Smokers' Engagement Behavior on Facebook regarding to Smoking Cessation Verbalization and Facebook Reaction Usage: Content Analysis (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The Transtheoretical Model recommends "processes of change", while the Motivational Interviewing approach offers “motivational language” as indicators of health behavior change. The relationship between these indicators and the usage of Facebook reaction buttons is little known. However, this relationship may highlight how to evaluate one of the most popular engagement indicators (Facebook reactions) in online health behavior change interventions. OBJECTIVE The study aim was to understand the relationship between processes of change, motivational language, Facebook users’ gender, and the Facebook reaction buttons. METHODS A total of 821 comments were analyzed in the current study (N=821), which came from different Facebook users, and responded to image-based, smoking cessation support contents. The processes of change (experiential and behavioral processes) and the motivational language (change talk and sustain talk) in the investigated comments were identified. The presence, the number, and the proportion of these linguistic categories were compared with the Facebook users’ gender and the usage of reaction buttons. RESULTS The Facebook users who used the “Haha” reaction button wrote significantly higher proportion of sustain talk than those who used the “Like” or “Love” reaction (P=.011). No significant difference in the number or proportion of linguistic categories was found between those who used the "Like" reaction button, and those who did not use reaction buttons. The Facebook users who combined the comment and “Love” reaction wrote significantly more change talk than those who used the “Haha” and “Like” reactions, or those who did not utilize these buttons (P<.001). Significant female dominance was observed in the presence, the number, and the proportion of experiential processes and change talk (P<.05). In addition, significant male predominance was found in the presence, the number, and the proportion of sustain talk (P<.05). CONCLUSIONS The "Haha" reaction may be a negative engagement indicator, the "Like" reaction may be a neutral engagement indicator, and the "Love" reaction may be a positive engagement indicator in terms of the smoking cessation during Facebook-based interventions. Furthermore, female engagement may be characterized by utilizing the terms of experiential processes and change talk, while the usage of sustain talk can be typical for male engagement. We recommend the evaluation of processes of change and motivational utterances in participants' comments during online public health interventions.

The emergence of Information Structure in child speech: the acquisition of c’est-clefts in French

Constructions marking information structure in French have been widely documented within the constructionist framework. C’est ‘it is’ clefts have been demonstrated to express the focus of the sentence. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children are able to acquire clefts, and how they develop information structure categories. The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition of clefts in French through the usage-based framework, to understand (i) whether IS categories emerge gradually like other linguistic categories, and (ii) how children build IS categories. For this, I analysed 256 c’est-clefts produced by three children between age 2 and 3. I show that most early clefts are produced by children with the chunk c’est moi associated with the concrete function of requesting to perform an action themselves. This chunk then becomes a frame with slot, extending the function to other human referents and discourse participants with the function of requesting adults to perform an action. Another large portion of early clefts seems to belong to a frame with slot c’est X whose function is to identify the agent who carried out an action. These findings suggest that the information structure category of focus emerges gradually.

Corpus Linguistics: Theory Vs Methodilogy

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the stages of formation and development of corpus linguistics. The purpose of the article is to analyze various scientific approaches to the scientific significance of this linguistic discipline and identify a set of concepts and criteria that form the foundation of this field. Corpus linguistics is one of the most promising and rapidly developing areas of language research. Linguistics of the XIX century set as its goal the study of language as such, and linguistics of the XXI century sees the relevance of the research not in identifying absolute linguistic categories and meanings but in the practical application of linguistic knowledge. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that the linguistic corpus contains a vast potential, which the scientific community has not fully comprehended since the text as the main object of corpus linguistics in various forms of its implementation is one of the central components systems of language and speech-thinking activity of a modern native speaker of any language. The content and volume of linguistic corpora of various kinds allow obtaining reliable information about the modern and real use of a particular term: the corpus becomes a tool for analyzing the functioning of this term both in the linguistic field of morphology, syntax, and vocabulary and in the theory and practice of translation, identifying the register of its formal or informal usage. The fundamental novelty of this studys results allows us to speak about the legitimacy of the creation of corpus dictionaries and corpus grammars of a new generation, developed and verified concerning a specific fixed corpus. Simultaneously, the author substantiates the proposition that the corpus nature of dictionaries and grammars increases their reliability and objectivity and avoids the subjectivity that is often characteristic of research-based solely on the intuition of a linguist. The corpus is a medium for obtaining new scientific data, the comprehension of which seems to be a priority for modern linguistic description and necessary in the scientific activity of a modern researcher. From our point of view, this article's relevance and novelty lie in the fact that the expediency of corpus research is an essential requirement of the time, associated with a new quality of linguistic reality and meeting the needs of modern society. The article examines the main stages of the formation of corpus linguistics as a scientific field, characterizes the scientific concepts and approaches inherent in each of these stages, provides an overview of the main conceptual provisions of corpus linguistics within the framework of domestic and foreign linguistics. The author analyzes in detail the polemics between representatives of various scientific directions and reveals the advantages of one or another approach, traces the similarities and differences between approaches to the study of corpora at various historical stages of their formation. The review's focus is the role and place of corpus studies of language in modern linguistics, comparison of the pro and contra arguments of the use of corpus technologies in linguistic description. Considerable attention is paid to the main criteria for the classification of corpora, a brief overview of the most famous corpora in history is offered, and the prospects for their use in various fields of modern language science are discussed.

Identifying who is who in Brokpa

The grammatical features of a language reflect the attitudes and societal practices, both past and present, of its speakers. This chapter examines some select linguistic categories in order to understand how the Brokpa language and its society are closely correlated. The linguistic categories include the comparative construction, honorific systems and social deixis, and topographic deixis. Brokpa has a well-developed honorific systems. For example, the verbs of speaking and giving have three different forms for the same meaning, two honorific and one ordinary. One honorific form is to describe the action of speaking/giving from a higher to a lower (downward) speech-act-participant, the other honorific form from a lower to a higher level (upward), and the ordinary form to be used with the equals (horizontal). Most nouns and verbs have at least two forms, honorific and ordinary. These kinds of bipartite and tripartite systems are for the purposes of according deference to people who are 'elders' not only in terms of age, but also in terms of responsibility, experience, knowledge, contribution, and suchlike, in the society. Topographic deixis and demonstratives make a two-way or a three-way distinction which have striking parallels with the social deixis.

On Declarative and Procedural Knowledge Representation

Рассматриваются преимущества и недостатки стандартных в математике и информатике способов задания множеств и представления знаний. В развитие классификации сигнализации, по Ю. В. Кнорозову, знания разделяются на невербальные (иррациональные) и вербальные (рациональные), последние, в свою очередь, подразделяются на фактуальные и фасцинационные. Доказывается, что в теории Языка как системы фигур и знаков для декодирования модели мира и сознательного управления интеллектуальной деятельностью релевантными оказываются лишь те языковые категории, которые выделены процедурно, закреплены декларативно и подтверждены комбинáторно. The article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of standard methods in mathematics and computer science for setting sets and representing knowledge. Developing the classification of signaling by Yu. V. Knorozov, we divide knowledge into non-verbal (irrational) and verbal (rational), with the latter, in turn, subdivided into factual and fascinating. The approach proves that in the theory of Language as a system of figures and signs for decoding the World Model and for conscious management of intellectual activity, only those linguistic categories that are distinguished procedurally, fixed declaratively and confirmed combinatorially can be determined as relevant.

Dismantling the Chinese Room with linguistic tools: a framework for elucidating concept-application disputes

Imagine advanced computers that could, by virtue merely of being programmed in the right ways, act, react, communicate, and otherwise behave like humans. Might such computers be capable of understanding, thinking, believing, and the like? The framework developed in this paper for tackling challenging questions of concept application (in any realm of discourse) answers in the affirmative, contrary to Searle’s famous ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, which purports to prove that ascribing such mental processes to computers like these would be necessarily incorrect. The paper begins by arguing that the core issue concerns language, specifically the discourse-community-guided mapping of phenomena onto linguistic categories. It then offers a model of how people adapt language to deal with novel states of affairs and thereby lend generality to their words, employing processes of assimilation, lexemic creation, and accommodation (in intersense and intrasense varieties). Attributions of understanding to some computers lie in the middle range on a spectrum of acceptability and are thus reasonable. Possible objections deriving from Searle’s writings require supplementing the model with distinctions between present and future acceptability, and between contemplated and uncontemplated word uses, as well as a literal-figurative distinction that is more sensitive than Searle’s to actual linguistic practice and the multiplicity of subsenses possible within a single literal sense. The paper then critiques two misleading rhetorical features of Searle’s Chinese Room presentation, and addresses a contemporary defense of Searle that seems to confront the sociolinguistic issue, but fails to allow for intrasense accommodation. It concludes with a brief consideration of the proper course for productive future discussion.

Psychosemantic approach as the basis for the algorithmization technology of processing educational information

An ability to improve the professional level, need for self-development and self education is called to be one of the essential qualities of a modern specialist irrespective of the professional sphere. Such an activity requires intellectual and psychological mobility, wish to obtain and process huge amount of new and complex information, ability to apply new knowledge to correct and modify the existing system of experience and activity. In the evolution of the information society, self-development and self education are at the top of the soft skills list; therefore formation of a new thinking style is becoming the most important task of teaching. The aim of the paper is to present an argument for introducing some elements of algorithmization of work with student texts based on the psychosemantic approach. Semantic principles (matching of logical and linguistic categories, considering the text from the inner and outer speech, considering the text as cognitive and communicative essence; differentiation between the meaning and sense as between the semantics of the outer speech and the semantics of thinking; identification of semantic relationships between information elements, etc.), psychological and pedagogical principles (self-reflection support of learning activity; self-motivation due to determining usefulness and applicability of information; self-organization of students while creating their own algorithms of learning activity, etc.), and psycholinguistic principles (building logical supporting schemes, analogues of universal subject codes; semantic evaluation of the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of information, etc.)of work with scientific and educational profession-oriented information are described and correlated with the learning content and mechanisms of students verbal and cognitive activity. Psycholinguistic, semantic and organizational competences are identified, with a set of knowledge, skills and abilities for each of them being defined. The authors suggest a technology of algorithmization of students work with the professionally-oriented text information on the basis of a psychosemantic approach. The purpose of the algorithmization is to accelerate students work and improve the quality of information acquisition.

Structural and functional types of lexical units, their expressiveness

At the present stage of development of linguistic science and in context of global trends towards constant cooperation in various fields and spheres of activity, there is a need for comparative typological studies aimed at a comprehensive and large-scale study of various linguistic categories. First of all, this is explained by the fact that it is in these categories, as in a mirror, that the peculiarities of the mentality, history and secular culture of the speakers of a particular language are reflected. The object of language sciences consists of two series of phenomena: on the one hand, it is made up of everything that is inherent in human language, that is to say language as such in its relation to thought and to reality; on the other hand, we are talking about the specifics and the variety of properties and categories of each language compared to another. Researchers' attention has largely shifted from the question of how the language of speakers of a particular language works. Research plays an important role in the study of the specificities of the nominative means of the language. Contrastive linguistics has the great advantage that the practical areas of its application are clearly visible. These are mainly the methodology and methodology of foreign language teaching, bilingual lexicography, theory and practice of translation.

The Role of khafāʾ al-maʿnā (‘Obscurity of Meaning’) in Qur'anic Rhetoric

Khafāʾ al-maʿnā (‘obscurity of meaning’) is a distinctive characteristic of Qur’anic rhetoric that helps the Qur’an convey its intended message. It grips the attention of its readers, regardless of time or place, and should be considered an integral element of Qur’anic iʿjāz (‘inimitability’). This study divides khafāʾ al-maʿnā into three linguistic categories: lexical, morphologic, and syntactic, and these categories will be explored through three research questions and thirteen research points. The paper will examine reader response to the Qur’anic text found in various works of tafsīr from differing historical periods. The objective is not to assess the accuracy of the mufassirs’ interpretations, but to objectively explore the influence that khafāʾ al-maʿnā has on the reading process. This study uses the term ‘Qur’anic rhetoric’ in order to distinguish between ‘Qur’anic rhetoric’ and ‘Qur’anic text’. This differentiation is based on the idea that the meaning of the literal ‘textual’ verses of the Qur’an is clear, and does not involve any obscurity of meaning (and, moreover, the interpretation of these verses has been clarified by Muḥammad). However the ‘rhetorical’ verses invite the Qur’an’s readers, in their respective times and places, to read, contemplate, and reflect on them, and to attempt to uncover the hidden meanings that can be found by exploring their linguistic context.