Philosophical Origins of Methodological Nomothetism of F. de Saussure’s Concept

The article raises the problem of philosophical principles and origins of Ferdinand de Saussure’s views. The editors of “Course in General Linguistics”, C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, contributed to the emergence of stereotypes about Saussure as the founder of structuralism, who for the first time conceptually distinguished language and speech based on dichotomy, established the systemic nature of language as an abstract entity, developed a bilateral psychological theory of sign and divided linguistics into the synchronous and the diachronic. This prevented the synthesis of Saussure’s concept as a holistic and internally consistent anthropocentric system of views. The conceptual analysis of the fundamental theses of Saussure’s concept, given in Saussure’s autographed materials, which appeared in 2002, showed that its most important feature is that it was an anthropocentric nomothetic proposition aimed at creating the foundations for the study of human language activity as such, language as such and speech as such. The Kantian idea of anthropocentric transcendentalism can be considered the principal philosophical source of Saussure’s nomothetic project.

PRIVACY, FACE, AND SOCIAL RESPECTABILITY IN A DIGITAL CHINA

This study attempts to delineate $2 when they use social media, shop online, and make electronic payments using WeChat Pay and Alipay. It is part of a book I am writing on perceptions of privacy and surveillance in China and is grounded in an inductive content analysis of 58 semi-structured in-depth interviews I conducted late 2019 in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu. Privacy is written with two different words in Mandarin: $2 (a personal thing you do not wish to disclose in public akin to Western definitions) and $2 (hiding a shameful secret). Most of my interviewees used the latter meaning: $2 . Privacy, thus, was $2 , understood as $2 (moral face - e.g., purchases of personal medicine, underwear and sex-related products, or weapons) and $2 (social face - eg., financial information). Moreover, they perceived the need to hide shameful information $2 : parents and supervisors, or hackers who would disclose personal information, but less so an abstract entity such as the government. For instance, several interviewees felt they could “hide on Weibo” using a pseudonym, despite the real-name registration policy. These findings on privacy may shed slight on how Chinese citizens view the digitalization of surveillance through facial recognition monitoring and the building of the social credit system, and contribute to culture-sensitive surveillance research.

Psychological Oneness: A Typology

Oneness is a sense of profound unity with some other entity, typically a large, abstract entity such as nature or all of existence. This article offers a typology of oneness based on a review of oneness concepts in the psychology literature. The typology distinguishes between oneness experiences and oneness intuitions or beliefs, the latter being propositions about how self and other are connected. It also distinguishes between three perceived ontologies: expansion (including other in self), interdependence (self and other in symbiosis), and essential (self and other sharing some fundamental property). Confirmatory factor analysis ( n = 102) supported the typology’s dimensions within the scope of nature, using novel sets of items based on restructuring extant oneness measures. Implications of the typology for understanding oneness with nature and its role in addressing environmental crises are discussed, including how these may interact with cultural context.

Making Explicit What has Been Implicit

How is a map different from things that are not maps? What is a map? How do you know it's a map? Such questions appear quite simple—the answers would seem to be things everyone knows almost without thinking—yet comprehensive answers have proved elusive. Hitherto, such existential questions have almost inevitably been either conflated with practical ones or deliberately ignored. Map artifacts are, by themselves, mere things. Like any text, the map artifact can be read, and, through the action of being read, the artifact comes to bear meaning. Maps, however, go beyond mere meaning-bearing to achieve a state where they actually embody meaning. Reaching a state of meaning-embodiment requires a transformation that is analogous to an apotheosis or a transfiguration of the common clay of the artifact into an abstract conceptual state of map-hood. Describing this transfiguration into a conceptual state requires a Conceptual theory of cartography—one that defines the relationship between the artifact as a thing and the map as an abstract entity, and that also defines the map entity in a manner unambiguously applicable to every, any, and all maps. Such a theory would also have to define the discipline of cartography in relation to that abstract map entity. This paper proposes the outlines for the required Conceptual theory—one based on the proven model of Conceptual Art. Practically speaking, the first step—and the effective scope of the paper—is an inquiry into the nature of the map as an abstract conceptual entity. It provides a model for an investigative methodology for interrogating the formal map, and sketches out a framework for assimilating the findings of such investigations. This paper will not settle all fundamental questions about what a map is, but it will outline an analytical course that can address them. It proposes that asking how one knows something is a map is a step on the road to discovering what a map is.

MODELLING OF THE FRAGMENT OF THE SEMANTIC FIELD, REPRESENTED BY ABSTRACT NOUNS IN OLD ICELANDIC

Введение. Изучение семантики словообразовательных формантов сосредоточено главным образом на материалах современных языков. Эмпирический материал охватывает лексические единицы одного из древних германских языков – древнеисландского, а именно существительные мужского рода, образованные с помощью словообразовательного суффикса -skapr-. Цель – моделирование участка семантического пространства, вербализованного в древнеисландском языке посредством производных лексических единиц с абстрактной семантикой, маркированных словообразовательным суффиксом -skapr-. Материал и методы. Материалом для исследования послужили этимологические и толковые словари древнеисландского языка. Корпус эмпирического материала составил 86 единиц, выделенных с помощью приема сплошной выборки. Исследование языкового материала осуществлялось с применением методов сравнения, компонентного и словообразовательного анализа, приемов этимологического анализа, интерпретации. Результаты и обсуждение. Корпус лексических единиц мужского рода склонения на -а, образованных от именных основ при помощи суффикса -skapr-, включает 86 единиц. Понятийные области, вербализованные производными с рассматриваемым суффиксом, включают обозначения личностных качеств человека, характера или способа действий и их результатов, обозначение конкретных объектов, товаров в собирательном значении, типов взаимоотношений, обозначения понятий, относящихся к религии, язычеству или колдовству. Наиболее многочисленная группа обозначений охватывает названия черт характера или поведения человека, как поощряемых, так и порицаемых обществом. При этом зафиксировано наличие синонимичных рядов производных с суффиксом -skapr-, номинирующих одно и то же качество характера человека, а также синкретичность семантики некоторых производных с указанным суффиксом, включающей как абстрактные, так и конкретные значения. Наличествующий в морфологической структуре анализируемых производных суффикс -skapr- этимологически связан с самостоятельным словом skap «вид, состояние», которое восходит к праиндоевропейскому корню *(s)keH. Развернутый ряд производных, построенных по одному и тому же словообразовательному типу, позволяет рассматривать данный тип как отдельный формат представления знаний, некий мыслительный конструкт, объективированный суффиксом. Суффикс в такой аналитической конструкции функционирует в качестве маркера формата. В случае с анализируемым суффиксом данный формат может быть определен как абстрактная сущность, названная основой, мыслимая как самостоятельный объект в абсолютизированном виде, т. е. в отрыве от действительного обладателя этой характеристики. Заключение. Производные с словообразовательным суффиксом -skapr- репрезентируют целый спектр понятий, связанных с характеристиками человека и его деятельности. Словообразовательный суффикс функционирует как маркер семантического инварианта в семантической структуре производных, который может позиционироваться как профиль словообразовательного типа. Семантическое пространство, форматируемое суффиксом, имеет композиционную природу, обусловленную семантикой компонентов самого суффикса. Introduction. Over the last decade’s studies on semantics of derivational morphemes have primarily dealt with contemporary language data. The article focuses on a group of Old Icelandic masculine nouns that are formed by means of the derivational suffix -skapr-. The aim is to model a fragment of the semantic field that is represented by the Old Icelandic derivatives with an abstract semantics and marked by the suffix -skapr- . Materials and methods. The source of material for the study is etymological dictionaries of the Old Icelandic language. The corpus of empirical material includes 86 lexical units. The study of the linguistic material draws on the methods of comparison, component and word-formation analysis, methods of etymological analysis, interpretation. Results. The corpus of masculine nouns belonging to the masculine a-declension, derived from nominal stems with the help of the suffix -skapr-, includes 86 units. The conceptual areas, verbalized by derivatives with the suffix under consideration, include designations of personal qualities of a person, character or method of action and its results, designation of specific objects, goods in a collective sense, types of relationships, designation of concepts related to religion, paganism or witchcraft. The most numerous group of designations covers the names of traits or behavior of a person, both encouraged and condemned by the members of society. It has been revealed that the same quality of a person’s character can be verbalized by a series of synonymous derivatives with the suffix -skapr-. Besides, a number of derivatives with the suffix display their syncretic semantics, involving both abstract and concrete meanings. The suffix -skapr- present in the morphological structure of the analyzed derivatives is etymologically related to the independent word skap “species, state”, which goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)keH. A series of derivatives, built according to the same word-formation type, allows us to consider this type as a separate format for representing knowledge, a kind of mental construct objectified by the suffix. The suffix in this analytic construct functions as a format marker. It is argued that the suffix under analysis marks the format that can be defined as “an abstract entity called by the base, conceived as an independent object in an absolutized form, i.e. in isolation from the real owner of this characteristics”. Conclusion. Derivatives with the word-formation suffix -skapr- represent a whole range of concepts related to the characteristics of a person and his activities. The word-formation suffix functions as a marker of the semantic invariant in the semantic structure of derivatives, which can be viewed as a profile of this word-formation type. The semantic filed indicated by the suffix is of a compositional nature due to the semantics of the components of the suffix itself.

Kěài ‘cute’ in Mandarin

The word kěài in Mandarin is semantically rich. However, little research has been devoted to examining its meanings and uses, let alone possible innovative usage following the popularity of social media platforms. Hence, this study aims to examine in detail (a) the descriptive range, meanings and functions of kěài, and (b) possible changes of its usage in Internet communication. To achieve these goals, a total of 800 tokens of kěài were collected and analyzed–400 from the Sinica Corpus and 400 from two widely used social media platforms, representing the data before and after social media platforms became popular. Our major findings are as follows: First, although human beings and non-human objects are what kěài mostly describes, its descriptive range is shifting to more abstract entities for much higher percentages of Abstract Entity and Event are found on the social media platforms. Second, the influence of age and gender factors has weakened. Third, although most of the non-human cases are described as kěài due to their external features, most of the human cases in the Sinica Corpus are called kěài for their external features while on the social media platforms, for their non-external features. Fourth, kěài conveys positive meanings most of the time, and the three most frequently found meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus are different from those on the social media platforms. Fifth, kěài is found to serve as hedges in both sets of data, but it is also used to show surprise on the social media platforms.

The Fear Domain of Iban Sebuyau, Sarawak Communities Euphemisms: Metaphor Conceptual Analysis / Domain Ketakutan Bahasa Halus Masyarakat Iban Sebuyau, Sarawak: Satu Analisis Metafora Konseptual

This paper examines the use of subtle language or euphemisms in the fear domain of the Iban Sebuyau community, Sarawak. The data of this qualitative study was obtained through a field study, involving 10 Iban informants who are permanent residents in the district of Sebuyau, aged between 40-70 years. The study informants consisted of five males and five females. Structured interview method was conducted to obtain data from the fear domain, guided by questions related to the element of fear of a concrete and abstract entity. The five data analyzed in this paper are akar kayu’ (wood root), jelu sungkur (shovel animal), aki’ (grandfather), utai terebai (flying object), and bisi’ orang (the presence of people). The Conceptual Metaphor approach from the cognitive semantic framework applied in the data analysis of this study succeeded in unraveling the cognitive relationship based on the knowledge and experience of the speaker with the lexical euphemisms of Iban Sebuyau. This study provides an important contribution to the vocabulary of knowledge, in addition to explain the use of euphemisms in this domain as one of the forms of figurative language that is important and significant in the daily communication of the Iban Sebuyau community

CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN COGNITIVE-SEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION

The article presents an attempt to view the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor in the cognitive-semiotic aspect. The object of the study is the conceptual metaphor, the subject matter is its cognitive-semantic essence and the forms of its representation. The main thesis that forms the theoretical basis of the article is that the conceptual metaphor understood as the ability of our consciousness to think of one, more abstract entity in terms of another, more concrete, entity, presents a mental phenomenon that may have not only verbal, but other forms of its representation. The main objective of the article is to carry out the analysis of visual, artefact and ontological metaphors in the cognitive-semiotic aspect and the ways of their representation in the text. The main methods of analysis conditioned by the theoretical aspect chosen for analysis are introspection, or metacognition aimed at reconstructing the work of consciousness in the process of metaphorical thinking, and the inferential method aimed at reconstructing implicit metaphorical meanings. The analysis of visual (artistic), artifact and ontological metaphors reveals that they are characterized by the same qualities as verbal metaphors: dynamism, contextual variability and existence of two their varieties: trite metaphors which reflect ordinary thinking and original ones which are the product of artistic thinking. When ontological and artefact metaphors are presented in the text, their metaphorical meanings can be presented both explicitly and implicitly and, in the latter case, their metaphorical meanings must be inferred by the reader or the linguist. The participation of nonverbal codes in the expression of metaphorical meanings does not diminish the significance of the verbal code which is another proof of the leading role of language in conceptualization and interpretation of the world. The analysis undertaken enables to confirm the main thesis as well as to reveal the explanatory potential of the cognitive-semiotic approach to the study of metaphor and, most probably, other language phenomena.

Dictionary for speech activity: what will be the entry?

The author concerns the problem of representing lexical information when the user is looking for the necessary lexeme. The entry cannot be the lexeme but should represent its semantics. It is proposed to turn to the more abstract entity that can be called function. Particles and interjections are represented by their functions in dictionaries.

Virtual Subjects

Our task now is to talk about the types of entity which occupy the central position. What occupies that position? Given that it is evidently a self or subject which does so, the task is to say more about the nature of selves. What makes Pessoa’s heteronymic philosophy of self so fascinating is, precisely, that it stands as much opposed to both the Cartesian and the animalist pictures as it does, evidently, to the Humean account of selfhood. Heteronyms are virtual subjects. A virtual subject is an abstract entity, and there is a standard way to introduce and define abstract entities of any type. This is the method of definition by abstraction, first proposed by Gottlob Frege.