Symbolic and automatic differentiation of languages

Formal languages are usually defined in terms of set theory. Choosing type theory instead gives us languages as type-level predicates over strings. Applying a language to a string yields a type whose elements are language membership proofs describing how a string parses in the language. The usual building blocks of languages (including union, concatenation, and Kleene closure) have precise and compelling specifications uncomplicated by operational strategies and are easily generalized to a few general domain-transforming and codomain-transforming operations on predicates. A simple characterization of languages (and indeed functions from lists to any type) captures the essential idea behind language “differentiation” as used for recognizing languages, leading to a collection of lemmas about type-level predicates. These lemmas are the heart of two dual parsing implementations—using (inductive) regular expressions and (coinductive) tries—each containing the same code but in dual arrangements (with representation and primitive operations trading places). The regular expression version corresponds to symbolic differentiation, while the trie version corresponds to automatic differentiation. The relatively easy-to-prove properties of type-level languages transfer almost effortlessly to the decidable implementations. In particular, despite the inductive and coinductive nature of regular expressions and tries respectively, we need neither inductive nor coinductive/bisimulation arguments to prove algebraic properties.

The Impact of Codemixing on Language Differentiation in Young Bilinguals

The phenomenon by which a lexical item or phrase from one language is inserted into another, known as codemixing, is common in adult bilingual communities around the world (Genesee & Nicoladis, 1997). In many types of immersion programs as well, codemixing is a common strategy for introducing target vocabulary. However, little research has been conducted on the precise impact that vocabulary exposure via codemixing may have on how the target item is encoded by child listeners – namely, how it is assigned to one language or another. Spanish- and English-speaking children (n = 10) between 3 and 6 years old were recruited to participate in this experiment, in which phonetically English- or Spanish-apparent nonwords were presented in the context of a “codemixed” or “non-codemixed” sentence and participants were asked to decide to which language the nonword belonged. Results demonstrated a considerable bias toward categorizing most of the nonwords as Spanish (the non-dominant language for all ten children), although the language in which the nonword was introduced also considerably impacted children’s judgments. While the nonword’s phonology appears somewhat influential in determining its language of origin, this was not as impactful as the overall linguistic context.

Mapping Perceptions of Language Variation in Wisconsin

This article investigates whether residents of central Wisconsin perceive language variation within their state and, if they do, what it looks like according to them. To achieve these aims, this study examines the perspectives of one central Wisconsin community regarding internal language differentiation within the state. It follows the perceptual dialectology paradigm, based on work by Dennis Preston, in that it studies how nonlinguists view language variation within Wisconsin. Respondents completed Preston’s draw-a-map task, which additionally asked them to label each indicated area. The drawn boundaries were digitalized using ArcGIS to create composite maps to allow for systematic comparison. The labels provided by the respondents were analyzed to see how this group of Wisconsin residents views the speech of each identified region and thus to see whether there are distinctly enregistered dialects within Wisconsin for these respondents. Findings show three distinctly perceived areas within the state: the Milwaukee area, the north of the state, and the participants’ own area, central Wisconsin. The analysis of the labels indicates that an urban-rural divide is at play for perception of the first two mentioned areas, whereas perceptioin of the latter identified area reflects the belief in a regionally located standard variety.

Language Preference of Bilingual Preschool Children in Articulating Word-Object Relationships

This study attempts to focus on one factor of bilingual acquisition and language differentiation by exploring bilingual preschoolers’ language preference in articulating word-object relationships using concentrated descriptive and associative questions. Ten bilingual preschool children from the middle class families participated in the study. Pre-testing phase was conducted before the actual testing phase and the preschool teachers were consulted to confirm the data collection. These observations on general language bias as well as preferences developed by the males and females participants may have significant implications for language teaching that teachers shall carefully deliberate the kind of classroom culture they would like their learners to experience because strong language bias could possibly develop in language prejudice that may obstruct healthy bilingual development.

RUSSIAN DETACHED COORDINATED ATTRIBUTES IN THE MIRROR OF THE PERSIAN LANGUAGE

This article is focused on a comparative analysis of sentences with detached coordinated attributes in the Russian and Persian languages. Detachment is one of the most common ways of complicating simple sentences in the Russian language. Detachment in the Russian language is realized by a change of a rhythmic structure and intonation of the secondary member of the sentence in order to give them a semantic and syntactic independence in the sentence. The conditions and ways of detaching the secondary members of the sentence in the Russian language, differentiation of simple sentences with detached members from complex ones, as well as translation of these sentences always cause difficulties for Iranian students. It is therefore necessary to conduct contrastive-comparative studies in this field. The novelty of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time the question of detached coordinated attributes has been considered in a comparative Russian-Persian study by drawing on translation of literary texts. The analysis is carried out on the basis of 70 examples, collected from various Russian literary works that have been translated into Persian. Our analysis shows that the use of the conjunction [ke] and the addition [ye / i] to the defined word in Persian are the most matching Russian detached coordinated attributes.

ON THE VARIABILITY OF SOMATIC PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN THE CHECHEN LANGUAGE

The article investigates variable somatic phraseological units of the Chechen language. Differentiation of terms and concepts "variability" and "alternativeness" is carried out. The variability including both usual, and occasional changes of component structure of phraseological units is considered in the article as characteristic sign of phraseological units. The language alternativeness of somatic phraseological units in the Chechen language exists on all levels of the language: phonetic, lexical, morphological, structural-syntactic. The greatest distribution in the Chechen language belongs to lexical options. The most frequent among them is the type of lexical alternativeness when the replaced components are the lexemes of the same semantic field. The ability of somatic phraseological units to enter the synonymic relations is considered to be the one of the obvious signs of consistency of somatic phraseology.

LANGUAGE PREFERENCE OF BILINGUAL PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN ARTICULATING WORD-OBJECT RELATIONSHIPS

This study attempts to focus on one factor of bilingual acquisition and language differentiation by exploring bilingual preschoolers’ language preference in articulating word-object relationships using concentrated descriptive and associative questions. Ten bilingual preschool children from middle-class families participated in the study. Pre-testing phase was conducted before the actual testing phase and the preschool teachers were consulted to confirm the data collection. These observations on general language bias as well as preferences developed by the males and females participants may have significant implications for language teaching that teachers shall carefully deliberate the kind of classroom culture they would like their learners to experience because strong language bias could possibly develop in language prejudice that may obstruct healthy bilingual development.

Northern Pame-Spanish language acquisition in the context of incipient language loss

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: Northern Pame (autonym: Xi’iuy) is an Otopamean language situated in the Mexican state of San Luís Potosí. Today over 90% of the Pame population speaks Spanish, and two-year-old children only speak Northern Pame in two Northern Pame villages. The paper explores differences in two-year-old Pame children’s production of words in Northern Pame and Spanish in order to assess the possibility that developmental constraints and/or language shift influence the form and distribution of the children’s words in the two languages. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on video recordings of five Northern Pame children around the age of 2;0. The adult speakers included one father and four mothers. Four hours of production data were analyzed from each of the five children. Data and Analysis: We analyzed the following: (1) the proportion of major lexical categories; (2) the use of the Spanish copula ser in Pame; (3) the mean segmental length of words in Pame and Spanish; and (4) the syllable structure of words in Pame and Spanish. Findings/Conclusions: The overall results demonstrate that the children’s Pame and Spanish words have distinct linguistic properties. Originality: The study is the first to report acquisition data for the Northern Pame language. Northern Pame differs from Spanish on a wide range of lexical and grammatical features. The analysis includes four lexical features. The outcomes for these four features produce a multi-dimensional measure of language differentiation. Significance/Implications: The study shows that Northern Pame parents are successfully passing their home language to their children despite pressure from the contact language. The children acquired the features of Pame words even though some mothers produced over 40% of their nouns in Spanish. The Spanish vocabulary does not inhibit the children’s developing Pame lexical structures.

Language proximity and speech perception in young bilinguals

Linguistic experience shapes speech perception from the earliest stages of development. Infants growing up in bilingual contexts are exposed to a more complex linguistic input from which they will gradually build language-specific phonetic and phonological categories, eventually characterizing words in their early lexicons. Input languages can show different levels of proximity relative to their rhythmic, phonetic, phonological, or lexical properties. Does language proximity affect early speech perception processes, from language differentiation to perceptual narrowing and phonological representation of words in the bilinguals’ vocabulary? Data from infants growing up in Catalan-Spanish contexts, acquiring a close pair of Romance languages, are reviewed and contrasted with data from infants exposed to more distant language pairs. It is argued that language proximity can determine specific adjustments in bilinguals’ early phonetic perception and phonological encoding of words. Language proximity factors can account for differences among bilingual infants’ trajectories previously reported in the literature.