categories: This mixed language displays a conservative Quichua morphosyntactic frame while approximately 90% of its lexical roots are relexified from Spanish. Thus, due to the lexical-functional split Media Lengua displays, whether adpositions in this language are realized in Quichua or Spanish can speak to their status as a lexical/functional category. This study reports data from recent field research, conducted with speakers trilingual in Media Lengua, Quichua and Spanish who participated in two tasks (video description and translation). The results show a split between lexical and functional adpositions in Media Lengua, manifested in the dual-language realization of complex (multimorphemic) items: The lexical part of these complex items is relexified from Spanish while the functional part is retained in Quichua – even when participants are structurally primed. This suggests that Media Lengua across communities systematically follows Quichua morphosyntactic rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper much discussion will be on the formation of a unique identity as a Chinese-American in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior. This unique identity succeeds to link and bridge the two different cultures, the past and the present, the male and the female. It also has the capacity to encompass all sorts of differences and contradictions. The hybrid allusions, the hybrid genre, the blending of facts and fiction, the thematic decentralization, the shifting narrative point of views, the hybrid readers and the hybrid language employed in Kingston's writing all reflect on the erasure of boundaries between the East and the West, the past and the present, the male and the female. Instead of dichotomizing the world, the unique identity as a Chinese-American link and unite things altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language practices of Latinos in the US continue to attract attention from politicians, educators, journalists, linguists and the general Hispanic and non-Hispanic public. While monolingual speakers of English in the US expect Hispanics to shift to English like other minority language speakers have done in the past, monolingual speakers of Spanish expect them to speak "pure" Spanish. Even Spanish-English bilingual speakers criticize Latinos for mixing Spanish and English or speaking Spanglish. This term has been rejected by some linguists who claim that it is technically flawed and only applies to casual oral registers. In this paper I consider the linguistic nature, sociolinguistic functions and attitudes towards Spanglish, I show that Latinos are using this hybrid, heteroglossic variety beyond casual oral registers, and I suggest a broader perspective which not only considers the linguistic features of Spanglish but also the political, social and cultural issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to explore the phonological features of Arabi-Malayalam based on the Arabi-Malayalam prose and poetry. The study evaluates the peculiarities in the phonological treatment of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian loan words in this mixed language. It aims mainly at exploring the phonological modifications undergone in the loan words and the particular patterns, if any in such incorporation. The analysis reveals that the Arabi-Malayalam utilized and preserved several Proto-Dravidian phonological processes for the assimilation of loanwords. Highly sanskritized modern standard Malayalam has given up several such features. The study concludes that the Arabi-Malayalam has devised its own de-clustering pattern in the incorporation of loan words. As a result of these processes, drastic changes have been made in the surface structure of loan words and the root forms of such words are difficult to be identified. The phonological features of these words and usages are analyzed in order to bring new lights in understanding linguistic features of this Arabi-Malayalam. [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]

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish 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.)

We examined if iconic pictures belonging to one's native culture interfere with second language production in bilinguals in an object naming task. Bengali-English bilinguals named pictures in both L1 and L2 against iconic cultural images representing Bengali culture or neutral images. Participants named in both "Blocked" and "Mixed" language conditions. In both conditions, participants were significantly slower in naming in English when the background was an iconic Bengali culture picture than a neutral image. These data suggest that native language culture cues lead to activation of the L1 lexicon that competed against L2 words creating an interference. These results provide further support to earlier observations where such culture related interference has been observed in bilingual language production. We discuss the results in the context of cultural influence on the psycholinguistic processes in bilingual object naming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial amounts of resources are usually required to robustly develop a language model for an open vocabulary speech recognition system as out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words can hurt recognition accuracy. In this work, we applied a hybrid lexicon of word and sub-word units to resolve the problem of OOV words in a resource-efficient way. As sub-lexical units can be combined to form new words, a compact set of hybrid vocabulary can be used while still maintaining a low OOV rate. For Thai, a syllable-based unit called pseudo-morpheme (PM) was chosen as a sub-word unit. To also benefit from different levels of linguistic information embedded in different input types, a hybrid recurrent neural network language model (RNNLM) framework is proposed. An RNNLM can model not only information from multiple-type input units through a hybrid input vector of words and PMs, but can also capture long context history through recurrent connections. Several hybrid input representations were also explored to optimize both recognition accuracy and computational time. The hybrid LM has shown to be both resource-efficient and well-performed on two Thai LVCSR tasks: broadcast news transcription and speech-to-speech translation. The proposed hybrid lexicon can constitute an open vocabulary for Thai LVCSR as it can greatly reduce the OOV rate to less than 1 % while using only 42 % of the vocabulary size of the word-based lexicon. In terms of recognition performance, the best proposed hybrid RNNLM, which uses a mixed word-PM input, obtained 1.54 % relative WER reduction when compared with a conventional word-based RNNLM. In terms of computational time, the best hybrid RNNLM has the lowest training and decoding time among all RNNLMs including the word-based RNNLM. The overall relative reduction on WER of the proposed hybrid RNNLM over a traditional n-gram model is 6.91 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For any given mixed-language text, a multilingual synthesizer synthesizes speech that is intelligible to human listener. However, as speech data are usually collected from native speakers to avoid foreign accent, synthesized speech shows speaker switching at language switching points. To overcome this, the multilingual speech corpus can be converted to a polyglot speech corpus using cross-lingual voice conversion, and a polyglot synthesizer can be developed. Cross-lingual voice conversion is a technique to produce utterances in target speaker's voice from source speaker's utterance irrespective of the language and text spoken by the source and the target speakers. Conventional voice conversion technique based on GMM tokenization suffer from degradation in speech quality as the spectrum is oversmoothed due to statistical averaging. The current work focuses on alleviating the oversmoothing effect in GMM-based voice conversion technique, using (source) language-specific mixture weights in a multi-level GMM followed by selective pole focusing in the unvoiced speech segments. The continuity between the frames of the converted speech is ensured by performing fifth-order mean filtering in the cepstral domain. For the current work, cross-lingual voice conversion is performed for four regional Indian languages and a foreign language namely, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, and Indian English. The performance of the system is evaluated subjectively using ABX listening test for speaker identity and using mean opinion score for quality. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively improves the quality and intelligibility mitigating the oversmoothing effect in the voice-converted speech. A hidden Markov model-based polyglot text-to-speech system is also developed, using this converted speech corpus, to further make the system suitable for unrestricted vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses the identity and language of three groups which are considered to display hybrid characteristics. These three groups are the Samsams, Baba Nyonya and the Jawi Peranakans. They are predominantly found in the northern part of peninsular Malaysia. As a concept, hybrid refers to the nature of a system which forms a cluster of several subsystems or segments that are different from one another. This hybrid concept is used to explain the identity of the three above groups. Even though the language spoken by the three groups display hybrid characteristics, their linguistic classifications indicate the speech systems of both the Samsams and Jawi Peranakans as dialect, whereas the speech system of the Baba Nyonya as creole. The essay also reviews the linguistic classification of speech systems of these three groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "The Tin Drum" by Günter Grass is presented. Topics discussed include novels' thematic framework and formal design; theoretical framework comprising reflections of philosophers Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno on storyteller and narrator; and novels hybrid language such as Polish, Cassubian and German.

Copyright of HOW: A Colombian Journal for Teachers of English is the property of Asociacion Colombiana de Profesores de Ingles 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.)

Highlights: [•] We recover out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words in continuous speech recognition. [•] OOV words are detected and transcribed with a mixed word/sub-word language model. [•] Unlike traditional hybrid language models, ours consists of two independent components. [•] The orthography of OOV words is retrieved with a table look-up approach. [•] We outperform state-of-the-art approaches, especially on an out-of-domain task. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents the layout description script (LDS), which is a domain specific language intended to code layout templates to be used for layout-aware circuit synthesis. LDS supports both sequential and constraint programming and is suitable for both manual coding and automatic code generation. LDS is compared with previous approaches related to layout description. Code samples are given for alignment, abutment, symmetry, and similar constraints. Also, implementation of the LDS compiler is discussed and a methodology for handling complex constraints is presented. Due to its support for constraint programming, it is possible to constrain topological representations and even combine them. It is also possible to combine and constrain placement and routing in an LDS template. Finally, a capture tool has been implemented. This tool is designed to extract a template from an expert-drawn layout. Capture converts a data structure extracted through a guided user interface into a template. This tool highlights the compatibility of LDS with electronic design automation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper explores types of marked language choices and their uses in Taiwan, using examples from both everyday and e-generation online communication where language mixing, crossing, and stylizing are rampant despite the fact that most of the same individuals consider conventionally codified Mandarin, English, and Japanese more prestigious. The paper argues that this kind of hybrid language practice owes much to Taiwan's twice-reformatted national language policies in the 20th century, and to a rapid regime transition from one party dominance to a multi-party society. That is, the historical enforcement of both Japanese and Mandarin helped nation-state development but didn't leave other linguistic varieties with an equal chance for social advancement, modernization, and codification. Indigenous and ingenious, the language choices and uses in question tap into the lack of codification and standardization of non-Mandarin varieties, into the stereotypical features of Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and into the incongruities of so many phonetic schemes and use of Chinese characters as phonetic symbols to sound out English, Mandarin, and Japanese. The pragmatics goes beyond immediate functional purposes and are used metaphorically to tap into taboos, for example, or to create humor by adopting a marked choice, in real and virtual discourse. By connecting these emerging language features to broader socio-historical changes in Taiwan, we are able to see the coming of age of a new pattern of reappropriating Chinese characters and therefore Chineseness in online communication. It is a development that may help us reflect on the meanings of speaking/writing Chinese in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Uspanteko (Guatemala; ∼2000 speakers) is an endangered K'ichean-branch Mayan language. It is unique among the K'ichean languages in having innovated a system of contrastive pitch accent, which operates alongside a separate system of non-contrastive stress. The prosody of Uspanteko is of general typological interest, given the relative scarcity of 'mixed' languages employing both stress and lexical pitch. Drawing from a descriptive grammar and from our own fieldwork, we also document some intricate interactions between pitch accent and other aspects of the phonology (stress placement, vowel length, vowel quality, and two deletion processes). While pitch accent is closely tied to morphology, the location of lexical tone is entirely a matter of surface phonology. We propose that the position of pitch accent and stress is determined by three factors: (i) feet are always right-aligned, and preferably iambic; (ii) pitch accent must fall on a stressed syllable; and (iii) pitch accent cannot fall on a final mora. These assumptions derive default final stress, as well as a regular pattern of tone-triggered stress shift. Interactions between prosody and segmental phonotactics are attributed to further constraints on footing. Surprisingly, we find robust evidence for foot structure in Uspanteko, even though these patterns could easily be described in non-metrical terms. Interactions between tone and vowel length also provide evidence for lexical strata within the Uspanteko vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the readability criterion and the use of jargon in enterprise agreements made in the domain of higher education and fast food sectors between 1993 and 2011. It informs that very small progress has been made during this period in improving readability or abating the use of jargon in agreements.

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