The ‘golden section’ on Kitawa Island

When one first looks at the lagimu and tabuya, the two multicoloured prowboards placed symmetrically, like mirror-images of one another, on the ceremonial canoe (masawa) used for the Kula Ring exchanges, one is struck by the delicate visual balance between the graphic signs carved in the surface of the wood. The concept of randomness, in the sense of lack of 'order', as absence of planning, must, one feels sure, have been foreign to the person who carved these two prowboards: his hand and his eye must have been guided by precise rules of composition. In what follows I shall try to identify some of the aesthetic principles which determine these rules of composition and the technique which realizes them on a lagimu and tabuya. My exposition is based, as far as the aesthetic principles are concerned, on a series of conversations with Towitara Buyoyu, regarded as one of the greatest woodcarvers in Milne Bay, and Tonori Kiririyei and Siyakwakwa Teitei. Of these last two the former is a young carver of multicoloured prowboards, and the latter a carver and builder of hulls for ceremonial canoes. The lagimu/tabuya, as a geometrical and abstract schema, is equivalent to an equiangular spiral inscribing a golden or isosceles triangle. It is no coincidence that in the past Kitawans used to build ceremonial canoes called goragora (Nautilus pompilius) and characterized by a lagimu in the form of a large, stylized, Nautilus shell.

Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, and their Analogues

This essay presents an experimental theory of values. An abstract schema is extracted from two pairs of concepts that are used in moral evaluation, good and bad, on the one hand, and right and wrong on the other. The schema is then used to explore the analogues of the moral concepts in aesthetic and epistemic evaluation.Este ensayo presenta una teoría experimental de los valores. Se extrae un esquema de dos pares de conceptos que se utilizan en la evaluación moral: bueno y malo, por un lado, y correcto e incorrecto por el otro. El esquema se usa luego para explorar los análogos de los conceptos morales en la evaluación estética y epistémica.

Schemas and the frequency/acceptability mismatch: Corpus distribution predicts sentence judgments

A tight connection between competence and performance is a central tenet of the usage-based model. Methodologically, however, corpus frequency is a poor predictor of acceptability – a phenomenon known as the “frequency/acceptability mismatch”. This article argues that the mismatch arises from a “methodological mismatch”, when simple frequency measures are mapped onto complex grammatical units. To illustrate, we discuss the results of acceptability judgments of go/come-v. The construction is subject to a formal constraint (Go see the doctor! vs. *He goes sees the doctor), which results from its mandative semantics (directives, commissives). While a formal model makes no prediction with regard to gradient acceptability of bare (“grammatical”) go/come-v, the usage-based view assumes that acceptability is a function of compatibility with an abstract schema. The experimental ratings are compared with a number of corpus-derived measures: while acceptability is largely independent of (raw) frequency, it is not independent of frequency-related usage distribution. The results add to recent suggestions that the frequency/acceptability mismatch is substantially reduced if the syntactic complexity of a unit is appropriately captured in usage data.

Frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction – evidence from experimental and corpus data

This paper investigates frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction by German learners of English from a usage-based perspective by presenting findings from two experimental studies and a complementary corpus study. It was examined if and to what extent the frequency of the verb in the catenative verb construction affects the choice of the target-like complement type and if the catenative verb construction with a to-infinitive complement, which is highly frequent in English, is more accurately acquired and entrenched than the less frequent variant with an -ing complement. In all three studies, the more frequent construction with a to-infinitive yielded higher numbers of target-like complement choices. Furthermore, it was shown that the verb’s faithfulness to the construction made a significant prediction of a target-like complement preference. It is argued that a higher faithfulness promotes a target-like entrenchment of the construction and motivates a taxonomic generalisation across related exemplars. Furthermore, the results provide support for the idea that the mental representation of language is comprised of item-specific as well as more abstract schema knowledge, where frequency determines the specificity with which the construction is entrenched.

An algebraic perspective on abstract and concrete domains

Looking at isomorphic constructs from an algebraic perspective, this article suggests that every concrete construct is understood by reference to an underlying abstract schema in the mind of comprehender. The complex form of every abstract schema is created by the gradual development of its elementary form. Throughout the process of cognitive development, new features are added to the elementary form of abstract schema, which leads to gradual formation of a fully-developed abstract schema. Every developed abstract schema is the underlying source for understanding an infinite number of concrete isomorphic constructs. It is suggested that the process of the mapping of base domain (base construct) unto target domain (target construct) is conducted and mediated by an abstract domain. This abstract domain, which is free from concrete features of base and target, is isomorphic to both base and target domains. To describe the mediatory role of this abstract domain, it might be argued that the chain process of understanding a less familiar domain in terms of a relatively more familiar domain (salience imbalance model) cannot continue infinitely. This chain must stop at some point. This point is the abstract domain, which is isomorphic to base and target domains.

Models of narration in literary texts for children (case study of Norman Lindsay’s fairy tale “The Magic Pudding”)

The research focuses on reconstruction of the model of narration “Merry-go-round” in Norman Lindsay’s fairy tale “The Magic Pudding” and revealing lexical, grammatical, semiotic means of its actualization in the text. It is believed that narration refers to the concrete and directly visible way in which a story is told, comprising word choice, sentence length and narrating agent. The model of narration is realized as a cognitive and linguistic construal which we represent as an abstract schema. The model of narration “Merry-go-round” is inbuilt into the narrative structure of the text. The semantics of the name of the model taken from different thesaurus sources: etymological, synonymous and definitional correlates with the name of the game and enables us to reveal typical features of the word and main characteristics of the game itself: it is something pleasant and funny for children, it moves round, has circular movements. Circular fast movements of merry-go-round correlate to the description of its movements in narrative situations in the fairy tale i.e. the repetition of adventures of main characters. On lexico-grammatical level circular movement is actualized via motion verbs. Text illustrations of the fairy tale serve as semiotic means of realization funny circular movements. It is claimed that such narrative structure of the text subconsciously activates in a child’s mind his/her knowledge, memories, emotions connected with the play Merry-go-round and as a result makes a child get interested in a fairy tale and keeps him/her engaged in the development of the plot.

Data Extraction, Transformation and Integration Guided by an Ontology

This chapter deals with integration of XML heterogeneous information sources into a data warehouse with data defined in terms of a global abstract schema or ontology. The authors present an approach supporting the acquisition of data from a set of external sources available for an application of interest including data extraction, data transformation and data integration or reconciliation. The integration middleware that the authors propose extracts data from external XML sources which are relevant according to an RDFS+ ontology, transforms returned XML data into RDF facts conformed to the ontology and reconciles RDF data in order to resolve possible redundancies.

Polysemie du verbe manger chez les Dagara du Burkina Faso

In Dagara, the most common translation for the verb di is 'eat'. Other translations, however, are: 'spend, take advantage of 'burn, wear out, hurt, be infected,' 'be named x, look like x, be x only by name,' and 'be topmost, reach the target, make good for a bad situation'. For each of these meanings, di always differs from its false-synonyms ('munch, blaze, wear, hurt, call, be or have, resemble, manage, make up for. . .'). We distinguish two main types, one where di is a verb of accomplishment, and one where di is a verb of state. The investigation reveals how grammatical structure fits with semantics as well as ethnological data, mainly through a constant valuation of the state of affairs by the Speaker. The article concludes by showing how all of the meanings can be united around a single common, abstract schema.