Linguistics Commons^™

Vital-Historical And Eternal Themes In Khaled Hosseini’S Novels, Dilnoza Ruzmatova Phd Student

Philology Matters

In the study of literature the themes of fiction are divided into vital-historical and eternal themes. Vital-historical themes refer to the conditions resulted in character upbringing in the socio-historical situation and they can’t exist outside of this certain time and place. The eternal themes indicate the repeated events in all the periods of all the nations. The combination of several themes in one work is expressed in literary studies with the concept of “thematic”. When faced with such a situation, one or two major themes may be separated, and the rest should be explored as secondary. The objective of this …

Linguocultural Aspect Of Investigation Of English And Uzbek Idiomatic Expressions, Bozor Safaraliev Professor, Gulandom Bakieva Professor, Nafisa Nasrullaeva Professor

Philology Matters

The present article is devoted to investigation of English and Uzbek idiomatic expressions or phraseological units which contain culture-related information. They were divided into main groups: idiomatic expressions with the structure of knowledge related to religion, myths and legends, literature, geography, history and culture. They convey significant information about people’s way of life, religious principles, historical events, geographical places, etc. Theoretical part of the article is proved by numerous examples of English and Uzbek idiomatic expressions which were chosen for linguocultural approach of investigation. The objectives of the research: English and Uzbek idiomatic expressions with linguocultural content. The following methods …

Development Buzzwords And Their Characteristics, Elmira Muratova Candidate Of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Department Of Linguistics And Literature Critical Studies,, Victoria Eolian Teacher, Department Of Theoretical Aspects Of The English Language

Philology Matters

The paper continues to analyze the language of international organizations, its development and importance of its correct understanding in the course of partners’ communication with different languages, which requires translators to be more attentive to avoid discrapencies and confusions while translating dialogues or presentations at some official meetings. The topicality of such research is obvious. Thus in the article the authors decided to discuss a very interesting phenomenon of buzzwords and ‘plastic’ words as a distinct class of words. For that, they reviewed key publications on development discourse and eleven characteristics of development buzzwords and plastic words were identified and …

Media Image As An Important Meaning Of Uzbekistan’S Image Formation: Theoretical And Cognitive Aspects, Beruniy Alimov Associate Professor (Phd)

Philology Matters

This article analyzes that the media image is an important tool for shaping the image of the country and the theoretical and cognitive aspects of the image.
We perceive an object or event through our senses, see and hear them. We understand and comprehend the new information received. They are then placed in our memory as a definite quality mark, image, or ‘piece of symbol’. Therefore, in the modern media space, it is important to understand the content of information about a country, positive or negative information about the image of the region, to understand the realities of what is …

Developing Consecutive Interpreter’S Communicative Skills Of Emotive-Empathic Interaction, Jameela Abduganieva Researcher

Philology Matters

Consecutive interpretation is a special form of oral communication between people speaking different languages, representing different cultures, and it is carried out in any situation of intercultural communication in order to exchange thoughts, information, knowledge, labor results, products, emotions, values, relationships in the process of interaction.
A consecutive interpreter is a mediator of intercultural communication, and the development of emotive-empathic interaction skills of an interpreter promotes the successfullness of such communication.
Interpreters’ communicative skills of emotive-empathic interaction within consecutive interpretation may be defined as a communicative and speech act in a foreign language communication implemented independently and in an optimal …

Importance Of Showing Colorful Pictures And Images In Abdulla Kadiri’S Novel “The Days Gone By”, Madina Kholmurodova Phd Student

Philology Matters

Abdulla Kadiri’s novel, “The Days Gone By” reveals a wide range of universal themes and problems. Therefore, it is very difficult to define its all features unambiguously. Nevertheless, it can be argued that, having laid the foundation of the work for a beautiful love story, the author was able to touch upon the complex problem of the confrontation between God and the devil, light and darkness in the density of mankind. The novel reflects the social and political life of the power and trade strata of the then feudal society. The writer, based on his own progressive views, reveals a …

The Necessity Of Foreign Language Curriculum Revision, Mukhamadavas Irisqulov Associate Professor

Philology Matters

The article deals with the effect of the curriculum objectives on the most important factors to meet the language learning goals. Implementing the goals of the curriculum, teachers will have opportunities to share successful classroom activities, guide the trainers, obtain good knowledge of the language theory and practice, maintain high expectation in the classrooms, encourage students, motivate them, foresee the ways to overcome setbacks. The overall aim of curriculum is - to improve the effective communicative competence in different life situations. The article presents a practical overview of the different activities for developing an effective national language program. Both teachers …

Linguoculturological Aspect Of Translating Realias, Shoira Isaeva Independent Researcher

Philology Matters

This article examines the specificity of translation of realias – linguistic units reflecting national life, which are generally studied in linguoculturology. Cultural linguistics as a branch of linguistics was formed in the 1990s at the intersection of linguistics and cultural studies and explores the manifestations of the culture of people, which are reflected and entrenched in the language. The idea that language and culture are interrelated and culture manifests itself in language, in general, belongs to V. von Humboldt, but only in recent years, linguoculturology began to develop actively, and its terms such as the linguistic picture of the world, …

Syntactic And Semantic Analysis Of Cognate Word Combinations In The English And Uzbek Languages, Mukhtorjon Bakhtiyarov Senior Teacher, Department Of English Language Translation Theory And Practice

Philology Matters

This article describes the derivational potential of root word combinations belonging to the noun, adjective and verb groups in the English and Uzbek languages and their grammatical functional features on the basis of comparative-typological, comparative and distributive methods at the lexical and syntactic levels of the language. Structural models of derivation of verbs, nouns and adjectives in the English and Uzbek languages and their features are considered based on component analysis, as well as morphological factors that ensure the completeness of derivation, their distinctive and similar features in both languages, the role and importance in the formation of verbal compounds …

Linguistic Status Of Address: Address As A Syntactic Unit, Zebo Yovkacheva Phd Student

Philology Matters

This article discusses the linguistic aspect of address. The syntactic category of address attracted the attention of Russian linguists for a long time. The object of their study was address, the natural condition for the existence of which was oral and written forms of dialogical speech. A multilateral analysis of the essence and functioning of circulation in the Russian language was first presented in the works of A.A. Shakhmatova and A.M. Peshkovsky. In modern syntactic works and academic grammars, the methods of expression and distribution of addresses in oral and written dialogical speech, their bridges in the utterance, the nature …

Analysis Of Information Genres In National Journalism Of Colonial Turkestan (Uzbekistan), Khalim Saidov Candidate Of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Theory And Practice Of International Journalism Department

Philology Matters

The foundation of periodicals in Turkestan during the Tsarist Russia, the role of Jadid journalists in disseminating information, the tasks of the press in Uzbekistan during the rule of Bolsheviks, the essence of authoritarian, totalitarian views (theories) on information and their consequences have been analyzed in the article. The item entitled “Short Stories from the Life of Russian Tsars, Local and Other Types of Information” pointed out in the charter of newspaper “Turkiston Viloyatining Gazeti” (Newspaper of Turkestan Region) is considered to be the first official source on the theory of authoritarian publications in the current research, with particular emphasis …

Noun Animacy As A Factor In The Production Of L2 English Passives By L1 Mandarin Learners, Shanshan Duan

UM Graduate Student Colloquium in Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Shanshan investigates whether there is a greater likelihood of producing passives with animate (as opposed to inanimate) patients being placed in the grammatical subject position during syntactic priming activities.

50 Anos De Evolução Nos Estudos Linguísticos Transculturais: Da Retórica Contrastiva À Retórica Intercultural, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

Este trabalho apresenta um panorama histórico dos estudos linguísticos transculturais, discorrendo sobre o surgimento da retórica contrastiva por meio do trabalho seminal de Robert Kaplan em 1966 e as contribuições de Ulla Connor ao rebatizar tais estudos como retórica intercultural. Explana-se também sobre as críticas endereçadas à retórica contrastiva feitas durante os anos 1980, 1990 e 2000 e de que maneira tais críticas redefiniram o quadro teórico-metodológico e o objeto de estudo da disciplina. Conclui-se com exposição de uma crítica à homogeneização das distintas culturas retóricas causada pela globalização e internacionalização do inglês no âmbito acadêmico e nas atividades profissionais.

Persona Development: Unpacking The Process, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

In our last post, we introduced the concept of personas and discussed how we are using personas to create a compelling and approachable representation of our aggregated interview data with working learners. Our hope is that the personas we develop will help practitioners and program developers better understand the working learners' experiences. We have found that personas help us illustrate who working learners are and situate our findings within the existing instructional design paradigm. In this post, we discuss our process for creating person as.

Researching Paraguayan Guarani: The Minoritized Language Of The Majority, Josefina Bittar Phd Candidate

LAII Events

Paraguayan Guarani, one of the native languages of Paraguay, is spoken by more than 80% of the country’s population. However, despite government and societal efforts, Spanish remains the language of prestige, required for education opportunities and social mobility. In this presentation, Josefina Bittar will discuss the characteristics of Guarani-Spanish bilingualism in Paraguay, the importance of documenting linguistic practices in the country, and the role of researchers in challenging the population’s internalized prejudices about languages and their speakers.

Bless Your Heart: Constructing The ‘Southern Belle’ In The Modern South’, Staci Defibaugh, Karen Taylor

English Faculty Publications

Language and identity are intricately woven into the personal and public lives of social groups. Words and phrases may originate in a subculture morphing into mainstream culture on the comingled streams of interactions among the masses. These words and phrases have specific meanings within their original contexts in their home cultures, yet they vary and evolve as they travel on the above-mentioned comingled streams of interactions and conversations. In this paper, we explore the typified Southern expression, ‘bless your heart,’ examining the ways in which this phrase is used, understood and reinterpreted as it circulates within the South and outside …

On The Temporal Interpretation Of Epistemic Modals: Evidence From Palestinian Arabic, Alaa M. Sharif

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of temporal interpretation of epistemic modals in Palestinian Arabic (PA), and develop a cross-linguistic analysis. The epistemic necessity modal akeed and the epistemic possibility modal yimkin in PA exhibit similar temporal configurations to English epistemic modals must and might, respectively. We argue for a unified underlying structure to account for the temporal configurations. The linearized combination of the epistemic modal, a silent present tense morpheme and an aspectual head morpheme derive either a present-oriented reading when the aspectual head is empty, or a future-oriented reading in presence of a silent prospective …

Working Memory Training: Cognitive And Linguistic Implications In Adult English Language Learners, Deepti Wadhera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used a cognitive training paradigm to explore whether the same mechanisms of working memory underly conflict resolution in non-verbal and verbal domains in adult English language learners.The association between an individual’s Working Memory (WM) performance and their success in skills such as interference control, decision-making and language processing has been repeatedly highlighted by researchers in cognitive psychology and linguistic fields. Particularly, acquisition and use of a second language is one life experience in which WM ability seems valuable. However, when this association is put to the test in studies that train participants’ WM and measure transfer of these …

Tones In Shupamem Reduplication, Magdalena Markowska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents an analysis of reduplication in Shupamem, an Eastern Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon. In this language nouns, verbs, and adjectives undergo full segmental reduplication. At the suprasegmental level, on the other hand, tones of the reduplicants are not entirely faithful to their bases. The tonal asymmetry of the reduplicted phrase also relies on the grammatical function of that phrase within a clause, as well as on the neighboring grammatical words, such as tense particles. This morphological process gives also an insight to an underlying tonal representations in Shupamem. Nominal reduplication, in particular, provides a proof of the …

Bilingual Reading Fluency And Prediction: Heritage Language Versus Second Language, Olga Parshina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis presents the first comparative investigation of reading fluency and factors that affect it by examining eye movements in reading by Heritage Speakers (HSs) and L2 learners of Russian. The eye movements of bilingual participants are compared to two control groups, monolingual adults and monolingual children. Following the introductory Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 we present the study that establishes basic eye-movement characteristics in reading for Heritage Speakers and L2 learners in connection to proficiency and linguistics factors of word length and frequency. Contrary to our predictions, we found that all eye-movement characteristics of high-proficiency HSs are different from …

Mitigating Gender Bias In Neural Machine Translation Using Counterfactual Data, Alan Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent advances in deep learning have greatly improved the ability of researchers to develop effective machine translation systems. In particular, the application of modern neural architectures, such as the Transformer, has achieved state-of-the-art BLEU scores in many translation tasks. However, it has been found that even state-of-the-art neural machine translation models can suffer from certain implicit biases, such as gender bias (Lu et al., 2019). In response to this issue, researchers have proposed various potential solutions: some have proposed approaches that inject missing gender information into models, while others have attempted modifying the training data itself. We focus on mitigating …

Integrating Affect Perception Tasks From The New York Emotion Battery Into A Comprehensive Measure Of Neuropsychological Change Across The Lifespan, Melinda A. Cornwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: The ability to perceive others’ emotions is a vital skill for social competency, impacting the success of personal and professional relationships (Brinton & Fujiki, 2011; Cassidy et al., 1992; Côté & Miners, 2006). According to Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST; Carstensen, 1991), human motivation develops to become more discerning in choosing milieus that yield the most gratifying return on the investment of personal resources (e.g., time, attention, and effort), perhaps explaining why some research findings indicate that older adults may demonstrate an affect perception (AP) bias described as a positivity effect (Reed et al., 2014). Moreover, AP predicts cognitive and …

Acquisition Orders And Instructional Sequences: A Case Study Of Russian Textbooks, Olga Ozhiganova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous research on English as a second language has established the linguistic phenomenon of the natural order of morpheme acquisition in which grammatical features are acquired by learners in a specific order. The acquisition of Russian morphosyntax as an L2 had not been established until Gor’s (2019) research. The present study employs Gor’s (2019) findings to examine whether the order in which five Russian morphosyntactic features—case, impersonal sentences, location-direction, aspect, verbs of motion (VoM)—are acquired is reflected in second-year Russian instructional materials by investigating three commonly used textbooks. The results reveal that (1) the documented order in which Russian morphosyntactic …

360º Video And Language Documentation: Towards A Corpus Of Kanien'kéha (Mohawk), Joseph Pentangelo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Robust documentation is a major goal of documentary linguistics. Recognizing spoken language as a multimodal phenomenon, researchers working in this field broadly agree that video is an improvement over audio-only recording. At the same time, video is limited by the format’s frame, which permits only a relatively small portion of the visual field to be recorded at any given time. This results in much data being lost, as the documenter must decide where to aim their camera, necessarily leaving out more than they record.

In this dissertation, I apply 360º video to language documentation for the first time. 360º video, …

Does The Word "Chien" Bark? Representation Learning In Neural Machine Translation Encoders, Emily Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents experiments with using representation learning to explore how neural networks learn. Neural networks which take text as input create internal representations of the text during their training. Recent work has found that these representations can be used to perform other downstream linguistic tasks, such as part-of-speech (POS) tagging. This demonstrates that the neural networks are learning linguistic information and storing this information in the representations. We focus on the representations created by neural machine translation (NMT) models and whether they can be used in POS tagging. We train 5 NMT models including an auto-encoder. We extract the …

The Medium Of Liberation: Kurdish Language And Education Activism In Turkey, Demet Arpacik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic study examines the Kurdish language and education activism, which I argue, is an anti-colonial movement generating decolonial forms of practices as responses. Prohibited to be spoken even in private spaces until 1991 in Turkey, the Kurdish language has been an intense object of struggle between the Turkish state and the Kurdish population. What historical, political, and sociocultural forces have contributed to colonial language governmentality in Turkey against the Kurdish language and its speakers? How do Kurdish activists challenge the linguistic hegemony in their semi-formal spaces and in what ways are their practices, discourses and policies decolonial? My study …

The Sounds Of Sikles Gurung: A Phonetic And Phonological Description Of A Tibeto-Burman Language Of Nepal, Danielle Ronkos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes the sound system of the Sikles variety of Gurung, or Tamu Kyui, a Tibeto-Burman minority language of Nepal. Drawing on data collected with the help of Sikles Gurung speakers living in Nepal and New York between 2014 and 2018, it presents evidence that the phonetics and phonology of this variety differ from descriptions of other varieties. Major findings include contrastive vowel duration, a 2-category register system rather than the 4-tone system reported for other varieties, and allophonic secondary consonant articulations assigned by the backness of adjacent vowels and glides. The secondary articulation system is linked to the …

Cot In The Act: Ethnicity And Age Affects Phonemic Perception Of The Low-Back Merger In New York City English, Omar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

ABSTRACT

This paper is an experimental study on how perceptions about a speaker’s age and ethnicity may influence whether listeners perceive the THOUGHT / LOT distinction. The macro-categories of age and ethnicity have been found to correlate with the lowering of raised THOUGHT (Wong 2012, Becker 2010) and the favoring of the merged vowels in perception (Haddican et al. 2016). This thesis examines whether images of faces associated with different age and ethnicity categories condition perception of auditory stimuli as belonging to either the LOT or THOUGHT class. This thesis builds on previous results suggesting that non-linguistic information influences speech …

The Grammatical Systems Of Attentionworthiness: Positional Signals And Invariant Meanings In Spanish Word Order, Eduardo Ho-Fernández

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a Columbia School analysis of word order phenomena in Spanish. The data was sourced from a corpus of manually collected utterances extracted from six volumes of Latin American short stories written in the twentieth century. The study employs various qualitative and quantitative techniques in order to test the various hypotheses offered as explanations of the distributional problems selected for the study. The observations roughly correspond to word orders that the grammatical tradition describes as having to do with either verbs with one argument (SV, VS, OV, VO) or verbs with two arguments (SVO, OVS, VSO, VOS, SOV, …

Processing Coercion In A First, Non-Dominant Language: Mandarin-English Heritage Bilinguals, Christina N. Dadurian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent work in heritage language grammars has shown variability in L1 competence, despite high proficiency in both languages. While sources of variation have been debated, little attention has been given to the role of language dominance. This thesis uses a self-paced listening task to explicitly investigate the roles of language dominance and pragmatic competence in how heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese process aspectual coercion in their non-dominant home language, as compared to late bilinguals. Specifically, constructions that vary in acceptability and salience in input between Mandarin and English are tested: Iterative coercion, complement event coercion of entity NPs, and perfective …