Action Verb Nosi `Cooking` in Bima Language: A Study of Natural Semantic Metalanguage

There are two subordinate structures in action verbs, namely uncompositional polysemy. Action verbs to do and happen are action verbs with uncomposed polysemy, including Cooking Nose. This research aims to find out the mapping and explication of the 'cooking' action verb. The method used is qualitative. The data source consists of oral data taken from key informants, written data collected from storybooks in the Bima language and language intuition. The technique used is interview and literature study. The data collection method is advanced, namely the agih method with the application of transformation and insertion techniques used to reveal the original meaning contained in BBM. The default meaning is used to determine the semantic structure of VBBm by explication or paraphrasing techniques. Each verb nosi cooking is based on: the tool, the model of movement, the part of the entity that is being treated, the result that the agent wants to achieve. The results show that the Bima language action verb 'Cooking' in general has a component mapping `X Doing something to Y` and therefore `Something happened to Y`. A number of words that contain the meaning of cooking: lowi, mbako, danda, salunga, puru, sanggowo, sanggapi, suje, ncango, and tumi, gule. This variant has unique semantic characteristics so that the meaning content of each word is different even though it is still in the same field of meaning (Cf. Adawiyah, 2021).

The Verbs with the Notion of Eating in Manggaraian Language: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Analysis

The aim of this research is to explicate and account for the verb of eating in Manggaraian language. There are some verbs denoting the meaning of eating, such as hang, lompong, jumik, mboros, takung, la’ur, alas, pongo mu’u. The qualitative research method was applied to unveil and explain the explication of meaning in the given verbs respectively. Field-observation and recording were the techniques used to gather the data from the natural speakers utterances as well as part of the data were based on the researchers’ intuitive knowledge as the native speakers. The data were analyzed through the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). The results of the analysis reveal that Manggaraian language has the inventory of verbs designating the meaning of eating such as hang, jumik, lompong, mboros, takung, raci, alas, pongo mu’u. In terms of semantic prime, the verbs are under the category of the action verb. Comparing to the other verbs, the verbs jumik, lompong, pongo mu’u have more delicate meaning of eating. Furthermore, those verbs are classified into generic and specific category of meaning. The verbs “hang, jumik, mboros” are generic in meaning while the verbs lompong alas,racik, pongo mu’u, takung are specific in meaning. The verbs are categorized into non-compositional polysemy. Regarding the explication of meaning, the verbs reveal the action and the process of eating involving certain parts of body (hands and mouth) as well as specific tools (plate, spoon, bowl).

Faroqi-Shah_Verb_Naming_in_Aphasia

Persons with aphasia (PWA) frequently experience difficulties in retrieving verbs. Little is known about mechanisms underlying verb retrieval, both in neurologically healthy adults and PWA. The present study investigated two questions pertaining to action verb naming: 1) if any properties of a verb influence naming efficiency, particularly, somatotopy (bodypart used for the action), and 2) if somatotopic and phonemic primes facilitate action verb naming. Neurologically healthy adults and eight PWA named action videos performed by hand, leg or face under three conditions: neutral, phonemic or somatotopic (same body part) prime. Both groups named hand verbs the fastest and leg verbs the slowest. Somatotopic primes speeded naming for healthy adults, while phonemic facilitation was found for both groups. A multiple regression analysis identified verb frequency, name agreement and somatotopic association rating as significant predictors of verb naming in healthy participants. The findings elucidate the dynamics of verb retrieval and its impairment in aphasia.

Manual action motivates networked meanings of a productive construction in Mandarin

This study analyzes the manual action verb dǎ as part of the [dǎ – NP] construction in Chinese corpora. Drawing on constructionist perspectives on language productivity (Goldberg 2006; Gries 2012), I show that [dǎ – NP] is a productive construction the multiple meanings of which are conceptually motivated by manual action. The type-token distributions show the productivity of the [dǎ – NP] schema and the semantic clusters in a network of meanings show a gradation of manual action experiences with no clear-cut boundaries. Usage productivity goes hand in hand with semantic extension, which gives rise to the emergence of the light verb dǎ. Contra previous morpheme-based studies that viewed dǎ a polysemy in its own right, isolation from its network of collocates, I argue that polysemy is a consequence and an epiphenomenon of constructional productivity resulting from language use and exemplar propagation.

On The Study Of The Meaning Of "Ability" Within Motion Manner Category In Uzbek Language

The intermediate grammatical meaning of "ability" is smaller than the number of specific meanings in "process" and is limited to "ability" and "trial". While these meanings are expressed in the phonetic layer by the extension and contraction of the sound, in the morphological layer they are expressed by the use of auxiliary verbs. These particular grammatical meanings are not represented by tense forms in the morphological layer. The meanings of "process" are expressed in the syntactic layer by word combinations with the presence of the action verb, that is, together with the verb, such words as “hardly”, “with huge efforts” are combined with the word denoting the action. In the lexical layer, it can be expressed directly by verbs such as to act, to succeed. Although the intermediate meaning group “ability” is smaller in structure than the “process” group, its means are stylistically neutral and can be used in both formal and informal speech..

Developing a Semantic Similarity Judgment Test for Persian Action Verbs and Non-action Nouns in Patients With Brain Injury and Determining its Content Validity

Objective: Brain trauma evidences suggest that the two grammatical categories of noun and verb are processed in different regions of the brain due to differences in the complexity of grammatical and semantic information processing. Studies have shown that the verbs belonging to different semantic categories lead to neural activity in different areas of the brain, and action verb processing is related to the activity of motor and pre-motor areas of the brain. Researchers use different tasks to evaluate action verb processing. The most common tasks are action naming and action fluency tasks. Although these types of tasks are sensitive to deficits in action verb processing, they do not specify the nature of the injury. To understand whether dysfunction in action verb processing is due to difficulty in lexical access or specific impairment in semantic processing, it is necessary to design a specific test to evaluate lexical-semantic processing. Semantic Similarity Judgment (SSJ) test targets the lexical-semantic encoding at a deep and controlled processing level. The purpose of the present study was to develop a SSJ test for Persian action verbs and non-action nouns and determine its content validity. Materials & Methods: In this methodological study, 70 Persian action concrete verbs and 80 Persian non-action concrete nouns were first selected. For each word, a semantically related word based on functional, physical, categorical features and similarity in action was selected according to the opinion of 4 experts (3 speech-language pathologists and one linguist) using a 7-point scale. For semantic similarity rating, only the pairs of words with a high semantic similarity score (5 to 7) remained and the rest were omitted. Then, for each pair of semantically related words, a semantically unrelated word was selected. After determining content validity qualitatively by three experts and removing inappropriate items, for matching the two sets of nouns and verbs, the lexical and psycholinguistic characteristics of the remaining words (207 nouns and 156 verbs) including frequency, number of syllables, phonemes, letters, phonological and orthographic neighbors, action association, imageability, familiarity and age of acquisition were extracted by 18 volunteers (13 speech-language pathologists and linguists and 5 parents selected by a convenience sampling method) based on a 7-point scale. The verbs with low action associations and the nouns with high action association were removed and then, the two sets of words were matched for other lexical and psycholinguistic characteristics. Finally, 34 triples of verbs with high action association and 34 triples of nouns with low action association were selected. In both noun and verb sets, the words were chosen in such a way that, in order to judge, the semantic features of the words need to be carefully considered. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and independent t-test.

The Influence of Verbal Semantics on Agreement Patterns in Arabic: the Role of Agenthood

The present paper, based on a complete analysis of the Quranic text, investigates the influence of verbal semantics on agreement choices in Quranic Arabic. Building on the principle according to which, when a language shifts from a prevalently formal agreement system to a partially semantic one, conditions gain more importance (Fleischer, Rieken, Widmer 2015: 21), it focuses on the role of agenthood (or agency) in triggering syntactic agreement. The analysis of the data reveals that the occurrence of an action verb and of an agent subject favors syntactic agreement in the feminine plural, although not systematically. Passive verbs, copulas and state verbs, in which the subject is either a patient or an experiencer, on the other hand, strongly favor semantic agreement in the feminine singular. From this perspective, moreover, Quranic Arabic seems to represent a more innovative stage of the language when compared to pre-Islamic poetry, described in D’Anna (forth.).

Using Action-congruent Language Facilitates the Motor Response during Action Observation: A Combined Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Eye-tracking Study

There is evidence that action observation (AO) and the processing of action-related words are associated with increased activity in cortical motor regions. Research has examined the effects of AO and action verb processing on activity in the motor system independently. The aim of this experiment was to investigate, for the first time, the modulation of corticospinal excitability and visual attention during the concurrent processing of action verbs and AO stimuli. Twenty participants took part in an integrated transcranial magnetic stimulation and eye-tracking protocol. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was delivered to the hand representation of the left motor cortex during (i) observation of a static hand, (ii) AO of a hand squeezing a sponge, (iii) AO of the same action with an audio recording of the word “squeeze,” and (iv) AO of the same action with an audio recording of the word “green”. Motor evoked potentials were recorded from the abductor pollicis brevis and abductor digiti minimi muscles of the right hand. Eye gaze was recorded throughout the four conditions as a proxy for visual attention. Interviews were conducted to discuss participants' preferences and imagery use for each condition. The AO and action verb condition resulted in significantly increased motor evoked potential amplitudes in the abductor pollicis brevis muscle; participants also made significantly more fixations on the sponge and reported wanting to move their hand more in the action verb condition. The inclusion of auditory action verbs, alongside AO stimuli, in movement simulation interventions could have implications for the delivery of AO interventions for motor (re)learning.