Mobile app communication aid for Cypriot deaf people

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: People with severe or profound hearing loss face daily communication problems mainly due to the language barrier between themselves and the hearing community. Their hearing deficiency, as well as their use of sign language, often makes it difficult for them to use and understand spoken language. Cyprus is amongst the top 5 European countries with a relatively high proportion of registered deaf people (0.12 per cent of the population: GUL, 2010). However, lack of technological and financial support to the Deaf Community of Cyprus leaves the Cypriot deaf people unsupported and marginalised. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: This study implemented user-centred design methods to explore the communication needs and requirements of Cypriot deaf people and develop a functional prototype of a mobile app to help them to communicate more effectively with hearing people. A total of 76 deaf adults were involved in various stages of the research. This paper presents the participatory design activities (N=8) and results of usability testing (N=8). Findings: The study found that users were completely satisfied with the mobile app and, in particular, they liked the use of Cypriot Sign Language (CSL) videos of a real person interpreting hearing people’s speech in real time and the custom onscreen keyboard to allow faster selection of text input. Originality/value: Despite advances in communication aid technologies, there is currently no technology available that supports CSL or real-time speech to sign language conversion for the deaf people of Cyprus

Assistive technologies for severe and profound hearing loss: beyond hearing aids and implants

Assistive technologies offer capabilities that were previously inaccessible to individuals with severe and profound hearing loss who have no or limited access to hearing aids and implants. This literature review aims to explore existing assistive technologies and identify what still needs to be done. It is found that there is a lack of focus on the overall objectives of assistive technologies. In addition, several other issues are identified i.e. only a very small number of assistive technologies developed within a research context have led to commercial devices, there is a predisposition to use the latest expensive technologies and a tendency to avoid designing products universally. Finally, the further development of plug-ins that translate the text content of a website to various sign languages is needed to make information on the internet more accessible

Slavic Translations of the Biblical Hebrew Basic Color Term Green [ièrek]

The author basing himself on an extensive sample of original Old Testament Hebrew contexts and their translations into Slavic languages investigates the complicated semantic problems connected with the proper translation and rendering in Slavic languages of the Biblical designation of the color green. Being not in agreement with the previous research on the subject he makes important points on the specificity of the translation of the Biblical color terms and on the nature of the Biblical text

Plasticity in second language (L2) learning: perception of L2 phonemes by native Greek speakers of English

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Understanding the process of language acquisition is a challenge that many researchers spanning different disciplines (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience) have grappled with for centuries. One which has in recent years attracted a lot of attention has been in the area of non-native phoneme acquisition. Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine which cues (duration or spectral) they were using to make discrimination and identification judgments for an English vowel contrast pair. To this end, two forms of identification and discrimination tasks were used: natural (unedited) stimuli and another ‘modified’ vowel duration stimuli which were edited so that there were no duration differences between the vowels. Results show the Greek speakers were particularly impaired when they were unable to use the duration cue as compared to the native English speakers. Similar results were also obtained in control experiments where there was no orthographic representation or where the stimuli were cross-spliced to modify the phonetic neighborhood. Further experiments used high-variability training sessions to enhance vowel perception. Following training, performance improved for both Greek adult and child groups as revealed by post training tests. However the improvements were most pronounced for the child Greek speaker group. A further study examined the effect of different orthographic cues that might affect rhyme and homophony judgment. The results of that study showed that Greek speakers were in general more affected by orthography and regularity (particularly of the vowel) in making these judgments. This would suggest that Greek speakers were more sensitive to irrelevant orthographic cues, mirroring the results in the auditory modality where they focused on irrelevant acoustic cues. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of language acquisition, with particular reference to acquisition of non-native phonemes.School of Social Sciences, Brunel Universit

Conformed to the image of Christ: An intertextual study of the significance of Pauline image-vocabulary passages for Paul and the gentile problem

To investigate Paul’s thought on the Gentile problem is to ask how, in Paul’s understanding, the Gentiles have come to be included as the recipients of the blessings promised to Abraham’s descendants when, in fact, they are not Abraham’s descendants. Constructing a satisfactory response, however, is fraught with difficulty. Paul’s theological assertions concerning his Gentile mission do not always fit neatly together and the variegated nature of Pauline scholarship has made his thought on the Gentile problem appear differently across many perspectives. Is Paul’s Gentile mission best understood through the Jewish “eschatological pilgrimage” tradition, as some scholars suggest? Or is it simply the outflowing of his insistence on faith in Christ, as the “Old Perspective” championed? Is he chiefly concerned with extending covenantal membership to Gentiles, as the “New Perspective” proffers? Or is he adamant that the Gentiles remain Gentiles and not become Jews, as the “Radical New Perspective” argues? Does he ever turn to Stoic physics or the Roman legal context to incorporate Gentiles into the covenant community? Attempting to answer questions such as these can help one appreciate the fact that the Gentile problem has become something of an academic battleground. In contemporary discussions on the matter, however, little attention has been addressed to Paul’s language of “image” in passages that speak of being or becoming an “image” of Christ. The distinctive contribution of the present study is that it begins to fill this gap in Pauline scholarship by intertextually analysing three such passages (1 Cor 15:42-49; Rom 8:28-30; Col 1:15-23) and asking afresh how these two aspects – Paul’s language of “image” and his thought on the Gentile problem – belong together. By doing so, it seeks to identify and explore any insights that emerge from this analysis and shed new light on Paul’s thought vis-à-vis the Gentile problem

Advertisements: Signs of femininity and their corresponding ‎color ‎meanings

This book is submitted by Professor Mony Almalech, Dr. Habil. ‎Institute for the Bulgarian language. The monograph represents an example ‎of the unique partnership between Almalech and Prof. Sasha Weitman, ‎Ph.D., Tel-Aviv University as Almalech quotes a manuscript Weitman ‎on signs of femininity. ‎ The monograph of Almalech consists of two parts two Appendixes – the first serves ‎as a textbook on Semiotics of colors, the second is research on the color ‎meanings and their corresponding meanings to the signs of femininity in ‎advertisements.‎ Appendix 1 is the Norm of color associations and 2 is pictures of adds. The contribution of Almalech is the development of the Semiotics of ‎colors and its application to the world of advertisements. ‎ Almalech draws our attention to the semiotic differences between ‎visual colors and linguistic color terms. He recognized two forms of ‎existence of the language of the colors – Verbalized and Visual (non-‎verbalized). The visual colors are percept by the ocular perception, i.e. all ‎colors are percept simultaneously. The verbalized form is when we use the ‎natural language to designate color. The verbalized Color language is ‎subordinate to the linear or syntax order of the natural language. ‎Almalech used the Test of Free Linguistic Associations (Kent-‎Rossanof) to form the Bulgarian Norm of associations on colors (Appendix ‎‎1). The list of word-associations (Appendix 1) is taken as a dictionary of ‎non-color meanings of colors. In his previous book in English – Balkan ‎Folk Color Language – Almalech proves a list of universal and non-‎universal color meanings of Visual colors in folklore marriage and burial. ‎Now he used the Prototype theory of Rosch and Lakoff to comment the ‎Norm of associations and the list of visual color meanings.‎ Almalech relates the verbalized associative non-color meanings of ‎different words (basic color terms white, black, red, etc.; prototype terms ‎light, darkness, sun, fire, blood, sky, sea, etc.; prototype rival terms linen, ‎cherry, duckling, ruby, wine, sapphire, etc.; terms for the basic features of ‎the prototypes clean, pure, immaculate for light; hot, warm for fire; fresh ‎for plants, etc.) to the non-color meanings of the visual colors in folklore. ‎He finds a small kern of mutual universal meanings which become a ‎semiotic key for decoding the messages of advertisements. ‎ The colors and the signs of femininity are described by Almalech as ‎independent sign systems in terms of the semiotic triangle. The previous ‎researches of Almalech on colors gave him the possibility to trace ‎semantic and semiotic links between the signs of femininity and the colors. ‎The analysis of 44 advertisements (pictures in Appendix 2) is the second ‎part of the book. ‎ Maybe the most valuable result of this book of Mony Almalech is ‎the conclusion that despite the successful use of folklore matrices such as ‎‎“saying twice the same thing” the world of advertisements misses the most ‎important intention and semantics of the ritual colors – the preserving ‎and reproducing power of their positive magic. The ads manipulate by ‎subconsciously readable messages which are not pinpointed on our ‎survival. The pragmatic principle of lie works here because, as the author ‎points out, we all know subconsciously the universal meanings of colors. ‎Almalech concludes that effective advertising works on our soul but not ‎on our pocket. ‎ The book can be used both by students of semiotics or by ‎advertisement specialists. It might be of interest to semioticians, ‎anthropologists, linguists.‎ DOI: 10.7546/9789543220205