Large language models achieve strong performance on many language tasks, yet it remains unclear whether they integrate world knowledge with syntactic structure in a human-like, structure-sensitive way during ambiguity resolution. We test this question in Turkish prenominal relative-clause attachment ambiguities, where the same surface string permits high attachment (HA) or low attachment (LA). We construct ambiguous items that keep the syntactic configuration fixed and ensure both parses remain pragmatically possible, while graded event plausibility selectively favors High Attachment vs.\ Low Attachment. The contrasts are validated with independent norming ratings. In a speeded forced-choice comprehension experiment, humans show a large, correctly directed plausibility effect. We then evaluate Turkish and multilingual LLMs in a parallel preference-based setup that compares matched HA/LA continuations via mean per-token log-probability. Across models, plausibility-driven shifts are weak, unstable, or reversed. The results suggest that, in the tested models, plausibility information does not guide attachment preferences as reliably as it does in human judgments, and they highlight Turkish RC attachment as a useful cross-linguistic diagnostic beyond broad benchmarks.
Nikolai Danilovich Golev, Victoria Sergeevna Melnikova
The aim of this research is to systematically organize contemporary theoretical concepts that explore the ontological aspects of translatability and understandability, with a focus on identifying their interconnections with the interpretability of linguistic units. The article analyzes Russian linguistic works devoted to the ontological aspects of translation linguistics, predominantly in the Russian language. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the first identification and systematization of key aspects of the ontology of translation, which previously have not received comprehensive consideration within translation linguistics, and in the proposed inclusion of an ontological approach into the methodology of translation linguistics. Based on the analysis of linguistic studies, the authors formulate original conclusions and propositions, substantiate the concept of translative space, and propose a classification of the mechanisms of translative functioning of linguistic units. The results obtained show that translatability correlates with text understandability and can serve as its marker. The proposition about the translative functioning of language as a special format of speech activity, generating translative micro-fields, is substantiated. This allows us to view language as part of a global interlingual space, where each unit possesses the potential for variable interlingual representation.
Conhecer e entender as motivações da escolha de certas denominações para nomear determinado lugar é uma maneira de estudar os fatores sociais, culturais e históricos que dele fazem parte e, portanto, de preservar memórias significativas e particulares do povo que nele habita. Sendo assim, o principal objetivo deste artigo é analisar, sob a perspectiva histórica, linguística e sociocultural, os nomes dados às ruas, avenidas e travessas do município de Farroupilha, localizado no Rio Grande do Sul. Para isso, é realizado um estudo documental dos aspectos históricos e socioculturais, com ênfase nos processos migratórios, bem como nas características atuais do município de Farroupilha, ou seja, o processo de ocupação do território por imigrantes italianos no século XIX até o desenvolvimento da cidade na contemporaneidade; uma análise bibliográfica da área da toponímia a partir de autores como Dauzat (1947), Seabra (2006), Marcato (2009), Frosi (2009), Zamariano (2012) e Isquerdo (2019), principalmente; a classificação dos hodônimos conforme taxionomias previamente definidas, com base em Dick (1990), e uma análise da motivação decorrente da denominação de cada logradouro. Após a realização de cada etapa citada anteriormente, chegou-se a algumas conclusões: a administração pública valoriza quase com exclusividade as pessoas locais no ato de nomear, ou seja, as pessoas que contribuíram para a construção e o desenvolvimento do município; e, também, estampa a história e a cultura, especialmente a dos imigrantes italianos, nos nomes dados aos logradouros. Por fim, este estudo contribui para a construção de conhecimento sobre a microtoponímia urbana na Região de Colonização Italiana do Rio Grande do Sul e apresenta uma interpretação dos nomes dos logradouros para a comunidade pesquisada.
Auxiliary sciences of history, Philology. Linguistics
O artigo propõe analisar alguns poemas de Manuel Bandeira (“Poema do beco”, “O cacto”, “Poema tirado de uma notícia de jornal” e “O bicho”) buscando enfatizar as tensões entre vida social e representação literária. Nosso intuito é ler os poemas como produtos de conjunções históricas, isto é, construções que literariamente apontam um esforço de um Brasil tentando a todo custo se adaptar ao padrões da modernidade. No entanto, nesse processo, uma série de impasses surge incessantemente. Percebemos, então, que os poemas selecionados são perpassados por essas tensões e nos possibilitam lê-los como uma acurada reflexão sobre a realidade e um processo de modernização que traz no seu bojo exclusão, impasses e desumanização.
This study investigates the relative roles of frequency and transparency in native speakers’ comprehension of Spanish object relative sentences by comparing performance with two variants of the construction that differ in these properties. Experiment 1 suggests that seven- to eight-year-old children’s processing of object relative sentences is consistently facilitated by variant frequency and likely relies on separate representations for each variant as two different, although related constructions. Experiment 2 turns to adult comprehension of the two variants, showing similar accuracy and reaction time patterns for both variants for this population. This second outcome could be interpreted as a decrease in frequency effects over time, in line with the power law of practice, as an experience-based increase in the ability to make use of redundant markers, or both.
Batima Dzhumamukhambetova, Kanagat Altaibekova, Sabira Sapina
et al.
Relevance. In the modern world, which is characterised by the development of technology, globalisation, and cultural integration, the issue of the development of a linguistic identity, which is the basis of cultural, social, and intellectual development of a person, is of particular importance.Purpose. The purpose of the study is to analyse the features and significance of the linguistic identity in the learning process, considering the connection between the cultural component and the language.Methodology. To achieve research goals, the following methods were used: hypothetical and deductive, survey, and comparative.Results. The results of the study have determined that teaching with an emphasis on the development of a linguistic identity is based on the integration of linguistic and cultural aspects of language. This allows students not only to assimilate grammatical and lexical structures, but also to understand the cultural and sociolinguistic features of the language community. The survey of students found that most of the respondents attach special importance to the terms �linguistic identity� and �linguistic worldview�, understanding their significant contribution to a comprehensive language education that can meet the needs and challenges of a globalised world. In turn, the teacher occupies an important place in the development of a linguistic identity, actively using individual and cultural aspects of the educational process. The analysis of the teacher's role in the development of a linguistic identity in the learning process shows that there is a special connection between culture and language, causing the development of critical abilities that make students active participants in a multicultural society.Conclusions. The practical significance lies in the use of the findings by researchers who study the mechanisms, aspects, and features of the development of a linguistic identity in the learning process, and specialists in the field of philology and linguistics.
Wundt's Völkerpsychologie (VP) is an exceptional case in the history of psychology. Outlined in 1863 in the second volume of Vorlesungen über Menschen- und Thierseele (Lectures on the Human and Animal Soul), VP was finally published 37 years later in 10 volumes during the last 20 years of the author's life. The work was characterized by an ambitious program of multimethod and transdisciplinary research. This article explores the intellectual and contextual reasons for the early successes and failures of VP. We analyzed n = 264 articles published in the German press and n = 220 books, reviews, and articles published in scientific journals that explicitly cited the 10 volumes between 1900 and 1920. VP received considerable criticism from linguists and philologists, who claimed that its results were of little practical use for their research. The first volumes of VP were criticized for their abstract character and psychological indifferentism; on the other hand, positive reviews emphasized their attempt to systematize and give a philosophical order to the individual investigations of philology, linguistics, comparative history, religious studies, and so on. The normative-methodological role that VP tried to play in relation to the other historical sciences was significantly criticized, and this was a determining factor in its diminishing impact over time. Some of Wundt's hypotheses were philosophically at odds with the project of German cultural imperialism that was being developed at the time and with which most of his intellectual enemies agreed.
Catarina G Belem, Markelle Kelly, Mark Steyvers
et al.
_Uncertainty expressions_ such as "probably" or "highly unlikely" are pervasive in human language. While prior work has established that there is population-level agreement in terms of how humans quantitatively interpret these expressions, there has been little inquiry into the abilities of language models in the same context. In this paper, we investigate how language models map linguistic expressions of uncertainty to numerical responses. Our approach assesses whether language models can employ theory of mind in this setting: understanding the uncertainty of another agent about a particular statement, independently of the model's own certainty about that statement. We find that 7 out of 10 models are able to map uncertainty expressions to probabilistic responses in a human-like manner. However, we observe systematically different behavior depending on whether a statement is actually true or false. This sensitivity indicates that language models are substantially more susceptible to bias based on their prior knowledge (as compared to humans). These findings raise important questions and have broad implications for human-AI and AI-AI communication.
Semantic textual similarity (STS) is a fundamental NLP task that measures the semantic similarity between a pair of sentences. In order to reduce the inherent ambiguity posed from the sentences, a recent work called Conditional STS (C-STS) has been proposed to measure the sentences' similarity conditioned on a certain aspect. Despite the popularity of C-STS, we find that the current C-STS dataset suffers from various issues that could impede proper evaluation on this task. In this paper, we reannotate the C-STS validation set and observe an annotator discrepancy on 55% of the instances resulting from the annotation errors in the original label, ill-defined conditions, and the lack of clarity in the task definition. After a thorough dataset analysis, we improve the C-STS task by leveraging the models' capability to understand the conditions under a QA task setting. With the generated answers, we present an automatic error identification pipeline that is able to identify annotation errors from the C-STS data with over 80% F1 score. We also propose a new method that largely improves the performance over baselines on the C-STS data by training the models with the answers. Finally we discuss the conditionality annotation based on the typed-feature structure (TFS) of entity types. We show in examples that the TFS is able to provide a linguistic foundation for constructing C-STS data with new conditions.
This thesis is a corpus-based, quantitative, and typological analysis of the functions of Early Slavic participle constructions and their finite competitors ($jegda$-'when'-clauses). The first part leverages detailed linguistic annotation on Early Slavic corpora at the morphosyntactic, dependency, information-structural, and lexical levels to obtain indirect evidence for different potential functions of participle clauses and their main finite competitor and understand the roles of compositionality and default discourse reasoning as explanations for the distribution of participle constructions and $jegda$-clauses in the corpus. The second part uses massively parallel data to analyze typological variation in how languages express the semantic space of English $when$, whose scope encompasses that of Early Slavic participle constructions and $jegda$-clauses. Probabilistic semantic maps are generated and statistical methods (including Kriging, Gaussian Mixture Modelling, precision and recall analysis) are used to induce cross-linguistically salient dimensions from the parallel corpus and to study conceptual variation within the semantic space of the hypothetical concept WHEN.
Wiktoria Mieleszczenko-Kowszewicz, Dawid Płudowski, Filip Kołodziejczyk
et al.
This study explores how the Large Language Models (LLMs) adjust linguistic features to create personalized persuasive outputs. While research showed that LLMs personalize outputs, a gap remains in understanding the linguistic features of their persuasive capabilities. We identified 13 linguistic features crucial for influencing personalities across different levels of the Big Five model of personality. We analyzed how prompts with personality trait information influenced the output of 19 LLMs across five model families. The findings show that models use more anxiety-related words for neuroticism, increase achievement-related words for conscientiousness, and employ fewer cognitive processes words for openness to experience. Some model families excel at adapting language for openness to experience, others for conscientiousness, while only one model adapts language for neuroticism. Our findings show how LLMs tailor responses based on personality cues in prompts, indicating their potential to create persuasive content affecting the mind and well-being of the recipients.
Although Francisco de Quevedo’s sonnets, unlike, for example, Shakespeare’s, have not become a fact of Russian culture and literature, the existing experience of translating them is of interest from the point of view of the very possibility of conveying to the modern reader the meaning and pragmatics of the Baroque text. The peculiarities of the Spanish author’s poetic language are associated with the specifics of lyrical subjectivity, which is far from romantic and post-romantic ideas about authorship as a confession based upon personal experience, but is a set of masks or roles that he constructed in accordance with one or another poetic canon. One of these canonical languages was Petrarchism, which largely determined the language of Quevedo’s love sonnets. The novelty of the Spanish Baroque author lies in the fact that, relying on Petrarchist conventions, he subjects them to witty reflection and turns them into the subject of a conceptual game. At the same time, the reflective nature of the sonnet as a Renaissance genre is reduced to the poetic word. The true hero of Quevedo’s sonnets is not himself or even the feeling of love as such, but a conceit (concepto), the pragmatic goal of this kind of poetry is to surprise the reader and involve him in an intellectual adventure. Analysis of two sonnets and their Russian versions (by A. Koss and A. Geleskul) allows us to draw conclusions about different translation strategies (literal and adapting), which nevertheless lead in different ways to the weakening and erosion of the conceit. The advantage of the first translation is its philological precision. The second impresses with its poetical qualities and naturalness. However, in the first case, the endeavor to follow the original step by step leads to overly heavy syntactic and grammatical constructions. This distracts the reader, preventing him from following the sophisticated paradigm of metaphors into which the basic conceit unfolds. In the second case, the intellectual and rhetorical basis of the sonnet, the supporting elements of the final conceit are sacrificed.
From role playing games to animated GIFs, from reenacted performances to poetic writing, this video essay asks: what is an authentic expression of anger?
Communication. Mass media, Social sciences (General)
As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into everyday life as general purpose multimodal AI systems, their capabilities to simulate human understanding are under examination. This study investigates LLMs ability to interpret linguistic pragmatics, which involves context and implied meanings. Using Grice communication principles, we evaluated both LLMs (GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and Bard) and human subjects (N = 147) on dialogue-based tasks. Human participants included 71 primarily Serbian students and 76 native English speakers from the United States. Findings revealed that LLMs, particularly GPT-4, outperformed humans. GPT4 achieved the highest score of 4.80, surpassing the best human score of 4.55. Other LLMs performed well: GPT 3.5 scored 4.10, Bard 3.75, and GPT-3 3.25. GPT-2 had the lowest score of 1.05. The average LLM score was 3.39, exceeding the human cohorts averages of 2.80 (Serbian students) and 2.34 (U.S. participants). In the ranking of all 155 subjects (including LLMs and humans), GPT-4 secured the top position, while the best human ranked second. These results highlight significant progress in LLMs ability to simulate understanding of linguistic pragmatics. Future studies should confirm these findings with more dialogue-based tasks and diverse participants. This research has important implications for advancing general-purpose AI models in various communication-centered tasks, including potential application in humanoid robots in the future.
Much work in the space of NLP has used computational methods to explore sociolinguistic variation in text. In this paper, we argue that memes, as multimodal forms of language comprised of visual templates and text, also exhibit meaningful social variation. We construct a computational pipeline to cluster individual instances of memes into templates and semantic variables, taking advantage of their multimodal structure in doing so. We apply this method to a large collection of meme images from Reddit and make available the resulting \textsc{SemanticMemes} dataset of 3.8M images clustered by their semantic function. We use these clusters to analyze linguistic variation in memes, discovering not only that socially meaningful variation in meme usage exists between subreddits, but that patterns of meme innovation and acculturation within these communities align with previous findings on written language.
Amit Moryossef, Zifan Jiang, Mathias Müller
et al.
Sign language segmentation is a crucial task in sign language processing systems. It enables downstream tasks such as sign recognition, transcription, and machine translation. In this work, we consider two kinds of segmentation: segmentation into individual signs and segmentation into phrases, larger units comprising several signs. We propose a novel approach to jointly model these two tasks. Our method is motivated by linguistic cues observed in sign language corpora. We replace the predominant IO tagging scheme with BIO tagging to account for continuous signing. Given that prosody plays a significant role in phrase boundaries, we explore the use of optical flow features. We also provide an extensive analysis of hand shapes and 3D hand normalization. We find that introducing BIO tagging is necessary to model sign boundaries. Explicitly encoding prosody by optical flow improves segmentation in shallow models, but its contribution is negligible in deeper models. Careful tuning of the decoding algorithm atop the models further improves the segmentation quality. We demonstrate that our final models generalize to out-of-domain video content in a different signed language, even under a zero-shot setting. We observe that including optical flow and 3D hand normalization enhances the robustness of the model in this context.
This study analyses the types of neurotic needs experienced by Griffin through three kinds of neurotic conditions, which indicate that he has a neurotic disorder. This study uses psychoanalysis social by Karen Horney's theory about the types of neurotic needs, namely the neurotic need for power, the neurotic need to exploit others, the neurotic need for self-sufficiency, and independence. This study aimed to determine the types of neurotic conditions experienced by Griffin. This research method uses descriptive qualitative. The data Source of this research is the novel The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, published in 1897 but using the 2016 version, which consists of 250 pages and 28 chapters. Meanwhile, the instrument in this study is note-taking. The data analysis technique of this research uses the theory of Miles and Huberman, namely, data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions and verification. This study found that Griffin experienced three types of neurotic needs: the neurotic need for power, the neurotic need to exploit others, the neurotic need for self-sufficiency, and independence, which proves that he has a neurotic disorder or mental disorder. Social, cultural, and childhood life are the factors that influenced Griffin in a way to experience some types of neurotic needs.
Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar, Computational linguistics. Natural language processing
Este artículo propone reflexionar sobre las diversas maneras de aproximarse a la innegable vigencia actual de la posición de María Rosa Lida, sobre todo a partir de una serie de debates y conceptos que definirían sus especiales estrategias críticas. Entre esas estrategias, el artículo insiste en uno de los rasgos (junto con sus dotes para la polémica, ya tratadas en un artículo anterior [Catelli, 2011]) que considera propio de Lida, tanto desde el punto de vista personal como desde el ángulo de su especial situación, como americana, dentro de la filología europea y especialmente la castellana. Ese rasgo es el recurso a diversas modalidades del diálogo, con Américo Castro entre otros, signado por una infatigable voluntad de corrección, tanto de detalle como del panorama de amplio rango histórico.
Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the relationship of students’ creativity and their emotional well-being during the period of forced distance learning. It was found that students with a higher creative potential easier coped with periods of social restrictions, felt less anxiety, were better satisfied with the distance learning process, while experiencing a lack of face-to-face communication with the instructor.Aim. The aim of the current research was to identify the relationship between students’ creativity and their emotional well-being during the period of forced self-isolation in 2020–2021.Methodology and research methods. The research was carried out within the framework of health care pedagogy. The methodological basis of the study included pedagogical principles of promotion, maintenance and restoration of emotional health; development of knowledge, skills and abilities to maintain emotional health especially during online studies. Creativity was measured with the Torrance test of creative thinking; emotional state – with a well-being questionnaire created by the authors on the Google Forms platform. The study population was represented by 387 1–4-year bachelors studying the humanities (Philology, Linguistics, History, Sociology and Pedagogy) and technical sciences (Petroleum Engineering, Computer Science) at the Tyumen Industrial University, Tyumen State University and South Ural State Humanitarian and Pedagogical University.Results. Statistical analysis confirmed the hypothesis about the relationship of students’ creativity and their emotional well-being during the quarantine period. Students with higher scores on the Originality scale experienced less anxiety and stress during the quarantine period (r = –0.36*). A negative relationship was found between the variables “Originality” and “Comfort in using PPE” (r = –0.38*), “Development” and “Satisfaction with communication with the instructor” (r = –0.41**), “Fluency” and “Comfort of using PPE” (r = –0.49**). The ways of stress relief used by students during the period of self-isolation were identified and described. It was found that more than half of the students intuitively chose creative activities (61.3%) to improve their well-being.Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty lies in an attempt to present students’ creativity as a resource that requires special activation during the period of forced self-isolation within the general framework of health care pedagogy.Practical significance. Eleven forms and methods of creative interaction with students are suggested. Research findings aim at forming health preserving skills in students, especially during distance learning, by stimulating their creative resources.