Semantic Categories in the Domain of Motion Verbs by Adult Speakers of Danish, German, and Turkish

Languages differ in the ways they divide the world. This study applies cluster analysis to understand how and why languages differ in the way they express motion events. It further lays out what the parameters of the structure of the semantic space of motion are, based on data collected from participants who were adult speakers of Danish, German, and Turkish. The participants described 37 video clips depicting a large variety of motion events. The results of the study show that the segmentation of the semantic space displays a great deal of variation across all three groups. Turkish differs from German and Danish with respect to the features used to segment the semantic space – namely by using vector orientation. German and Danish differ greatly with respect to (a) how fine-grained the distinctions made are, and (b) how motion verbs with a common Germanic root are distributed across the semantic space. Consequently, this study illustrates that the parameters applied for categorization by speakers are, to some degree, related to typological membership, in relation to Talmy's typological framework for the expression of motion events. Finally, the study shows that the features applied for categorization differ across languages and that typological membership is not necessarily a predictor of elaboration of the motion verb lexicon

“How Short is a Piece of String?”: An Investigation into the Impact of Text Length on Short-Text Classification Accuracy

The recent increase in the widespread use of short messages, for example micro-blogs or SMS communications, has created an opportunity to harvest a vast amount of information through machine-based classification. However, traditional classification methods have failed to produce accuracies comparable to those obtained from similar classification of longer texts. Several approaches have been employed to extend traditional methods to overcome this problem, including the enhancement of the original texts through the construction of associations with external data enrichment sources, ranging from thesauri and semantic nets such as Wordnet, to pre-built online taxonomies such as Wikipedia. Other avenues of investigation have used more formal extensions such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to extend or replace the more basic, traditional, methods better suited to classification of longer texts. This work examines the changes in classification accuracy of a small selection of classification methods using a variety of enhancement methods, as target text length decreases. The experimental data used is a corpus of micro-blog (twitter) posts obtained from the ‘Sentiment140’1 sentiment classification and analysis project run by Stanford University and described by Go, Bhayani and Huang (2009), which has been split into sub-corpora differentiated by text length

De los conceptos a las palabras: El papel de las representaciones semánticas

In this paper we argue that there is a translation problem from the conceptual representational system to the linguistic one that has not traditionally been taken into account. Such a problem has gone unnoticed possibly because an intermediate representational system adapted to the expressive needs of language has been postulated to exist. However, we explain that, far from solving the problem, postulating this intermediate system makes the translation problem more difficult to solve. Consequently, we propose a model of speech production that does not resort to the representation level known as “thinking for speaking” (Slobin, 1996).  En este artículo proponemos que existe un problema de traducción del sistema representacional conceptual al lingüístico que tradicionalmente no se ha tenido en cuenta. Tal problema ha pasado desapercibido posiblemente porque se ha echado mano de un sistema representacional intermedio adaptado a las necesidades expresivas del lenguaje. Sin embargo, explicamos que, lejos de resolver el problema, postular este sistema intermedio hace que el problema de traducción sea más difícil de resolver. En consecuencia, proponemos un modelo de producción lingüística que no recurre al nivel de representación conocido como “pensar para hablar” (Slobin, 1996)

Speaking for Thinking: “Thinking for Speaking” reconsidered

Two connected questions that arise for anyone interested in inner speech are whether we tell ourselves something that we have already thought; and, if so, why we would tell ourselves something that we have already thought. In this contribution I focus on the first question, which is about the nature and the production of inner speech. While it is usually assumed that the content of what we tell ourselves is exactly the content of a non-linguistic thought, I argue that there can be a lot of transformation in the process of converting a thought into words. Thus, the content of what we tell ourselves, being intrinsically linguistic, is different from the content of the thought our speech transmits. Fleshing out this kind of approach implies dealing with complicated questions which we lack enough knowledge about: the nature of non-linguistic thinking, and how speech (inner and overt) is produced; i.e. how the speaker goes from format a (format of thought) to format b (language). I show that these are pressing issues for any other position, but also suggest ways in which we could tackle such complicated issues

Conceptual representations and figurative language in language shift : Metaphors and gestures for emotions in Kriol (Barunga, northern Australia)

This article explores the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their corresponding conceptual representations, by considering their respective continuities and discontinuities in language shift. I compare the figurative encoding of emotions in Kriol, a creole of northern Australia, with those of Dalabon, one of the languages replaced by this creole, with a particular focus on evidence from metaphorical gestures. The conclusions are three-fold. Firstly, the prominent figurative association between the body and the emotions observed in Dalabon is, overall, not matched in Kriol. Secondly, although this association is not prominent in Kriol, it is not entirely absent. It surfaces where speakers are less constrained by linguistic conventions: In non-conventionalized tropes, and gestures in particular. Indeed, some of the verbal emotion metaphors that have disappeared with language shift are preserved as gestural metaphors. Thus, Kriol speakers endorse the conceptual association between emotions and the body, in spite of the lower linguistic incidence of this association. The third conclusion is that therefore, in language shift, conceptual figurative representations and linguistic figurative representations are independent of each other. The former can persist when the latter largely disappear. Conversely, the fact that speakers endorse a certain type of conceptual representation does not entail that they will use corresponding linguistic forms in the new language. The transfer of linguistic figurative representations seems to depend, instead, upon purely linguistic parameters.I am immensely grateful to speakers of Dalabon and Kriol speakers for their support with this project, as well as to Siva Kalyan for his help on a first version of this article. I would also like to thank Sarah Cutfield for sharing her data with me, in particular videos that crucially helped my analysis (Section 5.2). My thanks also go to the ASLAN project (ANR-10-LABX-0081) of Universite de Lyon within the program "Investissements d'Avenir" (ANR-llIDEX- 0007) of the French government operated by the National Research Agency (ANR), for funding this research project, including fieldwork

A Cognitive and Cross-Linguistic Approach to Polysemy

Polysemy refers to the phenomenon that a word possesses multiple different but related meanings. Past accounts have provided descriptions of the relations that an extended sense may have to the most central or fundamental ( core ) sense of a word, but they do not provide an explanatory account of how such senses are generated. The current research investigates the cognitive basis for the generation of polysemous senses. I hypothesize that extended senses are built on the salient characteristics of referents of core senses. I also argue that to the extent that speakers of different languages find the same characteristics of default referents salient, different languages should tend to generate similar polysemous senses from the same core senses. Evidence is provided for this proposed language-independent mechanism using data from six psycholinguistic tasks administered to speakers of two historically unrelated languages: English and Chinese. I also propose that, assuming a bidirectional interaction between language and thought, more embodied words should generate a larger number of extended senses and a higher proportion of senses shared between the languages. Evidence is provided for these predictions through the same empirical tasks. Broadly, this project provides a novel avenue for the study of word senses by revisiting the cognitive link between thought and language

Do words reveal concepts?

Contains fulltext : M_356334.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 20 juli 201