The Use of Ateji as Figurative Speech in Japanese Song Lyrics

This study aims to analyze the types of ateji used in Japanese song lyrics, and to analyze ateji as a form of figurative speech by the semantic-semiotic connection between the words used in ateji’s writing and reading. Analysis is done qualitatively based on Shirose’s theory of ateji classification and Japan’s hiyu hyougen (figurative speech) theory. This research resulted in the finding of 4 ateji types in Japanese song lyrics, which are ateji for foreign words pronunciation, ateji for pronouns, ateji for replacing words, and ateji for words used in specific titles/works. The use of metaphor (in’yu), metonymy (kan’yu), and synecdoche (teiyu) are also found between the uses of ateji, based on the relation of the words in said ateji. The words can be linked through contextual relation, conceptual relation, or semantical relation. The connection of the words can also result in similar uses as other figurative speeches not included in Japanese’s hiyu hyougen, which indicated that ateji can be handled and understood as a general form of figurative speech in written Japanese language.

In a Manner of Speaking: How Reported Speech May Have Shaped Grammar

We present a first, broad-scale typology of extended reported speech, examples of lexicalised or grammaticalised reported speech constructions without a regular quotation meaning. These typically include meanings that are conceptually close to reported speech, such as think or want, but also interpretations that do not appear to have an obvious conceptual relation with talking, such as cause or begin to. Reported speech may therefore reflect both concepts of communication and inner worlds, and meanings reminiscent of ‘core grammar’, such as evidentiality, modality, aspect (relational) tense and clause linking. We contextualise our findings in the literature on fictive interaction and perspective and suggest that extended reported speech may lend insight into a fundamental aspect of grammar: the evolution of verbal categories. Based on the striking similarity between the meanings of extended reported speech and grammatical categories, we hypothesise that the phenomenon represents a plausible linguistic context in which grammar evolved.

Cascades. Goldman’s Level-Generation, Multilevel Categorization of Action, and Multilevel Verb Semantics

The paper proposes a novel theory of the categorization of acts and applies it to the semantics of action verbs, with fundamental consequences for semantic theory and beyond. The theory is based on Goldman’s (Theory of human action. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1970) multilevel theory of action which is taken here as a theory of categorization. Goldman’s central notion is level-generation: acts of a type may under circumstances generate acts of other, more abstract types. The acts form a hierarchical structure which Goldman calls an act-tree. Level-generation results in a conceptual relation called c-constitution here, i.e. constitution under the given circumstances; I also introduce the more general term cascade for act-trees. In the second part, multilevel cascade-structure categorization is combined with a cognitive semantics that models meanings with Barsalou frames. A multilevel analysis of the concept of writing is discussed in depth and detail in order to illustrate the potential and the consequences of a cascade approach to verb semantics. It is shown that the concept of c-constitution can be generalized as to cover the roles of persons and objects across levels in a cascade. The generalization suggests that multilevel categorization may be a very general and fundamental phenomenon in the psychology of categorization.

The theme of the Motherland in the short stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and Yu.V. Bondarev

The purpose of this article is to examine the originality of understanding one of the central themes of the Russian literature – the theme of the Motherland – in the short stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and Yu.V. Bondarev. The main research methods are comparative-historical and structural-typological. In connection with the analysis of short stories of Solzhenitsyn’s and Bondarev’s the article emphasizes the key features of the short stories as a genre, defines the main directions of the analysis of the short stories of these writers in school classes of Literature, identifies the points of ideological and conceptual relation and repulsion in the perception of the theme of the Motherland in the short stories of Solzhenitsyn’s and Bondarev’s. The analysis of Solzhenitsyn’s short stories allows us to identify their semantic and emotional dominants. This is the admiration for the beauty of the Russian nature, which gives the heroes of short stories a sense of happiness, harmony and unity with the world; love and an indissoluble connection with the Motherland; the writer’s anxiety about her destiny; reproach to the contemporaries who participate in the destruction of the old days; faith in the spiritual revival of Russia. Bondarev’s characters are also amazed by the richness and diversity of the beauty of their native nature, and they watch the destruction of historical and cultural monuments of the past with a heavy heart. But, unlike Solzhenitsyn’s characters, they feel their personal guilt and responsibility for the future of their Motherland. Thus, the patriotic idea, the pain for the fate of the Motherland, the belief in the spiritual renewal and transformation of the Russian life are vividly embodied in the short stories and conceptually bring together the positions of Solzhenitsyn’s and Bondarev’s. Both writers associate their hopes for saving the Motherland with her return to the traditional system of values of the Russian World.

Efficient Text Mining Model with Conceptual Informative Relational Measure using Semantic Ontology

The problem of text mining has been well studied and numerous approaches are analyzed towards their performance in text mining. The existing methods suffer to achieve higher performance as they consider only content of document and the term features available. Also, they measure the similarity between documents on the term features to identify the class of any document. This affects the performance of text mining and produces poor accuracy and generates higher irrelevancy. To improve the performance, a Conceptual Informative Relational Model (CIRM) is presented in this paper. Unlike previous methods, the method considers both conceptual and informative relations in measuring the similarity between the documents. The method preprocesses the text documents by eliminating the stop words, stemming and identifies list of root words or nouns. The root words extracted has been used to measure the conceptual relation and informative relation according to the taxonomy of classes and semantic meanings. Based on the value of relational measures, the method identifies the class of the document and produces result set. The proposed method improves the performance of text mining and reduces the irrelevancy.

Searching for specific sentence meaning in context: the conceptual relation between participants

abstractWe argue that the interpretation of transitive aspectual-verb sentences like “Sue finishes the book” results from an evaluation of the degree of asymmetry in control power between the participants in the sentence. Control asymmetry is proposed as one conceptual constraint on sentence meaning precisification. An evaluation of ‘high control asymmetry’ for the relation between “Sue” and “book” yields an agentive/actor-undergoer interpretation (Sue is doing something involving the book). An evaluation of ‘low control asymmetry’ yields a constitutive/part–whole interpretation (Sue’s story is the last one in the book). Which reading emerges depends on the comprehender’s control-asymmetry evaluation based on contextual cues or, in the absence of explicit context, based on conventionalized control asymmetry expectations given the participants’ denotations. Results show that semantically under-specified aspectual-verb sentences such as “Sue finishes/begins/continues the book” (i) receive multiple readings in a control-asymmetry neutral context, (ii) are judged as less acceptable than their control asymmetry-biased counterparts, and (iii) clearly evidence the constitutive reading as part of their core reading. These findings are consistent with a real-time linguistic meaning composition system that systematically draws from context guided by lexically driven semantic demands and that presents the structure of these demands as a cognitively viable metric of complexity.

Metonymy

This chapter addresses metonymy, an operation that is used to refer to an entity by means of an expression that has a particular semantic or conceptual relation to that entity (e.g. ‘the ham sandwich’ referring to a customer at a restaurant or ‘the wooden turtle’ referring to an object on a shelf). It discusses different types and communicative functions of metonymy and delineates it from other referential ambiguities such as homonymy and polysemy. The chapter reviews experimental evidence from real-time processing, acquisition, and language disorder and illustrates that discrete cognitive processes are involved in the constitution of extended meanings. It presents a classification of referential ambiguities based on neurocognitive profiles and suggests that the different types of ambiguities may be linked to the diachronic development of meaning alternations.

The Instrumental Character of the Concept of Sustainability Focusing to the Institutionalist Theory

In organizations, we seek to adapt to the good practices of a relationship with nature, transforming technologies, processes and structural and productive redesign. Reflections such as these motivate research supported by the Institutionalist Theory and the assumptions of sustainability. The general objective here is to carry out a theoretical-conceptual study on the instrumental character of the concept of sustainability in focusing to the of institutionalist theory; and to the results, the specific objectives of contextualizing the concept of sustainability (1), addressing the main concepts raised in the face of institutionalist theory (2), and analyzing the approach of the conceptual perspectives considered in this research (3). The question to be answered in this study is: what is the instrumental character of the concept of sustainability in the face of institutionalist theory? The Content Analysis Method and data analysis techniques are applied in qualitative research, such as cleavage and categorization. As a result, it brings a virtuous circle of conceptual relation in evidence; points out inequality of behavior in organizations, making it difficult to achieve sustainability; Criticism points to the lack of employee awareness of the rules. We also look at organizational levels that reflect on sustainability. Conceptual applicability converts the commitment to protect and conserve natural resources, while at the same time channeling real benefits to all who are around the institution that promotes the activities. These concepts will result in a balance between the constraints that lead to scarcity and progress on the sustainability tripod; are isomorphic measures that are somehow beneficial in the relationship between the environment and the social and economic.