Towards an Operational Definition of Discourse Contrast

1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Myhill ◽  
Janet Zhiqun Xing
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Specific Problem ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship

Linguists have often invoked the concept of contrast in attempting to explain the use of certain constructions without explicitly defining this term. The present paper proposes an operational definition of contrast which can be applied to naturally occurring data so as to provide a more precise account of the relationship between form and function. The specific problem addressed is word order in Biblical Hebrew and Chinese. It is shown that contrast is one factor affecting deviations from canonical word order in these languages, but that the effect of contrast differs in a number of respects in the two languages, and many deviations from canonical word order cannot be accounted for by reference to contrast.

scholarly journals Gender Differences in the Form and Function of Naturally Occurring Smiles

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Hansen ◽  
Jared Martin ◽  
Paula Niedenthal ◽  
Adrienne Wood
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Recent Approach ◽  
And Function ◽  
Physical Features ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opposite Gender

Through their nuanced ability to reinforce, reassure, and judge, smiles accomplish many tasks in daily interactions. A recent approach proposes that there are at least three distinct types of smiles: reward, affiliation, and dominance, which are predicted to take different physical forms and serve unique functions in social communication. Although American women are socialized to smile more often than men, it is possible that gender differences in smile behavior depend upon social context. For instance, since it is more acceptable for men to convey status, men may produce smiles with more pronounced dominance features than women. Conversely, since women are socialized to convey harmlessness, women may produce smiles with stronger affiliation features than men. To test these hypotheses, we filmed participant pairs interacting while watching humorous videos relevant to the tasks of reward, affiliation, and dominance. We extracted all visible smiles and quantified their physical features using automated face coding software. As expected, female participants smiled more often in the affiliation context and less in the dominance context and displayed smiles with more affiliation features than males overall. Furthermore, participants’ smiles in the dominance context contained more features characteristic of dominance when they were interacting with an opposite-gender partner. This study—the first to examine naturally-elicited smiles in reward, affiliation, and dominance contexts—suggests the relationship between gender and smiling norms is nuanced and depends on the smiler’s communicative intent.

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) of DNA and RNA

1989 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 34-35
Author(s):  
Patricia G. Arscott ◽  
Gil Lee ◽  
Victor A. Bloomfield ◽  
D. Fennell Evans
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Structures ◽  
Inorganic Materials ◽  
Resolving Power ◽  
Scanning Tunneling ◽  
Tunneling Microscopy ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Dna And Rna ◽  
Calf Thymus ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship

STM is one of the most promising techniques available for visualizing the fine details of biomolecular structure. It has been used to map the surface topography of inorganic materials in atomic dimensions, and thus has the resolving power not only to determine the conformation of small molecules but to distinguish site-specific features within a molecule. That level of detail is of critical importance in understanding the relationship between form and function in biological systems. The size, shape, and accessibility of molecular structures can be determined much more accurately by STM than by electron microscopy since no staining, shadowing or labeling with heavy metals is required, and there is no exposure to damaging radiation by electrons. Crystallography and most other physical techniques do not give information about individual molecules.We have obtained striking images of DNA and RNA, using calf thymus DNA and two synthetic polynucleotides, poly(dG-me5dC)·poly(dG-me5dC) and poly(rA)·poly(rU).

Physicianship and the Rebirth of Medical Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Donald Boudreau ◽  
Eric Cassell ◽  
Abraham Fuks
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Medical Attention ◽  
Patient Centeredness ◽  
Goals Of Medicine ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
William Osler ◽  
The Relationship

This book reimagines medical education and reconstructs its design. It originates from a reappraisal of the goals of medicine and the nature of the relationship between doctor and patient. The educational blueprint outlined is called the “Physicianship Curriculum” and rests on two linchpins. First is a new definition of sickness: Patients know themselves to be ill when they cannot pursue their purposes and goals in life because of impairments in functioning. This perspective represents a bulwark against medical attention shifting from patients to diseases. The curriculum teaches about patients as functional persons, from their anatomy to their social selves, starting in the first days of the educational program and continuing throughout. Their teaching also rests on the rock-solid grounding of medicine in the sciences and scientific understandings of disease and function. The illness definition and knowledge base together create a foundation for authentic patient-centeredness. Second, the training of physicians depends on and culminates in development of a unique professional identity. This is grounded in the historical evolution of the profession, reaching back to Hippocrates. It leads to reformulation of the educational process as clinical apprenticeships and moral mentorships. “Rebirth” in the title suggests that critical ingredients of medical education have previously been articulated. The book argues that the apprenticeship model, as experienced, enriched, taught, and exemplified by William Osler, constitutes a time-honored foundation. Osler’s “natural method of teaching the subject of medicine” is a precursor to the Physicianship Curriculum.

Relationship between Magical Ideation and Noctcaelador

2005 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-374
Author(s):  
William E. Kelly ◽  
Don Daughtry
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Common Variance ◽  
Magical Ideation ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
Night Sky ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

This study explored the relationship between magical ideation and “noctcaelador” (strong interest in, and psychological attachment to, the night sky). 210 university students completed Eckblad and Chapman's 1983 Magical Ideation Scale and Kelly's 2004 Noctcaelador Inventory. Scores on the two scales were significantly positively related and accounted for 14% of the common variance. Based on this operational definition of magical ideation, a strong interest in the night-sky might be associated with uncommon beliefs and reports of unusual perceptual experience. Researchers must clarify and define these concepts to study possible relations.

Poetry and Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tod Linafelt
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Key Points ◽  
And Function ◽  
Biblical Hebrew Poetry

Although virtually all other long narratives from the ancient world take the form of verse, biblical authors pioneered a prose style that, for reasons unknown, came to dominate ancient Hebrew narrative, relegating verse to nonnarrative genres. In other words, extended biblical Hebrew narrative always takes the form of prose, and biblical Hebrew poetry is nearly always nonnarrative. And yet, one finds authors and editors of the narratives dropping poems into the stories at key points, often because poetry provides literary resources unavailable in prose. By exploring both the form and function of these poetic insets, we may see the intentionality with which the ancient authors treated literary form and the crucial roles that nonnarrative poetic genres came to play in the biblical stories.

Relationship of Skeletal Muscle Atrophy to Functional Status: A Systematic Research Review

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Michael
Keyword(s):  
Muscle Atrophy ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Functional Limitation ◽  
Skeletal Muscle Atrophy ◽  
Research Review ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
And Function ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

In the realm of muscle atrophy research, many studies address minute details of molecular function but few examine the effects of atrophy in terms of mobility, strength, endurance, and performance of activities of daily living. The relationship between impairment and functional limitation is the focus of this research review. A wide array of studies constitute this area of inquiry, including investigations as diverse and widely disparate as molecular chemistry and space travel and populations as different as rats, healthy young men, and elderly women. Thirty-four studies were selected based on their fit with the Enabling-Disabling Model. Three paradigms of atrophy and function emerged. Adaptation reflects the plastic nature of muscle when placed under certain conditions, ranging from disuse to high-resistance exercise. Injury/loss describes damage to muscle tissue from ischemia, medications, or reloading or reperfusion trauma. Also in this category is the loss of muscle that is seen with aging. Integrity relates to the muscle’s tendency to protect itself and maintain structural adjacencies and cellular proportions. Based on the 3 muscle research paradigms, the relationship of muscle atrophy to function is portrayed as a bidirectional interaction wherein form and function have an influence on each other by way of physical changes, including those of adaptation, injury/loss, or integrity. A conceptual model is constructed to reflect this relationship.

Verb inflection in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and auxiliation patterns in French and Italian

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nunzio La Fauci ◽  
Liana Tronci
Keyword(s):  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Verb Inflections ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship

This paper deals with the complex interaction between form and function in the verb morphosyntax of four Indo-European languages (French, Italian, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Beyond the difference in form, auxiliation patterns in French and Italian, and verb inflections in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit correlate, thanks to the agreement for number and person, to the expression of the relationship with the Subject. The different auxiliation patterns (sum and habeo) and the different inflections (middle and active) correlate to different properties of the Subject. In particular, these forms depend on the syntactic opposition between middle and non-middle. The ways of this dependency are regulated and systematic, although they appear fuzzy and chaotic, not only if the four languages are compared to each other, but also if different morphosyntactic combinations, inside the same language, are concerned.

Towards a pragmatic approach to the study of languages in contact

Pragmatics ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan A. Argente ◽  
Lluís Payrató
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interactive Strategies ◽  
And Function ◽  
Adaptation Processes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Distribution

The study of language contact has been traditionally carried out from a structural perspective (synchronic or diachronic), from a sociolinguistic perspective and/or from a rather psychological perspective, centered on the linguistic and communicative competence of the multilingual individual. However, a great number of linguistic and sociolinguistic topics that appear in language contact situations may be productively tackled from a pragmatic viewpoint. This pragmatic perspective takes into account linguistic use in communication contexts and raises, at a different level, questions that deal with the structures and the evolution of the codes in contact. The main aim of this presentation is the analysis of some of the specific problems that arise in given language contact situations from a pragmatic perspective, considering the adaptation processes of the speakers, their particular interactive strategies and the social meaning generated. Understanding pragmatics in its original sense, i.e. as the study of the relationship between linguistic signs and speakers (users of certain resources), these phenomena should be understood as the result of speakers’ adaptation to changing sociocultural circumstances. This adaptation creates a new distribution of the verbal resources (or linguistic economy) of the community and, consequently, modifies its varieties as far as form and function are concerned.

English as a Lingua Franca: form follows function

English Today ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 58-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessia Cogo
Keyword(s):  
Research Field ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The World ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTIn this paper I wish to respond to the article published in ET94 by Saraceni while at the same time providing some clarifications concerning the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF). In his article Saraceni raises three main questions (and a number of related debatable comments which I will quickly deal with in my final remarks) regarding: 1) the nature of ELF and its speakers, 2) the relationship between ELF and the World Englishes (henceforth WE) paradigm, and 3) the distinction between form and function. I will address each of these questions, and in so doing consider a number of notions concerning the ELF research field.

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