Article
Verbs in aphasic discourse: data from the Russian Clinical Pear Stories Corpus
In the current study we present interim results of verb use analysis in two aphasic groups
based on Russian CliPS (Clinical Pear Stories) data. Russian CliPS is a multimedia corpus of
narratives produced by speakers with aphasia and right hemisphere damage, as well as
neurologically healthy speakers of Russian.
The articles of the book are devored to the search of the particular regularities of narrative forms' functioning. At the same time the narratological problems are researched in the context of the phenomenon of cultural memory.
51st Academy of Aphasia Proceedings
An attractor, in complex systems theory, is any state that is more easily or more often entered or acquired than departed or lost; attractor states therefore accumulate more members than non-attractors, other things being equal. In the context of language evolution, linguistic attractors include sounds, forms, and grammatical structures that are prone to be selected when sociolinguistics and language contact make it possible for speakers to choose between competing forms. The reasons why an element is an attractor are linguistic (auditory salience, ease of processing, paradigm structure, etc.), but the factors that make selection possible and propagate selected items through the speech community are non-linguistic. This paper uses the consonants in personal pronouns to show what makes for an attractor and how selection and diffusion work, then presents a survey of several language families and areas showing that the derivational morphology of pairs of verbs like fear and frighten, or Turkish korkmak 'fear, be afraid' and korkutmak 'frighten, scare', or Finnish istua 'sit' and istutta 'seat (someone)', or Spanish sentarse 'sit down' and sentar 'seat (someone)' is susceptible to selection. Specifically, the Turkish and Finnish pattern, where 'seat' is derived from 'sit' by addition of a suffix-is an attractor and a favored target of selection. This selection occurs chiefly in sociolinguistic contexts of what is defined here as linguistic symbiosis, where languages mingle in speech, which in turn is favored by certain demographic, sociocultural, and environmental factors here termed frontier conditions. Evidence is surveyed from northern Eurasia, the Caucasus, North and Central America, and the Pacific and from both modern and ancient languages to raise the hypothesis that frontier conditions and symbiosis favor causativization.
The distractive effects on attentional task performance in different paradigms are analyzed in this paper. I demonstrate how distractors may negatively affect (interference effect), positively (redundancy effect) or neutrally (null effect). Distractor effects described in literature are classified in accordance with their hypothetical source. The general rule of the theory is also introduced. It contains the formal prediction of the particular distractor effect, based on entropy and redundancy measures from the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon, 1948). Single- vs dual-process frameworks are considered for hypothetical mechanisms which underpin the distractor effects. Distractor profiles (DPs) are also introduced for the formalization and simple visualization of experimental data concerning the distractor effects. Typical shapes of DPs and their interpretations are discussed with examples from three frequently cited experiments. Finally, the paper introduces hierarchical hypothesis that states the level-fashion modulating interrelations between distractor effects of different classes.
The results of research of different areas of personality of homeless men: values, life attitudes, activity, homelessness area is presents. The data indicate the presence of a number of characteristics inherent in varying degrees all homeless people. The data obtained can be used to build an effective program of psychological re-socialization of homeless people.
The present article continues the investigation of the Soqotri verbal system undertaken by the Russian-Soqotri fieldwork team. The article focuses on the so-called “weak” and “geminated” roots in the basic stem. The investigation is based on the analysis of full paradigms (perfect, imperfect and jussive) of more than 170 “weak” and “geminated” Soqotri verbs.