A Qualitative Similarity Framework for the Interpretation of Natural Language Similarity Expressions

In this paper, a representational framework is presented featuring a qualitative notion of similarity. It is aimed at issues of natural language semantics, in particular the semantics of expressions of similarity and sameness and their role in comparison and ad-hoc kind formation. The framework makes use of attribute spaces, which are well-established in AI and also in some branches of natural language semantics, e.g., frame-based approaches (Barsalou 1992). What distinguishes attribute spaces and representations as proposed in this paper is the idea of systems of predicates on attribute spaces corresponding to predicates on the domain. On the worldy side, a domain includes a set of relevant predicates talking about individuals. These predicates have counterparts on the representational side talking about points of an attribute space. Counterpart predicates are required to be consistent with their originals; more precisely, they have to agree in truth-value on the set of positive and negative exemplars thereby approximating the original predicates. Moreover, counterpart predicates will be assumed to have convex and open extensions. This system facilitates a qualitative notion of similarity which is suited to account for the meaning of natural language similarity expressions and, furthermore, their role in comparison and ad-hoc kind formation.

Representations as Metalinguistic Macro-Awareness: An Experiment on 11–12 Years Old Greek Students within the Framework of Pluralistic Approaches

SummaryIn order to transition from a monolingual foreign language course to a multilingual one, all the elements that are connected to students’ cognition should be taken into consideration in order to facilitate this shift. Working with classes of French as a Foreign Language involving 11–12 years old Greek students, our study revealed that by switching to multilingual teaching, students’ representations of language(s) start to emerge; these representations had in most cases been hidden, incoherent and fossilized in teaching monolingual classes. While considering metalinguistic awareness, a variable that is central to our research, as a prerequisite for resolving problems emerging in a multilingual educational context, this article seeks to show that the representations language learners make of themselves and their learning constitute metalinguistic reflection at a macro level, which may influence how metalinguistic awareness functions when performing multilingual tasks. This paper focuses on the processing of qualitative data: meta-discourse analysis of the learners participating in our study led us to establish a typology of representations that enabled us to highlight what aspects to focus on in the classroom so as to prepare students to reflect on language more intensively. This involved guiding learners towards modifying their representational framework, by addressing deficiencies and correcting their representations characterized as “unproductive”, in order to take full advantage of multilingual teaching/learning situations.

A constraint-based modeling of negative polarity items in result clause constructions in Romanian

Summary The paper discusses the occurrence of emphatic negative polarity items (NPIs) in high degree result clause constructions. We will identify four distributional patterns for Romanian emphatic NPIs. These will range from NPIs that only occur occasionally in result constructions to NPIs that are bound to such constructions and even do not show any truth-conditionally relevant semantic contribution. We reformulate a scalar, pragmatic theory of NPIs in a constraint-based, representational framework, Lexical Resource Semantics. We propose a scalar extension of a standard semantics of result clauses in order to capture the high degree, i.e. intensification readings. The constraint-based, representational perspective of this paper allows for an elegant modeling of the data: (i) We can capture the four distributional patterns as a lexical property of the discussed NPIs. (ii) The semantics and pragmatics of Romanian result clause constructions is accounted for by lexical properties of the result clause complementizers. (iii) A scalar analysis of emphatic NPIs can be applied in embedded clauses and even when the NPI itself does not contribute to the at-issue content of the overall utterance.

Syllable Weakening in Kagoshima Japanese

This paper examines syllable weakening or nisshōka (入声化) in Kagoshima Japanese (KJ), where high vowel apocope feeds lenition, leading to correspondences such as Tōkyō Japanese (TJ) [kaki] ‘persimmon’ and Kagoshima [kaʔ]. The traditional pattern noted in the literature is quite clear. Apocope elides stem-final /u/ or /i/. The preceding onset is lenited in one of four ways: 1) stops and affricates are debuccalised (/kaki/ > [kaʔ] ‘persimmon’); 2) fricatives undergo voicing neutralisation (TJ [kazu] > KJ [kas] ‘number’); 3) nasals undergo place loss (TJ [kami] > KJ [kaɴ] ‘paper’); 4) rhotics undergo gliding (TJ [maru] > [maj] ‘round’). This paper presents an initial analysis of the data within Element Theory representational framework.

'Sonderkommando' photographs as a disobedient act of seeing

In his book Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, Didi-Huberman indicates that the four photographs in question were taken as a counterweight or in spite of something. They show the activities of the Sonderkommando, whose task was to escort other Jews into gas chambers, as well as to dispose and burn the corpses that were left behind. In the dual role of the victim and the perpetrator, members of this unit, in spite of the ban and the danger they were in, had created four photographs showing their own activities inside the camp. Throughout the work, different modes of being in spite of characteristic of the aforementioned photographs are separated and explained with regard to whether they relate to the need for, production or reception of photographs. They were created in spite of, but also based on, the inconceivability of the situation they portray (photographs as evidence), in spite of the prohibition of photographs (obstacle in production) and in spite of the representational framework or representability of humans obstacle in reception. Inconceivability brings us to the notions of evidence, truth, but also power, representability, prohibition and rules. Based on the representability of the photographs and the notion of cultural memory, we considered the possibilities of the photographs representing Judith Butler's disobedient act of seeing. It will be shown that an emergence in spite of as Didi-Huberman would say, or a disobedient act of seeing in Judith Butler's words, is readable more through the way the images are made, than through what they depict. Unlike the usual "allowed" war photographs, they are specific proofs of the prohibition against which they are made.

Kirjandus, kontrapunkt ja cantus technicus / Literature, Counterpoint, and Cantus Technicus

Artikkel uurib tehnika representeerimise poeetilisi viise kirjandustekstides. Võttes kompositsiooniteooriast muusikas tarvitusele kontrapunkti mõiste, näitab autor, et iseäranis modernistlikes tekstides, kus tehnikat esitatakse sageli kas vastandlikuna loodusele või ängistavana tegelaste meeletundmustele, saame rääkida kontrapunktist kui poeetilisest võttest, mille eesmärk on eriomaselt rõhutada tehnika kohalolu ja kaalu tegelaste tunde- ja argielus. Autor väidab, et tehnika kui ühe pingestava „hääle“ – cantus technicus’e – tegelaste tundmus- ja kogemusvälja polüfoonsest häälterägastikust eristamine aitab meil paremini mõista üha jõudsamalt argiteadvusse hiiliva tehnilise ajastu loomulaadi ning sünkroniseerib lugeja mõjusalt senitundmatu modernsuse-kogemusega. This article explores D. H. Lawrence’s and Virginia Woolf’s literary responses to modern technology by analyzing their most typical poetic ways of representing technology-related themes in their works. Since technology, in its various modern industrial forms, is generally depicted as being set against nature or otherwise estranging to Lawrence’s characters, it is suggested that it may be useful to explain his peculiar representational framework for technology via the concept of counterpoint. Indeed, by adopting the term from composition theory, it is argued that the contrapuntal approach to describing technology forms a distinctive literary device for Lawrence in an effort to communicate the “polyphonic” experiences of everyday technical consciousness of the “bewildering pageant of modern life” and thereby synchronizes the readers more effectively with the realities of industrial modernity. While adopting the counterpoint for tracing the technicity in Lawrence promises, perhaps, no overarching solutions, it nevertheless provides a viable literary model, and a novel perspective, for exploring “the dynamic interplay of tensions and contradictions” that technology typically triggers in the poetic creation of the experience in his texts. While critics have found Virginia Woolf’s works exhibiting, perhaps, certain passivity in dealing with the themes of industrialism and technological machine, the article argues that there is, in fact, a very nuanced and rich position to be found on human relationship with modern technology in closer readings of Woolf’s works. Despite the fact that counterpoint as a literary technique has been noticed as forming a crucial method in advancing several important aspects in her works, viewing it as a device for extracting particularly modern technology and its many variants has not been researched in depth. By offering new techno-poetic readings of Woolf’s seminal works Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and Between the Acts (1941), the article shows that the contrapuntal approach, in analyzing the key passages, where technology genuinely affects the characters, proves to be a helpful method in making sense of the full impact of modernity in its many and varied aspects. The article identifies the appearances of cars and planes, for example, to represent predominantly Britain’s imperial power, which acts as a counterpoint to the diverse sensibilities of Woolf’s main characters.