learning to identify metaphors from a corpus of proverbs

n/

LOCAL WISDOM IN JAVANESE PROVERBS (A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC APPROACH)

Proverbs are expressions representing views and values in creating harmonious and successful life. This paper is to investigate the local wisdom in Javanese proverbs. Nonparticipant observation method with note-taking technique is used to collect the data. To analyze the data, I used distributional, identity, and inferencial methods. From the analysis, I found that there are some values among other things related with the Javanese views on social and cultural diversity, self control and management in individual, social, and spiritual life. There are four levels of meaning the proverbs convey, i.e literal, cognitive, literary, and cultural, since they represent concepts for conceptualizing. The concepts are related with nature, body organ, building, motion, space, visual experience, habit, cosmology, number, family relationship, country, God, container, shape. This implies that language in this case Javanese proverbs can preserve human’s experiences and habits that may lose in another decade due to social dynamicity and natural changes. The loss may happen along with the loss of the language. Therefore, there must be some efforts to preserve the language upholding them

Metaphorical Expressions in Automatic Arabic Sentiment Analysis

Over the recent years, Arabic language resources and NLP tools have been under rapid development. One of the important tasks for Arabic natural language processing is the sentiment analysis. While a significant improvement has been achieved in this research area, the existing computational models and tools still suffer from the lack of capability of dealing with Arabic metaphorical expressions. Metaphors have an important role in Arabic language due to its unique history and culture. Metaphors provide a linguistic mechanism for expressing ideas and notions that can be different from their surface form. Therefore, in order to efficiently identify true sentiment of Arabic language data, a computational model needs to be able to “read between lines”. In this paper, we examine the issue of metaphors in automatic Arabic sentiment analysis by carrying out an experiment, in which we observe the performance of a state-of-art Arabic sentiment tool on metaphors and analyse the result to gain a deeper insight into the issue. Our experiment evidently shows that metaphors have a significant impact on the performance of current Arabic sentiment tools, and hence it is an important task to develop Arabic language resources and computational models for Arabic metaphors

Proverbial Machine Translation: Translating Proverbs between Spanish and English Using Phrased Based Statistical Machine Translation with the Grammatical Category Based Approach

The focus of the research presented in the paper is translating the non-literal interpretation of proverbs from Spanish to English without changing their intended meaning. Proverbs have limited variation in comparison to slang, poetry, and metaphors which tend to differ significantly within the context that they are used. Although there are many other approaches for machine translation (MT), the one most suitable for the research project is Phrased Based Statistical Machine translation used in conjunction with the Grammatical Category- Based approach

Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga, eds. Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. (Berlin 2014) – (Peter Unseth)

Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. Ed. by Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga, managing ed. Anna Borowska, associate ed. Darko Matovac, language ed. Aderemi Rajij-Oyelade. Warsaw & Berlin: DeGruyter Open, 2014. Pp. 368. http://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/44964

Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga, eds. Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. (Berlin 2014) – (Peter Unseth)

Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. Ed. by Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga, managing ed. Anna Borowska, associate ed. Darko Matovac, language ed. Aderemi Rajij-Oyelade. Warsaw & Berlin: DeGruyter Open, 2014. Pp. 368. http://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/44964

A Content Analysis of Colour-term Conceptual Metaphors in Modern Persian Poetry

This study sought answers related to the distribution of colour terms in Persian poems and their metaphoric reflection in poets' beliefs, ideas, or values. In so doing, 137 Persian verses from two poetry books with colour terms in content were considered for the analysis. Four raters who studied literature of Persian scrutinized the verses for the evaluation of the colour metaphoric conceptualizations. To validate the raters' suggestions, a focus group of sixteen commented on the recommended connotations. Results indicated that colours are not similarly distributed in Persian poems, are used with different conceptualizations and stood for both positive and negative connotations. Therefore, since colours are part of the authors' and speakers' daily lives to express information, knowledge of metaphoric expressions is suggested to be an inseparable part of language classes

A proverb in need is a proverb indeed: Proverbs, textbooks and communicative language ability

In the study reported here we focus on proverbs in English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebooks and how the pithy structure and the “wisdom”-loaded content of proverbs can contribute to the development of foreign language learners’ communicative competence as defined by Bachman (1990). We discuss how the most frequently used coursebooks in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) were identified through a questionnaire administered to 127 first and fourth-year EFL pre-service teachers. We also show how these popular coursebooks were scrutinised for the inclusion and presentation of proverbs by using content analysis and an analysis form to uncover (1) the number of the proverbs incorporated, (2) whether or not the presentation of the proverbs in the coursebooks would foster the development of the competencies identified by Bachman (1990), and (3) whether they were among the most known and frequently used proverbs in present-day English (i.e., currency). The findings reveal a number of problems related to the frequency and currency of the included proverbs, and to the adequacy of the presentation of the proverbs in the examined coursebooks to help studentsi develop their communicative competence. Keywords: communicative competence; ELT textbooks; proverbs; teaching Englis

Linguistic prosody and comprehension of idioms and proverbs in subjects of school age

A crucial component of language is represented by the prosodic system because it provides essential elements to speaker about how a sentence should be interpreted or intended (Fodor, 2002). Increasing interest from researchers also relates to the understanding of figurative language (Levorato, & Cacciari, 2002). In the figures of speech that the speaker wants the listener intends something more or different than what is explicitly stated (Glucksberg, 2001).. In particular, prosodic intonation is crucial in the resolution of syntactic ambiguity and structural features that constitute the complex messages, such as idioms and proverbs. A crucial component of language, therefore, is represented by the prosodic system because it provides essential elements to talking about how a sentence should be interpreted or understood . The ability to relate to metalinguistic understanding the cognitive processes that allow you to reflect on language and manipulate its characteristics. These capabilities are essential to recognize and resolve the ambiguities of a complex message, you can control and plan the way we produce and understand language (Levorato, 2007). The study demonstrates that an understanding prosodic correlates with the understanding of idioms and proverbs, which are crucial for the achievement of metalinguistic awareness, are influenced by the level of schooling and socio-cultural

A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Life Metaphor in Tetralogy Laskar Pelangi

This study aims at finding the use of life metaphors in tetralogy Laskar Pelangi (hereinafter TLP). Data were analyzed in the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by using a descriptive qualitative approach. We found 21 life metaphors in TLP and the finding shows that the conceptual metaphor of life as a target domain is mapped into several diverse source domains, and they are: life is a fluid in a container, life is a journey, life is a living organism, life is a precious possession, life is dedication to others, life is a struggle,life is guidance, life is war, and life is hard work. It can be concluded that TLP is rich with the use of metaphors in describing the cultural events of the Malays in detail. The way how the Malay master the problems in their lives, how they see and understand the world, is made clear by their language, which is reflected in conceptual metaphors. The results of this research support the idea that metaphors are not just rhetorical devices to say something more stylistically but they are conceptual in nature and its existence can be different in each culture