scholarly journals SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF VERBAL ASPECTUALITY IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN DISCOURSES

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
E. V. Limarova ◽  
E. E. Sokolova

The relevance of the proposed article stems from the scientific interest in investigation of different means of conceptual organization of knowledge in the process of production and interpretation of English and Russian utterances. Thus, it aims at establishing the role of aspect in English and Russian discourse through interpreting aspectual situations which are analyzed at the level of sentences and textual fragments borrowed from two translation versions of M. Mitchell’ s novel “Gone with the Wind”.The theoretical framework for the research is provided by Relevance theory as developed in recent works on procedural meaning to handle H. Reichenbach’s symbolic logic for tense and aspect and Relevance theory proposed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson. We suggest that the following means are involved in expressing the type of action: a combination of lexical and grammatical properties of the verb; grammatical forms of the verb; meanings of time adverbs. These means are capable of characterizing R, a conceptual notion, which can be inferred by contextual assumptions.Systematization of referential relations among the above mentioned components taking into account the influence of pragmatic interpretive component and contextual analysis of informational organization of discourse proves the hypothesis that referential characteristics being combined contribute to the description of a discourse situation as stative, habitual, inchoative or punctual.The article will be interesting for researchers in contrastive and cognitive linguistics.

Author(s):  
Charles Forceville

Successful communication requires optimal relevance to a target audience. Relevance theory (RT) provides an excellent model based on this insight, but the impact of the theory has until now been restricted due to an almost exclusive focus on spoken face-to-face communication. Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle is the first book to systematically demonstrate how RT can fulfill its promise to develop into an inclusive theory of communication. In this book, Charles Forceville refines and adapts RT’s original claims to show its applicability to static visuals and multimodal discourses in popular culture genres. Using colorful examples, he explains how RT can be expanded and adapted to accommodate mass-communicative visual and visual-plus-verbal messages. Forceville addresses issues such as the difference between drawing prospective addressees’ attention to a message and persuading them to accept it; the thorny continuum from implicit to explicit information; and the role of genre. Case studies of pictograms, advertisements, cartoons, and comics provide contemporary and accessible examples of the importance of genre and of how the RT model can be connected to other approaches. By expanding the application of relevance theory to include mass-communicative messages, Visual and Multimodal Communication reintroduces a central framework of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics to a new audience and paves the way for an inclusive theory of communication.


Author(s):  
Mark Johnson

Analytic philosophy of language was originally based on a fundamentally disembodied view of meaning and language. In contrast, research in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience emphasizes the central role of the body and brain in shaping meaning, concepts, and thought. Meaning is not, in the first instance, linguistic. Instead, language depends on and recruits prior sensory, motor, and affective processes. This article surveys some of the more important embodied structures and processes of meaning-making that give rise to the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural languages. This includes body-part projections, perceptual concepts, image schemas, emotions, body-based grammatical constructions, and conceptual metaphors, as those are understood from the perspective of simulation semantics, embodied construction grammar, and the neural theory of language. In addition to the four Es of cognition—embodied, embedded, enactive, extended—we need to add three more Es—emotional, evolutionary, and exaptative.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Stöver

This paper argues that a cognitive account of metaphor comprehension needs to include awareness of metaphoricity in order to fully explain the processes involved. In Relevance Theory as well as in other cognitively oriented approaches, much can be gained by making explicit the difference between conscious and subconscious processing: whether a communicator is aware of an expression’s metaphoricity or not may have an impact on the type of cognitive processing involved. A theoretical investigation is offered which explores the potential role of reflective reasoning in metaphor understanding. The discussion is based on the relevance-theoretic account, which explains the subconscious inferential processes involved. However, it leaves open the question of the potential impact of conscious availability of the tension between literal and figurative meaning, which is reminiscent of domain mappings in Cognitive Linguistics. Within metaphor research, a focus on awareness offers valuable findings for cognitively oriented schools of thought.


1999 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

Discovering the nature and role of inferential mechanisms in language understanding is a distinctly common concern in work carried out both within Cognitive Linguistics and Relevance Theory. Cognitive linguists increasingly tend to see language-related inferences as a matter of the activation of relevant conceptual structures. This is generally accepted by relevance theorists; however, they tend to play down the importance of such structures in favour of pragmatic principles. This is evident in their treatment of phenomena like metaphor and metonymy, which are explained by them as a question of deriving strong and weak implicatures. In this paper we revise this treatment and argue in favour of dealing with metaphor and metonymy as cognitive mechanisms which provide us with explicit meaning or, as relevance theorists would put it, with sets of "explicatures". This allows us to reformulate the implicature/explicature distinction and to reconsider the way it works in relation to other phenomena which are also of concern to relevance theorists, like disambiguation in conjoined utterances.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 955-982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyoung Sang Cho ◽  
Jang Ho Lee ◽  
Jeiwon Cho ◽  
Guang-Ho Cha ◽  
Gyun Jee Song

Background: Neuroinflammation plays a critical role in the development and progression of various neurological disorders. Therefore, various studies have focused on the development of neuroinflammation inhibitors as potential therapeutic tools. Recently, the involvement of autophagy in the regulation of neuroinflammation has drawn substantial scientific interest, and a growing number of studies support the role of impaired autophagy in the pathogenesis of common neurodegenerative disorders. Objective: The purpose of this article is to review recent research on the role of autophagy in controlling neuroinflammation. We focus on studies employing both mammalian cells and animal models to evaluate the ability of different autophagic modulators to regulate neuroinflammation. Methods: We have mostly reviewed recent studies reporting anti-neuroinflammatory properties of autophagy. We also briefly discussed a few studies showing that autophagy modulators activate neuroinflammation in certain conditions. Results: Recent studies report neuroprotective as well as anti-neuroinflammatory effects of autophagic modulators. We discuss the possible underlying mechanisms of action of these drugs and their potential limitations as therapeutic agents against neurological disorders. Conclusion: Autophagy activators are promising compounds for the treatment of neurological disorders involving neuroinflammation.


Author(s):  
Nathan Platte

In the productions leading up to Gone with the Wind, Selznick tried working with different composers to cultivate a sustainable partnership. These efforts included trial productions with Alfred Newman (The Prisoner of Zenda) and Oscar Levant (Nothing Sacred), and ultimately led to Selznick’s hiring Lou Forbes as a permanent music director in 1937. Forbes’s responsibilities included securing permissions to use preexistent music, assembling preview scores (known now as “temp tracks”), supervising final scores, serving as a liaison between Selznick and the composer, monitoring recording sessions, and watching the budget. This chapter surveys the films leading up to Forbes’s tenure and his initial productions, which involved coordinating the collective efforts of multiple composers, including Hugo Friedhofer, Max Steiner, Robert Russell Bennett, and Franz Waxman. Forbes’s thoughtful contributions to films like Intermezzo illuminate the otherwise neglected role of the Hollywood music director.


Nutrients ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2653
Author(s):  
Matilde Roda ◽  
Natalie di Geronimo ◽  
Marco Pellegrini ◽  
Costantino Schiavi

Nutritional optic neuropathy is a cause of bilateral, symmetrical, and progressive visual impairment with loss of central visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, dyschromatopsia, and a central or centrocecal scotoma. The clinical features are not pathognomonic, since hereditary and toxic forms share similar signs and symptoms. It is becoming increasingly common due to the widespread of bariatric surgery and strict vegetarian or vegan diets, so even the scientific interest has recently increased. In particular, recent studies have focused on possible pathogenetic mechanisms, and on novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in order to prevent the onset, make a prompt diagnosis and an accurate nutritional supplementation, and to avoid irreversible optic nerve atrophy. Nowadays, there is clear evidence of the role of cobalamin, folic acid, thiamine, and copper, whereas further studies are needed to define the role of niacin, riboflavin, and pyridoxine. This review aims to summarize the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of nutritional optic neuropathy, and it is addressed not only to ophthalmologists, but to all physicians who could come in contact with a patient with a possible nutritional optic neuropathy, being a fundamental multidisciplinary approach.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomas Huumo

AbstractRecent groundbreaking work in cognitive linguistics has revealed the semantic complexity of motion metaphors of time and of temporal frames of reference. In most approaches the focus has been on the clause-level metaphorical meaning of expressions, such as Moving Ego (We are approaching the end of the year) and Moving Time (both Ego-centered, as in The end of the year is approaching and field-based, as in Boxing Day follows Christmas Day). The detailed grammatical structure of these metaphorical expressions, on the other hand, has received less attention. Such details include both elements that contribute to the metaphorical meaning and those that have a non-metaphorical temporal function, e. g., tense and (central features of) aspect. I propose a model for the analysis of metaphorical expressions, building on earlier work in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the framework of Cognitive Grammar (CG). I approach the grammatical structure of metaphorical expressions by analyzing the interplay between veridical and metaphorical systems of expressing temporal relations. I argue that these systems relate to two relevant conceptualizations of time. Veridical time (VT) is the non-metaphorical conceptualization of time, where the processual profile of the clause-level metaphorical expression resides. A metaphorical path (MP) is the metaphorical conceptualization of time as a path occupied by the metaphorical motion. A motion metaphor of time tracks the mover’s changing position on the MP against VT. I show how metaphorical expressions based on a motion verb differ from those based on a prepositional construction in grammatical and semantic terms, and how tense and aspect contribute to the conceptualization of the motion scenario. I argue that tense grounds the metaphorical motion event with respect to the speech event. All the participants in the motion event, as well as the metaphorical path itself, are present in each subsequent configuration tracked against VT by the conceptualizer. Thus tense has a wide scope over the motion scenario with Ego’s ‘now’ as a reference point, while Ego’s ‘now’ cannot serve for grounding of tense. This is why expressions such as *The meeting is difficult ahead of us are not acceptable.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Savitskaya ◽  

In the field of cognitive linguistics it is accepted that, before developing its capacity for abstract and theoretical thought, the human mind went through the stage of reflecting reality through concrete images and thus has inherited old cognitive patterns. Even abstract notions of the modern civilization are based on traditional concrete images, and it is all fixed in natural language units. By way of illustration, the author analyzes the cognitive pattern “сleanness / dirtiness” as a constituent part of the English linguoculture, looking at the whole range of its verbal realization and demonstrating its influence on language-based thinking and modeling of reality. Comparing meanings of language units with their inner forms enabled the author to establish the connection between abstract notions and concrete images within cognitive patterns. Using the method of internal comparison and applying the results of etymological reconstruction of language units’ inner form made it possible to see how the world is viewed by representatives of the English linguoculture. Apparently, in the English linguoculture images of cleanness / dirtiness symbolize mainly two thematic areas: that of morality and that of renewal. Since every ethnic group has its own axiological dominants (key values) that determine the expressiveness of verbal invectives, one can draw the conclusion that people perceive and comprehend world fragments through the prism of mental stereo-types fixed in the inner form of language units. Sometimes, in relation to specific language units, a conflict arises between the inner form which retains traditional thinking and a meaning that reflects modern reality. Still, linguoculture is a constantly evolving entity, and its de-velopment entails breaking established stereotypes and creating new ones. Linguistically, the victory of the new over the old is manifested in the “dying out” of the verbal support for pre-vious cognitive patterns, which leads to “reprogramming” (“recoding”) of linguoculture rep-resentatives’ mentality.


Author(s):  
Anton Batliner ◽  
Bernd Möbius

Automatic speech processing (ASP) is understood as covering word recognition, the processing of higher linguistic components (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), and the processing of computational paralinguistics (CP), which deals with speaker states and traits. This chapter attempts to track the role of prosody in ASP from the word level up to CP. A short history of the field from 1980 to 2020 distinguishes the early years (until 2000)—when the prosodic contribution to the modelling of linguistic phenomena, such as accents, boundaries, syntax, semantics, and dialogue acts, was the focus—from the later years, when the focus shifted to paralinguistics; prosody ceased to be visible. Different types of predictor variables are addressed, among them high-performance power features as well as leverage features, which can also be employed in teaching and therapy.


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