Interaction Between Language and the Mind Through Translation: A Perspective from Profile/Base Organization

Profile/base organization in cognitive linguistics emphasizes a hierarchy of salience ­imposed on construal by usage events of some concept. Shift in terms of profile/base alignment is highly likely to occur in a cross-linguistic/cultural context. Granted two definitive features of translation, i.e., accountability of a TT to the ST’s textually-grounded intention, unless the TT has an otherwise stated intention, and systematicity attained within the TT itself, whether the shift(s) in a translation are explainable and how fall within our concern. This paper has examined the profile/base organization in two Chinese translations of the opening paragraph of William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury, and attempted to locate the factors to account for the textual realization in the TTs as such.

Partial Reinforcement and Noticeability of an Irrelevant Dimension and Their Effects on Subsequent Performance in a Concept-Shift Task

The literature suggested that, whereas prior partial reinforcement of a relevant dimension in a concept-shift task has a detrimental effect on learning an extradimensional shift, prior partial reinforcement of an irrelevant dimension has no effect on subsequent transfer performance. The experiment involved increasing the salience of a partially reinforced irrelevant dimension by varying the number of values on this dimension during original learning and determining the effects of this on extra-dimensional shift performance. Subjects were 120 male and female students. Negative transfer occurred. The effect interacted with the number of values present on irrelevant dimensions; results were interpreted in terms of the relative noticeability of the different dimensions within the paradigm.