The development of noun definitions: a metalinguistic analysis

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty McGhee-Bidlack

ABSTRACTDefining is a metalinguistic skill. This study charts the development of the ability to define. A total of 120 participants (40 at each of the ages of 10, 14 and 18 years) defined eight concrete and eight abstract nouns. Each definition was coded to identify the types of responses present in it. Results indicate that there are significant differences in the way concrete and abstract nouns are defined. All three age-groups defined concrete nouns mainly by class and characteristic responses. But it was not until age 18 that abstract nouns were defined by class and characteristic responses. The development of abstract noun definitions follows the development of concrete noun definitions. The ability to define is dependent upon knowledge of the meaning of the word but it is also dependent upon implicit or explicit knowledge of the definitional form. The ability to define abstract nouns is a late developing metalinguistic skill.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Muhsin Hama Saeed Qadir ◽  
Saza Ahmed Fakhry Abdulla

This paper is a comparative morphological study of some class maintaining derivational affixes that do not alter the grammatical categories lexemes in Standard English and Central Kurdish from the standpoints of Generative Morphology. For the comparative analysis of the two languages, some of the derivational affixes that form new meanings from the existing lexemes and retain the grammatical categories of the newly derived lexemes have been classified. The main aim of the study is to identify the points of similarity and difference of class maintaining derivational affixes in both languages. The findings indicate that in the addition of nominal affixes, English and Kurdish are similar in that ‘concrete nouns’ could remain concrete nouns, as well as could convert into abstract nouns by adding certain affixes. In English, a prefix can also be added to a concrete noun to derive a new concrete noun, whereas in Kurdish, only a prefix can be added to an abstract noun to form a concrete noun. In the addition of adjectival affixes, both languages are similar in that adjectives can derive new adjectives by attaching some prefixes and some suffixes to the existing lexemes. In English, the cardinal numbers remain cardinals when the suffixes –teen and –ty are attached to them, whereas in Kurdish the only rare case can be seen when the suffix –a is attached to the two cardinal numerals hawt/ haft ‘seven’ and hašt ‘eight’. The suffixes –th in English and -(h)am and -(h)amin  in Kurdish can be attached to the cardinal numbers to form the ordinal numbers.


Author(s):  
Xu Xu ◽  
Chunyan Kang ◽  
Kaia Sword ◽  
Taomei Guo

Abstract. The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.


Author(s):  
Álvaro Quijano-Solís ◽  
Guadalupe Vega-Díaz

The purpose of this chapter is to describe how the concepts and principles from the Systems Approach may be helpful in understanding and modeling the collaborative group cognitive processes in information handling in an academic library. In order to address complexity and dynamics, this chapter analyzes several theoretical positions, which together may help us to shape the academic library from a comprehensive and systemic point of view (such as Systems Approach, Communities of Practice, Activity Theory and the Viable System Model). This chapter suggests focalizing on the activity (performed by a community) as the basic unit of analysis in studying the complexity of academic libraries. This activity is what allows the transmission of tacit and explicit knowledge and the skills from an expert to a novice. Other elements in the activity are objectives, rules and regulations, and importantly the learning processes that occur dialectically between subjects and community. A model such as Beer´s in the way the authors presented it in this chapter fits well to decompose reality and synthesize it to analyze the proposed complexity. This may allow facing organizational problems by focusing in the way people act to transform the inputs into products and add value to them by teaching and learning.


Author(s):  
Jennifer (Jenny) L. Penland ◽  
Kennard Laviers

Of all the technologies emerging today, augmented reality (AR) stands to be one of, if not the, most transformational in the way we teach our students across the spectrum of age groups and subject matter. The authors propose “best practices” that allow the educator to use AR as a tool that will not only teach the processes of a skill but will also encourage students to use AR as a motivational tool that allows them to discover, explore, and perform work beyond what is capable with this revolutionary device. Finally, the authors provide and explore the artificial intelligence (AI) processors behind the technologies driving down cost while driving up the quality of AR and how this new field of computer science is transforming all facets of society and may end up changing pedagogy more profoundly than anything before it.


Author(s):  
Selin Ozdemir ◽  
Fatih Yavuz

Teaching grammar has been regarded as one of the most crucial issues in the field of language. It gains its importance since it helps learners attain high level of accuracy and proficiency in language learning processes. During these processes, the way of teaching grammar differs under some certain circumstances and is divided into some sub-categories such as conscious grammar teaching and subconscious grammar teaching. In this study, a literature review of issues on the role of consciousness and sub-consciousness in teaching of grammar has been widely discussed since there are numerous views, claims and approaches related to choosing one of them as an ideal way to teach grammar. Both of them have a significant impact on the knowledge of grammar .The study revealed that neither conscious grammar teaching which lays emphasis on the structures and rules of a language nor subconscious grammar teaching without attention to explicit knowledge of grammar should be neglected. Keywords: Grammar teaching, consciousness, sub-consciousness, deductive, inductive.


2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 531-534
Author(s):  
Caslav Milic

Introduction. Suicide is a conscious and deliberate extermination of one?s own life. Suicidal motives can be exogenous and endogenous. Exogenous factors are those from social and economic sphere, moral and political ones. There are numerous elements: demographic, socio-pathological, clinical-psychopathological and, in recent time, seasonal variations and meteorological characteristics are considered to be significant. Aim. On the basis of the analyzed literature the aim of this paper was to show the connection among seasonal variations, frequency and suicidal features. Methods. Numerous epidemiological analyses of suicide have found a connection between suicide and seasonal variations. The connection between seasonal variations and suicide regarding the way of committing it (violent and nonviolent one) has been checked. Seasons, particularly spring and summer, have influence on suicide, which confirms the fact that suicide rate in time corresponds with seasonal variations. Results. Suicides in younger age groups of both sexes show smaller asymmetry in seasonal distribution than in older groups. Seasonal influence on suicide rate has been proved to be bigger in men than in women. As for the connection between seasonal characteristics and suicide regarding the way of committing it (violent and nonviolent suicide) most studies show that suicide, but only the violent one, is in direct connection with seasons. Annual trend shows the peak from March to May (from early to late spring) for violent suicide. Conclusion. To have knowledge about the influence of seasonal variations on committing suicide is very important for taking adequate preventive measures, especially in those countries which have high rate of suicide.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tantri Refa Indhiarti ◽  
Dwi I Rizki

In recent years, it is found that pronoun they and its lemmas are used to refer to singular person to show that the person does not wish to be identified as one of gender binaries. This phenomenon occurs in The Washington Post having added singular they to their stylebook. Therefore this paper aims at elaborating how pronouns they, them, their, theirs, and themselves are used as singular ones in the articles of The Washington Post published in 2016. With the aid of corpus instrument software, this study qualitatively analyses a small corpus consisting of 100 articles. References of pronouns identified as singular are proceeded as the data source of this study and categorized into Crystal’s (2003) main classes of noun and Cobuild’s (2011) classification of indefinite pronoun. The study reveals that The Washington Post used they as singular with the references of proper noun which consists of names of people and organizations, common count concrete noun which consists of nouns denoting persons and a noun denoting things, common count abstract noun consisting of nouns denoting abstract entities, and 6 indefinite pronouns which are used to refer to persons. These references are found mostly to be non-referential, where gender is indefinite. However, some are found to be referential which are common count concrete noun child and proper nouns in the form of names of people. These references refer to individuals who identify themselves not in one of gender binaries, instead they are found to be used in a context regarding LGBT.


Author(s):  
Antigoni Mertika ◽  
Paschalia Mitskidou ◽  
Anastassios Stalikas

Positive relationships are widely considered to be one of the pillars of well-being. Their boosting effect on emotional and physical health has repeatedly been documented by experimental and longitudinal studies. Despite their instrumental role, the existing literature does not offer systematic observations of their nature and characteristics. In this paper, we aim to explore the specific characteristics of positive relationships. We conducted a thorough research of the existing most recent literature and grouped our findings according to the following two research questions: (a) the kind of relationships that are positive in people's lives and, (b) the way positive relationships relate and support well-being. Our findings suggested that specific relationships are examined with respect to different age groups, e.g. peer relationships in adolescence or marital relationships in adulthood. All relationships described as positive at each developmental stage are correlated with wellbeing in various ways. Beyond the characteristics of people and the way they relate, relationships seem to contribute to wellbeing by sharing positive moments and events, being supportive with respect to autonomy and showing an attitude of interest and emotional engagement. In conclusion, we argue that while relationships seem to contribute to wellbeing, there is not yet an exhaustive list of ingredients that make the relationship “positive”. We suggest new ways to enhance the study of positive relationships as well as possible variables that have not yet been examined and could possibly enhance our understanding of positive relationships and their influence on wellbeing.


Author(s):  
Zahoor Hussain ◽  
Samiullah Khan ◽  
Muhammad Ajmal

Palestinian literature received significance after Nakba (1948 Palestine-Israel war) and Naksa (1967 Arab-Israel war) and it laid an impact on Palestinian writers and there emerged a new form of literature called Palestinian American literature which got recognition in the 1990s internationally. After Nakba and Naksa many Palestinian families migrated to America. These Palestinians wrote literature in English that is called Palestinian-American literature. The aim of the stylistic analysis of Abulhawa's work to trace out how the writer constructs reality through lexical categories. This thesis also analyzes the work of Palestinian-American writer Abulhawa's novel, The Blue between Sky and Water, and focuses specifically on how the writer achieves her aims. At the same time, this stylistic analysis of The Blue between Sky and Water shed light on the use of Arabic words in English fiction which represent the culture and identity of the Palestinian nation. It explores the dilemma of Palestine that they become a foreigner in their native land. The researcher employed a mixed-method approach to conduct the present study. The researcher used Corpus stylistics tools to analyze the novel. The researcher traced around 6288 concrete nouns and 1634 abstract nouns from the sample respectively. The extensive use of concrete nouns showed that the main purpose of the writer was to get homeland and this piece of writing was not only art for art sake rather art for life's sake. The researcher traced out around 1400 adjectives from the sample of study.


Author(s):  
Yezelia Danira Caceres Cabana ◽  
David Aguilar del Carpio ◽  
Erika Velásquez Chacón ◽  
Juan Mardonio Rivera Medina

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has led many states, in an attempt to control the spread of the virus, to decree social immobilization, which meant the introduction of restrictions on the free movement of people and the opening of shops. This led them to seek new marketing channels for purchases. Among these, ICTs have been important. This is the focus of the analysis in this document. Through surveys and interviews, information was obtained, divided into four age groups, which showed that an important part of the population has had to resort to ICTs to acquire goods and/or pay for services. This change in the way of acquiring had different particularities according to the age group analyzed, with a greater change in the oldest group (56 to 74 years old). It can be concluded that the massification of these tools has generated a change in the ways of acquiring products, and this is likely to transcend the pandemic and these channels will be maintained and strengthened in the future.


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