Complex Syntactic Whole: the Use of Grammatical Forms of the Predicate for Expressing Communicative Intentions

10.12737/7162 ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Albina Torzhok ◽  
Elena Voevoda
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Form ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Wide Context ◽  
Explicit Substitution ◽  
Action Verbs

The article considers the role of the grammatical forms of the predicate in expressing communicative intentions of the speaker within complex syntactic whole. Analyzing the specifics of substitution, the author points out that implicit substitution, or deletion, is made with the help of zero substitute, while explicit substitution or replacement, implies the use of the verb ‘to do’. This type of substitution exists as a separate grammatical phenomenon based on the opposition to the explicit form of the predicate. Auxiliary and modal verbs serve as markers of implicit (zero) substitution of the lexical part of the predicate. The substitute verb ‘to do’, due to its wide semantics, often replaces ‘action verbs’. In most cases, these two types of predicate substitution and the related phenomena are to be considered in a wide context – a complex syntactical whole. An analysis of opposition of grammatical forms of the predicate, with the aim of defining communicative intentions of the speaker or new implications relevant for both communicants and ways of effecting the addressee, shows that such an opposition helps to build the expressive and pragmatic potential of the statement.

scholarly journals Classroom Discourse and Teachers’ Experience: A Cognitive View

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1308-1317
Author(s):  
Bibi Malihe Vamagh Shahi
Keyword(s):  
Novice Teachers ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Classroom Discourse ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Experienced Teachers ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
Action Verbs

In this article, we intend to investigate the role of experience in EFL teachers’ discourse using a cognitive taxonomy. In this line, we are going to examine whether there any significant differences between novice and inexperienced groups of teacher in their discourse with regard to a cognitive taxonomy. The selected sample comprises twenty-seven English teachers engaged in EFL classes. Totally, six categories of cognitive processes were introduced. The categories are from the most concrete to the most abstract: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension; (3) application; (4) analysis; (5) synthesis; and (6) evaluation. According to the results, it was revealed that experienced teachers used more action verbs in all the categories of this taxonomy (428 action verbs out of 805), whereas novice teachers (teachers which has less than 4 years of experience) used 377 action verbs. It can be concluded that experienced teachers teach in more fruitful and meaningful way. Novice teachers can learn and construct meaning from their experiences when they are actively engaged in authentic activity that will help them to learn to think and act in a community of practice.

scholarly journals Dissociable electrophysiological correlates of semantic access of motor and non-motor concepts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodika Sokoliuk ◽  
Sara Calzolari ◽  
Damian Cruse
Keyword(s):  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Specific Role ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Action Verbs ◽  
Healthy Participants

AbstractThe notion of semantic embodiment posits that concepts are represented in the same neural sensorimotor systems that were involved in their acquisition. However, evidence in support of embodied semantics – in particular the hypothesised contribution of motor and premotor cortex to the representation of action concepts – is varied. Here, we tested the hypothesis that, consistent with semantic embodiment, sensorimotor cortices will rapidly become active while healthy participants access the meaning of visually-presented motor and non-motor action verbs. Event-related potentials revealed early differential processing of motor and non-motor verbs (164-203ms) within distinct regions of cortex likely reflecting rapid cortical activation of differentially distributed semantic representations. However, we found no evidence for a specific role of sensorimotor cortices in supporting these representations. Moreover, we observed a later modulation of the alpha band (8-12Hz) from 555-785ms over central electrodes, with estimated generators within the left superior parietal lobule, which may reflect post-lexical activation of the object-directed features of the motor action concepts. In conclusion, we find no evidence for a specific role of sensorimotor cortices when healthy participants judge the meaning of visually-presented action verbs. However, the relative contribution of sensorimotor cortices to action comprehension may vary as a function of task goals.

scholarly journals A Study of Dramatic Action and Emotion Using a Systematic Scan of Stick Figure Configurations

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noa Raindel ◽  
Yuvalal Liron ◽  
Uri Alon
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Upper Body ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Body Postures ◽  
Stick Figure ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Action Verbs

Comprehending the meaning of body postures is essential for social organisms such as humans. For example, it is important to understand at a glance whether two people seen at a distance are in a friendly or conflictual interaction. However, it is still unclear what fraction of the possible body configurations carry meaning, and what is the best way to characterize such meaning. Here, we address this by using stick figures as a low-dimensional, yet evocative, representation of body postures. We systematically scanned a set of 1,470 upper-body postures of stick figures in a dyad with a second stick figure with a neutral pose. We asked participants to rate the stick figure in terms of 20 emotion adjectives like sad or triumphant and in terms of eight active verbs that connote intent like to threaten and to comfort. The stick figure configuration space was dense with meaning: people strongly agreed on more than half of the configurations. The meaning was generally smooth in the sense that small changes in posture had a small effect on the meaning, but certain small changes had a large effect. Configurations carried meaning in both emotions and intent, but the intent verbs covered more configurations. The effectiveness of the intent verbs in describing body postures aligns with a theory, originating from the theater, called dramatic action theory. This suggests that, in addition to the well-studied role of emotional states in describing body language, much can be gained by using also dramatic action verbs which signal the effort to change the state of others. We provide a dictionary of stick figure configurations and their perceived meaning. This systematic scan of body configurations might be useful to teaching people and machines to decipher body postures in human interactions.

Children’s use of gesture and action with static and dynamic verbs

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Mats Andrén ◽  
Johan Blomberg
Keyword(s):  
Bodily Movement ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
Action Verbs

Abstract The present study investigates the use of gestures by 18-, 24- and 30-month-old Swedish children, as well as their practical actions in coordination with verbs. Previous research on connections between children’s verbs and gestures has mainly focused only on iconic gestures and action verbs. We expand the research foci in two ways: we look both at gestures and at practical actions, examining how the two are coordinated with static verbs (e.g. sleep) and dynamic verbs (e.g. fall). Thanks to these additional distinctions, we have found that iconic gestures and iconic actions (the latter in particular) most commonly occurred with dynamic verbs. Static verbs were most commonly accompanied by deictic actions and deictic gestures (the latter in particular). At 30 months, deictic bodily expressions, including both gestures and actions, increased, whereas iconic expressions decreased. We suggest that this may reflect a transition to less redundant ways of using bodily expressions at 30 months, where bodily movement increasingly takes on the role of specifying verb arguments rather than expressing the semantics of the verb itself.

scholarly journals Interwoven functionality of the brain’s action and language systems

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Boulenger ◽  
Tatjana A. Nazir
Keyword(s):  
Word Meaning ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Semantic Retrieval ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Electrophysiological Studies ◽  
Neuroimaging Study ◽  
Action Verbs ◽  
The Brain

Theories of embodied cognition consider language understanding as intimately linked to sensory and motor processes. Here we review evidence from kinematic and electrophysiological studies for the idea that processing of words referring to bodily actions, even when subliminally presented, recruits the same motor regions that are involved in motor control. We further discuss the functional role of the motor system in action word retrieval in light of neuropsychological data showing modulation of masked priming effects for action verbs in Parkinson’s patients as a function of dopaminergic treatment. Finally, a neuroimaging study revealing semantic somatotopy in the motor cortex during reading of idioms that include action words is presented. Altogether these findings provide strong arguments that semantic mechanisms are grounded in action-perception systems of the brain. They support the existence of common brain signatures to action words, even when embedded in idiomatic sentences, and motor action. They further suggest that motor schemata reflecting word meaning contribute to lexico-semantic retrieval of action words.

scholarly journals The Impact of the Source Language in Spanish Translations: A Survey on English Counterfactuals ‘Should have’

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Isabel Repiso
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Word Translation ◽  
The Impact

The present article shows that the most frequent way of translating Should have + Past participle in Spanish is the word-by-word translation Debería haber. This preference is not coherent with the language use of natives at three levels: (i) the marginal role of modal verbs to express the speaker’s subjectivity in Spanish; (ii) the preferred use of modal verbs in the past participle position (e.g., No hubiese debido tener libros); and (iii) the predominant use of the pluperfect subjunctive as a prompting tense for counterfactual readings. Our survey is based on 1.7  million-word Social Sciences corpus covering 8 essays, 4 political biographies and 2 dystopian novels. In all, 9  sentences containing should have + past participle were analyzed. The translations were crossed with a reference corpus in Spanish containing 154 million words (CREA). The translators’ preference by Debería haber has an effect in the output texts’ readability since it implies a reversal in the frequencies of the Spanish constructions pertaining to the irrealis semantic domain. Our results provide empirical cues to prevent the word-by-word translation Debería haber, such as avoiding infinitive periphrastic constructions or favoring subjunctive mood’s tenses.

scholarly journals Роль эмпатем при переводе норвежской прозы на русский язык

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ольга Яныгина
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Form ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Slavic Languages

This paper investigates the role of empathemes in transmitting implicit emotive components in Norwegian prose translations into Russian. The focus of the study is on lexical and syntactical means used by both professional and non-professional translators. According to the results of the study, Russian translations appear to abound in emotive lexics and emphatic syntactical constructions, whereas the original text may seem to be devoid of any explicitly manifested emotion. Thus, in the process of translation from Norwegian into Russian some additional connotative senses have been brought about (either purposefully, or unintentionally). This fact is due to the cultural language-specific differences, as in Slavic languages emotions are much more explicit. The tranlator perceiving empathemes present in emotive texts is obliged to retain the implicit emotionality and usully does this in the explicit form.

scholarly journals The mythopoetics role in the formation of the chronotope of L. Andreev’s play "Anatema"

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Wide Context ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Productive Research ◽  
New Drama ◽  
The Town

The analysis of poetics of L. Andreev’s play “Anathema” showed that productive research of this drama is possible only in the wide context of works, that not only form the dramatical cycle “The God, devil and men” but a series of L. Andreev’s short stories and stories, where the author interprets the Bible history of Jove (“ The life of Vassilyj Fivyskiy”, “The sun of men”) and the Gospel history of Christ and Judas (“Ben-Jovit”, “Judas Iskariot”) under different points of view. First of all we have in mind the role of ironical, nonortodoxal neomythologism in the drama “Anathema”. We also note that Andreev in the play “Anathema” advatageble used powerful philosophical and mythosymbolical potential not opened, like in drams “The Life of Man” and “Blach masks”, but closed artistic spaces – of desert and especially of sea, that becomes ideologically – artistical center of dram. Herewith the writer created volumetrical, manyleveled chronotop, where the town, devided by the gates from one side and the sea from another side become not only the most symbolically important space plans, but plotallyfounding pales. The study showed that the important role in this work play modernistic principles of representation of world and person as neomythologism, intertextuality, motifity, dominating of symbolical types and characters, irony, grotesque. The article “Life of a Man” demonstrated that the “new drama” by L. Andreev has been promoting such a type of conflict, which shows the way of collision, where the Wall resists the Man in its various forms. In the "new myth" of the writer, it turned to Rock (Someone in Gray). Therefore, the basis of the drama "Life of Man" was based on the conflict "Man and Rock", embodied in adequate artistic forms. The study of L. Andreev’s drama’s chronotop in various periods of his work, along with variability, demonstrates his apparent conceptual uniformity. The local framework, where he transfers the action in this play (the room where the Life of Man flows) is an invariant of special variation of locuses of early dramas and play of “panpsihe”. Apparently, both in prose, and in dramaturgy of the writer there was no evolution, the accents in the author’s concept only changed and the appropriate art means and image forms merely varied. Already in the first dramas all was put that only came to light, deepened and became more obvious.

scholarly journals Towards an Archaeology of ‘Know-How’

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Form ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

This article explores the relation between experience and ‘know-how’ as a ‘tacit’ form of knowledge and the role of enthusiasm in the production of ‘know-how’, and engages with the problem of the transmission of ‘know how’. Why is the transmission of ‘know-how’ a problem? If ‘know-how’ is a tacit form of knowledge, then there are difficulties imagining how it is transmitted through the media without becoming an ‘explicit’ form of knowledge.The author turns his attention to the humble ‘how to’ article, as its primary purpose is the transmission of ‘know-how’. He teases out the way ‘know-how’ is developed through experience and then suggests that instead of transmitting ‘know-how’ itself, the ‘how to’ article presents the conditions of experience through which a reader or viewer can develop ‘know-how’.

scholarly journals Covert societal practices in linguistic choices of Pakistani editorials: Fairclough’s CDA model approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Misbah Rafat
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Language Interpretation ◽  
The Press ◽  
Online Sources ◽  
Action Verbs ◽  
Model Approach

Purpose: Core concept of CDA revolves around the interdependency of description of language, interpretation of language and prevailing discursive practices in society. This study examines the role a language plays in formulating ideological subjective position of male and female in any contemporary society. Methodology: The study applied Fairclough’s CDA model on the Pakistani editorials of two English newspapers in order to qualitatively analyze the linguistic choices and its placement in the text by focusing on other modalities of language such as adverbs, adjectives, metaphors and action verbs for unraveling the patriarchal practices of the society in which women are at the stake of more disadvantages than the men in COVID-19 pandemic situation. Findings: Editorials showed remarkable use of differences in linguistic choices for depiction of powerful and powerless group. Findings showed the existence of hegemony in society where men dominates women by violating their basic rights. Abusive nature of men during the pandemic situation has transformed women's tendency to attend their work through online sources into a tiresome experience.  Linguistic choice and syntactic structure have brought forth the discourse type, situational context and societal practices at the surface level which in turns connect back to the role of society and culture in shaping the perception of editors in writing a piece of editorials. Unique Contribution to Practice and Policy: Two newspapers have adopted different stances in depicting a same issue which also reveals the hidden ideology of the press media in which they use implicit or explicit tone in delivering their ideas. This research can help in exploring new dimensions of Pakistani editorials’ language where different tone of language represent unique subject position of female and male in pandemic situation. 

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