Word Distance Affects Subjective Temporal Distance

The kappa effect is a well-reported phenomenon in which spatial distance between discrete stimuli affects the perception of temporal distance demarcated by the corresponding stimuli. Here, we report a new phenomenon that we propose to designate as the lexical kappa effect in which word distance, a non-magnitude relationship of discrete stimuli that exists in the lexical space of the mental lexicon, affects the perception of temporal distance. A temporal bisection task was used to assess the subjective perception of the time interval demarcated by two successively presented words. Word distance was manipulated by varying the semantic (Experiment 1) or phonological (Experiment 2) similarity between the two words. Results showed that the temporal distance between the two words was perceived to be shorter when the corresponding two words were lexically closer. We explain this effect within the internal clock framework by assuming faster detection of the word that terminated timing when it is preceded by a semantically or phonologically similar word.

Source side pre-ordering using recurrent neural networks for English-Myanmar machine translation

Word reordering has remained one of the challenging problems for machine translation when translating between language pairs with different word orders e.g. English and Myanmar. Without reordering between these languages, a source sentence may be translated directly with similar word order and translation can not be meaningful. Myanmar is a subject-objectverb (SOV) language and an effective reordering is essential for translation. In this paper, we applied a pre-ordering approach using recurrent neural networks to pre-order words of the source Myanmar sentence into target English’s word order. This neural pre-ordering model is automatically derived from parallel word-aligned data with syntactic and lexical features based on dependency parse trees of the source sentences. This can generate arbitrary permutations that may be non-local on the sentence and can be combined into English-Myanmar machine translation. We exploited the model to reorder English sentences into Myanmar-like word order as a preprocessing stage for machine translation, obtaining improvements quality comparable to baseline rule-based pre-ordering approach on asian language treebank (ALT) corpus.

Costs and Benefits of Native Language Similarity for Non-native Word Learning

The present study examined the costs and benefits of native language similarity for non-native vocabulary learning. Because learning a second language (L2) is difficult, many learners start with easy words that look like their native language (L1) to jumpstart their vocabulary. However, this approach may not be the most effective strategy in the long-term, compared to introducing difficult L2 vocabulary early on. We examined how L1 orthographic typicality affects pattern learning of novel vocabulary by teaching English monolinguals either Englishlike or Non-Englishlike pseudowords that contained repeated orthographic patterns. We found that overall, the first words that individuals learned during initial acquisition influenced which words they acquired later. Specifically, learning a new word in one session made it easier to acquire an orthographically similar word in the next session. Similarity among non-native words interacted with native language similarity, so that words that looked more like English were easier to learn at first, but they were less effective at influencing later word learning. This demonstrates that although native language similarity has a beneficial effect early on, it may reduce learners' ability to benefit from non-native word patterns during continued acquisition. This surprising finding demonstrates that making learning easier may not be the most effective long-term strategy. Learning difficult vocabulary teaches the learner what makes non-native words unique, and this general wordform knowledge may be more valuable than the words themselves. We conclude that native language similarity modulates new vocabulary acquisition and that difficulties during learning are not always to be avoided, as additional effort early on can pay later dividends.

SynoExtractor: A Novel Pipeline for Arabic Synonym Extraction Using Word2Vec Word Embeddings

Automatic synonym extraction plays an important role in many natural language processing systems, such as those involving information retrieval and question answering. Recently, research has focused on extracting semantic relations from word embeddings since they capture relatedness and similarity between words. However, using word embeddings alone poses problems for synonym extraction because it cannot determine whether the relation between words is synonymy or some other semantic relation. In this paper, we present a novel solution for this problem by proposing the SynoExtractor pipeline, which can be used to filter similar word embeddings to retain synonyms based on specified linguistic rules. Our experiments were conducted using KSUCCA and Gigaword embeddings and trained with CBOW and SG models. We evaluated automatically extracted synonyms by comparing them with Alma’any Arabic synonym thesauri. We also arranged for a manual evaluation by two Arabic linguists. The results of experiments we conducted show that using the SynoExtractor pipeline enhances the precision of synonym extraction compared to using the cosine similarity measure alone. SynoExtractor obtained a 0.605 mean average precision (MAP) for the King Saud University Corpus of Classical Arabic with 21% improvement over the baseline and a 0.748 MAP for the Gigaword corpus with 25% improvement. SynoExtractor outperformed the Sketch Engine thesaurus for synonym extraction by 32% in terms of MAP. Our work shows promising results for synonym extraction suggesting that our method can also be used with other languages.

To the Explanation of the Annalistic Tolkoviny

The “tolkoviny” mentioned in “The Tale of Bygone Years” (“Povest’ Vremennych Let”) about Oleg’s campaign against the Greeks in 907, can be taken as a characteristic given by the chronicler to the participants of the campaign. It is not clear who this characteristic applies to, although there is a tendency to apply it to the Tivertsy. There is extensive scholarship devoted to the meaning of the word “tolkoviny”. There are many options offered. The most common meaning is “allies” or “translators” (currently the latter is considered preferable). In the context of the information about the relationship between the Rus’ and the Slavs in the famous work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it can be suggested that the chronicle sheds a new light on the nature of these relations. Meanwhile, the word “tolkoviny” is unique. Besides the story about the campaign of Oleg in the chronicle, a similar word is used only in the “Igor’ Tale”. The author of the article suggests that the search for the meaning of the word “tolkoviny” should be stopped, and it should be admitted that there is an error in the text made in the early chronicles, and then repeated many times later. Instead of “tolkoviny” in the original source, the explanatory word “tolkovaniye” was inserted somewhere, which got into the main text in the process of rewriting. The purpose of the phrase inserted after the list of the Slavs-participants of the campaign of Oleg, (without “tolkoviny”) was simply to draw the reader’s attention to how the Greeks called part of the Slavs “Great Scythia”.

A Comparative Analysis of the Similar Word-formation Processes in English and Arabic

This paper sets out on a comparative analysis of similar word-formation processes in English and Arabic. In doing so, it hopes to emerge and serve as subsequent and reliable, albeit partial, reference material for English and Arabic linguistics, especially in reference to linguistic structures. The framework herein for the study and analysis of word-formation processes in both languages may also be applied in future studies and other genres, corpora, and texts. This study enriches the research findings and meta-theory in the field of linguistics, contributing to the current linguistic intellectualism trends. The specific processes discussed are acronyms, antonomasia, backformation, blending, borrowing, compounding, and derivation.

The cognitive saliency of word associations of verbs of speech in English as a Lingua Franca interactions

Building on the theoretical insights into the socio-cognitive approach to the study of interactions in which English is used as a lingua franca (ELF)), this paper reports on the idiosyncratic phenomenon that ELF speakers do not adhere to the norms of native speakers, but instead create their own particular word associations during the course of the interaction. Taking the verbs of speech talk, say, speak, and tell as examples, this study compares word associations from three corpora of native and non-native speakers. The findings of this study reveal that similar word associative patterns are produced and shared by ELF speech communities from different sociocultural backgrounds, and these differ substantially from those used by native English speakers. Idiom-like constructions such as say like, how to say, and speakin are developed and utilized by Asian and European ELF speakers. Based on these findings, this paper concludes that ELF speakers use the prefabricated expressions in the target language system only as references, and try to develop their own word associative patterns in ELF interactions. Moreover, the analysis of the non-literalness/metaphorical word associations of the verbs of speech in the Asian ELF corpus suggests that ELF speakers dynamically co-construct their shared common ground to derive non-literal/metaphorical meaning in actual situational context.

Testing the P-Map: Lenition and Position

This study tests the P-Map’s (Steriade, 2001) hypothesis that attested phonological patterns vary depending on phonological context due to differences in the perceptual similarity of two phonological contrasts in different contexts, and that the knowledge of these relative perceptibilities are used to explain cross-linguistic patterns of phonological typology. Specifically, the phenomena in focus are spirantization and devoicing. The study investigates if preference for spirantization of voiced stops in intervocalic position and devoicing of voiced stops in word-final position across languages is correlated with perceptual similarity. Using perceptual similarity tests with native Michigan English speakers on pairs of contrasts in nonsense words, the results show that continuancy contrasts are significantly more similar in intervocalic position than in word-final position, explaining the preference for spirantization intervocalically while voicing contrasts are significantly more similar word-finally, explaining the preference for devoicing word-finally. The results thus support the P-Map’s claim and support a phonetics-based approach to phonology. In addition, since neither phenomenon is a process that happens in Michigan English, the lack of bias in these similarity judgements lends weight to the idea that these results reflect the universal perception of phonological processes.

The Influence of Similarity Vocabulary on New Vocabulary Learning in Indonesian for Taiwanese Students

This study investigated the new vocabulary effect to remember the old vocabulary in task reading Indonesia as a second language. The similarity of vocabulary related to Phonological neighborhood by giving two pretest and posttest methods in two groups and presenting a control group to be able to see how far the ability of students to understand related vocabulary. The task in the form of reading shows an image. The Lexicon neighbor is constrained because of the similar word can affect the memory of students. The problem of students they have limited time to finish the task of reading — the issue of student they found when running the experiment.

Dadanitic b-rʾy as referring to a local calendar?

This article will discuss the dating formula in the Dadanitic inscriptions. So far, some of these have been interpreted to refer not only to the reign of the local king (mlk lḥyn), but also to another political official called rʾy. The article will discuss the merit of this interpretation based on both the questionable etymology of the term rʾy and the problematic interpretation of the terms following this word as personal names. Instead, a new interpretation of this formula as a reference to a local calendar will be explored in light of the occurrence of a similar word rʾy in Safaitic dating formula, and comparison to other ancient methods of time reckoning in the region.