Linguistic cues facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences

It has been well-documented that although children around 4 years start to attribute false beliefs to others in classic false-belief tasks, they are still less able to evaluate the truth-value of propositional belief-reporting sentences, especially when belief conflicts with reality. This article investigates whether linguistic cues, verb factivity in particular, can facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Two experiments were implemented, one testing children’s knowledge of verb factivity using a gold medal task, and one investigating children’s interpretation of belief-reporting sentences using a truth-value-judgment task. Both experiments took advantage of the contrast between neutral non-factive mental verbs and strong negatively biased mental verbs. What sets the two apart is that the complement clause following a strong negatively biased mental verb is definitely false, whereas the one following a neutral non-factive mental verb remains indeterminate in the absence of additional information. The findings were that, first, 4-year-old children were able to tell the difference between the two types of mental verbs in factivity, and second, children’s performance was significantly improved when a strong negatively biased mental verb than when a neutral non-factive mental verb was used as the main verb of the belief-reporting sentences. The findings suggest that the use of strong negatively biased mental verbs facilitates children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the underlying mechanisms connecting verb factivity and false-belief understanding.

Egophoricity and Perspective: A View From Spoken Swedish

From the point of view of everyday talk and especially, casual conversation, it is obvious that language use is highly perspectivized with a clear focus on the speech-act participants. This fact is supported by observations regarding the pervasiveness of egophoric pronouns and the frequent use of the modal particles ju and väl in spoken Swedish. The paper demonstrates how egophoric pronouns, modal particles, and mental verbs are used to signal the epistemic perspective of the speech-act participants, i.e., when the knowledge and attention of the speech-act participants are at stake. These formally distinct resources show patterns of co-distribution that permit an analysis of forms in terms of how they signal shared/private access to events from the perspective of the speaker and the addressee.

The Translation of English Activity Verbs Found in Turtle and Dolphin Story

In trilingual kids’ story book entitled “Turtle and Dolphin” by Dunkle et al (2012), the English text has both Indonesian and Balinese equivalences. This study aims at revealing the translation procedures applied to the English text especially the activity verbs and also the correlation between the translation procedures and the translation shifts that happen as the result of translations. The English activity verbs as the data in this study are collected using documentation method, the analysis is done by applying descriptive qualitative method and the result is shown using the combination of informal and formal methods. The result shows that literal translation is the most frequent translation procedure applied to translate ST into Indonesian (91%) and Balinese (77%). However, there are several English activity verbs transferred into mental verbs, nouns, and prepositions in the TT. Furthermore, when literal translations are applied the shifts that appear are intra-system shifts (36%). When transpositions are applied, the shifts that appear are class shifts (100%). When modulations are applied the shifts that appear are intra-system shifts (60%). Lastly, when adaptations are applied, the shifts that appear are intra-system shifts (37, 5%).

Conversational Mental Verbs In English Song Lyrics

This corpus-driven study explores the linguistics phenomenon of mental verbs in English song lyrics from 1960s until 2000s. This study aims to identify the frequency distributions of lexical verbs, mental verbs, and to analyze the language uses of mental verbs in the Diachronic Corpus of English Song Lyrics (DCOESL). Quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis were implemented to complement each other. First, quantitative data covering frequency distributions of general verbs was produced via LancsBox. Top three mental verbs in song lyrics were selected for analysis and discussion. The frequency distributions of mental verbs and collocations were produced via LancsBox. Collocational patterns are illustrated through collocational graphs constructed via LancsBox. Frequency distributions of mental verbs were compared to reference corpus Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) for the purpose of generalizing the findings from this study as representative of English language. The statistical data were submitted for four statistical tests of significance namely Chi-square, Mutual Information, Log-likelihood, and t-score. Second, qualitative data are composed of corpus annotations. Corpus annotations were conducted via CLAWS for assigning part-of-speech C7 tagset to identify verbs. Semantic categories of mental verbs were identified via UCREL Semantic Analysis System (USAS). Findings uncovered the significantly high frequencies of mental verbs know, want, and love in English song lyrics through 1960s until 1990s. These three mental verbs possess high inclination to occur alongside personal pronouns I and you, depict social actions, high predilection for simple present tense, and simple sentence structure. These attributes illuminate that song lyrics emulate spoken English, predominantly the informal conversation register. Keywords: Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Driven, Computational Corpus Linguistics, Mental Verbs, Song Lyrics.

I’m thinking and you’re saying: Speaker stance and the progressive of mental verbs in courtroom interaction

This study investigates the use of progressives with mental verbs in courtroom talk and shows a range of subjective meanings which are not delivered by the simple form. Looking at the data from a British libel trial, it explores patterned co-occurrences with first-person subjects vs. second- and third-person subjects, revealing both emphatic, polite and interpretative uses of the analyzed items. In addition, context-sensitivity and speaker status (judge vs. other participants) are shown to be significant factors affecting both the choice of verbs and their interactional configurations. The findings reveal not only well-established uses of “progressive statives” (wonder and think) but also less conventional ones which convey intensity and expressivity (e.g., understand, remember and want). It is also revealed that the use of progressives with mental verbs differs from the deployment of progressives with communication verbs. In both groups of verbs, however, the interpretative meaning is common. In sum, the study situates progressives with mental verbs among stancetaking resources which speakers employ to share their thoughts, wishes and desires, and to position themselves against other interactants and their propositions.

SLOVAK TEMPORAL ADVERBS ČOSKORO, ONEDLHO, O CHVÍĽU: A CASE OF QUASI-SYNONYMY

The article uses the material of the Slovak national corpus to examine the lexical meaning of the Slovak adverbs čoskoro, onedlho, o chvíľu. Their semantics presupposes a rapid onset of the situation in relation to the moment of speech or to the moment in the text. In the dictionaries of the Slovak language, these lexemes are usually not differentiated, which raises the question of their synonymy or quasi-synonymy. In the first part of the article, collocations of these adverbs are analyzed in the light of the logDice Association measure. In the second part, cases of mutual compatibility of lexemes are considered pairwise. It is shown that čoskoro tends to cooccur with mental verbs and verbs with the semantics of termination and disappearance, onedlho – with verbs with the meaning of achieving a goal, passing of time, or waiting, while o chvíľu is characterized by collocations with perceptual verbs. When adverbs cooccur in the same stretch of text, the situation indicated by onedlho usually follows the situation with čoskoro, and is most often related to it causally. O chvíľu more often denotes completed or predetermined situations, excluding the possibility of doubt. Thus, čoskoro is more focused on the interpretation of the situation by the speaker, onedlho – on the situation in its course, and o chvíľu – on the direct perception of the situation by the speaker with the ability to control the situation.

TWO SEMANTIC TYPES OF VERB VOCABULARY WITH THE MEANING OF ATTENTION IN THE KHAKASS LANGUAGE

The article is devoted to the identification and description of one of the subgroups of mental verbs - verb vocabulary with the meaning of attention in the Khakass language, combined according to the general categorical semen "to focus your attention on a certain object when distracting from others." By the nature of the contextual implementation, we distinguish their two types of semantic types: 1) verb units expressing attention, as a cognitive process that ensures that the subject receives and processes information from the surrounding reality. In the position of the subject under these verbs, only a person speaks; 2) verb units expressing attention as a psychophysiological process in which the subject (man and other living beings) consciously or unconsciously select certain information coming through the senses, ignoring the rest.

MENTAL VERBS IN K.L. KHETAGUROV’S POETRY AS MEANS OFREPRESENTING THE FRAGMENTS OF THE AUTHOR’S WORLD IMAGE

В статье исследуется функционально-семантическая сфера и художественно-когнитивный потенциал ментальных глаголов, употребленных К. Л. Хетагуровым в сборнике Ирон фандыр ( Осетинская лира , 1899) и примыкающих к нему текстах на осетинском языке.На основе лексико-семантического анализа прототипической глагольной лексемы зонын, доминантной в словаре языка сборника, и ее производных определены важные структурные компоненты когнитивного фрейма осуществление ментальной деятельности. Очерчен состав номинативного поля ментальных глаголов с прямым и контекстным значением слов: конститутивные элементы отнесены к ядру и приядерному слою номинации, эксплицирующие синонимические ряды дополнительных характеристик, к области ближней и дальней периферии. В работе изложен опыт применения комплексного (лингво-литературоведческого) подхода к исследованию вербальных средств выражения мыслительных действий с использованием элементов этимологического, контекстуального и интерпретативного анализа. В основу организации материала лег метод структуризации семантического поля ментальных глаголов по признаку действие/состояние с различением трех аспектов ментальной сферы сознания: 1) мыслительных действий, цель которых получение знания (процесс мышления) 2) мыслительных актов, свидетельствующих о результатах реализации ментальной способности 3) ментальных состояний (статуальность как результат предшествующих мыслительных действий) с указанием дифференцированной частоты их употребления. Делается вывод о том, что единицы ментального поля являются ключевыми и концептуально значимыми в анализируемыхтекстах Коста Хетагурова. Проблема рассмотрена под углом зрения антропного фактора в аспекте репрезентации фрагментов картины мира в художественном тексте, отражающих ценностно-мировоззренческие установки автора. The article explores the functional-semantic sphere and artistic-cognitive potential of the mental verbs used by K.L. Khetagurov in his anthology Iron Fandyr ( Ossetian Lira, 1899) and the adjoining Ossetic texts. Based on the lexico-semantic analysis of the prototypical verb lexem zonyn, which is dominant in the dictionary of the anthology language, and its derivatives the important structural components of the cognitive frame exercise of the mental activities are defined. The structure of the nominative field of mental verbs is outlined (direct and contextual meanings of words): the constitutional elements are classified as the nucleus and nearby layer the nominations which make synonymic rows of additional characteristics explicit, to the area of near and far periphery. The paper outlines the experience of applying a comprehensive (linguo-literary) approach to the study of verb means of expression of thought actions, including the elements of etymological, contextual and interpretive analysis. The material organization is based on the method of structuring the semantic field of mental verbs on the basis of action/station with the distinction of three aspects of the mental sphere of consciousness: 1) cognitive actions, which purpose is to obtain knowledge (process of thinking) 2) the cognitive acts confirming results of mental ability realization 3) mental conditions (a stasis as a result of the previous cogitative actions) with the indication of the total and differentiated frequency of their use. It is concluded that mental verbs are key-note and conceptually significant in Kosta Khetagurovs poetry. The problem is considered from the point of view of the anthropic factor in the aspect of representation of fragments of the image of the world in the literary text, reflecting the axiological and worldview attitudes of the author.