This article explores the semantic shifts and connotations of denotative terms referring to the residents of Mexico City, as well as their documentation in Spanish lexicography. It examines the influence of extralinguistic factors on the evolution of these meanings. The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics of the semantic development and cultural connotations of the denotative terms mexiqueño, defeño, chilango, and capitalino, along with the principles governing their representation in authoritative Spanish dictionaries and corpora. To achieve this, an etymological, linguistic-cultural, and pragma-semantic analysis of these linguistic units is conducted. The relevance of this article lies in its contributions to linguistics, lexicography, and intercultural studies, as it reveals the mechanisms of interaction between language, society, and institutional norms. Furthermore, the study of the evolution of these denotative terms reflects the processes of language adaptation to socio-political realities. The novelty of this research is evident in its comprehensive comparative analysis of the dynamics of all key nomenclatures for Mexico City residents, taking into account their pragma-semantics and lexicographic documentation. Special attention is given to the contradictions between artificial normativity and natural language development, raising questions about the role of academic institutions in language policy. The findings suggest that changes in dictionaries often lag behind actual usage, highlighting the crucial role of grassroots language practices in solidifying meanings. Future research prospects include the potential application of this approach as a model for studying similar phenomena in other languages.
Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
This paper explores challenges in intellectualizing Sesotho for academic works beyond literary-based theses. It also overviews resources for the intellectualization of official Indigenous languages of South Africa, focusing on national translation projects for terminology development. Furthermore, it highlights efforts by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources in creating and collecting corpora for all official languages, including Sesotho. Challenges in Sesotho lexicography, especially with corpus-based approaches, are discussed. Additionally, the paper reflects on the authors' experiences with publishing academic articles in Sesotho in South African journals. It discusses obstacles faced, and strategies employed, including dialogues with reviewers on creating new terms and choosing between Lesothan Sesotho and South African Sesotho orthographies.
Finally, the essay addresses challenges posed by limited publication avenues for indigenous languages in southern Africa and academic pressures for citations and research impact. It aims to shed light on lesser-known Indigenous languages in Southern Africa by spotlighting challenges and solutions to academic publications in Sesotho. Overall, the paper concludes that efforts at intellectualizing Sesotho and other South African indigenous languages are evident. Even so, there is far less emphasis on using Sesotho and other indigenous languages for academic discourses.
The article presents unknown evidence of epistolary communication of S. I. Ozhegov and his “correspondents” — Professor A. M. Egolin, Prince P. Obolenskiy, Mr Nedzvetskiy. The linguistic informativeness of the letters is noted. The value of the presented materials for the study of lexicology, stylistics, author’s punctuation and speech culture is indicated. Attention is drawn to the range of problems discussed in the letters, including the selection and interpretation of definitions in dictionaries (pilyonyi sakhar ‘sawn sugar’, plavlenyi syr ‘processed cheese’, gromootvod ‘lightning rod’), haplology, the formation of appellatives from the names of writers (nekrasovoved or nekrasoved), social and phonetic adaptation of foreign language vocabulary (t’emp — temp), etc. The facts given in the correspondence are commented on from the standpoint of the history of philological science, the necessary references are given, possible comparisons are made with the events and persons mentioned in the epistolary. The texts are evaluated as a fragment of a special linguistic picture of the world, in which the main place is occupied by the linguistic personality of S. I. Ozhegov, who attracted scientists of different schools and generations. The conclusion is made about the relevance of the publication of archival sources that reveal interesting circumstances of the scientific life of philologists, exposing their searches and discoveries. These materials supplement the available information about the linguistic discussions of the 1950s and 1960s, represent living portraits of scientists.
Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
The article fits into the urgent problem field of dictionary data analysis in terms of their methodological significance, which allows the author to speak not only about the composition and meaning of the units of the corresponding language, but also about the structure of the mental lexicon and the mechanisms of speech-thinking activity of the learners. The author substantiates the correlation of Dahl’s explanatory dictionary, based on the principle of word family method of organization of material, with the principles of compiling modern associative dictionaries, where the word appears in the light of its psychological significance for the eve- ryday consciousness of concrete native speakers. The novelty of this study lies in the postulate that a dictionary entry explicating motivational (formal and/or semantic) connections between related lexical units in the process of their interpretation can be considered as a fragment of an associative-verbal network reflecting the dynamics of transition from the “word family” to the “family of meanings” in the processes of generation and perception of words in living speech. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that the word-formation precedents that are regularly reproduced (and, accordingly, are urgent for speakers) include: collective and abstract nouns (formed from a verb or adjective); gender marked word-formation pairs; verbs of different aspective semantics denoting
various kinds of action (one-time action, repeated action, continuous action); correlative oppositions of ref- lexive and non-reflexive verbs; qualitative adjectives and adverbs; separate functionally specialized, frequent and urgent word forms of different parts of speech, etc. The operational essence of such a dictionary representation fully corresponds to the models of “cluster” and chain connection of words in their pre-speech readiness, indica- ting potential ways of activating such connections in the associative-verbal network. Explication of such potential “routes” based on specially oriented associative experiments is one of the prospects of modern associative lexicography. The practical outcome of the comparative analysis of Dahl’s explanatory dictionary as a unique source for studying national mentality and modern associative dictionaries is connected with the prospect of developing of the functional model of teaching Russian (including Russian as a foreign language).
New prepositional analytic constructions in contemporary Polish
This paper presents pairs of structures in which one structure is a correct synthetic phrase and the other is a corresponding analytic structure that is incorrect according to contemporary dictionaries. The latter are nevertheless used because speakers notice subtle differences between the synthetic and analytic forms. As a result, one structure cannot be replaced with the other in all contexts. The process of replacing synthetic structures with analytic ones is evidence of the intensifying tendency towards analyzation in Polish. This process has been observed in all periods of the history of the Polish language.
Nowe przyimkowe konstrukcje analityczne we współczesnej polszczyźnie
Tematem artykułu są pary konstrukcji, z których pierwsza jest syntetyczna, druga – analityczna. Wszystkie opisywane formy analityczne są niezgodne z normą, a mimo to wielu użytkowników wybiera je zamiast połączeń syntetycznych. Funkcjonowanie w języku dwóch niemal identycznych struktur syntetycznej i analitycznej może być spowodowane subtelną różnicą znaczeniową między nimi. Proces ten jest dowodem działania tendencji analitycznej w polszczyźnie, obserwowanej we wszystkich okresach rozwoju języka polskiego.
Computational linguistics. Natural language processing, Semantics
The paper offers a rigorous characterization of the notion of lexicographic definition: a minimal paraphrase formulated in the same language as the word defined and satisfying six lexicographic principles, which are formulated and discussed. The major types of semantic components in a lexicographic definition are identified and described: firstly, central vs. peripheral components, semantic-class marking components, presuppositional components, actant-specification components, weak components, and metaphor-marking components; secondly, conjunctive and disjunctive components. Three additional topics are introduced: the roles that the definition plays in a lexical entry (accounting for the semantic, syntactic and lexically restricted cooccurrence of the headword); lexical units whose definition is problematic; lexical connotations and semantic labels. Though the perspective offered on lexicographic definition is theory-oriented – within the framework of Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology (ECL) –, a strong emphasis is put on the writing of actual definitions, a couple dozen of which is proposed and analyzed.
Abstract In this paper, max-min fuzzy relation inequalities are applied to describe a BitTorrent-like Peer-to-Peer file sharing system. In order to decrease the network congestion under some fixed priority grade of the terminals, we define concept of lexicographic solution in such system. It is found that each minimal solution of max-min fuzzy relation inequalities happen to be a lexicographic solution. Moreover, the lexicographic solution set is exactly the minimal solution set. Numerical example is given to illustrate our results. At last, for the addition-min fuzzy relation inequalities, we provide a guess, trying to describe the relation between its lexicographic solution set and minimal solution set.
Bibliografija uključuje radove o Andriji Štamparu i njegovim suvremenicima, kao i radove o stanju u javnom zdravstvu i medicini, posebice medicini rada, u Štamparovo doba. Uz radove objavljene u časopisima i zbornicima sa znanstvenih skupova, donose se i poglavlja u knjigama te knjige u cjelini.
Vocabularies are linguistic resources that make it possible to access knowledge through words. They can constitute a mechanism to identify, describe, explore, and access all the digital resources with informational content pertaining to a specific knowledge domain. In this regard, they play a key role as systems for the representation and organization of knowledge in environments in which content is created and used in a collaborative and free manner, as is the case of social wikis and blogs on the Internet or educational content in e-learning environments. In e-learning environments, electronic vocabularies (e-vocabularies) constitute a mechanism for conceptual representation of digital educational resources. They enable human and software agents either to locate and interpret resource content in large digital repositories, including the web, or to use them (vocabularies) as an educational resource by itself to learn a discipline terminology. This review article describes what e-vocabularies are, what they are like, how they are used, how they work, and what they contribute to the retrieval of digital educational resources. The goal is to contribute to a clearer view of the concepts which we regard as crucial to understand e-vocabularies and their use in the field of e-learning to describe and retrieve digital educational resources.
When soul is lost in translation: Metaphorical conceptions of soul in Dostoyevsky’s original Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov) and its translations into Polish, Croatian and English
Given that our understanding of such an abstract concept as soul is almost purely metaphorical, this paper provides a comparative cross-linguistic analysis of the system of metaphorical conceptions of soul in Dostoyevsky’s original Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov) and its Polish, Croatian and English translations. Special attention is paid to those metaphors that are translated differently between the various translations, either in conceptual or linguistic terms.
This paper adheres to the cognitive-linguistic approach to Mind (Reddy, 1979; Sweetser, 1990; G. Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Consistent with conceptual metaphor theory in general (G. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; G. Lakoff, 1987; Grady, 1997; Kövecses, 2000; G. Lakoff, 2009; etc.), this paper’s theoretical and methodological approach is based on Sweetser’s (1990) analysis of the system of metaphors for knowledge, on G. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) systematic analysis of the metaphorical conceptions of Mind and Soul, and on Štrkalj Despot, Skrynnikova and Ostanina Olszewska’s (2014) comparative analysis of the metaphorical conceptions of ДУША/DUSZA/DUŠA (‘soul’) in Russian, Polish, and Croatian.
The metaphors for soul were examined in a parallel corpus that consists of Dostoyevsky’s original Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov) and its Polish, Croatian and English translations. Linguistic metaphors were detected using the MIPVU procedure (Steen et al., 2010).
The main questions that this paper ains to answer are: Which metaphors for conceptualizing soul are shared by all the languages in question? Which metaphors are translated differently and why? If metaphors are translated differently, is the difference conceptual, cultural or linguistic? Does the type of metaphor (primary, complex) have any influence on the decision to translate the source language (SL) metaphor into a different one in the target language (TL)? What cultural differences are revealed through the analysis of the way metaphors have been translated to other Slavic and one non-Slavic language?
Pojęcie duszy zagubione w tłumaczeniu: Metaforyczne ujęcie duszy w oryginale powieści Братья Карамазовы (Bracia Karamazow) Fiodora Dostojewskiego oraz w jej tłumaczeniach na język polski, chorwacki oraz angielski
Rozumienie tak abstrakcyjnych pojęć, jak dusza jest w pełni metaforyczne. Niniejszy artykuł zawiera porównawczą, przekrojową analizę lingwistyczną systemu konceptualizacji pojęcia dusza w powieści Fiodora Dostojewskiego pt. Братья Карамазовы (Bracia Karamazow) oraz w jej polskim, chorwackim i angielskim tłumaczeniu. Zwrócono szczególną uwagę na te metafory, które zostały przetłumaczone inaczej w każdym wariancie tłumaczenia, pod względem pojęciowym albo językowym.
W artykule zastosowano kognitywno-lingwistyczne podejście do umysłu (Reddy, 1979; Sweetser, 1990; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), podejście teoretyczne i metodologiczne – zasadniczo spójne z teorią metafory pojęciowej (Lakoff i Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Grady, 1997; Lakoff, 1999; Kövecses, 2000; Lakoff, 2009 i in.) – opiera się na analizie E. Sweetser (1990) dotyczącej systemu metafor wiedzy, systematycznej analizie G. Lakoffa i M. Johnsona (1999) dotyczącej metaforycznego pojmowania umysłu i duszy oraz na analizie porównawczej K. Štrkalj Despot, I. Skrynnikovej i J. Ostatniny-Olszewskiej (2014) pojęć metaforycznych ДУША/DUSZA/DUŠA (dusza) w językach rosyjskim, polskim i chorwackim.
Przeanalizowano metaforyczne określenia duszy w korpusie paralelnym, w którym znalazła się powieść Fiodora Dostojewskiego pt. Братья Карамазовы (Bracia Karamazow) w oryginale oraz jej przekłady na język polski, angielski i chorwacki. Metafory językowe wskazano, korzystając z procedury MIPVU (Steen i in., 2010).
Niniejsza analiza jest próbą odpowiedzi na następujące pytania: które metafory pojęcia dusza są tożsame we wszystkich analizowanych językach? Które metafory zostały przełożone w odmienny sposób i dlaczego tak się stało? Jeżeli metafory zostały przetłumaczone inaczej, czy jest to różnica pojęciowa, kulturowa czy językowa? Czy rodzaj metafory (podstawowa, złożona) wpływa na próbę przetłumaczenia metafory w języku źródłowym inną metaforą w języku docelowym? W jaki sposób metafory i rozumowanie metaforyczne w różnych językach wskazują na różnice i podobieństwa kulturowe w pojmowaniu świata?
Computational linguistics. Natural language processing, Semantics
Nina Sergeevna Kotova, Igor Aleksandrivich Kudryashov
Purpose. The purpose of the research conducted is revealing the peculiarities of lexical paradigmatics influence upon the usage of aspect and temporal verb forms and the opposite impact as well, i.e. the influence of aspect and temporal verb forms upon the lexical meaning of this verb groups under specific conditions of functioning. The lexical paradigmatics is considered as the system of mutually contrasted semantic features of particular verb groups. In this case, we analyze the paradigmatics in the middle language hierarchy for each language level separately.
Methodology. The research is conducted synchronically on the material of the contemporary English verb system. Interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is examined in a functional aspect. Such consideration gives a possibility to differentiate the intrasystem phenomena and phenomena of pragmatic character and expose the system-structural mutual relations of lexical and grammatical factors. The research material is the verb as massive word group.
From the point of view of interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the functional and semantic field representing aspectuality, we get interested in the meaning which realizes in the opposition ofatelicity – telicity(telicity correlates the action with the limit, and atelicity demotes the action irrespectively to its limit). The technique applied to the analysis of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is complex combining descriptive and comparative and functional methods.
Results. Interrelations and interdependency of lexical and grammatical paradigmatics create particular sustainability in using the lexical unit of this paradigm with aspect and temporal verb forms. In this case, the tendencies of the language sign developing and changing are expressed in the process of the mutual substitution and interpenetration of grammatical forms primarily under the influence of paradigmatic factors. In this material this tendency is traceable in cases of using the verbs pertaining to 4-th and 5-th oppositions in the forms of Continuous which are used instead if Indefinite. The grammatical form meaning modifies the verb meaning specifying particularly the action intensity giving it the particular emotional coloring.
Practical implications. The material investigated can be used in the sphere of practical and theoretical lexicography, in teaching general and particular (English) lexicology. The research can be of assistance in teaching practical English courses in secondary school and higher educational establishments if the programs are oriented on the functional study of the language grammatical system.
Multilingual digital resources with Bulgarian language
The paper presents in brief Bulgarian language resources as a part of multilingual digital resources developed in the frame of some international projects, among them parallel annotated and aligned corpora, comparable corpora, morpho-syntactic specifications for corpora annotation and dictionaries encoding, lexicons, lexical databases, and electronic dictionaries.
Computational linguistics. Natural language processing, Semantics
Analytic tendencies in modern Polish and Russian
Modern Polish and Russian are characterized by some features which demonstrate an increasing level of analitism. In the process of transformation from synthetic to analytical language, a crucial role is played by prepositional units. In this research, analitism is understood in a traditional way as a morphological and syntactic phenomenon. The fact that the synthetic structure of a language may, in some conditions, turn into an analytical one, as happened in the case of Bulgarian and Macedonian, has been intriguing linguists ever since, and has made me attempt to answer the question: What is the condition of modern Polish and Russian, which are languages with a rich literary tradition and solid grammatical norms, which belong to a group of synthetic languages? The analytical tendencies in morphology include the following: a decrease in the number of cases in all inflected parts of speech; a more frequent use of uninflected nouns and adjectives; the growing importance of nouns with common gender, and, in particular, the use of forms of masculine gender to depict feminine gender; differences in expressing collectiveness in a group of nouns (using collective meaning for forms that have singular meaning; substituting case forms with prepositions; substituting case forms with subordinate clauses; substituting case forms with “helper” words. Analytical tendencies in the area of numeral functioning include: substituting inflected forms of ordinal numerals with cardinal ones; the gradual disappearing inflection of numerals; confusing the forms of noun cases after numerals; the disappearing declination of collective numerals; displacing other cases with so-called simple cases; changing the syntactical position which the numeral should be inflected in; abandoning the declination of first elements of collective numerals. During the study of analytic tendencies in morphology, it was necessary to examine personal pronouns as this part of speech seems to be the most stable as far as other forms except nominative are concerned. Having analysed the material, it can be claimed that analitism in Slavic pronouns is observed at the level of the replacement of short forms with full ones, through the use of various forms after prepositions and eliminating all the alternative forms of personal pronouns. This review of analytic tendencies has also involved studying the article and its role in analytic languages, as the article is the area of a language which should be filled while the inflection disappears. Having analysed the material, I have concluded that there is a possibility that the article may appear in Polish and Russian.
The most important part of speech in analytic languages is the preposition. An increase in the number of prepositional units is said to be an essential element of syntactic transformation in 20th century Polish and Russian i.e. their ongoing transformation from synthetic into analytic languages. In accordance with this tendency, secondary prepositions are gradually replacing proper prepositions and case forms in their traditional usage. The secondary preposition has been defined as a lexical unit, not being a preposition initially but used secondarily in this function. Such a definition requires adopting a functional perspective in the description, more so because the transformation of various language units (nouns, prepositional phrases, adverbs, conjunction, phraseological nexuses) into prepositions takes place gradually and the same set can be interpreted otherwise in different contexts. This comprehensive analysis of two modern Slavonic languages shows that the number of prepositional units in both languages has grown and is still increasing.
Computational linguistics. Natural language processing, Semantics
Web presentation of bilingual corpora (Slovak-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Polish)
In this paper we focus on the web-presentation of bilingual corpora in three Slavic languages and their possible applications. Slovak-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Polish corpora are collected and developed as results of the collaboration in the frameworks of two joint research projects between Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, from one side, and from the other side: Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, coordinate by authors of this paper.
Computational linguistics. Natural language processing, Semantics
The total irregularity of a graph $G$ is defined as $\irr_t(G)=1/2 \sum_{u,v \in V(G)}$ $|d_G(u)-d_G(v)|$, where $d_G(u)$ denotes the degree of a vertex $u \in V(G)$. In this paper we give (sharp) upper bounds on the total irregularity of graphs under several graph operations including join, lexicographic product, Cartesian product, strong product, direct product, corona product, disjunction and symmetric difference.
Abstract
Following acomparative,quantitative study of English to English and English to Persian dictionariesof linguistics, it was found that the number of terms in Persian is too limited compared to the English ones; Persian language also lacks clear definitions and descriptions for many terms. Therefore, developing a comprehensive linguistics dictionary based on principles of dictionary compilation and terminology is an urgent need.
Using word formation rules and principlesapproved by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, this study suggests some equivalents for words which have not been translated yet. The study also indicates that diversity in number and meaning, andusing one term to refer to many concepts are among serious problems in this regard which, in turn, lead to limitation in knowledge, meaning contradictions and disorder in process of symbolization and in recovering data. It is concluded that standardization is one of the main instruments in promoting a language and bringing order backto the terminology, definitions, and system of concepts.