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Many languages of the world have genders, that is, grammatical agreement classes, based on such core semantic properties as animacy, sex and humanness, and also shape. In Manambu, a language of New Guinea, nouns are assigned genders according to the sex of a human referent, and to shape and size of any other referent. Men are assigned to the masculine, and women to the feminine gender. A long tube and a large house are masculine, and a round plate and a small house are feminine. Switching gender for humans has pejorative overtones: an unusually boisterous or bossy woman can be treated as masculine, and a squat fattish man who does not display fully masculine behaviour as feminine. Classifying humans by their shape and size implies downgrading them to the level of inanimates. Gender switch also reflects social stereotypes. Feminine gender is functionally unmarked for non-humans, but not for humans. The noun du, “man” can be used as a generic term for “human being.” Linguistic Gender of humans in Manambu unequivocally reflects Social Gender relations.

The semantic incorporation of nouns into predicates, like give a hug, is not morphologically marked in English, and how syntactic incorporation strategies like light verb constructions influence the discourse-prominence structure of an utterance has not yet been studied systematically. One hypothesis is that since semantically incorporated nouns are not morphosyntactically incorporated in English, they can function like any other noun as prominent and accessible referents for anaphora. Another hypothesis is that their semantic status and their predicative meaning influence their discourse prominence, and hence their accessibility by anaphoric means. We tested these two hypotheses in two experimental studies on different anaphoric preferences of English pronouns. Our studies demonstrate that the felicity patterns for the two different pronominal reference strategies are determined at different linguistic levels: For it, we found an impact of morphosyntactic form; for that, the semantic type of the referent (object vs. event) seems to play a role. Crucially, the degree of semantic incorporation does not affect discourse prominence and pronoun choice to the extent that we had expected.

Argumenta-se que experiências de trabalho associado, no âmbito da Economia Solidária, promovem uma qualificação profissional ampliada dos trabalhadores que, por sua vez, gera tensões e complementações com saberes e valores produzidos em trajetórias de trabalho pregressas, incluindo significados e sentidos atribuídos à categoria profissão. A pesquisa, referência para o texto, objetivou conhecer e compreender como vivências de trabalho marcam a qualificação de pessoas que escolheram trabalhar de forma associada e solidária. O referente empírico são trajetórias de trabalhadores de uma cooperativa de confecção do sul do Brasil, captadas por entrevistas narrativas. O conceito de qualificação profissional ampliada é de ALANIZ (2003) e serviram de orientação os estudos sobre profissão de FRANZOI (2006).

Purpose Building on encapsulated interest account and motivated cognition account, this study aims to investigate how channel members extend trust in a channel leader when the channel leader applies various non-coercive power sources (e.g. referent, expert, legitimate and reward power). Besides, the study explored the changes in channel members’ trust in a channel leader when each non-coercive power source is coupled with coercive power sources. Design/methodology/approach Using survey items from previously validated scales, the study collected responses from 237 channel members of 3 paint distribution channels in India. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling and multi-group moderation analysis techniques. Findings Findings indicated that expert and reward power sources enhance trust in channel leaders while affective commitment mediates the effects of all the non-coercive power sources on trust. Further, coercive power weakens the effects of expert power on trust. Research limitations/implications The study is based on a cross-sectional survey and confines to the paint industry in India. Replicating this study in other countries and industries will better generalise the study’s findings. Practical implications The study recommends that channel managers use power sources to build trust in channel leaders. Consequently, they will be able to emphasise those specific power sources while developing channel management strategies. Originality/value The study contributes to a greater understanding of the power-trust relationship.

Two 2nd person verbal indexation forms are reconstructed back to Proto-Trans-Himalayan (PTH): a suffix #-n(a) (Bauman 1975; DeLancey 1989, 2014; H. Sun 1983, 1995; van Driem 1993; Watters 2002), and a prefix #tV- (Watters 2002; Jacques 2012; DeLancey 2011a, 2014). While #-n(a) is in paradigmatic distribution with other suffixal forms, the prefixal position of #tV-raises the question of its functional origin. DeLancey (2011a, 2014: 23) suggests hypothetically that #tV- finds its origin either in a non-finite nominalization or in an irrealis nominalization, “ideal for an impersonal 2nd person use: ‘One might [speak]’ rather than ‘You will [speak].’” Through the comparison of cognate tV- possessive and tV- nominalizer prefixes found in rGyalrongic, Kuki-Naga (Ao), and Sinitic, I propose that 2nd person #tV- can be traced back to a nominal possessive modifier such as one’s or someone’s: a man-type of R-impersonals (Malchukov & Siewierska 2011). Spreading to verbs, #tV- was used as a nominalizer indexing the notional S or A argument. With nouns and verbs alike, the referent of the possessor, whether 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, was specific (Siewierska 2011: 62), accessible in discourse, anaphorically or deictically, regardless of the presence of a coreferential overt noun-phrase. The prefix #tV- started to be used in particular to address 2nd person indirectly, a development likely triggered by pragmatic motivations, i.e. politeness, before being reanalyzed as a 2nd person indexation marker.

Upper German dialects make heavy use of diminutive strategies, but little is known about the actual conceptual effects of those devices. This paper is the first to present two large-scale psycholinguistic experiments that investigate this issue in East Franconian, a dialect spoken in Bavaria. Franconian uses both the diminutive suffix -la and the quantifying construction a weng a lit. ‘a little bit a’ to modify noun phrases. Our first experiment shows that diminutization has no effect on conceptualization of magnitude: People do not think of a smaller/weaker/shorter etc. referent when the NP is modified by the morphological diminutive, the quantifying construction, or their combination. The second experiment involves gradable NPs and shows that, again, the morphological diminutive has no effect on how people conceptualize the degree to which a gradable nominal predicate holds; in contrast, a weng a reduces it significantly. These experiments suggest that diminutization does not have uniform effects across semantic domains, and our results act as a successful example of extending the avenue of cognitive psychology into dialectology with the active participation of a speaker community.*

We examined the effects of drawing on correct and false recognition within the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm. In Experiment 1, we compared drawing of a word’s referent using either a standard black pencil or coloured pencils relative to a read-only control group. Relative to reading, drawing in either black or coloured pencil similarly boosted correct recognition and reduced false recognition. Signal-detection analyses indicated that drawing reduced the amount of encoded memory information for critical lures and increased monitoring, indicating that both processes contributed to the false recognition reduction. Experiment 2 compared drawing of individual images of DRM list items relative to drawing integrated images using sets of DRM list items. False recognition was lower for drawing of individual images relative to integrated images—a pattern that reflected a decrease in encoded memory information but not monitoring. Therefore, drawing individual images improves memory accuracy in the DRM paradigm relative to a standard read-control task and an integrated-drawing task, which we argue is due to the recruitment of item-specific processing.

Este artigo se propõe a analisar a poética de Conceição Evaristo - escrevivência - como performance de uma corporalidade negra, marcada por traumas e cicatrizes herdados de uma cultura de colonização escravocrata. Objetivamos mostrar como a escrevivência opera uma contranarrativa em face de uma história monocultural e monorracional, alterando a perspectiva e o protagonismo das experiências e memórias narradas. Para tanto, adotamos como referente literário desta abordagem a obra “Olhos d’água”, cuja leitura e análise permitem concluir que a escrevivência é uma estratégia político-discursiva de resistência e promove a desconstrução de imagens e alteração dos lugares reservados aos corpos negros, sob perspectivas epistemicidas e eurocêntricas.

When interacting with virtual reality (VR) applications like CAD and open-world games, people may want to use gestures as a means of leveraging their knowledge from the physical world. However, people may prefer physical props over handheld controllers to input gestures in VR. We present an elicitation study where 21 participants chose from 95 props to perform manipulative gestures for 20 CAD-like and open-world game-like referents. When analyzing this data, we found existing methods for elicitation studies were insufficient to describe gestures with props, or to measure agreement with prop selection (i.e., agreement between sets of items). We proceeded by describing gestures as context-free grammars, capturing how different props were used in similar roles in a given gesture. We present gesture and prop agreement scores using a generalized agreement score that we developed to compare multiple selections rather than a single selection. We found that props were selected based on their resemblance to virtual objects and the actions they afforded; that gesture and prop agreement depended on the referent, with some referents leading to similar gesture choices, while others led to similar prop choices; and that a small set of carefully chosen props can support multiple gestures.

Contrary to the Gricean maxims of quantity (Grice, in: Cole, Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics: speech acts, vol III, pp 41–58, Academic Press, New York, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over-specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present an information-theoretic explanation for the use of over-specification in visually-situated communication, which quantifies the amount of uncertainty regarding the referent as entropy (Shannon in Bell Syst Tech J 5:10, 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x, 1948). Examining both the comprehension and production of over-specifications, we present evidence that (a) listeners’ processing is facilitated by the use of redundancy as well as by a greater reduction of uncertainty early on in the utterance, and (b) that at least for some speakers, listeners’ processing concerns influence their encoding of over-specifications: Speakers were more likely to use redundant adjectives when these adjectives reduced entropy to a higher degree than adjectives necessary for target identification.

People who use drugs (PWUDs) are the main group at risk for hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission and a key population for hepatitis C elimination. Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings were set up in France in December 2014 within regional reference centers to supervise the prescriptions and delivery of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) to optimize the management of HCV infection. The aim of this retrospective study was to analyze the changes in the profile and therapeutic care of PWUDs with HCV mono-infection according to the evolution of MDT meetings in a regional tertiary reference center.Between 2015 and 2019, overall 1912 HCV-infected patients presented at the MDT meetings, 547 were PWUDs with HCV mono-infection treated with DAAs. Five periods were defined according to the evolution of MDT meetings. The profile and management of PWUDs were compared among these five periods.Over time, the frequency of advanced stage of fibrosis decreased from 90.8 to 36.3% (P 0.001), whereas the therapeutic care of the patients in primary addictology centers and networks of general practitioners increased from 17.4 to 55% (P 0.001). The frequency of excessive alcohol consumption varied between 9.1 and 30% (P = 0.003) and that of opioid substitution therapy between 42.5 and 70% (P 0.001). The Sustained virologic response assessed 12 weeks after the end of treatment rate was above 95% for the five periods.Between 2015 and 2019, the changes in the profile and management of PWUDs have followed the evolution of MDT meetings concerning patients with less advanced fibrosis and more therapeutic hepatitis C care made by the primary care centers.

Textbooks are one of the main components in teaching learning activities. It is very important that textbooks should be adjusted to the children’s cognitive development at specific age. Semiotics is one of the aspects that can be evaluated in a textbook because the illustration of semiotics is very specific element that has great influence on children’s visual perception. Specifically, the aim of this study is to analyze Semiotics on the students’ English textbook in Elementary school. This study investigated the meaning of semiotics on students’ English textbook in the second grade Elementary school and how semiotics realized on students’ English textbook in the second grade Elementary School. This study applied qualitative research in terms of library research to collect the data from the students’ English textbook in the second grade Elementary school. Meanwhile, the data were analyzed by applying semiotic analysis based on the Pierce’s semiotic theory namely representaman (signifier), object (referent) and interpretan (signified). The results of this study indicated that this book is very suitable for learning for the second grade students of Elementary school at SDIT Al-Hijrah 2 because the exercises contain symbols, pictures and signs that are very interesting for the second grade students of Elementary school who have high imagination. The researchers had analyzed the main pictures related to the theme of the material in the exercises. In addition, the relationship between the pictures of the exercises and the meaning is interconnected each other.

We examined behavioral and electrophysiological indices of self-referential and valence processing during a Self-Referential Encoding Task in 9- to 12-year-old children, followed by surprise memory tasks for self- and other-referential trait adjectives. Participants endorsed more positive than negative self-referential information but equally endorsed positive and negative information about the other character. Children demonstrated enhanced parietal LPP amplitudes in response to self- compared to other-referential trait adjectives. Positive and negative information was differentially remembered depending on the order of the referent cues presented, suggesting that social information undergoes differential consolidation processes depending on the referent and the order of presentation.

The paper outlines the linguistic and semiotic aspects of a specialty text – a knitting pattern. In today’s busy world, nobody wants to read long and complicated texts if it can be easier illustrated by a photograph or a charted image that uses a set of specific symbols with their own, non-arbitrary meanings to make a text reader’s time usage more effective but also clear. Aspects of signs, semiotics, and language games are also explored in alignment with knitting charts as the main reference, as a knitting chart symbol is a concrete referent in its context. Finally, the translation of knitting charts is described, including the importance of a chart key and what transformations of text have occurred in the translation of knitting charts from English into Latvian. Charted knitting patterns could become a that could be easily transferred between different languages and cultures, helping people share their skills and heritage. Knitting and linguistics and translation studies is a new area of research that could bring many new insights about crafting and specialized language use.

A percepção científica e social sobre os fundamentos da imposição tributária tem acompanhado as alterações do exercício do poder de tributar durante a história. Para formular um esboço de como se materializa, na atualidade, em tempos de reformas na legislação tributária, é necessário revisitar o comportamento histórico do instituto, além de analisar o arcabouço jurídico que atualmente rege o poder tributário. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo aborda a temática da fundamentação contemporânea da imposição tributária, focando especialmente nos seus aspectos controvertidos, por meio da revisão da literatura das principais teorias apresentadas pela doutrina tradicional. Para alcançar o objetivo, são analisados temas, como Ciência do Direito, Direito Positivo, poder imposição tributária. O resultado alcançado é que o poder tributário se revela como principal mecanismo de satisfação do Estado de arrecadar recursos financeiros, mas que tem prevalecido a percepção de que a imposição tributária se encontra inserida numa relação de poder, importando na sua rejeição. Foi desenvolvido o trabalho sob o método indutivo, sendo operacionalizado com as técnicas do referente, da categoria e do conceito operacional, mediante pesquisa bibliográfica.

Many researchers have reported that bridging analogies can productively support students’ scientific meaning-making. How this can be understood semiotically is, however, not well understood. This research followed an ethnographic case study approach to investigate Year 11 students meaning-making through a process of transduction (Kress, 2000; Volkwyn, 2020) across the submicroscopic and symbolic domains of Johnstone’s (1991) chemistry triangle. A “cross-and-portion” (CPO) model was devised as a bridging representation for learning the molar concentration and dilution concepts, informed by Peirce’s triadic model (1931) which relates the meaning of a concept to its representation in a sign, and its referent. The study drew on video capture of the classroom and small group activity, and interviews. The research findings indicated that the CPO model acted as a visualisation tool that facilitated students to link from the submicroscopic to symbolic domains of Johnstone’s triangle. A recursive model of meaning-making was formulated to describe how bridging representations are re-purposed to occupy shifting positions in Peirce’s triad to enable meaning through the system of interpretance. Students constructed, critiqued and transducted across multiple, multimodal representations to achieve discursive fluency across the dimensions of Johnstone’s triangle. The recursive model provides a fresh perspective on how students coordinate multimodal representations to learn science/chemistry.

Pull Requests (PRs) are a frequently used method for proposing changes to source code repositories. When discussing proposed changes in a PR discussion, stakeholders often reference a wide variety of information objects for establishing shared awareness and common ground. Previous work has not considered how the referential behavior impacts collaborative software development via PRs. This knowledge gap is the major barrier in evaluating the current support for referencing in PRs and improving them. We conducted an explorative analysis of \textasciitilde7K references, collected from 450 public PRs on GitHub, and constructed taxonomies of referent types and expressions. Using our annotated dataset, we identified several patterns in the use of references. Referencing source code elements was prevalent but the authoring interface lacks support for it. Three classes of contextual factors influence referencing behaviors: referent type, discussion thread, and project attributes. Referencing patterns may indicate PR outcomes (e.g., merged PRs frequently reference issues, users, and tests). We conclude with design implications to support more effective referencing in PR discussion interfaces.

An ongoing debate in the interpretation of referring expressions concerns the degree to which listeners make use of perspective information during referential processing. We aim to contribute to this debate by considering perspective shifting in narrative discourse. In a web-based mouse-tracking experiment in Dutch, we investigated whether listeners automatically shift to a narrative character’s perspective when resolving ambiguous referring expressions, and whether different linguistic perspective-shifting devices affect how and when listeners switch to another perspective. We compared perspective-neutral, direct, and free indirect discourse, manipulating which objects are visible to the character. Our results do not show a clear effect of the perspective shifting devices on participants’ eventual choice of referent, but our online mouse-tracking data reveal processing differences that suggest that listeners are indeed sensitive to the conventional markers of perspective shift associated with direct and (to a lesser degree) free indirect discourse.

This article investigates a language choice practice, referred to as other-language recalibration, which I have observed in news interviews in Rwanda. A recalibration repair is a type of repair in which the trouble source and the repairer have the same referent. In news interviews in Rwanda, the trouble source and the repairer can come from two different languages. It was observed that going from the trouble source to the repairer, language alternation can take either of two directions. It can go from Kinyarwanda to French/English and it can proceed from French/English to Kinyarwanda. Therefore, the article investigates the question whether, in these interviews, language alternation in other-language recalibration is directional. Observation of the data shows that the direction Kinyarwanda – French/English serves the interactional function of word clarification while the direction French/English – Kinyarwanda serves the function of medium repair. In turn, this finding leads to a respecification of the notion of directionality. Traditionally, this concept has been viewed in terms of the social indexicality of the languages involved. The paper proposes that, from an organisational perspective, directionality can be understood in terms of the interactional tasks alternative patterns of language alternation allow participants to accomplish in talk-in-interaction.

This article, from a conversation-analytic perspective, analyzes the Korean ‘topic’ particle nun used in news inquiries and assessments, whose pragmatic functions are described in terms of a categorization practice launching a retro sequence. This process is triggered by the nun-marked referent formulated as a ‘peripheral’ (e.g., hitherto-unnoticed or marginalized) category incumbent, which is now ‘seeable’ retrospectively as potentially relevant to the domain of situated action being currently organized. The preceding sequence is thereby shown to be ‘incomplete’ in light of a category relationship newly informed by the nun-marked referent, whose relevance is empirically grounded in conventional/shared ‘in-principle’ knowledge. Remedially motivated in this way, nun-marked inquiries embody the questioner's orientation to privileging the recipient's in situ epistemic rights, often being formatted as negative questions optimized for confirmation. In nun-marked assessments, the speaker's claim of epistemic authority, grounded in normative knowledge, is qualified through sequential and action-formational operations that render them externally made commentaries, often organized as postmortems self-absorbedly vocalized. The deeply inferential and normative character of the membership category ‘peripheral’, variously indexed by the nun-marked referent, is evidenced across different contexts, as an oriented-to feature in the service of elaborating upon circumstantial details of the situated practice on its periphery.

The term āśraya (“support” or “basis”) is used in manifold ways in the Abhidharmakośa and its bhāṣya (AKBh). This comes from the fact that its basic meaning, indicating anything on which something else depends or rests, is quite generic. Despite the plasticity of its usage, we can find some recurring and distinct technical applications of the term in the AK(Bh), which I explore in my paper. First, I look at its usage of characterising a member of various asymmetric dependence relationships on which the arising and sometimes also the persistence of the other relatum depends. Through examining the nature of various āśraya-āśrita dependence relations the AK(Bh) discusses, I show that āśraya stands for an entity that determines the fundamental nature of the thing it supports. In the second half of the paper, I move on to those occurrences of the term where āśraya has a specific referent. While āśraya can refer to the six sense faculties (indriya) individually, it can also stand for them collectively pointing towards its widespread meaning as ‘psychophysical basis’. In this context, the focus often shifts either to the material or the mental elements that make up a sentient being. I will dedicate special attention to the discussion of the transformation of the basis (āśrayaparāvṛtti), where, on my reading, it is more natural to interpret āśraya as referring primarily to the mind (citta), with its bodily connotations being marginal.

Children learn words in ambiguous situations, where multiple objects can potentially be referents for a new word. Yet, researchers debate whether children maintain a single word-object hypothesis – and revise it if falsified by later information – or whether children establish a network of word-object associations whose relative strengths are modulated with experience. To address this issue, we presented 4- to 12-year-old children with sets of mutual exclusivity (fast-mapping) trials: offering them with obvious initial hypotheses (that the novel object is the referent for the novel word). We observe that children aged six years and above, despite showing a novelty bias and retaining this novel word – novel object association, also formed an association between the novel word and the name-known object, thereby suggesting that older children attend to more than one word-object association, in a manner similar to associative learning. We discuss our findings in the context of competing theoretical accounts related to word learning.

In this paper I examine Hugh Burling’s inspiring proposal that the reference of ‘God’ is determined by the description: ‘the being worthy of our worship’. I argue that a more detailed analysis of the notion of being worthy of our worship leads to the conclusion that the proposed description is paradoxical, and cannot fulfill the role Burling would like it to play in determining the reference of the term ‘God’. Subsequently, I provide several examples implying that (1) being worthy of our worship is a necessary condition for any candidate to be the referent of the term ‘God’, but (2) the semantics of ‘God’ is considerably more complicated than Burling takes it to be. Finally, I show that religious people who use the word ‘God’ are either idolatrous or trapped in an apophatic paradox of the reference of ‘God’.

International audience; Past research shows that when a discourse referent is mentioned repeatedly, it is usually introduced with a full noun phrase and maintained with a reduced form such as a pronoun. Is this also the case in dialogue, where the same referent may be introduced by one person and maintained by another person? An experiment was conducted in which participants either told entire stories to each other or told stories together, thus enabling us to contrast situations in which characters were introduced and maintained by the same person (control condition) and situations in which the introduction and the maintaining of each character were performed by different people (alternating condition). Story complexity was also manipulated through the introduction of one or two characters in each story. We found that participants were less likely to use reduced forms to maintain referents in the alternating condition. The use of reduced forms also depended on the context in which the referent was maintained (in particular, first or second mention of a character) and on story complexity. These results shed light on how the pressure to signal understanding to one’s conversational partner affects referential choices throughout the interaction.

In this paper, we present two experimental studies on reference of complex demonstratives. The results of our experiments challenge the dominant view in philosophy of language, according to which demonstrative reference is determined by the speaker's intentions. The first experiment shows that in a context where there are two candidates for the referent—one determined by the speaker’s intention, the other by some “external” factors—people prefer to identify the referent of a demonstrative with the latter object. The external factors for which this prediction has been confirmed include the speaker’s demonstration and the descriptive content of a demonstrative. The second experiment shows that while this preference can be explained in terms of the speakers’ having different sorts of referential intentions, the relevant kind of intentions are fully opaque to the subjects. At the end of our paper, we point to some alternative accounts of demonstrative reference, including a pluralistic and hybrid approach, which can accommodate our experimental results.

This paper investigates how politeness-related social meanings are indexed verbally and nonverbally. We focus on the contrast between “doing deference” and “performing intimacy” in Korean. We asked Korean students to perform a sequence of tasks, once to a professor (deferential condition) and once to a close friend (intimate condition) and analysed the production of a wide range of morphological and lexical forms, as well as nonverbal sound objects. Our analysis shows that the participants not only increased their use of address and referent honorifics when addressing the professor, but also increased their use of backchannels and ‘hissing’ sound objects, and decreased their use of um-/uh-type sound objects, case particle ellipsis, and ideophones. There were also weaker tendencies for participants to use more formal case markers and Sino-Korean lexical items when addressing the professor. Taken together, these results demonstrate that deference and intimacy are indexed via multiple channels, not just through the honorific markers that have been the focus of previous studies.

This work proposes a theoretical reflection on the concept of realism in literature and cinema, establishing connections between the two artistic fields. For that purpose, it reviews classic formulations of these two theoretical fields and proposes their analysis based on the readings of contemporary thinkers, highlighting aspects of the current scenario of the crisis of representation in the arts. For Roland Barthes, the aesthetics of the realist novel embodied a new idea of verisimilitude, the result of a fusion between the referent and the signifier, resulting in the “reality effect”. For Andre Bazin, the cinematographic image was capable of operating the “epiphany of the real”, taking the desire for realistic representation to its limit. The positions of these authors were widely criticized by theorists such as Ranciere, Grodal and Carroll, who pointed out their deficiencies and incompleteness. For Wood, realism is an evaluative parameter for all narrative art, which is built upon a dynamics of approximation and distancing from reality. In the current scenario, the problem of representation calls into question the truth value of the forms of representation, which intensifies the feeling of skepticism that characterizes the post-truth context. Cinematographic images lost their status of material veridicality, since the film no longer has a physical support, while literature mixes fact and fiction in practices of self-fiction. What form of esthetic realism is possible for our time?

This paper focuses on the relational notion of prominence, in which entities of equal type are ranked according to certain prominence-lending features. In German two demonstrative forms, “der” and “dieser”, can function like personal pronouns in English. It has been proposed that processing “der” involves computing a prominence hierarchy of the prior referents, and excluding the referent with the highest prominence rank. The demonstrative “dieser” has not been extensively tested. In the current study, personal and demonstrative pronominal forms were investigated following ditransitive contexts, where three potential antecedents are available, in two rating experiments. The personal pronoun showed flexibility in that it received equally high ratings for all three antecedents in canonical configurations. The ratings fordieserfollowed a graded sensitivity to thematic role prominence, with lowest scores when referring to prominent antecedents (agents) and the highest scores for the least prominent antecedents (patients), with scores for the medium prominence candidate (recipients) differing from both.Derfollowed a similar but not identical pattern, with a less marked difference between lower prominence candidates. Positional information also has a strong influence on demonstratives. In sum, final interpretation is sensitive to fine-grained differences in prominence hierarchies.

In this paper, I build on recent scholarship concerning the early semantic history of the word “smṛti,” which has been shown to denote “tradition” in the early dharmasūtra material. I seek to add nuance to this work by examining the meaning of smṛti in the early Sāmavedic technical literature. This corpus helps elucidate one of the processes whereby smṛti came to refer to something textual. This paper argues that smṛti’s earliest textualized referent may have been fixed or semi-fixed individual statements rather than definite texts.

This study examines the behavior of consumer in fast food industry. The customer psychology strongly effected from other customer’s word of mouth, review’s and pricing policy of a company. In this study, we examine the consumer psychology with three factors (referent price, referent deservingness and fair pricing). The three factors become a cause to reduce the anger of consumer and due to this customer satisfy from the operations of fast food industry. We distribute more than 300 questionnaire for analyze our research hypothesis. After analyze we conclude that referent price does not impact on customer anger but it impact on satisfaction of customer. The referent deservingness and price fairness has significant impact on anger of customer and satisfaction of customer. This study provides useful information to fast food sector regarding customer psychology.

This study examines the cognitive information processes that Turkish advanced non-native speakers of English employ in assigning the referents of this and that in reading and production. We predicted that these speakers would assign referents in relation to the linear distance between discourse-linked anaphors and their referents in the discourse (i.e., based on spatial-temporal features of this and that), which means they would prefer this for a referent mentioned in the proximal chunk of text and that for a referent mentioned in the distal chunk. We also predicted that readers would not assign referents based on the focusing features of this and that. We tested our predictions in two eye- tracking reading experiments and one sentence-completion experiment. Turkish L2 learners’ on- line reference resolution in reading experiments was different from that of English native speakers that were tested in a previous study. In the eye-tracking experiments, Turkish L2 learners did not show evidence of using a recency strategy to resolve referential ambiguity and did not use spatial- temporal or focusing features of this and that to assign referents. On the other hand, in the sentence- completion experiment, the effect of prominence of discourse structure in the use of this and that was qualitatively similar to that of English native speakers, but their indexing of the degree of focus of this and that was different. Our results suggest that the difference between Turkish L2 learners and English native speakers is due to L1 interference.

We revisit the concept of synergy based on the recently translated classical book by Nikolai Bernstein (On the construction of movements, Medgiz, Moscow 1947; Latash, Bernstein’s Construction of Movements, Routledge, Abingdon 2020b) and progress in understanding the physics and neurophysiology of biological action. Two aspects of synergies are described: organizing elements into stable groups (modes) and ensuring dynamical stability of salient performance variables. The ability of the central nervous system to attenuate synergies in preparation for a quick action—anticipatory synergy adjustments—is emphasized. Recent studies have demonstrated synergies at the level of hypothetical control variables associated with spatial referent coordinates for effectors. Overall, the concept of synergies fits naturally the hierarchical scheme of control with referent coordinates with an important role played by back-coupling loops within the central nervous system and from peripheral sensory endings. Further, we review studies showing non-trivial changes in synergies with development, aging, fatigue, practice, and a variety of neurological disorders. Two aspects of impaired synergic control—impaired stability and impaired agility—are introduced. The recent generalization of the concept of synergies for non-motor domains, including perception, is discussed. We end the review with a list of unresolved and troubling issues.

BACKGROUND Many speakers with non-fluent aphasia (NFA) are able to produce some well-formed word combinations such as 'I like it' or 'I don't know', although they may not use variations such as 'He likes it' or 'I don't know that person'. This suggests that these utterances represent fixed forms. AIMS This case series investigation explored the impact of a novel intervention aimed at enhancing the connected speech of individuals with NFA. The intervention, motivated by usage-based principles, involved filling open slots in semi-fixed sentence frames. METHODS & PROCEDURES Five participants with NFA completed a 6-week intervention programme. The intervention trained participants to insert a range of different lexical items into the open slots of high-frequency phrases such as 'I like it' to enable more productive sentences (e.g., 'they like flowers'). The outcomes and acceptability were examined: The primary outcome measure focused on changes in connected narrative, and the availability of trained constructions (e.g., 'I like it') was explored through a story completion test. Two baseline measures of behaviour were taken prior to intervention, and outcomes assessed immediately after intervention and at a 6-week maintenance assessment. OUTCOME & RESULTS A pre-/post-treatment comparison of connected speech measures showed evidence of enhanced connected speech for two of the five participants (P2 and P5). An analysis of story completion test scores revealed positive change for two participants (P1 and P2). Findings were mixed with regard to baseline stability of outcome measures and post-intervention stability of language changes. The intervention was acceptable to all participants. CONCLUSION & IMPLICATIONS While this pilot study yielded promising findings with regard to the intervention's acceptability and increased connected speech for some participants, the findings were mixed across the sample of five participants. This research helps inform hypotheses and selection criteria for future studies. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject Despite difficulties producing grammatically correct sentences, many speakers with aphasia are able to produce well-formed utterances, often representing familiar expressions such as 'I don't know' and 'I like it'. In usage-based Construction Grammar (CxG) theories, familiar utterances are assumed to be processed as one unit and are therefore more resilient to brain damage. CxG assumes that residual utterances such as 'I like it' map onto more abstract sentence frames (e.g., '[REFERENT] like-TENSE [THING]'). What this paper adds to existing knowledge Sentence therapy, informed by CxG principles, is novel in aphasiology, and usage-based interventions need to be evaluated with regard to their impact on language processing at the connected speech level. This case series report explores the acceptability and outcomes of a usage-based sentence therapy. We also introduce and explore the value of an automated, frequency-based analysis tool for evaluating connected speech outcomes in aphasia therapy. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The findings inform further development of usage-based aphasia interventions targeting word combinations.

This article discusses the term and field of "semantics", the history of development of aid, the work done in this regard, and other current issues in the field.

Speakers tend to lengthen the durations of words when a phonologically overlapping word has recently been produced. Although there are multiple accounts of why lengthening occurs, all of these accounts generally assume that competition at some point in the production-comprehension process leads to lengthening. We investigated the contexts that lead to competition and consequent lengthening of target word duration. In three experiments, we manipulated the contexts in which a target word was produced. Speakers produced simple descriptions of animations involving referents that shared initial phonology with another potential referent (e.g., hat and hand). In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated whether the related referent (i.e. hat) was named by the speaker themselves, by another person, or was unmentioned. Experiment 2 additionally made speakers aware of competitors in the environment. In both experiments, we found that lengthening does not occur whenever there are two referents in the display that could be confused, even when it is clear that they are confusable. Instead, speakers only lengthened target words when the speaker or another person had named the phonologically related word out loud. Experiment 3 tested whether the task relevance of a phonological competitor influenced naming and found that speakers lengthen words that overlap with previously produced words, even when they were no longer competitors in the display. We propose that an auditory memory account best explains these results and discuss the implications of these findings for other accounts of lengthening.

Both definite descriptions and pronouns are often anaphoric; that is, part of their interpretation in context depends on prior linguistic material in the discourse. For example: (1) A student walked in. The student sat down. (2) A student walked in. She sat down. One popular view of anaphoric pronouns, the d-type view, is that pronouns like ‘she’ go proxy for definite descriptions like ‘the student who walked in’, which are in turn treated in a classical (neo-) Russellian or (neo-) Fregean fashion. I argue for a novel version of the d-type view in which anaphoric definites are restricted existential quantifiers that presuppose discourse uniqueness, which is uniqueness of discourse referent in the context, rather than uniqueness of object in the world. In other words, the anaphoric definites ‘the student’ and ‘she’ in (1) and (2) presuppose that there is a single object under discussion that is a student who walked in. I further argue that, by contrast, non-anaphoric definites are restricted existential quantifiers that presuppose worldly uniqueness, that is, that there is a unique object in the world that satisfies the descriptive information. The semantics for anaphoric and non-anaphoric definites accounts for the differences in truth conditions in discourses involving the two different types of definites, improving on existing accounts. It is further supported by crosslinguistic data. The semantics is formally implemented in a static system employing quantifier domain restriction in the style of Stanley and Szabo (Mind Lang 15(2–3):219–261, 2000) and extended to account for bridging definites and donkey sentences.

This paper explores the features and interactional functions of collaboratively constructed TCUs (CCTs) in responsive positions of question-answer sequences in Mandarin daily conversations. Adopting the methodologies of Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics and Multimodal Analysis, the study explores the sequential features of the CCTs and bodily-visual resources co-occurring with the CCTs, such as gaze orientations and gestures. Two categories have been identified based on the participants’ roles in the question-answer sequences. First, the answerer initiates the response to the question, and the questioner collaboratively completes the response. The analysis shows that the questioners are not conveying the action of answering the question but assuming the answer to the question. Second, one answerer initiates the response to the question, and another one collaboratively completes the response. The data demonstrates that this type of CCTs usually involves the two question-recipients with more or less equal epistemic access to the referent.

In order to describe how humans represent meaning in the brain, one must be able to account for not just concrete words but, critically, also abstract words, which lack a physical referent. Hebbian formalism and optimization are basic principles of brain function, and they provide an appealing approach for modeling word meanings based on word co-occurrences. We provide proof of concept that a statistical model of the semantic space can account for neural representations of both concrete and abstract words, using MEG. Here, we built a statistical model using word embeddings extracted from a text corpus. This statistical model was used to train a machine learning algorithm to successfully decode the MEG signals evoked by written words. In the model, word abstractness emerged from the statistical regularities of the language environment. Representational similarity analysis further showed that this salient property of the model co-varies, at 280–420 ms after visual word presentation, with activity in regions that have been previously linked with processing of abstract words, namely the left-hemisphere frontal, anterior temporal and superior parietal cortex. In light of these results, we propose that the neural encoding of word meanings can arise through statistical regularities, that is, through grounding in language itself.

En México y particularmente en la universidad no se conocen los factores de éxito del e-learning. El propósito de este estudio fue conocer el peso de los factores y de las dimensiones de e-learning. Se enviaron 252 cuestionarios por correo electrónico a alumnos de la Licenciatura en Cultura Física de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México; solo se contestaron 63. Para el análisis de dichas encuestas se usó el Proceso Analítico Jerárquico, para obtener el peso de los Factores Críticos de Éxito de e-learning que significa conocer la importancia de estos, y sus relaciones usando el análisis de componentes principales. Los resultados indicaron que los instructores tienen más peso que los alumnos y que no tiene peso la relación alumno con otros alumnos. Concluyendo que el peso de los factores y de las dimensiones del e-learning muestran un referente que anteriormente no existía de manera local para su orientación pedagógica.

The current study investigates whether the types of pronominal errors children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make are different from those of their TD peers at similar stages of language development. A recent review about language acquisition in ASD by Naigles and Tek (2017) argues that these children show relative deficits in assigning/extending lexical meaning alongside relative strengths in morpho-syntax. Pronouns provide an ideal test case for this argument because they are marked both for grammatical features (case) and features that reflect qualities of the referent itself (gender and number) or the referent’s role in conversation (person). The form-meaning hypothesis predicts that children with ASD should struggle more with these latter features. The current study tests this hypothesis with data from a caregiver report, completed by caregivers of 151 children with and without ASD. Reported pronominal errors were categorized as meaning or form and compared across groups. In accordance with the form-meaning hypothesis, a higher proportion of children with ASD make meaning errors than they do form errors, and significantly more of them make meaning errors than TD children do.

Attending to the whole unit that a number refers to in a mathematical problem situation and showing flexibility in coordinating different units are foundational for mathematical understanding. In this study, we explored teachers’ attention to and flexibility with referent units in situations involving fractions and fraction multiplication. Using data collected across the USA from 246 mathematics teachers in Grades 3–7 where fractions are taught, we found that teachers’ attention to and flexibility with referent units were related to each other as well as to teachers’ overall knowledge of fractions. WOS:000669290900001 2-s2.0-85109328142 Social Sciences Citation Index Q3 Article; Early Access Uluslararası işbirliği ile yapılan - EVET July 2021 YÖK - 2020-21

In all spoken languages, speakers use demonstratives - words like this and that e to refer to entities in their immediate environment. But which factors determine whether they use one demonstrative (this) or another (that)? Here we report the results of an experiment examining the effects of referent visibility, referent distance, and addressee location on the production of demonstratives by speakers of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru), an Amazonian language with four demonstratives, and speakers of Dutch (Indo-European; Netherlands, Belgium), which has two demonstratives. We found that Ticuna speakers' use of demonstratives displayed effects of addressee location and referent distance, but not referent visibility. By contrast, under comparable conditions, Dutch speakers displayed sensitivity only to referent distance. Interestingly, we also observed that Ticuna speakers consistently used demonstratives in all referential utterances in our experimental paradigm, while Dutch speakers strongly preferred to use definite articles. Taken together, these findings shed light on the significant diversity found in demonstrative systems across languages. Additionally, they invite researchers studying exophoric demonstratives to broaden their horizons by cross-linguistically investigating the factors involved in speakers' choice of demonstratives over other types of referring expressions, especially articles. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.