EU Terminology in Interpreter Training: Selected Problem Areas Connected With EU-Related Texts

Selected aspects of the aforementioned issues shall be verified in a case study conducted on trainee interpreters

The Relevance-Based Model of Context in Processing Puns

While the essential role context plays in the understanding of expressions and utterances has never been questioned, the way it is perceived has evolved from a static factor established prior to the process of utterance interpretation, indeed a prerequisite for processing information, to a dynamic entity which emerges in this process. The latter view is espoused by relevance theorists, who define context as “the set of premises used in interpreting an utterance” (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 15) and treat it as a mental construct undergoing diverse modifications as the comprehender of an utterance processes and interprets incoming verbal information and other communicative signals supplied by the communicator. The aim of this paper is to consider the usefulness of this model of context for analyzing the derivation of meaning in puns, i.e. utterances in which, instead of its usual function of allowing the comprehender to resolve ambiguities ubiquitous in language and communication, the context plays a different role of leading him to entertain, and often to accept two diverse readings[…

Keeping it vague: a study of vague language in an American sign language corpus and implications for interpreting between American Sign Language and English

Vague Language (VL) seems to be a universal feature of language, and American Sign Language (ASL) has been shown to have all the properties of language; therefore, it is natural that VL would appear in ASL. This thesis is the first study of VL in ASL, and provides evidence that VL occurs in ASL and is used to express meanings equivalent to those of VL in English. The findings of this study document yet another property that ASL shares with other languages, and contribute yet another language to the body of languages that have been studied for VL. The investigator of this study analyzed the National Center for Sign Language and Gesture Resources (NCSLGR) Corpus for vagueness and found that the corpus contained vagueness in signs, gestures, and non-manual markers (NMMs). Hedging, approximation, and lack of specificity were the predominant types of vagueness found in the NCSLGR Corpus. The findings of this study, in addition to the literature reviewed, have implications for ASL teachers, ASL-English interpreters, and interpreter trainers. Previous literature has shown a need for explicit metalinguistic instruction about VL to second language (L2) learners, interpreters and translators. The ability to be vague has been shown in previous research to be a form of pragmalinguistic competence. This study contributes to the knowledge of the forms and functions of VL in English and ASL so that ASL students may improve their pragmalinguistic competence in ASL, and ASL-English interpreters may improve the pragmalinguistic equivalence of their interpretations

Master Questions, Student Questions, and Genuine Questions: A Performative Analysis of Questions in Chan Encounter Dialogues

I want to know whether Chan masters and students depicted in classical Chan transmission literature can be interpreted as asking open (or what I will call “genuine”) questions. My task is significant because asking genuine questions appears to be a decisive factor in ascertaining whether these figures represent models for dialogue—the kind of dialogue championed in democratic society and valued by promoters of interreligious exchange. My study also contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of early Chan not only by detailing contrasts between contemporary interests and classical Chan, but more importantly by paying greater attention to the role language and rhetoric play in classical Chan. What roles do questions play in Chan encounter dialogues, and are any of the questions genuine? Is there anything about the conventions of the genre that keeps readers from interpreting some questions in this way? To address these topics, I will proceed as follows. First, on a global level and for critical-historical context, I survey Chan transmission literature of the Song dynasty in which encounter dialogues appear, and their role in developments of Chan/Zen traditions. Second, I zoom in on structural elements of encounter dialogues in particular as a genre. Third, aligning with the trajectory of performative analyses of Chan literature called for by Sharf and Faure, I turn to develop and criticize a performative model of questions from resources in recent analytic and continental philosophy of language and I apply that model to some questions in encounter dialogue literature

Metaphor in Analytic Philosophy and Cognitive Science

This article surveys theories of metaphor in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. In particular, it focuses on contemporary semantic, pragmatic and non-cognitivist theories of linguistic metaphor and on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory advanced by George Lakoff and his school. Special attention is given to the mechanisms that are shared by nearly all these approaches, i.e. mechanisms of interaction and mapping between conceptual domains. Finally, the article discusses several recent attempts to combine these theories of linguistic and conceptual metaphor into a unitary account

A corpus-based analysis of route instructions in human-robot interaction

This paper investigates how users employ spatial descriptions to navigate a speech-enabled robot. We created a simulated environment in which users gave route instructions in a dialogic real-time interaction with a robot, which was operated by naïve participants. The ability of robot monitoring was also manipulated in two experimental conditions. The results provide evidence that the content of the instructions and strategies of the users vary depending on the conditions and demands of the interaction. As expected, the route instructions frequently were underspecified and arbitrary. The findings of this study elucidate the complexity in interpreting spatial language in HRI. However, they also point to the need for endowing mobile robots with richer dialogue resources to compensate for the uncertainties arising from language as well as the environment