A Pragmatic Analysis of Illocutionary Act in a Selected Presidential Speech on COVID-19

This paper aims at studying the illocutionary speech acts: direct and indirect to show the most dominant ones in a presidential speech delivered by the USA president. The speech is about the most critical health issue in the world, COVID-19 outbreak. A descriptive qualitative study was conducted by observing the first speech delivered by president Trump concerning coronavirus outbreak and surveying the illocutionary acts: directive, declarative, commissive, expressive, and representative. Searle's (1985) classification of illocutionary speech acts is adopted in the analysis. What are the main types of the illocutionary speech acts performed by Trump in his speech?; Why does Trump perform illocutionary acts?; and What is the purpose behind using the most dominant acts? The study is of significant value as it displays how the USA's leader addresses his people linguistically using the illocutionary acts. It helps to understand how language is used to deal with certain actions and how it affects the hearers’ viewpoints. The study concludes that two types of illocutionary acts show a significant frequency of occurrence: representatives and declarative. Such result appears due to the purpose behind the discourse under analysis. The other three types of illocutionary acts are of very low frequency. The purpose of the speech and the identity of the figure who delivers it significantly influence the choice of the illocutionary acts. Since the figure who delivers the speech is the president, he has the authority to declare the issue, give instructions concerning the actions that will be taken in the light of this issue and clarify the situation.

Signs of temporomandibular joint dysfunction in individuals with different dentition defects and unequal preservation of antagonist pairs of teeth

As a result of examination and questionnaire of 143 patients who applied for orthopedic treatment of defects of teeth and dental rows, it was found that signs of dysfunction of temporomandibular joint with preserved dental rows are diagnosed in 36—55% cases, and with defects of dental rows — in 45—90% cases. The absence of eighth teeth in the dental row does not significantly change the functional state of the dental-jaw system. A statistically significant frequency of signs of EHS dysfunction has been identified among individuals having terminal dentition defects.In patients with terminal dentition defects, each 3rd patient is diagnosed with cochleovestibular syndrome, and in each 2nd, sounds are determined in the area of VNHS when the lower jaw moves. It has been found that if 15—13 and 12—11 pairs of antagonist teeth are preserved, the signs of dysfunction are determined in 55—45% cases, if the number of teeth having antagonists is reduced to 10—5 (in 90.0% these are patients with preserved 7—8 pairs of antagonist teeth), then the frequency of dysfunction signs increases to 75.0% (t1-3=1.33; t2-3=2.00), in such patients significantly more often — in 75.0% of cases, mandibular deviation is diagnosed when opening and closing the mouth than in persons with a large number of preserved antagonist teeth, respectively 55.0% (t=2.66) and 45.0% (t=3.93) in 1 and 2 groups. Thus, the identification of such signs as crunching, clicking in the joints, hearing loss or tinnitus, suggests the presence of intra-articular disorders in such patients. The deviation of the jaw from its main trajectory when opening the mouth indicates the possible involvement of the masticators muscles in the pathological process. All this requires the dentist to carry out early diagnosis and timely orthopedic treatment.

ON THE ISSUE OF IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF ELECTRICITY IN THE TRANSIENT OPERATING MODES OF MARINE DIESEL GENERATOR SETS

The operation of diesel generator sets (DGS) under conditions of significant frequency deviations with sharp load changes is investigated. Systems containing powerful static converters in transient operating modes experience a sharp deterioration in the quality of electricity in terms of non-sinusoidal voltage. The use of filtercompensating devices in conditions of frequency deviation is not effective. In order to improve the quality of the transition process, it is proposed to reduce the speed (frequency) dips by increasing the inertial mass of the DGU by hanging the flywheel.

Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form–frequency correspondences and predictability

This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users’ needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world’s languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations.

Frequency Effect of Formulaic Sequences on CAF in Academic Writing: Examples from L2 Master’s Theses

This study was conducted to explore the individual uses of formulaic sequence (FS) frequency and their effects on complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in academic writing. Data was collected from the conclusion sections of a self-compiled corpus of 30 L2 master’s theses. Statistical analysis revealed several notable conclusions. 1) Student writers tend to make repetitive use of particular FSs in single texts. 2）FS use has a significant frequency effect on fluency, and the high-frequency group slightly outperforms the low-frequency group. 3) FS use has a certain frequency effect on accuracy, and the high-frequency group demonstrates the strongest correlation between FS frequency and accuracy. 4) FS use has a significant frequency effect on lexical complexity, and the low-frequency group slightly outperforms the high-frequency group. In the low-frequency group, FS use has a significant frequency effect on syntactic complexity as well. Finally, 5) The results support Skehan’s trade-off effect, a competition between CAF, which, to a certain degree, is affected by individual uses of FS frequency. The low-frequency group displays a greater trade-off effect than the high-frequency group.

Florida Drosophila melanogaster genomes sampled 13 years apart show increases in warm-associated SNP alleles

ABSTRACTWe studied genetic change in Drosophila melanogaster using whole-genome SNP data from samples taken 13 years apart in Homestead, FL. This population is at the southern tip of a well-studied US latitudinal cline. On the non-inversion-carrying chromosome arms, 11-16% of SNPs show significant frequency changes. These are enriched for latitudinal clines and genic sites. For clinal SNPs each allele is either the northern- or southern-favored. Seventy-eight to 95 percent with significant frequency increase are southern-favored. Five to seven percent of SNPs also show significant seasonal change and involve increases in the northern-favored allele during the season. On the 2L and 3R chromosome arms there are significant seasonal shifts for common inversions. We identify regions and genes that are candidates for selection. These regions also show correspondence with those associated with soft sweeps in Raleigh, NC. This shift towards southern-favored alleles may be caused by climate shifts or increased African-European admixture.

Electromechanical Diode: Acoustic Non-Reciprocity in Weakly Nonlinear Metamaterial With Electromechanical Resonators

Recent attention has been given to acoustic non-reciprocity in metamaterials with nonlinearity. However, the study of asymmetric cells has been limited to mechanical diodes only. There is no work reported on electromechanical rectifiers or diodes. This problem is investigated here by analytically and numerically studying a combination of nonlinear and linear chains coupled with electromechanical resonators. The system is simulated numerically using MATLAB built in integrator and the results are validated by results found in the literature. Numerical examples are carried out to obtain band structure, operation range of electromechanical diode, harvested power, and significant frequency shift, which is demonstrated using spectro-spatial analyses. The observed frequency shift is used to construct an electromechanical diode to guide the wave to propagate in one direction only. This only allows signal sensing for waves propagating in one direction and rejects any other signals. Furthermore, this electromechanical diode is evaluated by calculating the transmission ratio and the asymmetric ratio for a transient input signal.

On the polysemy of motion verbs in Ancient Greek and Coptic

In this paper, we propose a constructional analysis of the meanings of two generic motion verbs in Ancient Greek and Coptic (Sahidic dialect), the verbs baínō and bôk, respectively, both of which are glossed as ‘go’ and are characterized by extensive polysemy. We argue that an adequate analysis of these meanings can only be achieved in a framework that recognizes lexical constructions at the level of the verb sense, showing that each meaning correlates with encoding features (ranging from morpho-syntactic to semantic, discursive, and lexical ones) that are not predictable, or at best are only partially motivated. Through extensive corpus analysis, we identify such significant, frequency-based patterns of correlation, each of which represents a lexical construction. Our data thus argue strongly for an approach to polysemy in which individual meanings are represented as enriched lexical constructions, which include morphological and discursive specifications (in addition to standard valence information).