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Apparent parallels between natural language and antibody sequences have led to a surge in deep language models applied to antibody sequences for predicting cognate antigen recognition. However, a linguistic formal definition of antibody language does not exist, and insight into how antibody language models capture antibody-specific binding features remains largely uninterpretable. Here we describe how a linguistic formalization of the antibody language, by characterizing its tokens and grammar, could address current challenges in antibody language model rule mining., (© 2024. Springer Nature America, Inc.)

The article offers information on several conferences including of 2013 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference to be held in Dallas, Texas from March 16-19, the 2013 International Conference on English Education to be held in Taiwan from April 20-21, and the 11th Asia Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) International Conference to be held in the Philippines from October 26-28, 2013.

Language diversity is under threat. While each language is subject to specific social, demographic and political pressures, there may also be common threatening processes. We use an analysis of 6,511 spoken languages with 51 predictor variables spanning aspects of population, documentation, legal recognition, education policy, socioeconomic indicators and environmental features to show that, counter to common perception, contact with other languages per se is not a driver of language loss. However, greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased endangerment. Higher average years of schooling is also associated with greater endangerment, evidence that formal education can contribute to loss of language diversity. Without intervention, language loss could triple within 40 years, with at least one language lost per month. To avoid the loss of over 1,500 languages by the end of the century, urgent investment is needed in language documentation, bilingual education programmes and other community-based programmes., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

This paper provides an overview of the contributions of the special issue, using these to arrive at an inventory of five ways in which we can critically approach the role of legal language in the systems of asylum determination in rich countries. It also draws out a series of broader lessons from the special issue and concludes by reflecting on the influence of scholarly work amongst the judges, lawyers, interpreters, and others involved in administering asylum processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the case of Spanish Perfecto simple and Imperfecto from the perspective of the cross-linguistic proposal in Altshuler's () 'A typology of partitive aspectual operators', pointing to ways in which the Spanish data suggests refinements for Altshuler's proposal. In particular: (i) the paper provides evidence from Spanish that sheds doubts on Altshuler's proposal that temporal asymmetry should be built into the semantics of Landman-style partitive operators in a manner that guarantees that the worlds quantified over match the actual world in the past; (ii) following Altshuler's observations regarding differences between events being 'completed' vs. events 'not continuing', the paper provides a comparison between examples from Spanish and Russian to argue that more than one notion of 'complete-event' is actually needed; (iii) expanding on Altshuler's proposal to link habitual readings to plural events, the paper examines the case of Spanish Perfecto vs. Imperfecto, showing that both modality and plurality play a crucial role in generating habitual readings. The paper also discusses the relative role of semantics and pragmatics in the interpretation of aspectual operators, comparing some aspects of Altshuler's proposal to Arregui et al. (). Together, the various examples strengthen the case for a semantics of aspect grounded on a fine-grained ontology that brings together both temporal and modal dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, inspired by María J. Arche's work, 'The construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited' (, this issue), I add several pieces of evidence in favor of her proposal that viewpoint aspect does not alter the fundamental situation aspect properties of predicates. Namely, I discuss the temporal interpretations in Capeverdean, a Portuguese-based Creole language for which the salient opposition in the domain of viewpoint aspect is not between the imperfective and the perfective, but rather between the Progressive and the Perfect, here taken as semantically complex categories that involve certain temporal characteristics; crucially, imperfectivity is one of the features of the Progressive and a perfective viewpoint is part of the semantic complexity of the Perfect. I also discuss the role of for-time durational adverbials when combined with the perfective and propose that, in their presence, the relevant final boundary when telic predicates are at stake is not the culmination of the event, but rather the final point described by that time-argument. This proposal accounts nicely for the fact that, in these specific contexts, there is no contradiction in having this perfective clause conjoined with the assertion that the underlying telic situation is not completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A familiar argument goes as follows: natural languages have infinitely many sentences, finite representation of infinite sets requires recursion; therefore any adequate account of linguistic competence will require some kind of recursive device. The first part of this paper argues that this argument is not convincing. The second part argues that it was not the original reason recursive devices were introduced into generative linguistics. The real basis for the use of recursive devices stems from a deeper philosophical concern; a grammar that functions merely as a metalanguage would not be explanatorily adequate as it would merely push the problem of explaining linguistic competence back to another level. The paper traces this concern from Zellig Harris and Chomsky's early work in generative linguistics and presents some implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic =wa and the covert morpheme -∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with =wa can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, the sentence with =wa that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that =wa is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987). This paper thus claims that =wa is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with -∅ entails that the speaker's contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019) that links evidentiality and discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sensitivity of focus to context has often been analyzed in terms of focus-based anaphoric relations between sentences and surrounding discourse. The literature, however, has also noted empirical difficulties for the anaphoric approach, and my goal in the present paper is to investigate what happens if we abandon the anaphoric view altogether. Instead of anaphoric felicity conditions, I propose that focus leads to infelicity only indirectly, when the semantic processes that it feeds—in particular, exhaustification and question formation—make an inappropriate contribution to discourse. I outline such an account, in line with Roberts (In Papers in semantics, Vol. 49 of Working papers in linguistics, 91–136, The Ohio State University, 1996) and incorporating recent insights from Büring (In Questions in discourse, Vol. 36 of Current research in the semantics/pragmatics interface, 6–44, Leiden: Brill, 2019) and Fox (In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, 403–434, 2019). This account, which I motivate on conceptual grounds, has no anaphoric conditions on focus placement and has only an economy condition as a potential felicity condition on focus. However, there are cases where the fine control offered by anaphoricity seems needed, either to block deaccenting that would be licensed by a question or to allow local deaccenting that is not warranted by a question. Such cases challenge non-anaphoric accounts such as the present one and appear to support recent anaphoric proposals such as Schwarzschild (In Making worlds accessible. Essays in honor of Angelika Kratzer, 167–192, 2020), Wagner (In The Wiley Blackwell companion to semantics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), and Goodhue (Journal of Semantics 39: 117–158, 2022). I argue that this potential motivation for anaphoricity is only apparent and that to the extent that anaphoric conditions on focus from the literature are not inert, they are in fact harmful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including a computational model of the meaning of tenses and aspects in natural languages, problems with generative linguistics, particularly in dative shift, and some major linguistic issues involving code switching.

Experimental Semiotics (ES) is the study of novel forms of communication that communicators develop in laboratory tasks whose designs prevent them from using language. Thus, ES relates to pragmatics in a "pure," radical sense, capturing the process of creating the relation between signs and their interpreters as biological, psychological, and social agents. Since such a creation of meaning-making from scratch is of central importance to language evolution research, ES has become the most prolific experimental approach in this field of research. In our paper, we report the results of a study on the scope of recent ES and evaluate the ways in which it is relevant to the study of language origins. We coded for multiple levels across 13 dimensions related to the properties of the emergent communication systems or properties of the study designs, such as type of goal (coordination versus referential), modality of communication, absence or presence of turn-taking, or the presence of vertical vs. horizontal transmission. We discuss our findings and our classification, focusing on the advantages and limitations of those trends in ES, and in particular their ecological validity in the context of bootstrapping communication and the evolution of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional models of mathematical proof describe proofs as sequences of assertion where each assertion is a claim about mathematical objects. However, Tanswell observed that in practice, many proofs do not follow these models. Proofs often contain imperatives, and other instructions for the reader to perform mathematical actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of instructions in proofs by systematically analyzing how instructions are used in Kunen’s Set theory: An introduction to independence proofs, a widely used graduate text in set theory. I use Kunen’s text to describe how instructions and constructions in proof work in mathematical practice and explore epistemic consequences of how proofs are read and understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the multidimensional visualization technology continues to accelerate, resulting in a huge amount of data, higher requirements for related technologies, and more opportunities. Under the background of big data technology application, multidimensional visualization methods can shine in different fields, such as applying them to linguistic research. Although the technology has a wide range of applications, it cannot effectively and intuitively display multidimensional voice feature data, which is difficult to fully meet the requirements of parameter visualization. In order to deeply study linguistic speech recognition and other issues, this paper introduces speech recognition technology to complete the creation and improvement of a multidimensional perspective analysis system for speech data and uses socket mechanism to complete the server construction, including voice recognition, data enhancement, model training and other modules. This system takes the target voice data collection as the calling end. Thus, based on socket connection, data interaction with the server can meet the task requirements of the multidimensional perspective analysis system and can achieve two-way data interaction. The simulation experiment results show that the system based on OpenSMILE toolbox can effectively obtain high-dimensional features, and its performance is excellent, which can meet most of the task requirements. It contains many kinds of acoustic feature data, which can solve the problem of over compression of the original signal, and mine the characteristics of voice waves to explain the relationship between frames. The system is higher than low-dimensional features in recognizing multiple speakers. This paper designs an effective simulation system by applying speech recognition technology to multidimensional linguistic data analysis in the context of big data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boersma's (, ) Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA) performs a sequence of slight re-rankings of the constraint set triggered by mistakes on the incoming stream of data. Data consist of underlying forms paired with the corresponding winner forms. At each iteration, the algorithm needs to complete the current data pair with a corresponding loser form. Tesar and Smolensky (Linguist Inq 29:229-268, ) suggest that this current loser should be set equal to the winner predicted by the current ranking. This paper develops a new argument for Tesar and Smolensky's proposal, based on the GLA's factorizability. The underlying typology often encodes non-interacting phonological processes, so that it factorizes into smaller typologies that encode a single process each. The GLA should be able to take advantage of this factorizability, in the sense that a run of the algorithm on the original typology should factorize into independent runs on the factor typologies. Factorizability of the GLA is guaranteed provided the current loser is set equal to the current prediction, providing new support for Tesar and Smolensky's proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I give an account of degree achievements in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I focus on degree achievements that are derived from gradable bases by means of the verbal suffix -cha, e.g., llusk'a-cha-ña 'to straighten' or q'añu-cha-ña 'to dirty'. I provide arguments suggesting that Aymara should be analyzed as a degree language (Bochnak in Semant Pragmat 8(6):1–48, 2015b). I further propose an analysis of Aymara degree achievements in terms of a differential measure function (Kennedy and Levin, in: McNally, Kennedy (eds) Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics and discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 156–182, 2008) The main point argued for in this paper is that this language has two degree morphemes in competition (Heim, in: von Stechow, Wunderlich (eds) Semantik: ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 487–535, 1991) combining with degree achievements, namely, a covert verbal positive morpheme v.pos and the overt morpheme -su. The latter restricts the standard of comparison to change where maximal values are reached, so it is preferred over v.pos when such values are targeted. v.pos is thus felicitous when the maximum is not reached. I propose an initial typology that distinguishes how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tense is traditionally assumed to express temporal relations between the time of the event and the moment of speech, whereas aspect expresses various views on one and the same event. In Klein (), it was argued that the intuitions which underlie this viewing metaphor can be made precise by a time-relational analysis as well. In his article 'Aspect vs. relative tense: the case reopened', Jürgen Bohnemeyer challenges one important point of this analysis, the equation of aspect and relative tense in the English perfect and in temporal forms of few other languages. In the present comment, it is argued that this is indeed a simplification, which does not speak, however, against a time-relational analysis of aspect in general. The main lines of such an analysis for the English perfect are sketched. It is shown that it naturally accounts for differences between the simple past and the present perfect, as well as for the oddity of constructions such as Einstein has visited Princeton or Ira has left yesterday at five. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to express negation in language may have been the result of an adaptive process. However, there are different accounts of adaptation in linguistics, and more than one of them may describe the case of negation. In this paper, I distinguish different versions of the claim that negation is adaptive and defend a proposal, based on recent work by Steinert-Threlkeld (2016) and Incurvati and Sbardolini (2021), on which negation is an indirect adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential diagnosis is a crucial aspect of medical practice, as it guides clinicians to accurate diagnoses and effective treatment plans. Traditional resources, such as medical books and services like UpToDate, are constrained by manual curation, potentially missing out on novel or less common findings. This paper introduces and analyzes two novel methods to mine etiologies from scientific literature. The first method employs a traditional Natural Language Processing (NLP) approach based on syntactic patterns. By using a novel application of human-guided pattern bootstrapping patterns are derived quickly, and symptom etiologies are extracted with significant coverage. The second method utilizes generative models, specifically GPT-4, coupled with a fact verification pipeline, marking a pioneering application of generative techniques in etiology extraction. Analyzing this second method shows that while it is highly precise, it offers lesser coverage compared to the syntactic approach. Importantly, combining both methodologies yields synergistic outcomes, enhancing the depth and reliability of etiology mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decades, migration policies in Western societies have grown stricter by the day. As part of this retrenchment, migrants are required to pass language tests to gain access to human and democratic rights such as residency, family reunification, and citizenship, as well as to enter the labour market or higher education. The use of language tests to control migration and integration is not value neutral. The question discussed in this paper is whether those who develop language tests should strive to remain neutral, or, on the contrary, whether they have a moral and professional responsibility to take action when their tests are misused. In this paper, a case is made for the latter: arguing along the lines of critical language testing, we encourage professional language testers to take on a more active role in order to prevent harmful consequences of their tests. The paper introduces the concept language test activism (LTA) to underscore the importance of scholars taking a more active role for social justice, following the pathway of proponents of intellectual activism in related fields like sociology and linguistics. We argue that language testers have a special responsibility for justice and consequences, as these are integrated in the very concept of validity upon which modern language testing is based. A model of language test activism is presented and illustrated by real-life examples of language test activism in Norway and Italy showing that language test activism may need to take on different forms to be successful, depending on the context in which it takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have yet described concrete efforts by researchers in applied linguistics to systematically impact language policy. In linguistics, there is a general lack of published work on interactions between research and policy, and authors have decried a general dearth of policy literacy among applied linguists. The goal of the current paper is to describe how applied linguistics research can bring about policy impact by presenting a narrative account of one approach aimed at impacting university admission language policies. The first part of the paper presents research-based recommendations regarding language requirements for international students, the second focuses on mechanisms to communicate these recommendations to policy makers. The case study presented in this paper serves to argue that applied linguistic research and policy impact can go hand in hand, on the condition that policy recommendations are concrete, timely, seen as relevant, and researchers have a fundamental understanding of the policy-making context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does grammar represent simultaneity? More precisely, how do grammatical representations of sentences indicate that two events or situations are located at the same time? This is a question of central importance for the theory of tense and aspect, and one to which Hamida Demirdache and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria (Nat. Lang. Linguist. Theory, doi:, ) (D&UE) propose some provocative new answers. Their empirical focus is the semantics of perfective, imperfective, and progressive aspect in French and Spanish, with special attention to the temporal semantics of modal verbs, but their account has broader implications for the theory of simultaneous time reference and the imperfective/perfective distinction in general. In these remarks, I discuss certain implications of their main proposal and its implementation. Specifically, I examine their idea that the principal semantic distinction between perfective and imperfective viewpoint aspect involves a contrast between coreference or covaluation (with perfective aspect) and semantic binding (with imperfective aspect). D&UE assume that the perfective/imperfective contrast is aspectual, and structurally parallel to perfect and progressive aspect; they implement the coreference versus binding distinction in terms of the relation between two aspectual time coordinates (the Assertion Time and the Event Time). I point out some problems that arise under these assumptions, and propose an alternative implementation of the coreference versus binding distinction at the higher level of tense. I then explore empirical implications of this approach for perfective versus imperfective tenses in ellipsis contexts, involving strict versus sloppy identity in temporal reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A learning format gaining attention that encourages language acquisition in science is the use of dynamic models as instructional tools. This grounded theory investigates the impact of the dynamic food chain model as an alternative lesson for teaching food chains. The researchers examined the impact of a paper-based activity and a dynamic model activity on 5th grade students' content knowledge and language development. A total of 96 English learners (ELs) and 62 native English speakers participated. Data were collected using a What I Did/What I Learned reflection and analyzed qualitatively. Results indicate that ELs exceeded native speakers in academic language development and in understanding interconnectedness of organisms. In addition, students engaging in the dynamic model activity expressed more joyful learning than students in the paper-based activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining the concepts of securitization with a discourse analytic approach, the study presents an attempt to investigate how the audience's perception toward an unconventional security issue has been shaped in media context. As a case study, this paper delves into the portrayal of the Confucius Institute in the U.S. media discourse. By analyzing the coverage of the Confucius Institute in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal from 2004 to 2022, it aims to unpack the narratives and representations surrounding this institution. With a particular focus on how the use of language shapes the audience's perception and subsequently influences their cognition in the context of the securitization of Confucius Institutes, a select sample of texts from the corpus was collected for coded qualitative analysis to allow for a deeper understanding of how the media constructs and disseminates information about the Confucius Institute. The findings turn out that American media actors deliver a bottom-up securitizing move by interacting with socio-political value positions on Confucius Institutes in the United States, grounding a cognitive construction of security threat into shaping public emotive perceptual experience with dialogically patterned linguistic configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Una Stojnić urges the radical view that the meaning of context-sensitive language is not "partially determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation", as traditionally thought, but rather "is determined entirely by grammar—by rules of language that have largely been missed". The missed rules are ones of discourse coherence. The paper argues against this radical view as it applies to demonstrations, demonstratives, and the indexical 'I'. Stojnić's theories of demon-strations and demonstratives are found to be seriously incomplete, failing to meet the demands on any theory of reference. Furthermore, the paper argues that, so far as Stojnić's theories of these terms go, they are false. This argument appeals to perception-based theories of demonstratives, a part of the tradition that Stojnić strangely overlooks. The paper ends by arguing briefly that though coherence has a place in a theory of understanding, it has no place in a theory of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on mood choice considers fine-grained semantic differences among desire predicates (notably, 'want' and 'hope') and their consequences for the distribution of indicative and subjunctive complement clauses. In that vein, this paper takes a close look at 'intend'. I show that cross-linguistically, 'intend' accepts nonfinite and subjunctive complements and rejects indicative complements. This fact poses difficulties for recent approaches to mood choice. Toward a solution, a broad aim of this paper is to argue that—while 'intend' is loosely in the family of desire predicates—it differs from 'want' and 'hope' in that it has a causative component, and this is relevant to its mood choice behavior, given that causative predicates also systematically reject indicative complements. More concretely, my analysis has three ingredients: (i) following related proposals in philosophy, intention reports have causally self-referential content; (ii) encoding causal self-reference requires abstraction over the complement clause's eventuality argument; and (iii) nonfinite and subjunctive clauses enable such abstraction but indicative clauses do not. Aside from causative predicates, independent support for the proposal comes from the syntax of belief-/intention-hybrid attitude predicates like 'decide' and 'convince', anankastic conditional antecedents, aspectual predicates, and memory and perception reports. Synthesizing this result with that of previous literature, the emergent generalization is that subjunctive mood occurs in attitude reports that involve either comparison or eventuality abstraction. Toward a unified theory of mood choice, I suggest that both comparison and eventuality abstraction represent departures from the clausal semantics of unembedded assertions and consequently that subjunctive mood signals such a departure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline a grammar of lifting (i.e., resistance training) and compare it to that of language. I approach lifting as a system of generating complex meaning–form correspondences from regularized elements and describe the levels of mental representations and relationships between them that are involved in full command of this system. To be able to do so, I adopt a goal-based conception of meaning, which allows us to talk about mappings from complex goals to complex surface outputs in systems of intentional action, signaling and non-signaling, interactive and non-interactive, in a unified way, and show how it applies in lifting. I then proceed to argue that the grammar of lifting is architecturally very similar to that of language. First, I show that both involve stable (idiomatized/lexicalized) pairings of regularized forms with regularized meanings. Second, I argue that in both lifting and language, meaning–form mapping is mediated by syntax, which, crucially, operates on non-linearized hierarchical structures of abstract objects that include both content morphemes and functional morphemes. I conclude, following and expanding on some insights from prior literature and offering further evidence for them, that neither of these architectural phenomena (idiomatized meaning–form pairings and abstract syntax) is specific to language, with both of them likely emerging in skilled action that does not necessarily involve social interaction, due to considerations of repeatability and reusability of elements in new contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Donald Davidson's infamous denial in "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" that there is any such thing as a language, though it may not be fully supported by the arguments given for it in that paper, is nonetheless entailed by his semantic views generally, according to which the literal, linguistic meaning of a speaker's words on an occasion is determined by how the speaker intended to be understood. In favor of this view, and thus against conventional languages, the paper then argues that this understanding of linguistic meaning promises, in a way the conventional view of meaning does not, to make sense of linguistic normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short text similarity measurement methods play an important role in many applications within natural language processing. This paper reviews the research literature on short text similarity (STS) measurement method with the aim to (i) classify and give a broad overview of existing techniques; (ii) find out its strengths and weaknesses in terms of the domain the independence, language independence, requirement of semantic knowledge, corpus and training data, ability to identify semantic meaning, word order similarity and polysemy; and (iii) identify semantic knowledge and corpus resource that can be utilized for the STS measurement methods. Furthermore, our study also considers various issues such as the difference between the various text similarity methods and the difference between semantic knowledge sources and corpora for text similarity. Although there are a few review papers in this area, they focus mostly only on one/two existing techniques. Furthermore, existing review papers do not cover recent research. To the best of our knowledge, this is a comprehensive systematic literature review on this topic. The findings of this research can be as follows: It identified four semantic knowledge and eight corpus resources as external resources that can be classified into general-purpose and domain-specific. Furthermore, the existing techniques can be classified into string-based, corpus-based, knowledge-based and hybrid-based. Moreover, expert researchers can utilize this review as a benchmark as well as reference to the limitations of current techniques. The paper also identifies the open issues that can be considered as feasible opportunities for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comprehensive survey of corpora and lexical resources available for Turkish. We review a broad range of resources, focusing on the ones that are publicly available. In addition to providing information about the available linguistic resources, we present a set of recommendations, and identify gaps in the data available for conducting research and building applications in Turkish Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scoping review provides an overview of cancer interventions implemented with Arab Americans across the cancer control continuum, including an examination of outcomes and implementation processes. The search strategy included database searching and reviewing reference lists and forward citations to identify articles describing interventions with Arab adults living in the US, with no restrictions on date of publication or research methodology. The review included 23 papers describing 12 unique cancer interventions. Most interventions focused on individual-level determinants of breast and cervical cancer screening; used non-quasi-experimental research designs to evaluate intervention effectiveness; and demonstrated improvements in short-term cancer screening knowledge. Implementation processes were less commonly described. Most interventions were culturally and linguistically tailored to communities of focus; were delivered in educational sessions in community settings; engaged with the community mostly for recruitment and implementation; and were funded by foundation grants. Suggestions for research and intervention development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the success stories of formal semantics is explicating responsive moves like answers to questions. There is, however, a significant lacune concerning the characterization of initiating utterances, which are strongly tied to the conversational activity [language game (Wittgenstein), speech genre (Bakhtin)], or—our terminology—conversational type, one is engaged in. To date there has been no systematic proposal trying to account for the range of possible language games/speech genres/conversational types and their global structure. In particular, concerning the range of subject matter that can and needs to be discussed and by whom—ultimately a semantic analogue of Laplace's demon. We suggest that the subject matter problem for conversational types is a central task for any semantic theory for conversation. This paper develops a theory of conversational types, which embedded in the theory of conversational interaction KoS, enables this problem to be tackled for a wide range of conversational types drawn from the British National Corpus classification of conversational domains. The theory we develop treats conversational types as first class, not metatheoretical entities, in contrast to explications of corresponding notions in game theoretic approaches. We demonstrate that this allows us to explicate the possibilities interlocutors have to refer to and seek clarification about the types of conversations they are engaged in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a set of observations, many of which are novel, concerning differences between the adjectival modals certain and possible and their adverbial counterparts certainly and possibly. It argues that the observations can be derived from a standard interpretation of certain/certainly as universal and possible/possibly as existential quantifiers over possible worlds, in conjunction with the hypothesis that the adjectives quantify over knowledge and the adverbs quantify over belief. The claims on which the argument relies include the following: (i) knowledge implies belief, (ii) agents have epistemic access to their belief, (iii) relevance is closed under speakers' belief, and (iv) commitment is pragmatically inconsistent with explicit denial of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) is a time-series analysis method that uses autocorrelation properties of typing data to detect regularities within the writing process. The following paper first gives a detailed introduction to RQA and its application to time series data. We then apply RQA to keystroke logging data of first and foreign language writing to illustrate how outcome measures of RQA can be understood as skill-driven constraints on keyboard typing performance. Forty native German students performed two prompted writing assignments, one in German and one in English, a standardized copy task, and a standardized English placement test. We assumed more fluent and skilled writing to reveal more structured typing time series patterns. Accordingly, we expected writing in a well-mastered first language to coincide with higher values in relevant RQA measures as compared to writing in a foreign language. Results of mixed model ANOVAs confirmed our hypothesis. We further observed that RQA measures tend to be higher, thus indicating more structured data, whenever parameters of pause, burst, and revision analyses indicate more fluent writing. Multiple regression analyses revealed that, in addition to typing skills, language proficiency significantly predicts outcomes of RQA. Thus, the present data emphasize RQA being a valuable resource for studying time series data that yields meaningful information about the effort a writer must exert during text production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to Enguehard (Natural Language Semantics 29(4):527–578, 2021), who observes that presuppositions project in the same way from coordinations of declaratives and coordinations of polar questions, but existing mechanisms of projection from declaratives (e.g. Schlenker in Theoretical Linguistics 34(3):157–212, 2008, Semantics and Pragmatics 2:1–78, 2009) fail to scale to questions. His solution involves specifying a trivalent inquisitive semantics for (coordinations of) questions that bakes the various asymmetries of presupposition projection into the lexical entry of conjunction/disjunction. However, we argue that such a move faces both theoretical and empirical issues. Instead, we show that the data can be handled without moving to such an asymmetric inquisitive denotation, by adapting the novel pragmatic theory of Limited Symmetry (Kalomoiros in Proceedings of the 52nd annual meeting of the North East linguistic society, GLSA, Amherst, 2022) to an inquisitive framework in a way that leaves the underlying semantics for conjunction symmetric and bivalent, while deriving the projection data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the plausibility of developing anti-skepticism by framing the question in linguistic terms: instead of asking whether we know, we ask what falls within the extension of the word "know". I first trace two previous attempts to develop anti-skepticism in this way, from Austin (particularly as presented by Kaplan) and from epistemic contextualism, and I present reasons to think that both approaches are unsuccessful. I then focus on a recently popular attempt to develop anti-skepticism from the "function-first" approach associated with Craig, which I also show to be problematic. I then argue that the apparent prima facie plausibility of fighting skepticism on linguistic grounds is due to a methodological spill-over from linguistics. Once we recognize this, it becomes clear that the skepticism debate should not be conducted in linguistic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the "Unified Platform for Speech Acoustic Parameters of Chinese Minority Languages", this paper calculates and compares the acoustic distribution of vowels in Mongolian, Uyghur, and Ewenki and proposes a hypothesis that the relevance between the similarity of the acoustic distribution patterns of vowels and language closeness does exist. It indicates that the acoustic pattern implies clues of closeness and relevance among the three languages. The results demonstrate that, in terms of vowels, Mongolian and Ewenki are closely related. Both those languages and the Uyghur language are distant relatives, with only typological similarity. This paper provides a new perspective for the research methodology of language kindred. It proves that the comparison of acoustic pattern is of significance in studies in linguistics, linguistic typology, historical comparative linguistics, and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, states have increasingly emphasised the importance of integration, and translated it into legal regulations that demand integration from immigrants. This paper criticises a specific aspect to this development, namely the tendency to make permanent residency dependent on language skills and, as such, seeks to raise doubts as to the moral acceptability of the requirement of linguistic integration. The paper starts by arguing that immigrants after a relatively short period of time acquire a moral claim to permanent residency in their host country. Accordingly, states may not limit residency at their discretion. Nevertheless, three arguments may seem promising for defending the requirement of linguistic integration: (a) that the immigrants' moral claim conflicts with a stronger moral claim on the part of the larger society, and this makes an infringement of the immigrants' claim proportionate; (b) that language requirements may be legally demanded as a precondition for permanent residency for the immigrants' own sake; and (c) that language requirements are defensible, as far as immigrants may be understood to have consented to such regulation upon entry to the country. This paper argues that all three must be rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the various properties of the so-called Korean Left-Node Raising (LNR) construction, including its interpretation when a summative or symmetrical predicate occurs at the left periphery. While previous authors (Nakao in Proceedings of the 33rd annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania working papers in Linguistics, vol 16, pp 156–165, 2010; Chung in Stud Gener Gramm 20:549–576, 2010; Park and Lee in Stud Gener Gramm 19:505–528, 2009) focused on the syntactic connection between a coordinate phrase and its shared element at the left periphery, the exact compositional mechanism for the interpretation of the LNR construction has remained unaddressed in the literature. Building on the previous authors' claim regarding the parallels between the so-called 'respective' reading and the RNR construction in Korean and English (Park and Lee, 2009; Chaves in J Linguist 48(2):297–344, 2012; Kubota and Levine in Nat Lang Linguist Theory 34(3):911–973, 2016b), I compositionally analyze the interpretation of the Korean LNR construction in terms of a pairwise predication within the framework of Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar (Kubota in (In)flexibility of Constituency in Japanese in Multi-Modal Categorial Grammar with Structured Phonology, 2010; Kubota in Nat Lang Linguist Theory 32:1145–1204, 2014; Kubota in Linguist Inq 46:1–42, 2015; Kubota and Levine in OSU working papers in Linguistics, vol 60, Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University, pp 21–50, 2013; Kubota and Levine in Nat Lang Linguist Theory 34(1):107–156, 2016a; Kubota and Levine in Type-Logical Syntax, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2020). I argue that the proposed analysis straightforwardly captures not only the interpretation of the Korean LNR construction with summative/symmetrical predicates, but also the other properties such as occurrence of the plural marker -tul, case-matching patterns, long-distance dependency, and island insensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to an idea which is widespread among philosophers, linguistic entities derive their intentionality from the intentionality of mental entities by virtue of some relation between them. Typically, it is some kind of intention on the speaker's part – e.g., an intention to produce in the hearer a belief with a certain content – that is supposed to endow words with content. This paper argues that the concept of the derivation of content from one entity to another, if understood realistically, is flawed: derived intentionality, I will argue, is merely ascribed intentionality, not a real property of its possessor (one which is independent of any stance or interpretation). Irrealistic-ascriptivist senses are suggested for the ideas of content derivation, of original intentionality, and of the mind as the source of linguistic (and other forms of non-mental) intentionality. Thus, endorsing the idea that mental intentionality is the source of non-mental intentionality need not tempt one to intentional realism. In an intentional irrealistic framework, what forms of intentionality are original and what are derived is a deeply contingent matter, determined by our practice(s) of content ascription. But while intentional irrealism accommodates all those ideas, this paper defends "content-derivation irrealism" but not thoroughgoing intentional irrealism – the idea that there is real original (that is, un-derived) intentionality is not ruled out. Still, assuming that some entities possess real intentionality, what can make them endow intentionality upon other entities is also our practice of content ascription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By playing a crucial role in settling open issues in the philosophical debate about logical consequence, logical evidence has become the holy grail of inquirers investigating the domain of logic. However, despite its indispensable role in this endeavor, logical evidence has retained an aura of mystery. Indeed, there seems to be a great disharmony in conceiving the correct nature and scope of logical evidence among philosophers. In this paper, I examine four widespread conceptions of logical evidence to argue that all should be reconsidered. First, I argue that logical apriorists are more tolerant of logical evidence than empiricists. Second, I argue that evidence for logic should not be read out of natural language. Third, I argue that if logical intuitions are to count as logical evidence, then their evidential content must not be propositional. Finally, I argue that the empiricist proposal of treating experts' judgments as evidence suffers from the same problems as the rationalist conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the current situation of the political turmoil in Northern Iraq, Turkey has been a natural destination country for thousands of refugees escaping the war, including the Iraqi Turkmens. Being native speakers of Turkmen-Turkish and Arabic, Iraqi Turkmen refugees go through confrontations about linguistic ideologies with the local Turkish community on a daily basis. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data of naturally occurring interactions from social gatherings of local Turkish women with their Iraqi Turkmen neighbors, the present paper analyzes the dialogical processes through which these women construct and negotiate their identities and social relations from the lens of a range of linguistic ideologies. The findings suggest that while the Iraqi Turkmen participants' skillful interactional moves allow them to reframe their relationship with the local women, Turkish nationalism blended with Ottoman patriotism and Sunni-Islamic conservativism, which lay the foundation of the women's linguistic beliefs and judgments, complicates the process of their attempt for recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy practices in science classrooms have been traditionally limited to the provision of macroscaffolds (writing templates like Question-Hypothesis-Methodology-Results). This paper explores the allowances and shortcomings of such practice by means of a systematic examination of a corpus of lab reports written by two small groups of college students taught to write scientifically through a macroscaffold-based approach. Despite reporting the same experience and being supported by the same macroscaffold, students' science writing differed in important ways. Group A's impersonal inferences expressed social detachment and objectivity (students positioned themselves as distant and objective knowledge producers), whereas Group B adopted a position of social closeness and subjectivity more typical of personal genres (e.g., personal diaries). Atypical of what is expected of science writers, Group B's personal inferences was taken as indicative of an alternative conception of what it meant to scientifically infer from one's empirical observations. Such a different style pointed to the possibility of some students holding alternative conceptions about what it means to scientifically infer from one's empirical observations. It is argued that, although macroscaffolding may be a helpful starting point, students need additional guidance on specific linguistic aspects of science writing, and possibly engage in genre-based literacy activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focusses on the social and legal implications that blockchain technology brings about, not only due to its ideological framework, but also, and especially, due to the concept of law it inaugurates. Thus, this article claims, that, by interlocking technological and legal structures, blockchain technology initiates a profound displacement of legal symbolics and imaginaries. It shows how blockchain law, by emancipating itself from three essential dimensions of law—language, territory, and the body—implies a profound disruption of how we perceive law and its legitimacy. Starting with an overview of the technological details of blockchain, the paper then addresses its ideological context and traces the underlying ideas, values and functions and their relation with—and impact on—the general perception of law and legal issues. By critically assessing the claim that blockchain will liberate the subject from any heteronymic constraints, this paper analyses to what extent this technology has social and legal implications that reach far beyond its virtual, purely blockchain-related scope of applications—and why this technology should matter to us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study on inhabited silence among unaccompanied female minors in Sweden. Silence among unaccompanied minors has often been explained by experienced trauma. Conversely, research also explains silence as a natural way of establishing autonomy during adolescence. By analyzing the narratives of 11 unaccompanied female minors, we aim to problematize and broaden the understanding of silence as a lack of communication. By using Bourdieu's concept of linguistic capital, we analyze how hegemonic narratives on migration and integration influence how the girls in this study use silence in their everyday interactions. Our findings suggest that silence can be understood as both a rejection of these narratives and a strategy to preserve the girls' integrity. We also demonstrate how these girls negotiate their linguistic capital in relation to embodiment and othering, thereby pushing boundaries of identity and what it means to be seen as Swedish. The paper concludes that silence itself speaks and shows that what is often perceived as a lack of communication can also be understood as a failure to listen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates case and agreement patterns in Iranian languages, mainly focusing on Zazaki and Kurdish varieties. Empirically, the paper discusses the typologically rare double-oblique pattern, along with a novel way of splitting the oblique. On the basis of the syntactic behavior of oblique-bearing arguments, the paper argues that the term 'oblique' corresponds to distinct cases, ranging from structural accusative case to nonstructural dative case and ergative case. Oblique number agreement is case-sensitive, targeting only ergative-oblique out of the oblique cases. In order to capture the facts, I adopt a Multiple Agree account (Hiraiwa 2005), in which partial number agreement is a process that takes place in the morphology via Impoverishment, and not in the syntax proper. The study proposes to capture the case patterns in Iranian languages along the lines of Svenonius (2006), in which arguments bearing nonstructural case get their licensing from a combination of two heads (cf. Chomsky 1993), one of which is Stem, the locus of split-ergativity in Iranian. A chain is established between Stem and v, which yields the nonstructural case on internal arguments, whereas the ergative case on external arguments is the result of the chain between Stem and Voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance is basically a pragmatic issue due to the failure of participative imagination, as involving a pre-semantic level relating to a wide context (the overall situation of discourse). Since the linguistic meanings of the relevant fiction-involving sentences violate some of our basic norms, what such sentences (fictionally) say cannot be participatively imagined. That failure leads one to refrain from ascribing such sentences the fictional truth-conditions they would have in narrow fictional contexts (sets of fixed parameters) as determined by those meanings in those contexts. Yet one could still make that ascription, for one can cognitively imagine what such sentences would say in those contexts. As is proved by the fact that if one either adopts an alternative view on such norms or, for some reason, brackets them, one can again perform that ascription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do crises happen in the history of science? What can they tell us about how crises happen in child psychological development and child behavior? And—as a bonus question—can crises in child development tell us anything about crises in science history? We compare and contrast two superficially similar answers. Then we look at three models for the formation of general, abstract concepts in children developed in integrative psychological and behavioral science by the Soviet pioneer L.S. Vygotsky. Using later, but similarly integrative, linguistic work by M.A.K. Halliday on generality, abstraction and metaphor in child language, we consider a real test case. An outstanding anomaly in solar physics is that the solar wind is actually far hotter than the surface of the sun itself, and a recent paper argues that the energy comes from the damping of waves in the plasma. We analyze the language of a ten-year-old Chinese boy trying to make sense of this phenomenon, and we find that lexicogrammatical metaphors play a very important role in posing the problem to the child, but a process of limiting and deflating metaphors is key to his understanding. This process of limitation and deflation, which corresponds to a crisis, shows us that the analogy between concept development in children in science and the same process in children is no mere metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between what we call "us" and what we call "them", a line must be drawn, which immediately becomes a contentious border, or a divide, that brings to the fore who "we" are, and that consigns to the background, or to the margin, those people who do not count as "us". Wherever this border is traced — whether along the lines of existing nation-states, racial or linguistic communities, or political affiliations — the resulting potential for antagonism leads to both internal social tensions within a society and, at the level of nations, to outright war—the ultimate example of the friend/enemy divide conceptualized by Carl Schmitt. Once this is recognized, the problem we encounter is the following: can we think of nothing else along the boundaries between "us" and "them", but an antithesis, nothing else but an antagonism? Under what conditions, "from within what axiomatic" (Derrida), can political thinkers be assured, that the "us/them" relation is by necessity one of hostility? In this paper I will set up a dialogue between Bernhard Waldenfels and Jacques Derrida around the figure of the stranger [étranger] — a figure which "frequently operates as a limit-experience for humans trying to identify themselves over and against others" (Kearney) — in order to challenge the logic of this presupposition. My aim is to show how the encounter between these thinkers allows us to challenge at the same time the antagonistic view of the "us/them" relation and the logic of binary opposition that informs it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews evidence concerning the nature of grouping in music and language and their interactions with other linguistic and musical systems. I present brief typological surveys of the relationship between constituency and acoustic parameters in language and music, drawing from a wide variety of languages and musical genres. The two domains both involve correspondence between auditory discontinuities and group boundaries, reflecting the Gestalt principles of proximity and similarity, as well as a nested, hierarchical organization of constituents. Typically, computational-level theories of musical grouping take the form of a function from acoustic properties through grouping representations to syntactic or interpretive constituents. Linguistic theories tend to be cast as functions in the opposite direction. This study argues that the difference in orientation is not grounded in principled differences in information flow between the two domains, and that reconceptualizing one or both theories allows for gains in analytical understanding. There are also obvious differences between musical and linguistic grouping. Grappling with those differences requires one to think in detail about modularity, information flow, levels of description, and the functional nature of cognitive domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]