Semantic Changes and Pragmatic Functions of Address Form “Bao” in Chinese Media Context

As an emerging address form, "Bao" is popular and widely used in media and has its own place in lovers' prattles. This article compares the newly fashioned address "bao" with the other two address forms, "bao bao" popular in 2015 as one of the ten buzzwords and "bao bei", respectively. It is found that the three shares the basic semantic meaning, but the degrees of their semantic extension differ. There are three semantic meanings: to refer to children from the parents' part, refer to someone in close relation, and refer to all the people. Meanwhile, "bao" has its distinctive features in pragmatic functions. The first one is to maintain a harmonious relationship, and the second is to achieve communicative goals. Therefore, we should consider when choosing among the three addresses, albeit their semantic generalization, in case of pragmatic failure.

Towards Automated Semantic Explainability of Multimedia Feature Graphs

Multimedia feature graphs are employed to represent features of images, video, audio, or text. Various techniques exist to extract such features from multimedia objects. In this paper, we describe the extension of such a feature graph to represent the meaning of such multimedia features and introduce a formal context-free PS-grammar (Phrase Structure grammar) to automatically generate human-understandable natural language expressions based on such features. To achieve this, we define a semantic extension to syntactic multimedia feature graphs and introduce a set of production rules for phrases of natural language English expressions. This explainability, which is founded on a semantic model provides the opportunity to represent any multimedia feature in a human-readable and human-understandable form, which largely closes the gap between the technical representation of such features and their semantics. We show how this explainability can be formally defined and demonstrate the corresponding implementation based on our generic multimedia analysis framework. Furthermore, we show how this semantic extension can be employed to increase the effectiveness in precision and recall experiments.

Lexical diachronic semantic maps

This paper extends the scope of application of the semantic map model to diachronic lexical semantics. Combining a quantitative approach to large-scale synchronic polysemy data with a qualitative evaluation of the diachronic material in two text languages, ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek, it shows that weighted diachronic semantic maps can capture informative generalizations about the organization of the lexicon and its reshaping over time. The general methodology developed in the paper is illustrated with a case study of the semantic extension of time-related lexemes. This case study shows that the blend of tools well established in linguistic typology with proven methods of historical linguistics enables a principled approach to long-standing questions in the fields of diachronic semasiology and onomasiology.

Infrared and Visible Image Object Detection via Focused Feature Enhancement and Cascaded Semantic Extension

Infrared and visible images (multi-sensor or multi-band images) have many complementary features which can effectively boost the performance of object detection. Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have seen frequent use to perform object detection in multi-band images. However, it is very difficult for CNNs to extract complementary features from infrared and visible images. In order to solve this problem, a difference maximum loss function is proposed in this paper. The loss function can guide the learning directions of two base CNNs and maximize the difference between features from the two base CNNs, so as to extract complementary and diverse features. In addition, we design a focused feature-enhancement module to make features in the shallow convolutional layer more significant. In this way, the detection performance of small objects can be effectively improved while not increasing the computational cost in the testing stage. Furthermore, since the actual receptive field is usually much smaller than the theoretical receptive field, the deep convolutional layer would not have sufficient semantic features for accurate detection of large objects. To overcome this drawback, a cascaded semantic extension module is added to the deep layer. Through simple multi-branch convolutional layers and dilated convolutions with different dilation rates, the cascaded semantic extension module can effectively enlarge the actual receptive field and increase the detection accuracy of large objects. We compare our detection network with five other state-of-the-art infrared and visible image object detection networks. Qualitative and quantitative experimental results prove the superiority of the proposed detection network.

Coordination in theory extension: how Reichenbach can help us understand endogenization in evolutionary biology

Reichenbach’s early solution to the scientific problem of how abstract mathematical representations can successfully express real phenomena is rooted in his view of coordination. In this paper, I claim that a Reichenbach-inspired, ‘layered’ view of coordination provides us with an effective tool to systematically analyse some epistemic and conceptual intricacies resulting from a widespread theorising strategy in evolutionary biology, recently discussed by Okasha (2018) as ‘endogenization’. First, I argue that endogenization is a form of extension of natural selection theory that comprises three stages: quasi-axiomatisation, functional extension, and semantic extension. Then, I argue that the functional extension of one core principle of natural selection theory, namely, the principle of heritability, requires the semantic extension of the concept of inheritance. This is because the semantic extension of ‘inheritance’ is necessary to establish a novel form of coordination between the principle of heritability and the extended domain of phenomena that it is supposed to represent. Finally, I suggest that—despite the current lack of consensus on the right semantic extension of ‘inheritance’—we can fruitfully understand the reconceptualization of ‘inheritance’ provided by niche construction theorists as the result of a novel form of coordination.

"Macho": The singularity of a mock Spanish item

This paper scrutinizes the path of the semantic extension of the originally neutral Spanish term macho‘male animal’ to the pejorative ‘animal-like man’. Semantic pejoration belongs to one of the techniques that Hill (1995b) identifies when describing Mock Spanish, a type of racist discourse used by monolingual English speakers when using single Spanish words. My objective was to identify if the origin of this pejoration and its subsequent proliferation had some relation to Mock Spanish. Methodologically, this is conducted by means of a lexical research of diachronic corpora in Spanish and English. I trace the origin of macho as an exclusively Spanish and neutral term to an international word with a pejorative connotation. My analysis leads me to conclude that the semantic shift of macho, at least in its written form, developed in both sides of the Mexican-American border in the first half of the XX century. Macho as an ‘animal-like man’ acquires a negative meaning northwards and a positive southwards. The latter during the Nationalist uproars of the Mexican Revolution.