Resource availability influences global social network properties in Gunnison’s prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni)

Increasingly we are discovering that the interactions between individuals within social groups can be quite complex and flexible. Social network analysis offers a toolkit to describe and quantify social structure, the patterns we observe, and evaluate the social and environmental factors that shape group dynamics. Here, we used 14 Gunnison’s prairie dogs networks to evaluate how resource availability and network size influenced four global properties of the networks (centralization, clustering, average path length, small word index). Our results suggest a positive correlation between overall network cohesion and resource availability, such that networks became less centralized and cliquish as biomass/m2 availability decreased. We also discovered that network size modulates the link between social interactions and resource availability and is consistent with a more ‘decentralized’ group. This study highlights the importance of how individuals modify social cohesions and network connectedness as a way to reduce intragroup competition under different ecological conditions.

Embedded indexing with Word. Part 3 - shifting method and field codes for cross-references and page ranges

In this third article in a series on the underexploited potential for using Microsoft Word as a tool for embedded indexing, the focus is on what is called the ‘shifting method’ and the use of the PAGE field within the XE field. It covers the application of these methods to see also cross-references and page ranges. The important search/replace method in this context, the pattern search, is described in detail. The addition of decorations to page references and the automatic conversion of a Word index into an active ebook index are also considered. The first two articles in the series can be found in the June and September 2020 issues of The Indexer (38(2) and 38(3)).

INTEGRATING A HISTORICAL CORPUS, A WORD INDEX, AND A DATABASE OF OLD EAST SLAVIC VERNACULAR WRITING

The paper presents work on two databases of vernacular Old East Slavic writing, viz. the databases of birchbark letters and epigraphy. The task is to link the information of archaeological/historical and linguistic character, namely, the possibility of simultaneous expansion and updating of the database and of a linguistic corpus that enables grammatical and lexical search. The online database Old East Slavic birch bark letters and the section of the historical subcorpus of the Russian National corpus containing birch bark letters call for an integration. This includes, in particular, creating an online workstation for the morphological markup of texts linked to the database entries, the possibility of exporting XML-databases with morphological markup to include them in the RNC, the possibility of automatic generation of forward and backward word indices to the database on the basis of the marked corpus, mutual verification of previously compiled manually indices to the book by A. A. Zalizniak The Old Novgorod Dialect (a new updated edition of this book is being prepared) and markup of the corpus. Creation of a new database on the Old East Slavic epigraphy is designed to overcome the fragmented state of the publications and research in the field, combining the material accumulated by the scholars into a single electronic resource. From the point of view of programming, the architecture of the epigraphy database is analogous to the one of the birch bark database, which makes it possible to create an annotated corpus of the Old East Slavic epigraphy.

“Pushkin Dictionary” by G.A. Shengeli: The unpublished article by the author of the concordance of A.S. Pushkin’s poems

The publication introduces into scientific circulation an article by G.A. Shengeli (1894 – 1956), dedicated to “Pushkin's Dictionary” prepared by him in the second half of the 1930s, which was conceived as a concordance of the classic’s poetry, but remained unpublished (the manuscript was most likely lost). Dated 1955 by the authors and written by Shengeli to notify writers and scholars about the goals, structure and informational possibilities of the “Pushkin Dictionary”, the article is still relevant, being one of the few concrete testimonies of the scientist’s intention to study Pushkin’s language and linguistic poetics. The text is published according to the typescript with the author’s corrections, preserved in the fund of the journal "Oktiabr’" in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts. In Shengeli’s article it is noted that the very idea of compiling a dictionary to the works by Pushkin as the creator of the Russian literary language arose long ago, but the lack of scientifically reliable Pushkin editions hindered the implementation of the plan. The compilers of the Pushkin Dictionary took as a basis the texts of the 1936 six-volume Collected Works, issued by the Goslitizdat, where, according to the scientist, this problem was generally overcome. Highlighting the explanatory dictionary and the concordance dictionary as two main types of works describing the linguistic features of one or another author, Shengeli argues the choice of concordance, presented in the form of a set of dictionaries, united by a common word index, for composing the corpus of Pushkin's poetic language.