On the origin of the Mainstream Hakka word [oi1] “mother”

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-186
Author(s):  
W. South Coblin

Abstract One of the most common morphemes meaning “mother” in the Hakka dialects is a syllable pronounced [oi1], [ɔi1], or the like. This word, so far as is known, has no phonologically systematic cognates in other Chinese dialect families and is not attested in early Sinographic records. Nor has any plausible non-Sinitic donor language been identified for it. The object of the present paper is to suggest a possible earlier origin for this word. Our hypothesis is that it is in fact a fusion of a Common Neo-Hakka compound *a1 moi1, in which the first element is a kinship prefix and the second is a word whose basic meaning is “mother, aunt, etc.” The paper then suggests that the morpheme *moi1 descends from an even older, pre-Hakka word *moi4, which may in turn have been related in some way to the pre-Hàn word mǔ 母 “mother”.

Author(s):  
Ash Asudeh ◽  
Gianluca Giorgolo

This book presents a theory of enriched meanings for natural language interpretation. Certain expressions that exhibit complex effects at the semantics/pragmatics boundary live in an enriched meaning space while others live in a more basic meaning space. These basic meanings are mapped to enriched meanings just when required compositionally, which avoids generalizing meanings to the worst case. The theory is captured formally using monads, a concept from category theory. Monads are also prominent in functional programming and have been successfully used in the semantics of programming languages to characterize certain classes of computation. They are used here to model certain challenging linguistic computations at the semantics/pragmatics boundary. Part I presents some background on the semantics/pragmatics boundary, informally presents the theory of enriched meanings, reviews the linguistic phenomena of interest, and provides the necessary background on category theory and monads. Part II provides novel compositional analyses of the following phenomena: conventional implicature, substitution puzzles, and conjunction fallacies. Part III explores the prospects of combining monads, with particular reference to these three cases. The authors show that the compositional properties of monads model linguistic intuitions about these cases particularly well. The book is an interdisciplinary contribution to Cognitive Science: These phenomena cross not just the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, but also disciplinary boundaries between Linguistics, Philosophy and Psychology, three of the major branches of Cognitive Science, and are here analyzed with techniques that are prominent in Computer Science, a fourth major branch. A number of exercises are provided to aid understanding, as well as a set of computational tools (available at the book's website), which also allow readers to develop their own analyses of enriched meanings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingxia Lin

AbstractTypological shift in lexicalizing motion events has hitherto been observed cross-linguistically. While over time, Chinese has shown a shift from a dominantly verb-framed language in Old Chinese to a strongly satellite-framed language in Modern Standard Mandarin, this study presents the Chinese dialect Wenzhou, which has taken a step further than Standard Mandarin and other Chinese dialects in becoming a thoroughly satellite-framed language. On the one hand, Wenzhou strongly disfavors the verb-framed pattern. Wenzhou not only has no prototypical path verbs, but also its path satellites are highly deverbalized. On the other hand, Wenzhou strongly prefers the satellite-framed pattern, to the extent that it very frequently adopts a neutral motion verb to head motion expressions so that path can be expressed via satellites and the satellite-framed pattern can be syntactically maintained. The findings of this study are of interest to intra-linguistic, diachronic and cross-linguistic studies of the variation in encoding motion events.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aletta G. Dorst ◽  
W.Gudrun Reijnierse ◽  
Gemma Venhuizen

The manual annotation of large corpora is time-consuming and brings about issues of consistency. This paper aims to demonstrate how general rules for determining basic meanings can be formulated in large-scale projects involving multiple analysts applying MIP(VU) to authentic data. Three sets of problematic lexical units — chemical processes, colours, and sharp objects — are discussed in relation to the question of how the basic meaning of a lexical unit can be determined when human and non-human senses compete as candidates for the basic meaning; these analyses can therefore be considered a detailed case study of problems encountered during step 3.b. of MIP(VU). The analyses show how these problematic cases were tackled in a large corpus clean-up project in order to streamline the annotations and ensure a greater consistency of the corpus. In addition, this paper will point out how the formulation of general identification rules and guidelines could provide a first step towards the automatic detection of linguistic metaphors in natural discourse.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Insidini Fawwaz ◽  
Agus Winarta

<p class="8AbstrakBahasaIndonesia"><em>Games have the basic meaning of games, games in this case refer to the notion of intellectual agility. In its application, a Game certainly requires an AI (Artificial Intelligence), and the AI used in the construction of this police and thief game is the dynamic programming algorithm. This algorithm is a search algorithm to find the shortest route with the minimum cost, algorithm dynamic programming searches for the shortest route by adding the actual distance to the approximate distance so that it makes it optimum and complete. Police and thief is a game about a character who will try to run from </em><em>police.</em><em> The genre of this game is arcade, built with microsoft visual studio 2008, the AI used is the </em><em>Dynamic Programming</em> <em>algorithm which is used to search the path to attack players. The results of this test are police in this game managed to find the closest path determined by the </em><em>Dynamic Programming</em> <em>algorithm to attack players</em></p>


Author(s):  
Javier Herrero Ruiz

Abstract: This paper resumes the series related to metaphors in fairy tales started by HERRERO in 2005 (cf. HERRERO, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). In this case, the study is based on how the conceptual metaphors LIFE IS A JOURNEY and THE DIVIDED-SELF may explain the structure and the basic meaning of more than twenty popular tales, which in turn accounts for some of the uncanny of tales.The tales, which are representative of various cultures, were compiled by the British author Andrew Lang (1844-1912), and have been downloaded from the Project Gutenberg online library. Our research also casts some light on the fact that tales are akin in varying socio-cultural contexts: their solid experiential grounding may not only have contributed to a uniform plot, but also to an easier transmission of the stories in diverse, remote settings.Resumen: Este artículo continúa la serie relacionada con las metáforas en los cuentos tradicionales comenzada por HERRERO en 2005 (véase HERRERO, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). En este caso el estudio se centra en cómo a través de las metáforas conceptuales LIFE IS A JOURNEY y THE DIVIDED-SELF se puede explicar la estructura y el significado de más de veinte cuentos populares, lo que a su vez da cuenta de parte de “lo maravilloso” que se da en ellos.Los cuentos, representativos de varias culturas, fueron recopilados por el autor británico Andrew Lang (1844-1912) y han sido extraídos del Proyecto Gutenberg. Nuestra investigación apoya además la idea de que los cuentos son similares en contextos socioculturales diferentes: el hecho de que estén firmemente basados en la experiencia puede haber contribuido tanto a que sus argumentos sean parecidos como a que se hayan transmitido fácilmente en entornos lejanos y diversos.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-95
Author(s):  
Nandang Rachmat

The basic meaning of the morphological aspect of Japanese is the opposition between the form -ru/-tawhich expresses perfective,  and -teiru/-teitawhich expresses imperfective. Also there are perfect meanings which derivate from the basic meaning of -taand -teiru/-teitaforms. They refer to the fact that a certain result or effect of previous activity remain at a certain point of time. In Indonesian function wordssudahand telah, which are generally considered as perfective markers, can often be the equivalent of perfect meanings in Japanese. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the differences between perfect aspect meanings in both languages mainly regarding the use of words sudahandtelah. This paper aims to explain perfect meanings in Japanese and Indonesian through the use of -ta, -teiru, -teitaforms and function words sudahand telah by contrastive analysis. The analysis showed that the perfect meanings cannot be fully matched with the use of sudahandtelah. They are not interchangeable because of differences in aspectual, modal, and contextual meanings. Some of them are expressed without using sudahor telah at all. Sudahmeans ingressive aspect, and refers to the result or effect of previous activities. As modal meanings, sudah indicates two things, that the speaker possesses predictions about a future event and the speaker’s attitude to provide the hearer information. Telah means completive aspect. It does not refer to the meaning of the effect of a previous activity, therefore it can not function as taxis on future perfect aspect.


2021 ◽  
pp. 97-109
Author(s):  
Irena Snukiškienė

The article presents Lithuanian linguistic cultural image of LIE (MELAS) reconstructed from lexicographic data. The analysis of the lexicographic definitions of this lexeme in Lithuanian dictionaries (The Dictionary of Lithuanian Language, The Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, the dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms and Lithuanian etymological sources) provides two views of the concept: synchronic and diachronic. The diachronic view shows the semantic development of the word, the specification of its meaning (the loss of the primary and the acquisition of new meanings). The synchronic view shows the basic meaning of the concept and its profiles in contemporary language. The research revealed that the basic meaning is LIE as a subject’s purposeful distortion of reality with the purpose of deception. The dominating aspects are: a subject’s purposeful activity and an object that a subject wants to deceive. Lexicographic data distinguished several profiles of LIE: (1) LIE as entertainment (when lie is used for joking, visual storytelling and has no negative purpose), (2) LIE as unethical issue (when lying is seen as negative, sinister activity) and (3) LIE as psychologically necessary element of life (when lie is seen as useful, helping to get out of difficult situations). The analysis is concluded with the cognitive definition of lie, providing its linguo-cultural view in Lithuanian.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document