Subject-tracking and topic continuity in the Church Slavonic translation of the story of Abraham and his niece Mary

The present article addresses issues of referentiality and text cohesion in a Church Slavonic narrative text. Starting with the specific problem of referential conflict as formulated by Kibrik (19871, issues of tracking personal participants in a narrative text are broadly explored in order to arrive at a rationale for the construction of cohesive text interpretation through topic continuity in subject position. The article takes an interpretative text-based approach of close-reading and argues for participant tracking to be dependent on text genre and general cultural prerequisites of text reading and interpretation rather than on systemic grammatical features of language. It is also hinted at the possibility that medieval narrative text genres (like the Byzantine-Slavic hagiographic genre being explored in this paper through the specimen of the Story of Abraham and Mary) may adhere to a type of narrative construction which places more responsibility on the reader-listener than on the narrator

Constructed Constraint and the Constitutional Text

In recent years, constitutional theorists have attended to the unwritten aspects of American constitutionalism and, relatedly, to the ways in which the constitutional text can be “constructed” upon by various materials. This Article takes a different approach. Instead of considering how various materials can supplement or implement the constitutional text, it focuses on how the text itself is often partially constructed in American constitutional practice. Although interpreters typically regard clear text as controlling, this Article contends that whether the text is perceived to be clear is often affected by various “modalities” of constitutional interpretation that are normally thought to come into play only after the text is found to be vague or ambiguous: the purpose of a constitutional provision, structural inferences, understandings of the national ethos, consequentialist considerations, customary practice, and judicial and nonjudicial precedent. The constraining effect of clear text, in other words, is partially constructed by considerations that are commonly regarded as extratextual. This phenomenon of constructed constraint unsettles certain distinctions drawn by modern theorists: between interpretation and construction, between the written and the unwritten constitutions, and between the Constitution and the “Constitution outside the Constitution.” Although primarily descriptive, this Article also suggests that constructed constraint produces benefits for the constitutional system by helping interpreters negotiate tensions within democratic constitutionalism

Visual Representation of Text in Web Documents and Its Interpretation

This paper examines the uses of text and its representation on Web documents in terms of the challenges in its interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the significant problem of non-uniform representation of text. This non-uniformity is mainly due to the presence of semantically important text in image form as opposed to the standard encoded text. The issues surrounding text representation in Web documents are discussed in the context of colour perception and spatial representation. The characteristics of the representation of text in image form are examined and research towards interpreting these images of text is briefly described

Visual Representation of Text in Web Documents and Its Interpretation

This paper examines the uses of text and its representation on Web documents in terms of the challenges in its interpretation. Particular attention is paid to the significant problem of non-uniform representation of text. This non-uniformity is mainly due to the presence of semantically important text in image form as opposed to the standard encoded text. The issues surrounding text representation in Web documents are discussed in the context of colour perception and spatial representation. The characteristics of the representation of text in image form are examined and research towards interpreting these images of text is briefly described

Interpretation and the Constraints on International Courts

This paper argues that methodologies of interpretation do not do what they promise – they do not constrain interpretation by providing neutral steps that one can follow in finding out a meaning of a text – but nevertheless do their constraining work by being part of what can be described as the legal practice

The Interpretation-Construction Distinction

The interpretation-construction distinction, which marks the difference between linguistic meaning and legal effect, is much discussed these days. I shall argue that the distinction is both real and fundamental – that it marks a deep difference in two different stages (or moments) in the way that legal and political actors process legal texts. My account of the distinction will not be precisely the same as some others, but I shall argue that it is the correct account and captures the essential insights of its rivals. This Essay aims to mark the distinction clearly! The basic idea can be explained by distinguishing two different moments or stages that occur when an authoritative legal text (a constitution, statute, regulation, or rule) is applied or explicated. The first of these moments is interpretation – which I shall stipulate is the process (or activity) that recognizes or discovers the linguistic meaning or semantic content of the legal text. The second moment is construction – which I shall stipulate is the process that gives a text legal effect (either my translating the linguistic meaning into legal doctrine or by applying or implementing the text). I shall then claim that the difference between interpretation and construction is real and fundamental. Although the terminology (the words interpretation and construction that express the distinction) could vary, legal theorists cannot do without the distinction. One more preliminary point: the topic of this Essay is narrow and conceptual. This Essay, has three goals: (1) to explicate the nature of the interpretation-construction distinction, (2) to argue that this distinction marks a real difference, and (3) to suggest that the distinction is helpful in that it enables legal theorists to clarify the nature of important debates, for example debates about constitutional interpretation. The Essay does not offer any particular theory of interpretation or construction – that it is, it remains agnostic about questions as to how linguistic meaning can be discerned or how legal content ought to be determined. Nor does this theory offer an account of the history and origins of the distinction. Those topics are important, but raising them in this Essay might shift attention away from prior questions about the nature and value of the distinction itself. Here is the roadmap. In Part II, this Essay shall discuss two preliminary sets of ideas: (1) vagueness and ambiguity, and (2) semantic content and legal content. In Part III, this Essay shall use these preliminary ideas to answer the questions, What is interpretation? and What is construction? In Part IV, this Essay shall consider some objections to the interpretation-construction distinction. In Part V, this Essay shall develop the argument that the distinction is fundamental and indispensable

Figures of interpretation

This peer-reviewed article was intended to contribute to the general pedagogy of practice-led doctoral research through addressing the particular methodological issue of the relationship between written text and practice. This methodological issue concerns the modes of interpretation that arise in the relationship between the written text and the art work in practice-led doctoral research. The initial version of this paper was a contribution to the 5th Research into Practice conference (Royal Society of Arts, London, October 2008), whose central theme was the question of whether art practice-led doctoral research should provide the means for a clear interpretation of its contribution to knowledge, or whether it is a defining characteristic of art work that it is open to different interpretations. In the article I subsequently developed, I consider the idea that the act of interpretation which takes place between written text and art work is one that involves two distinct interpretative attitudes, and explore the possibility, with reference to Hayden White's work on the relationship between rhetorical figures and discourse, that a particular kind of knowledge is produced through the workings of their internal relationship

Text Analytics for Android Project

Most advanced text analytics and text mining tasks include text classification, text clustering, building ontology, concept/entity extraction, summarization, deriving patterns within the structured data, production of granular taxonomies, sentiment and emotion analysis, document summarization, entity relation modelling, interpretation of the output. Already existing text analytics and text mining cannot develop text material alternatives (perform a multivariant design), perform multiple criteria analysis, automatically select the most effective variant according to different aspects (citation index of papers (Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar) and authors (Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar), Top 25 papers, impact factor of journals, supporting phrases, document name and contents, density of keywords), calculate utility degree and market value. However, the Text Analytics for Android Project can perform the aforementioned functions. To the best of the knowledge herein, these functions have not been previously implemented; thus this is the first attempt to do so. The Text Analytics for Android Project is briefly described in this article