The Adaptation of Loan Interjection wow in the Russian Language through the Prism of Modern Explanatory Dictionary: From Slang to Everyday Speech, from Everyday Speech to Terminology

The article considers the adaptation process of the loan interjection wow that was borrowed into Russian from American English in the early 1990s and at first was mostly used as slang, but later on it entered everyday speech. The research is carried out as a part of the project aimed at exploring the lexis of the modern Russian language, i.e. its main functional and chronological varieties and lexical categories with the use of “The Dictionary of the 21st Century Russian Language”. The novelty and specificity of the investigation lies in a comprehensive study of Russian lexis using a new approach “from dictionary to language” in contrast to the traditional one “from language to dictionary”. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the potential of this principle in practice, that is to describe some interesting phenomena in modern Russian using the material of several entries, – namely вау (wow), вау- (wow-), вау-эффект (wow effect), вау-фактор (wow factor) – selected from the dictionary mentioned above. This series clearly demonstrates the phenomena typical of modern Russian, that is the blurring of the boundaries between colloquial speech and other stylistic registers and the active interpenetration of words from one stylistic variety to another. The analysis of the dictionary entries revealed the gradual process of penetration of the interjection wow into the Russian language through its adaptation. It may be converted into a noun, a predicative or an analytic adjective, it may be reduplicated to indicate the intensity of surprise/ admiration, it may be used as a productive derivational element and even as a component of some special terms. This process is extraordinary for the Russian language, since, firstly, it affects one of the most stable groups of lexical items, and secondly, it is associated with acquiring a terminological meaning by a word component initially used as an exclamation to express a certain emotion. These new linguistic processes are largely due to the influence of the English language. This influence is so great that we can observe not only an active penetration of the Anglo-American interjection wow into the Russian everyday speech – emotive interjections were hardly ever borrowed – but also its integration into the Russian word-formation system.

Mining Trends of COVID-19 Vaccine Beliefs on Twitter with Lexical Embeddings (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating news globally and acts as a platform for people to express their opinions on various topics. A wide variety of views accompanies COVID-19 vaccination drives across the globe, often colored by emotions, which change along with rising cases, approval of vaccines, and multiple factors discussed online. OBJECTIVE This study aims at analyzing the temporal evolution of different emotions and the related influencing factors in tweets belonging to five countries with vital vaccine roll-out programs, namely, India, United States of America(USA), Brazil, United Kingdom(UK), and Australia. METHODS We extracted a corpus of nearly 1.8 million Twitter posts related to COVID-19 vaccination and created two classes of lexical categories – Emotions and Influencing factors. Using cosine distance from selected seed words’ embeddings, we expanded the vocabulary of each category and tracked the longitudinal change in their strength from June 2020 to April 2021 in each country. Community detection algorithms were used to find modules in positive correlation networks. RESULTS Our findings indicated the varying relationship among Emotions and Influencing Factors across countries. Tweets expressing hesitancy towards vaccines contained the highest mentions of health-related effects in all countries. We also observed a significant change in the linear trends of categories like hesitation and contentment before and after approval of vaccines. Negative emotions like rage and sorrow gained the highest importance in the alluvial diagram and formed a significant module with all the influencing factors in April 2021, when India observed the second wave of COVID-19 cases. CONCLUSIONS By extracting and visualizing these, we propose that such a framework may help guide the design of effective vaccine campaigns and be used by policymakers to model vaccine uptake and targeted interventions.

The effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing in different tasks: Evidence from late Chinese–English bilinguals

Although it has been well established that emotional content influences language comprehension, the effects of emotionality on L2 (second language: English) word processing require further clarification. Notably, most previous studies unsystematically mixed words of different lexical categories, although they often showed processing differences. Here, using the same set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives), we examined the effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing by conducting three experiments. In these experiments, three groups of late Chinese–English bilinguals performed three tasks: the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 1), the lexical decision task (Experiment 2), and the emotional categorisation task (Experiment 3), respectively. Overall, our data suggested that emotionality and lexical category exerted no influence on L2 word processing in the emotional Stroop task, but acted interactively to influence it in the other two tasks. The results evidenced that the processing of L2 emotional words was sensitive to task type. Therefore, we conclude that future research on L2 word processing should fully consider the emotionality, lexical category, and task type.

Quantifying the Differences Between Lexical Categories

The Cambridge grammar of the English language (HUDDLESTON; PULLUM, 2002) attempts to present a comprehensive and rigorous description of Modern Standard English. Much of the book is taken up with describing the properties of the various lexical categories, including determinative and pronoun. The distinction between these categories has been questioned by various authors in English (ABNEY, 1987; CROFT, 2001; HUDSON, 2004; MATTHEWS, 2014; POSTAL, 2014/1966; SOMMERSTEIN, 1972) and other languages (e.g., NAU, 2016). Here, I employ energy distance, a novel family of non-parametric statistics, to adjudicate between these positions. Following Crystal (1967), I binarily encode the features (has/doesn’t have feature) of the determinatives and pronouns from CGEL in a 138 word-forms by 232 features matrix. The results provide support for CGEL’s analysis (k-groups produces a 93% correspondence with CGEL’s categorization) and show that energy distance statistics applied to such matrices can help us adjudicate between competing lexical category analyses without resorting to methodological opportunism (CROFT, 2001).

Constructivist Approaches to First Language Acquisition

Constructivist approaches to language acquisition predict that form-function mappings are derived from distributional patterns in the input, and their contextual embedding. This requires a detailed analysis of the input, and the integration of information from different contingencies. Regarding the acquisition of morphology, it is shown which types of information leads to the induction of (lexical) categories, and to paradigm building. Regarding the acquisition of word order, it is shown how languages with fixed or variable word order profit from stable syntactic hyperschemas, but require a more detailed analyses of the form-function contingencies to identify the underlying, more specific semantic, syntactic and morphological patterns. At a theoretical level, it is shown how findings from acquisition and processing converge into new linguistic theories that aim to account for regular as well as irregular phenomena in language.

Vocabulary Growth in Lexical Categories Between Ages 13 and 24 Months as a Function of the Child’s Sex, Child, and Family Factors

We examined the vocabulary growth of lexical categories in 719 children (age 13–24 months) as part of a longitudinal cohort study (the STEPS Study) and found a discrepancy in how these categories were affected depending on the child’s sex. In girls, attending day care at 24 months of age predicted a positive vocabulary growth in the lexical categories sound effects, nouns, people, and games and routines, compared to girls staying at home. Firstborn girls had a greater vocabulary growth in descriptive and function words, in contrast to those born later. A boy attending day care at age 24 months was likely to have greater growth in sound effects and animal sounds, compared to boys not in day care. A family history of late onset of speech predicted less vocabulary growth in all lexical categories in boys, except for sound effects and animal sounds. Early vocabulary is of importance for later language and literacy development. Vocabulary is not an impenetrable entirety but consists of various types of words (lexical categories) developing at different tempos as they contribute to the developing language. Factors influencing early vocabulary development in boys and girls have been painstakingly studied, but fewer have examined these factors across lexical categories, let alone whether they have an equal effect in both sexes. More knowledge of what affects the variation in early vocabulary in boys and girls is needed for clinical practice and preventive purposes. Vocabulary was measured with the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. The effect of child and family factors on vocabulary growth in various lexical categories was analyzed separately for boys and girls using structural equational modelling. The results of the present study indicate that vocabulary development in the lexical categories is affected differently by child and parental factors in girls and boys as early as the second year of life, which gives new insights into the factors that need consideration in clinical practice and preventive work.

ENGLISH COMPOUND WORDS USED IN THE JAKARTA POST HEALTH COLUMN ON THIRD WEEK OF APRIL 2020

This study aims to describe the formation and the meaning of compound words that related to COVID-19 pandemics used in The Jakarta Post’s Health Column Article on Third Week of April 2020. There are two research question in this study: (1) What are the type of COVID-19 compound words and their lexical categories found in The Jakarta Post’s Health Column Article on Third Week of April 2020, and (2) How does those related COVID-19 compound words create meaning. To answer the research question, the writer uses the theory of morphology and semantics. The findings showed that there are 26 compound words in The Jakarta Post’s Health Column on the third week of April 2020. Based on the type of compound words, there are 86.4% compound noun, 11.5% compound adjective, and 3.9% compound verb. The most dominant lexical category is from compound nouns which are Noun+Noun and Adjective + Noun. Based on the meaning of compound words, there are are 80.76% endocentric compounds and 19.24% exocentric compounds.Keywords: Compound words, COVID-19, Morphology, Semantics

A Study of Nouns in Gu-Mawasangka Language

This study aims to obtain a descriptive description of the Gu-Mawasangka language nouns. Data collection was carried out by using descriptive methods through elicitation, listening and speaking techniques, recording, and recording. The results obtained, Gu-Mawasangka nouns can be analyzed from two aspects, namely semantic meaning and syntactic characteristics. The semantic meanings found are lexical categories that contain material meanings. The syntactic characteristics of Gu-Mawasangka nouns can be in combination with "deny, adjectives, nouns and verbs, personal pronouns). There are monomorphemic nouns and polymorphism nouns. At the nominal phrase level, the characteristic has a noun core in other words that accompany it as an attribute, and at the syntactic level, it functions as a subject, predicate, object, complement, and description.

Ways for Conceptualization of the Space Area Introduced by the Preposition dans (Based on the French language)

The ways for conceptualization of the area of space as a part of the nominal combinations via the French spatial preposition dans as the physical space and the conceptual space are studied in the article; the terms physical space and conceptual space are determined like realities of being and fundamental cultural concepts; the conceptual content of the preposition dans is formulated through the analysis of the spatial constructions. The problem of studying the semantics of the preposition dans in French is still relevant. Large number of works, primarily foreign researchers, who in their works refer to the specifics of cognitive and linguocultural analysis of ways of conceptualizing spaces by French speakers using the preposition dans is the confirmation of the topicality of the article. The perception of space and spatial relationships in each culture occurs in a special way, which is reflected in the language. According to cognitologists, the process of conceptualization depends on a person’s personal perception of the space. The considered cases of various ways of conceptualization allowed us to conclude that the way of conceptualizing the relatum both as a physical and as a conceptual space is explained by the influence of the cognitive context on the perception of a region of space. As the study has shown, it is the cognitive context that creates the basis for the use of lexical categories, with the help of which the interpretation of knowledge about the world occurs in the future. In our case, the interpretation of spatial relations between objects as part of the analyzed structures is facilitated by the cognitive context using the preposition dans.