The placement of the head that maximizes predictability. An information theoretic approach

The minimization of the length of syntactic dependencies is a well-established principle of word order and the basis of a mathematical theory of word order. Here we complete that theory from the perspective of information theory, adding a competing word order principle: the maximization of predictability of a target element. These two principles are in conflict: to maximize the predictability of the head, the head should appear last, which maximizes the costs with respect to dependency length minimization. The implications of such a broad theoretical framework to understand the optimality, diversity and evolution of the six possible orderings of subject, object and verb are reviewed.Comment: in press in Glottometric

The placement of the head that maximizes predictability: An information theoretic approach

The minimization of the length of syntactic dependencies is a well-established principle of word order and the basis of a mathematical theory of word order. Here we complete that theory from the perspective of information theory, adding a competing word order principle: the maximization of predictability of a target element. These two principles are in conflict: to maximize the predictability of the head, the head should appear last, which maximizes the costs with respect to dependency length minimization. The implications of such a broad theoretical framework to understand the optimality, diversity and evolution of the six possible orderings of subject, object and verb, are reviewed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Quantifying Interpreting Types: Language Sequence Mirrors Cognitive Load Minimization in Interpreting Tasks

Most interpreting theories claim that different interpreting types should involve varied processing mechanisms and procedures. However, few studies have examined their underlying differences. Even though some previous results based on quantitative approaches show that different interpreting types yield outputs of varying lexical and syntactic features, the grammatical parsing approach is limited. Language sequences that form without relying on parsing or processing with a specific linguistic approach or grammar excel other quantitative approaches at revealing the sequential behavior of language production. As a non-grammatically-bound unit of language sequences, frequency motif can visualize the local distribution of content and function words, and can also statistically classify languages and identify text types. Thus, the current research investigates the distribution, length and position-dependent properties of frequency motifs across different interpreting outputs in pursuit of the sequential generation behaviors. It is found that the distribution, the length and certain position-dependent properties of the specific language sequences differ significantly across simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting output. The features of frequency motifs manifest that both interpreting output is produced in the manner that abides by the least effort principle. The current research suggests that interpreting types can be differentiated through this type of language sequential unit and offers evidence for how the different task features mediate the sequential organization of interpreting output under different demand to achieve cognitive load minimization

IDEOLOGEME “ORDER” AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF RUSSIA AND THE USA AND THEIR COMPARISON

АКСИОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ ИДЕОЛОГЕМЫ "ПОРЯДОК" В ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ РОССИИ И США И ИХ СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ Аннотация В данной статье рассматриваются аксиологические аспекты идеологем «порядок» и «order» в политическом дискурсе России и США, также приводятся некоторые результаты сопоставительного исследования идеологем «порядок/order» в российском и американском политическом дискурсе. IDEOLOGEME “ORDER” AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF RUSSIA AND THE USA AND THEIR COMPARISON Abstract The article deals with axiological aspects of ideologeme “order” in the political discourse of Russia and the USA. It is also supplied with some results of comparative research of ideologeme “order” in Russian and American political discourse

Linguistic Research in the Empirical Paradigm as Outlined by Mario Bunge

In view of the critique of the methodology of the dominant interdisciplinary re-search involving language studies as the main component, in particular clinical linguistics, Cummings (2014) proposes that “It is perhaps appropriate at this point to move the debate onto non-empirical grounds.” In Cummings (2014: 113) she starts such a debate on the grounds of the philosophy of language and pragmatics. In this article, I propose to expand that debate by including the input of the philosophy of science. I start the discussion by presenting the way one may carry out language research in the paradigm of empirical sciences from the perspective outlined in Bunge (1967, 1973, 2003) and constrained by Altmann’s (1978) assumption about self-originating and self-regulatory nature of language

The Mechanics of Grammar: Theme and Rheme in Engineering Education (MOG TREE) Solution

Mastery of the English language for effective communication by Engineering Higher Degree by Research Students (EHDRS) is critical for progress in their highly challenging academic pursuits and future professional careers. These communication skills are especially critical for those for whom standard English is not their first language, who now comprise a significant percentage of contemporary Australian EHDR cohorts. As of 2017, some 20,000 international HDR students were enrolled in Australia, which constitutes around 32 per cent of the total HDR cohort (Australian Government DET 2017). Not only are students’ written and oral skills assessed in English, but any language obstacles can impact on their ability to understand and communicate the often highly complicated technical curriculum of Engineering, and hence can severely undermine confidence and self-belief. Students who have excelled throughout their schooling can suddenly find themselves questioning their intellectual ability, if their language skills significantly impede their capacity to communicate and understand effectively. Furthermore, 80% of all engineering academic journals are written in English and often require a highly effective grasp of the language to read and fully comprehend the subject. This can be extremely daunting, considering the expectations on EHDRS to publish alongside the authors of the works they read as peers. The problem that is being addressed is that of enabling positive, accelerated learning of academic engineering writing skills for postraduate engineering students, so that their language skills come to match their elevated engineering knowledge. In order to help these students to achieve the requisite skills to become confident and self-directed researchers, this thesis takes a humanistic view of learning and teaching (MacDonald 2012; David 2015), which places the EHDRS at the very centre of the research; actively engaging them throughout the design and testing process. A key aim is to address the language and emotional issues underlying current attrition rates by accelerating EHDRS’ (notably English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) EHDRS’) learning of nuanced, accurate academic English. Currently, HDRS undertake compulsory, generic genre level courses in academic writing but not explicit teaching at word, phrase and sentence levels, which would address their complex social, cultural and emotional needs. EAL/D HDRS regularly struggle to write fluently, and at speed, to a standard that meets supervisors’ expectations. This research is therefore designed to improve individualised discipline-specific learning, non-judgementally; to inspire the students’ English language enquiry skills, emotional growth and resilience, taking a humanistic view of learning and teaching placing Mechanical Engineering higher degree by research students (EHDRS) at the centre of the research. The thesis acknowledges the subliminal biases of English, using the Harkness paradigm to build an egalitarian, inherently positive learning architecture, both physically and philosophically and thereby taking a growth mindset position. The methodology is participative action research (PAR) (MacDonald 2012; David 2015), ii which is designed to frame early research in emerging fields. Its iterative nature aligns with the engineering method. The theoretical-linguistic elements of the research are framed by Lévi-Strauss’ analogy of the engineer and the bricoleur, gifted and talented pedagogies, engineering modes of cognition and play theory. A detailed needs analysis was undertaken, along with short samples of written language for analysis of typical EHDR errors. Based on these analyses, playful, social language learning mechanisms were investigated to ensure a balance of knowledge and emotional capitals is achieved. Subsequent to careful consideration of the learning mechanisms typical of engineering students (defined by the students themselves through the needs analysis and group discussion), a central aspect of the participative action research methodology was the development of an original, visual, kinaesthetic learning tool, which is focused on the Mechanics of Grammar, Theme and Rheme in Engineering Education, or MOG TREE. This appropriately-named, tactile learning tool physically resembles a tree and is supplemented by two other original language teaching methods for a tri-partite solution. It is social in nature, affirmatory, enables self-editing, and is industrial in design, ensuring that the learning system is appropriately adult. It is vital that the MOGTREE system is both conceptually and visually appropriate. The language tree elements derive from pedagogical traditions designed by Montessori and Cuisenaire- Gattagno. They are useful for planning, writing and editing in groups, language choices and punctuation selection. The playful nature of the language trees stimulates the EHDRS to generate lexical solutions by enabling sophisticated refinements without negativity. The second aspect of the solution is the Mechanical Engineering corpus. It is designed to be used in conjunction with a concordancing tool. This is particularly useful for (b)EAL/D EHDRS, as it can give statistically verified answers to collocation questions, which are critical for developing natural language phrasing rather than L1- L2 direct translations (Sadeghi 2010), for example. The corpus can also be used alone, as a discipline-specific, academic phrase bank. The corpus, containing contemporary published Mechanical Engineering journal articles, can be both personalised and updated. The third part of the solution is a grammar website (http://www.mogtreeapp.com). The grammar derives from the EHDRS’ requests, as expressed through the needs analysis, with discipline-specific examples. The website works at word, phrase, sentence and genre levels, enabling fully-individualised learning pathways. It takes a pragmatic, settlement position in terms of traditional and systemic functional grammar terminology in order to be as inclusive as possible. The results of the testing process show high broad agreement that the tri-partite MOG TREE solution is supportive, effective and engaging to use. The detailed results of the testing cycles are given. Potential applications and extensions of the research, beyond EHDRS’ use, are suggested under “Future Research”.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mechanical Engineering, 201

Landscape and Tourism, Landscapes of Tourism

Landscape is central to tourism. It is key to the development, marketing/promotion, and consumption of tourism destinations, to triggering and sustaining tourism markets, and to enticing tourist dreams, fantasies, and behaviors. From ‘sight-seeing’ practices—at the basis of all tourism activities—landscape figures prominently all the way to the overall spatial planning and management of a destination for tourism development. The intertwined relationship between tourism and landscape comes with a series of costs and benefits, in the context of tourism landscapes. Landscapes of tourism reflect and stage recreational trends, multifunctional livelihood systems, conflicts and opportunities for employment and income generation, as well as human, cultural, and natural resource management and use. This Special Issue aims to enhance the interdisciplinary scientific dialogue on these issues and challenges, while highlighting their range and significance for tourism and the landscape, in terms of theory, empirical practice, approach, policy, ethics, and future prospects. Some of the questions posed for consideration here are: What are landscapes of tourism, for whom and how/why? What is the role of the landscape in tourism promotion, attraction, and experience? How does tourism affect the landscape? What lessons do the history and geography of tourism have to offer to tourism landscape stewardship? How may we best plan for and manage the landscape in the context of various forms of tourism growth and spread, at various scales? Scholarly advances in the past few decades have steadily built on a diverse—but spread-out and not adequately connected—bibliographical basis for future research. Much remains to be understood and exchanged as landscape and tourism—two highly complex and multifaceted scientific areas—come together in the scope of this Special Issue in a variety of ways across time, space, and culture

Multimodal language learning environment of the Korean digital kitchen : a study on the impact of physicality and technological affordances on Korean vocabulary learning

PhD ThesisTask Based Language Learning and Teaching (TBLT) has been integrated with computer-assisted language learning (CALL), contributing to pedagogical developments in the field of foreign/second language teaching and learning (Thomas and Reinders, 2010). While the majority of studies have used the integrated pedagogy inside the classroom context, little attention has been paid to the area outside the classroom (Seedhouse et al., 2013; Seedhouse et al., 2014; Preston et al., 2015). This issue has recently been addressed by the European Digital Kitchen (EDK) project team (Seedhouse, 2017), which has successfully investigated the efficacy of digital technology on foreign language learning out of the classroom. However, as the EDK was designed as a holistic learning environment in which many different environmental factors would contribute to learning, there was a need to disaggregate some of these factors and discover which factors were more or less significant. In order to determine one of the environmental factors to learning, this study attempted to use the technological components of a previous project to create Korean pedagogical materials. This formed the Korean Digital Kitchen (KDK), a real-world environment of a kitchen where students can simultaneously learn Korean language and culture by carrying out the real-world task of cooking. Korean is one of the important global languages to be taught, according to an Ethnologue report (Lewis et al., 2016). Based on the literature on vocabulary learning, especially Nattinger’s (1988) claim that touching and manipulating real objects, as opposed to seeing them, increases learnability, this study explored whether kinesthetic mode adds extra value to foreign language learning processes. Would there be any significant difference between vocabulary learning which involves seeing the learning items only in a classroom and learning which also involves touching the items in the KDK? Thus, this study examined the power of physicality. Furthermore, the salience of real-world and pedagogical tasks has been investigated as factors to different level of vocabulary learning. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was employed for users to conduct two cooking sessions, one in a digital kitchen by using real objects and the other in a classroom by looking at pictures/photos in the textbook. Participants were 48 adults of both British and international origins, living in Newcastle, UK, coming from 20 different countries. To determine which environment between a digital kitchen and a classroom is more conducive to vocabulary learning, users needed to carry out two ii different recipes in the two locations in order to control a practice effect. Subjects went through the real-life cooking activities in three stages of TBLT in both settings using two different recipes with two different set of vocabularies. There were tests before and after cooking to compare their scores to examine the results of learning. Ten vocabulary noun items were targeted in this research. In addition to test score data, three more data sources were employed, namely questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and video-observations for triangulation, revealing the outcomes and processes of learning in two different learning environments. A series of data sets clearly demonstrated which of the two learning settings was more effective to learn foreign language vocabulary and culture in and what their attitudes towards a digitalized learning environment were. Findings suggest that physicality in the KDK makes students link the word and cultural aspects to their memory better than simply looking at photos of objects in the classroom. The learning differences reached statistical significance. Other environmental factors such as technology and its affordances may have contributed to different learning outcomes, playing a role in learners taking positive attitudes (Stricker et al., 2004). In contrast, users in the conventional setting demonstrated relatively less learning, due to fewer senses and its typical features such as the relationship with a teacher, less interaction with peers (Shen et al., 2008) and boredom. It is these differences that contributed to the different results and processes of learning in two settings. From these findings, it could be concluded that the digital kitchen can provide a motivating learning environment which is multi-modal, multi-sensory, multi-interactional, multi-experiential and multi-layered. It is physicality, meaningful tasks and computer technology that foster learning in vocabulary and cultural aspects. This project contributes to building up one more dimension of psycholinguistic factor in language learning, and supports the development of innovative ICT for foreign language learning across the world

Investigating Recommended Language Instruction of Complex Literary Texts: A Content Analysis of Close Reading Lesson Plans for Elementary Grades

Expectations have been placed upon elementary teachers from the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts to guide students through close readings of informational and literary texts. This content analysis examined online close reading lesson plans to determine common objectives in elementary close reading lessons using literary text and to delineate which aspects of language are recommended for close reading instruction. Lessons for primary and intermediate grade levels were stratified and highlighted which instructional moves and student tasks are recommended for making complex language in texts more comprehensible. Key findings indicate a lack of alignment in lesson planning between objectives, lesson content, recommended vocabulary, student tasks, and assessment of multiple aspects of language creating a possible challenge for teachers to use close reading lesson plans as clear resources of close reading instruction. The most common objectives centered on the processes and routines of close reading through discussions of elements of fiction. There is scarce representation of instruction or modeling of language structure grammar and syntax, figurative language, language use and conventions used in literary text language. Intentional and incidental vocabulary instruction and use of context clues is the predominant language focus