Hasil untuk "Ural-Altaic languages"

Inna Põltsam-Jürjo

Snakes appear relatively infrequently in medieval and early modern Estonian written and visual sources, and when they do, they are typically portrayed in a negative light. In theological writings and religious art, snakes symbolized Satan. Normative and narrative sources of the era often described Estonians through references to snakes, emphasizing their paganism, barbarism, and superstition. However, these sources contain little information about actual reptiles. Attitudes toward snakes – and knowledge about them – varied depending on a person’s background: urban and rural dwellers, Germans and Estonians, and individuals of different social classes all had different perceptions. Estonia’s old, pre-Christian folk traditions clearly reflect a positive, respectful attitude towards snakes; they were often seen as beneficial creatures. In contrast, the elite typically interpreted animals through a textual lens, relying on scholarly writings rather than direct observation or empirical data. As a result, snakes were understood largely in symbolic terms, reflecting the strong influence of Christian teachings on human perceptions of animals. During the medieval and early modern periods, medicine was, for the most part, the only field in which snakes held economic significance. The Enlightenment’s advances in medical and natural sciences also shaped attitudes toward snakes. In scholarly texts, practical, observation-based descriptions of reptiles as biological species gradually gained prominence, standing alongside previously dominant theological interpretations.

Jaan Undusk

"Linguistic discourse of Stalinism: Environment and heredity." The battlefield of linguistic policy in the 1920s to 1950s Soviet Union centred around two authoritarian figures: in Saint Petersburg the orientalist and active member of the Academy of Sciences Nikolai Marr, and in Moscow the dictator of the workers’ empire Joseph Stalin, an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences since 1939. Both spoke Georgian as their mother-tongue. Marr’s “new theory of language,” which was at times reminiscent of Medieval kabbalism (the descent of all languages from four original words, etc.), aspired to the status of the official linguistic doctrine of the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1950. Stalin initially gave it his endorsement. Marr explained the similarities between languages not through genetic relationships (language families), but by socioeconomic contact resulting in the intermingling or crossing of ethnic languages (“hybridization”), which gave rise to an explosion of new languages. The common features of languages derived also from the level of social development during which they emerged (the theory of stadialism). In Estonia, Marrism had an influence on linguistics in 1940–1941 (Marr’s ­disciple Kristjan Kure played an important role in this) and particularly during the heyday of the Marrist campaign in 1948–1950. Professor Paul Ariste of the University of Tartu suffered the most: he was forced to publicly promote Marrism in 1949 and then denounce it in 1950. Secondary school textbooks discussed Marrism above all in the context of the historical evolution of the meaning of words. The second stage of the linguistic discourse of Stalinism began in 1950, when Stalin personally disproved Marrism, essentially re-establishing the tenets of historical-comparative linguistics. Unlike Marr, Stalin did not conceive of language as a property of the ruling class, but as a tool common to all the social strata within a nationality – a tool immune to rapid changes in the social order. Although everyone was now required to cite Stalin’s “brilliant linguistic ideas,” a more or less normal work climate had thus been restored in linguistics – unlike in literature and the arts. The historical metanarrative behind this debate was the antagonism between heredity and the environment. Both Marrism and the “agrobiological” theory of Trofim Lysenko that had come to dominate agricultural science since 1948 challenged the emphasis on the genetic component in the cultivation of plants and livestock as well as human culture, regarding it as a racist and colonial mysticism of heredity. Lysenko drew on Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck’s theory of evolution, which posited that the characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime and through the environment can be passed on to its offspring. This originally bourgeois notion was meant to contest the hereditary privilege of the nobility. The rejection of heredity carried over to the socialist ideology, which contrasted racial uniformity with proletarian solidarity resulting from the social division of labour. Both Marrism and Lysenkoism wanted to liberate the society from “the bondage of genes,” believing that physical and mental development can be guided by changing the environmental conditions. The fact that Stalin decided at one point to defend the hereditary traits of language instead can be explained in a number of ways, for example with the desire of an autocrat to remain unpredictable.

Elisabeth Kaukonen

"Who is chairwoman?." So far, Estonian language planners have been advising to reserve the word esinaine (chairwoman) for the director of an all-female organization only. In this article I looked at data from the text corpora of different eras (1920s–1940s, 1950s–1970s, 1990–2008, 2013 and 2021) to find out whether the word occurs in its recommended meaning only in the past usage or if it also holds true in modern language. The results showed that this usage was dominant mainly during the 1920s and 1940s, where over 90% of the analyzed examples indicated the meaning of a director of an all-female organization. This is partly explained by the many women’s associations that were established during this period. However, in modern usage starting from the 1990s, esinaine as ‘the leader of a mixed-gender organization’ has been on the rise – for example, in 2021, 58% of the analyzed examples used esinaine in the meaning of a leader of a mixed-gender organization. It is therefore clear that the recommendation is not relevant in modern language, and indeed, in March 2022 it was removed from the Estonian Language Institute’s dictionary portal Sõnaveeb.

A. Tsvigun, Leonid Sanochkin, Daniil Larionov et al.

We present ALToolbox – an open-source framework for active learning (AL) annotation in nat-ural language processing. Currently, the framework supports text classification, sequence tagging, and seq2seq tasks. Besides state-of-the-art query strategies, ALToolbox provides a set of tools that help to reduce computational overhead and duration of AL iterations and increase annotated data reusability. The framework aims to support data scientists and researchers by providing an easy-to-deploy GUI annotation tool directly in the Jupyter IDE and an extensible benchmark for novel AL methods. We prepare a small demonstration of ALToolbox capabilities available online 1,2 . The code of the framework is published under the MIT license 3 .

Bryan Gregorius, T. Okadome

P. Pavlova, Dmitry Maksimov, D. Chegodaev et al.

Introduction The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development–third edition (Bayley-III) is one of the most widely used tools for assessing child development, and adapted versions of this instrument have been successfully used in many countries. No comprehensive psychometric studies of the Bayley-III have yet been performed in Russia. Materials and methods This psychometric study was part of the longitudinal study conducted by the Ural Federal University in 2016–2020. Within the project, the original Bayley-III manual was translated into Russian and then used in a cohort of 333 infants to assess cognition, expressive/receptive communication, and fine/gross motor skills. For the purpose of psychometric analysis, we selected the data for four age groups of children from the longitudinal study database: 4–6 months (N = 149), 10 months (N = 138), 15 months (N = 151), and 24 months (N = 124). The development scores of the sample children were compared with the original Bayley-III norms in each age strata separately. Reliability and validity of the translated instrument were examined using correlation analysis, tests of internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results The average scaled scores of the examined children were generally comparable with the original (US) Bayley-III norms, with the exception of those older than 1 year, who demonstrated 1.2–1.9 points better performance in cognitive development and gross motor skills and 0.9–2.6 points lower performance in expressive communication. The correlation of both raw and scaled scores between different scales was low to moderate in all age groups (Spearman’s ρ mostly within the range of 0.3–0.6; p < 0.001 for all pairwise correlations). Internal consistency tests confirmed high reliability of the translated instrument (Cronbach’s α = 0.74–0.87, McDonald’s ω = 0.79–0.89). CFA demonstrated a good fit of the three-factor model (cognitive, communicative, and motor components) in all age strata. Conclusion The Russian version of the Bayley-III proved to be a psychometrically valid and reliable tool for assessing child development, at least in a research context. The development of the examined children was close to the original US norms, with some deviation in cognitive, gross motor, and expressive communication scores mostly in older children, which could be attributed to the biased sample.

Kyra Wilson, A. Marantz

J. Eronen, M. Ptaszynski, Fumito Masui et al.

In this research, we analyze the potential of Feature Density (FD) as a way to comparatively estimate machine learning (ML) classifier performance prior to training. The goal of the study is to aid in solving the problem of resource-intensive training of ML models which is becoming a serious issue due to continuously increasing dataset sizes and the ever rising popularity of Deep Neural Networks (DNN). The issue of constantly increasing demands for more powerful computational resources is also af- fecting the environment, as training large-scale ML models are causing alarmingly-growing amounts of COz emissions. Our approach is to optimize the resource-intensive training of ML models for Nat-ural Language Processing to reduce the number of required experiments iterations. We expand on previous attempts on improving classifier training ef-ficiency with FD while also providing an insight to the effectiveness of various linguistically-backed feature preprocessing methods for dialog classifica- tion, specifically cyberbullying detection.

Silviu Miloiu

The British sociologist Gerard Delanty’s conception of “boundary and identities of exclusion” in European history shall be remembered when approaching “hard borders.” This concept takes into account the “cultural dynamics of self-identification through exclusion” and is germane when considering the interwar interactions between the countries of the Baltic area and Russia. The works of Reece Jones and Alec Murphy on “the hardening of borders” and “the fetishization of territory” as national traits are equally pertinent to the perception of frontiers during the duration of the 20th century, including the years 1917 to 1922. In every occasion in which war and violence (ultimatums, threats of force) were employed in the Baltic Sea Region to award borders in favor of one state or another or to settle accounts, the arrangements were not permanent and a cycle of warfare with terrible effects on local people followed. The combination of universalist ideologies (such as Communism) with imperial goals frequently resulted in both domestic and international conflicts. Civil unrest (sisällissota) and clashes with and between foreign troops (Russian and German) marked Finland’s journey to independence. Comparable conditions existed in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In each case, the upshot was not just an obsession with boundaries, but also an increase in otherness and loss of life.

N. Drutsko

The article discusses the issue of teaching a second foreign language in a transport university on the example of the experience of teaching students English after German. Comprehensive integration processes, the formation of a common information space between countries, the movement towards a single world economy - all this formulates a new request to a modern specialist in any field of activity. He should not only have knowledge, skills and abilities in his field, but also be able to apply them in multilingual communication. In a situation where the number of contacts between different ethnic groups is steadily increasing, the need for knowledge of foreign languages increases in direct proportion. Currently, students are already aware that foreign languages significantly increase the level of their competence not only in professional activities, but also in personal life, and open up a huge range of new opportunities. Speaking of railway specialists, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of knowledge of foreign languages. Firstly, thanks to globalization, the number of foreigners who are not afraid to travel independently and often use railway in their routes has increased greatly. If a few decades ago such a choice was rather an exception, now with the level of technology development, tourists increasingly prefer independent acquaintance with another country to package comfortable tours. In this situation, railway workers without knowledge of a foreign language will not be able to use their competence to perform work. Secondly, the expansion of professional cooperation also involves close contacts with specialists from other countries. Exchange of experience, international competitions and conferences, scientific activities - all this requires multilingual communication. In addition, having a high level of knowledge of a foreign language increases the value of an employee for large international companies. Speaking about the epidemiological situation of recent years, lockdown and the transition to remote work, we tend to emphasize even more the importance of foreign language proficiency. After all, while communicating by phone and online with clients and partners from other countries, we are much more limited in nonverbal communication, and therefore we rely even more on our level of a foreign language. Over the past few decades, the issues of teaching a second foreign language have become the subject of research by many domestic and foreign specialists. The theoretical foundations and the concept of multilingual education at school and university have been developed. The Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communications of the Ural State University of Railways Transport is actively engaged in the issues of scientific and methodological support of a multilingual approach to learning. The teachers of the department developed a «Practical course of a second foreign language» and published a manual «English after German: theory and practice of English as a second foreign language after German». The article substantiates the expediency of using foreign teaching materials on the one hand and the need to create manuals that prepare students for the perception of the educational material of authentic textbooks. The author focuses on the theoretical analysis of the fundamental principles of FL2 learning: communicative-cognitive, the principle of intensification, the principle of thoroughness, comparative (contrastive) principle, the principle of independence, the principle of self-efficacy.

E. Nenakhova

The CoronaVirus (COVID19) made the higher education establishment take on urgent measures when all the students were prohibited from entering the university not to catch the disease, but the educational process was not to be stopped. Distance education tools were to be applied and digital platforms of the universities were to be checked. This paper deals with the experience of the National Research South Ural University. The courses of all the schools and institutes of the University were conducted based on the platform Digital SUSU. The example of the courses for second language learning was discussed. Fifty students of bachelor's and master's degrees were respondents in this research. The students answered the questions of the questionnaire on Google Forms and then were interviewed. The results suggest that the most interesting task on the planform Digital SUSU was a video with tasks and vocabulary exercises. However, among the most useful, according to the students' opinion were grammar, vocabulary, and reading tasks. The students were also asked to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such remote learning. The most frequently mentioned advantages were the ability to study at home and the absence of the necessity to look smart. However, the disadvantages were more varied, including absence of communication, no face to face contact, too much homework, and too many written tasks.

N. Kuzmina, Darya V. Kochkina, M. Kuzmin

This paper considers the problem of blended learning as a means of foreign students’ integration into higher school environment. This process is not that simple, it demands special methods to help foreign students to be integrated easily. The use of blended learning in education facilitates easy students’ integration and leads to positive learning results. However, the application of blended learning is connected with challenges both educators and foreign students can face. The aim of the article is to consider and assess the use of blended learning at the lessons of English implemented into a university educational process. For that purpose, we applied such methods as a needs analysis (among lecturers of English from South Ural State University), a questionnaire and an interview (among three groups of students from similar bachelor’s programs). The findings show that the majority of those surveyed do understand the importance of blended learning as a means of foreign students’ integration, but they are not familiar with the types and how to use them. Based on the results of this analysis, the authors applied blended learning into the process of English teaching, such as flipped classroom, station rotation, and a new online language development course, “Methodological support to the textbook by McCarthy, M. “Touchstone”. The drawn conclusions indicate that blended learning allows not only to boost foreign language skills, but to promote easy foreign students’ integration into the educational process of the university.

Shuaicheng Zhang, Lifu Huang, Qiang Ning

Chaitanya Narisetty, Tomoki Hayashi, Ryunosuke Ishizaki et al.

S. Suvorova, T. Khilchenko, Yu. Olar

The article presents the authors’ experience of implementing distance learning in the information and educational environment of the higher educational institution as one of the conditions of its innovative strategies. Based on the latest research on introducing distance learning in teaching foreign languages in the modern conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors identified the key semantic fields of the problem, namely: positioning the process of introducing distance learning for teaching a foreign language as a prerequisite for the innovative development of the university as a whole and its strategic planning in particular; identification of universal technologies and platforms that can be used in the educational process of the university: videoconferencing implemented on Zoom, Discord, Skype; television and satellite technology based on the use of interactive television: television and radio lectures, videoconferences, virtual practical exercises; email technology; network technologies for posting various educational materials; case studies. The article describes specific models for the implementation of distance learning technologies in organizing practical classes in English. It describes a step-by-step algorithm for using Zoom platform, a model for integrating this technology with network technologies that provide an opportunity to use educational and methodological materials of electronic information educational environment of the university. The authors carried out a comprehensive analysis of the experience of introducing distance learning technologies in the process of foreign language teaching of two universities of the Ural Federal District – Shadrinsk State Pedagogical University and the Ural State Pedagogical University and concluded that it is necessary to use these technologies as a condition for the innovativeness of educational strategies of the university.

Fan Bai, Shiliang Lyu, Lin Na

Yugur is one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, and is a unique minority in Gansu Province. In the process of language development and evolution, the Yugur language is unique: a nation has two native languages, and the two languages belong to the Altaic Turkic language group and the Mongolian language group, the characters have been lost. Especially in the western Yugur language, the pronunciation of ancient Turkic languages is preserved, which is of great value to the study of the development and evolution of languages. Language is an important carrier of culture, which carries the development of Chinese national culture. Protecting and studying the development and language conditions of various ethnic languages is of great significance to the inheritance of national culture. By combing the current situation of the research on western Yugur language home and abroad, this paper mainly analyzes the research focus and research content, so as to highlight the specific theoretical value of the current research.

Roman Vasko, A. Korolyova, Y. Hryshchuk et al.

In the article the mathematical formulas and computer algorithms: 1) mathematical formula of G. V. Rauschenbach; 2) electronic calculator of V. I. Levenstein; 3) formula of T. Sorensen were applied to the Nostratic data material of Nostratic etymon *wete "water", which is derivable through the etymons from five language families: Altaic, Afroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Uralic. It helped to establish the following degrees of Nostratic languages relationships: the close degree of relationship, which corresponds to the divergent-convergent development of Nostratic languages, is established between Altaic and Dravidian language families; remote degree of relationship, which corresponds to the convergent-divergent development, is established between the Dravidian and Uralic language families, while distant degree of relationship, which also corresponds to the convergent-divergent development, is established between Afroasiatic and Indo-European language families.

Victoria V. Kazakovskaya, Reili Argus

The comparative paper considers diminutives at the early stages of development based on the longitudinal data of typically-developing monolingual children, aged up to three years old, acquiring languages which are different in the domain of diminutive systems, i.e. rich (in Russian) and poor (in Estonian). The impact of such factors as word formation and inflectional productivity, transparency, input frequency and semantic diversity on the acquisition of diminutives is discussed. From these factors, word formation and inflectional productivity are considered to have the most evident impact on the acquisition of diminutives in both languages. Being a powerful trigger for the development of early derivation and morphology, diminutives are prominent at the beginning of the acquisition of derivation in Estonian as the only derivation category, whereas they develop constantly alongside other derivatives in Russian. *** Deminutiivide omandamine tüpoloogiliselt erinevates keeltes eesti ja vene keele näitel Eesti ja vene keele deminutiivide varase omandamise võrdlev uurimus põhineb ükskeelsete laste pikiuuringu andmetel laste vanusest 1;3–3;1. Eesti ja vene keele deminutiivide puhul on tegemist kahe üsna erineva süsteemiga: kui vene keeles on deminutiivliiteid rohkesti ning deminutiive kasutatakse sageli, piirdub eesti keele deminutiivtuletus kolme liitega ning deminutiivide kasutus üldkeeles ei ole kuigi sage. Uurimuses on deminutiivtuletust vaadeldud üldiselt tuletuse arenemise taustal ning jälgitud lähemalt produktiivsuse, läbipaistvuse, sisendkeele sageduse ja eri semantiliste kategooriate mõju omandamisele. Kõige tugevam mõju deminutiivide omandamisele paistab olema (nii sõnamoodustuslikul kui ka muutemorfoloogilisel) produktiivsusel: deminutiivtuletisi on laste varastes sõnaperedes ning ka varastes muuteminiparadigmades. Võib öelda, et rikka deminutiivtuletistega keeles (vene) omandatakse deminutiivid samal ajal kui vaese deminutiivtuletiste hulgaga keeles (eesti keel). Deminutiivid on eesti tuletussüsteemi omandamise algfaasis laste kõnes aga ainuke produktiivselt kasutatud tuletiste liik, kusjuures vene keeles toimub deminutiivide omandamine kogu vaatlusperioodi jooksul paralleelselt teiste tuletusliidete omandamisega. Kui eesti keeles deminutiivide hulk nii laste kui ka vanemate kõnes laste vanuse kasvades pigem kahaneb, siis vene keeles nende hulk stabiilselt kasvab.

MUKHABBAT KURBANOVA, Mustafa KORKMAZ

Modern Uzbek literature, which has a great artistic heritage and is mainly based on Chagatai Literature, it gained its independence after the Soviets that broke up in the 1990s and this period has been named as ‘freedom or independence’ literature with the products put forward after these years. Looking at the main theme of the works given by poets during the period of independence, it is seen that the aim was to initiate a national awakening in the and to enlighten the Uzbek people. In this study, informasyons was given about the personality of A'zam Öktem who an important figure in the literature of the independence period, based on his sample poems.

Silviu Miloiu

The 13th volume of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies reflects some of the research presented at the 12th International conference on Baltic and Nordic studies titled “Rethinking multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and The Baltic Sea Region,” which will be held on May 27-28, 2021, under the auspices of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. RethinkMulti-Kulti2021 was called to reflect on multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region 10 years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted the end of German multicultural society. Many politicians with Conservative leanings praised the confirmation that the half-century-cherished multi-kulti “utterly failed,” and far-right gurus interpreted it as an omen. Furthermore, Merkel’s track record as a committed democratic-minded politician, EU leader, and proponent of migrant integration has garnered near-universal support for this argument. Furthermore, in academia, Merkel’s assertion has never been adequately questioned, but rather taken for granted. Meanwhile, policies governing multiculturalism and multilingualism in the EU and EEA have been stuck in a rut, particularly in what Fareed Zakaria properly refers to as illiberal democracies. The purpose of the conference was not to resurrect the political objective behind multi-kulti, but rather to critically reassess the role of multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy from the viewpoint of Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region. We see Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region as interrelated and partially overlapping by a plethora of historical, cultural, and social channels, hence papers dealing with multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy as reflected in these regions and wider Europe were planned. Papers on connections, liaisons, affiliations, divergences, animosity, legal or de facto statuses of cultures and languages in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region were also presented during the conference. How multilingualism, multiculturalism, and cultural diplomacy prospered or muddled through transitions from liberal nations to far-right or far-left governments and back were also addressed.