This document summarizes research on thematic structures in academic translated texts. It discusses key concepts such as theme, rheme, thematic organization and progression. It notes that thematic structures play an important role in organizing messages and enabling clear communication. One issue in translation is how thematic devices are handled when a text is translated. The document reviews studies comparing thematic development cross-linguistically and in translation. Previous research found that thematic structures are effective tools in translation but can be lost effectiveness. Translators need mastery of thematic structures in both source and target languages.
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) was developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan to create a theory that could form the basis of a realistic model for linguistic learnability and language processing. LFG analyzes sentences using three structures: lexical structure uses grammatical functions to label argument structure; constituent structure encodes hierarchical groupings and categories; and functional structure integrates lexical and structural information to unify representations.
Factors Responsible for Poor English Reading Comprehension at Secondary LevelBahram Kazemian
The present study shows factors responsible for poor English reading comprehension at secondary school level students. The purpose of this study is to explore those factors and to suggest remedies how to strengthen English reading comprehension of the students. English is the 2nd language of Pakistani students and Kachru (1996) places it in the outer circle. Test and interviews are conducted to get the data. Different factors like poor command of vocabulary, habit of cramming, no interest to learn creativity in reading but the sole goal is just to pass the examination which are found responsible for poor English reading comprehension. Motivation to learn reading can develop reading comprehension skill of students.
Presentation at Knowledge Building Summer Institute 2013 in Mexico. August 7th http://ikit.org/si2013/PROGRAM.pdf
In Knowledge Building (KB) research, the metadiscourse concept has been taken in use more inrecent years. The concept seems to have been used mainly to inform the academic discourse and thecollective advancement of ideas. Still, there have been few attempts to define the concept in acoherent way. In this paper I discuss whether we need to expand our understanding of the concept inorder to fully understand knowledge building discourse. By using a comprehensive definition of metacommunication as a theoretical framework, I demonstrate how different kinds of “talk about talk” are present in knowledge building discourse in selected KB research papers, while not beingexplicitly described as metadiscourse. It is suggested that several new discourse elements should beincluded in the metadiscourse concept; these are explanations of intentions in the knowledge building discourse, discussions of the relationship between the participants and questions of clarification that may better capture the meta-level in the “ongoing flow” of the knowledge buildingdiscourse. In addition, one should focus more on the discourse relationship.
This document discusses previous approaches to studying the grammatical concept of "case". It notes that traditional studies often examined case uses from a semantic perspective but neglected the nominative case and confused classificatory criteria. More recent work analyzed the case systems of individual languages. Generative grammarians have viewed case markers as surface structure reflexes of deep syntactic relations. The document argues for a new approach that views case relationships as primitive terms in a language's syntactic base structure.
Analysing classroom interactions using critical discourse analysishoragabomilo
This document analyzes classroom interactions in a year 8 mathematics classroom using critical discourse analysis. It summarizes the key points of the classroom discussion, where students took turns explaining graphs they drew to explore the concept of gradient. The analysis uses Fairclough's three-dimensional framework to examine the discourse as text, discursive practice, and social practice. It finds that in this classroom, students were empowered and agency was shared, in contrast to more traditional classrooms where the teacher maintains most of the control. The discourse encouraged generative understanding over simple reproduction of knowledge.
1. Michael Halliday developed systemic functional linguistics, which views language as a social semiotic system. It considers how language evolves based on the functions it needs to serve in communication.
2. Systemic functional linguistics analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational to construe experience, the interpersonal to enact social relations, and the textual to combine the other two into coherent texts.
3. Halliday's theory is based on five principles - paradigmatic choice, stratification of meaning, the three metafunctions, syntagmatic structure, and instantiation between system and instance. It provides a framework to explain the complexity of human language use.
This document discusses various theories of functional grammar. It begins by defining text and explaining how functional theories of grammar see language as a tool used to carry out functions. It then outlines several prominent functional theories including systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, role and reference grammar, and lexical functional grammar. For each theory, it discusses their key concepts and how they differ from formal theories of grammar by focusing on how language is used in context rather than just formal relations. It also covers concepts within functional theories like transitivity and the analysis of experience, interaction, and message construction.
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) was developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan to create a theory that could form the basis of a realistic model for linguistic learnability and language processing. LFG analyzes sentences using three structures: lexical structure uses grammatical functions to label argument structure; constituent structure encodes hierarchical groupings and categories; and functional structure integrates lexical and structural information to unify representations.
Factors Responsible for Poor English Reading Comprehension at Secondary LevelBahram Kazemian
The present study shows factors responsible for poor English reading comprehension at secondary school level students. The purpose of this study is to explore those factors and to suggest remedies how to strengthen English reading comprehension of the students. English is the 2nd language of Pakistani students and Kachru (1996) places it in the outer circle. Test and interviews are conducted to get the data. Different factors like poor command of vocabulary, habit of cramming, no interest to learn creativity in reading but the sole goal is just to pass the examination which are found responsible for poor English reading comprehension. Motivation to learn reading can develop reading comprehension skill of students.
Presentation at Knowledge Building Summer Institute 2013 in Mexico. August 7th http://ikit.org/si2013/PROGRAM.pdf
In Knowledge Building (KB) research, the metadiscourse concept has been taken in use more inrecent years. The concept seems to have been used mainly to inform the academic discourse and thecollective advancement of ideas. Still, there have been few attempts to define the concept in acoherent way. In this paper I discuss whether we need to expand our understanding of the concept inorder to fully understand knowledge building discourse. By using a comprehensive definition of metacommunication as a theoretical framework, I demonstrate how different kinds of “talk about talk” are present in knowledge building discourse in selected KB research papers, while not beingexplicitly described as metadiscourse. It is suggested that several new discourse elements should beincluded in the metadiscourse concept; these are explanations of intentions in the knowledge building discourse, discussions of the relationship between the participants and questions of clarification that may better capture the meta-level in the “ongoing flow” of the knowledge buildingdiscourse. In addition, one should focus more on the discourse relationship.
This document discusses previous approaches to studying the grammatical concept of "case". It notes that traditional studies often examined case uses from a semantic perspective but neglected the nominative case and confused classificatory criteria. More recent work analyzed the case systems of individual languages. Generative grammarians have viewed case markers as surface structure reflexes of deep syntactic relations. The document argues for a new approach that views case relationships as primitive terms in a language's syntactic base structure.
Analysing classroom interactions using critical discourse analysishoragabomilo
This document analyzes classroom interactions in a year 8 mathematics classroom using critical discourse analysis. It summarizes the key points of the classroom discussion, where students took turns explaining graphs they drew to explore the concept of gradient. The analysis uses Fairclough's three-dimensional framework to examine the discourse as text, discursive practice, and social practice. It finds that in this classroom, students were empowered and agency was shared, in contrast to more traditional classrooms where the teacher maintains most of the control. The discourse encouraged generative understanding over simple reproduction of knowledge.
1. Michael Halliday developed systemic functional linguistics, which views language as a social semiotic system. It considers how language evolves based on the functions it needs to serve in communication.
2. Systemic functional linguistics analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational to construe experience, the interpersonal to enact social relations, and the textual to combine the other two into coherent texts.
3. Halliday's theory is based on five principles - paradigmatic choice, stratification of meaning, the three metafunctions, syntagmatic structure, and instantiation between system and instance. It provides a framework to explain the complexity of human language use.
This document discusses various theories of functional grammar. It begins by defining text and explaining how functional theories of grammar see language as a tool used to carry out functions. It then outlines several prominent functional theories including systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, role and reference grammar, and lexical functional grammar. For each theory, it discusses their key concepts and how they differ from formal theories of grammar by focusing on how language is used in context rather than just formal relations. It also covers concepts within functional theories like transitivity and the analysis of experience, interaction, and message construction.
This document discusses the work of Australian linguist Michael Halliday and his theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). [Halliday identified seven language functions that children acquire: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative, and representational.] Halliday's approach analyzes language in terms of context (field, tenor, mode), semantics, and lexico-grammar. Central to SFL is the use of "system networks" to represent linguistic choices. According to Halliday, language is a functional system organized to express three primary meanings: ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
Here are some examples of the different cohesive devices:
Anaphoric Reference: The girl walked to the park. She sat on the bench.
Cataphoric Reference: Here is the book. I recommend reading it.
Substitution: Do you want tea or coffee? I'll have tea.
Ellipses: We went shopping after work and then to the movies.
Conjunction: We were tired but decided to go for a walk anyway.
Michael Halliday is an internationally renowned linguist who has significantly contributed to theories of language and related areas since the late 1950s. He is best known for developing systemic functional linguistics (SFL), shifting the focus from syntax to a more semiotic approach. SFL analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational which conceptualizes the world, the interpersonal which represents the speaker, and the textual which manages discourse flow.
A corpus driven comparative analysis of modal verbs in pakistani and british ...Alexander Decker
This document discusses a corpus-driven comparative analysis of modal verbs in Pakistani and British English fiction. It begins by introducing the study, which compiled corpora of 1 million words each from Pakistani English fiction (PEF) and British English fiction (BEF). Part-of-speech tagging was performed on both corpora using CLAWS tagging, and concordance lines of modal verbs were manually explored using Antconc software. The study aims to identify differences in modal verb usage between PEF and BEF and provide stylistic interpretations. A literature review covers previous research on modal verb classification and analyses of modal verbs in different varieties of English. The methodology explains that both qualitative and quantitative methods are used, including corpus compilation, POS tagging, and concord
This document discusses discourse analysis and discourse relations in Arabic texts. It defines discourse as written or spoken language and explains that texts have cohesive devices that link words, clauses, and sentences. There are two types of discourse relations: explicitly signaled relations indicated by connectives, and implicitly inferred relations without signaling. The document also describes different types of discourse connectives in Arabic and presents an annotation scheme for connectives and their arguments. It discusses related work on Arabic corpora and efforts to collect and analyze Arabic connectives. Finally, it introduces Rhetorical Structure Theory as one of the most popular theories for representing discourse structure.
Genre analysis is a process used to analyze types of documents produced in particular discourse communities. It examines similarities and differences in genres' purposes, structures, and language features. Key aspects of genre analysis include identifying the communicative purposes and intended audiences of genres, analyzing their macro-level organizational patterns and sections, and studying language features like verb tense and voice. Genre analysis provides insight into how language is used within important discourse communities and can inform applied linguistics in educational settings.
Functional grammar analyzes language based on its communicative functions rather than formal rules. It views grammar as a set of options or choices used to construct texts and make meaning in different contexts. Functional grammar looks at various levels of language, including the clause, phrase, word class, and morpheme levels, to understand the resources used for analyzing experiences, interactions, and message construction. There are several frameworks that employ a functional approach, including systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, and lexical functional grammar.
Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description developed by Michael Halliday that views language as a network of systems used to make meaning. It is influenced by the work of linguists such as Saussure, Firth, and Whorf. SFG analyzes language according to three metafunctions - the ideational for construing experience, the interpersonal for enacting social relations, and the textual for organizing coherent texts. Grammatical systems like mood and process types play a role in construing different types of meanings associated with these metafunctions. SFG differs from theories like Chomsky's generative grammar by focusing on language use and meaning rather than grammatical rules.
Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Scientific Texts: A Hallidayan PerspectiveBahram Kazemian
This document summarizes a research paper that analyzes the use of ideational grammatical metaphor in scientific texts using a Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics perspective. The paper examines nominalization frequency and process types through an analysis of a corpus of 10 scientific texts. The analysis found that scientific texts highly utilize nominalization as a form of ideational grammatical metaphor. This allows scientific writing to achieve technicality and rationality through more abstract and condensed information presentation.
Discourse analysis involves studying language beyond the sentence level, including conversations and written texts. There are various approaches to discourse analysis from different fields like sociology, linguistics, and philosophy. Sociological approaches include conversational analysis which examines turn-taking, openings/closings of conversations. Systemic functional linguistics views language as evolving based on its social functions and analyzes texts in relation to social contexts. Critical discourse analysis considers how power and social domination are reproduced through language.
This study examined the complex factors that motivate 547 English as a second language (ESL) learners in Pakistan to learn English. The results showed that no single factor predicted L2 motivation for this population. Instead, their motivation was influenced by an interconnected combination of language learning experience, international orientation, ideal L2 self, and instrumentality. English as an international language had a strong influence on ESL learning for Pakistani learners given their colonial past. The study suggested teachers should focus on attitudinal, situational, and self-related factors to keep students motivated over the long process of L2 learning.
The document discusses Shahid Mehmood's presentation on schema analysis. It defines schemas as patterns of thought or behavior that organize information. Schemas help interpret new situations based on prior experiences. The presentation covers the history of schema analysis, types of schemas, methods of studying schemas, and folk theories. Bartlett's work in the 1920s established that schemas influence how stories are remembered and retold over time.
The document analyzes the pragmatic functions of discourse markers used by interpreters in simultaneously interpreting the 2012 Chinese Spring Festival Gala from Chinese to English. It categorizes discourse markers into 7 types, and discusses how markers help reduce cognitive load or enhance communication. The study aims to determine the distribution and purposes of different discourse marker categories through analyzing over 3 hours of interpreting data.
This document discusses genre analysis and different types of genres. It defines genre as a way to group texts that share common communicative purposes. There are three main approaches to genre analysis in applied linguistics: English for Specific Purposes, New Rhetoric, and functional-systematic. The document also discusses public genres that are openly accessible versus occluded genres that are more closed. It provides examples of academic and professional genres and describes characteristics of professional genres like genre integrity and being products of established disciplinary procedures. The conclusion states that genre analysis enhances understanding of language use within important discourse communities.
Cognitive grammar is a cognitive linguistic theory developed by Ronald Langacker that views grammar as symbolic structures pairing semantic and phonological representations. It considers the basic units of language to be conventional pairings of semantic and phonological structures. Like construction grammar, cognitive grammar views grammar as extending to the entire language. Langacker developed the theory in his two volume work Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. He assumes linguistic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes and draws on principles of gestalt psychology.
The document discusses Systemic Functional Grammar, which views a clause as realizing three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents experiences through transitivity. The interpersonal metafunction concerns social exchanges through the mood system. The textual metafunction concerns information flow through the theme system. These metafunctions work interdependently in language.
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed systemic functional linguistics, which views language as a social semiotic system. He sees language as a meaning potential that allows humans to exchange meanings through communication. Halliday rejects generative grammar and argues that language cannot be reduced to grammatical sentences. Instead, he developed the concept of lexicogrammar to show how lexis and grammar are interrelated aspects of meaning. Halliday sees language as encoding three types of meanings simultaneously: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. He also pioneered eco-linguistics by analyzing how language reflects ideological assumptions about economic growth.
This document provides an overview of systemic functional grammar and linguistics. It discusses traditional grammar, formal grammar, and functional grammar. Functional grammar is concerned with both language structures and how those structures construct meaning. It analyzes clauses in terms of participants, processes, and circumstances rather than parts of speech. The document also discusses the connection between context and text, explaining how context of situation and culture influence language use and meaning. Context of situation includes factors like field, tenor, and mode. Finally, the document defines genre as culturally specific text types used to accomplish purposes, with distinctive stages and linguistic features.
This paper presents an alternative approach to teaching the be-verb construction in English based on cognitive linguistics. It outlines how cognitive grammar views grammar and learning as motivated by general cognitive processes. The paper proposes teaching the be-verb using cognitive grammar's "being schema" which relates subjects to identifiers, class membership, attributions, locations, or existential states. Examples are given and two designs for presenting and practicing this approach deductively or inductively are suggested. The cognitive approach is argued to help students better understand the concept of the verb "to be".
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) views language as a social semiotic system used to exchange meanings in social contexts. SFL was developed by Michael Halliday to study the relationship between language and its functions in social settings. It treats grammar as a meaning-making resource and considers how language evolves under the pressure of functions it must serve in society. SFL analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational to express experience, the interpersonal to enact social relationships, and the textual to create coherent messages.
This document provides guidance on writing a grant proposal for research. It discusses the different types of proposals, including solicited proposals in response to a request and unsolicited proposals. It notes that for this assignment, the student should write a research proposal. It provides information on the required components of the proposal, including an abstract, budget, cover letter, narrative, and additional information. The narrative should follow specific headings, such as objectives, importance, methods, timeline, and bibliography. Background information is included with the objectives to provide context. The importance section explains how the research contributes to various fields. The methods and timeline detail the procedures and planned schedule.
Daniel Kupr provides his contact information and resume. He studied English at Charles University from 1999-2000 and graphic and packaging design at VOS OT from 2000-2003. His work experience includes positions at IDMZ as a graphic designer from 2003-2004, Ogilvy & Mather as a designer from 2004-2006 and junior art director in 2007, and Kaspen as an art director from 2007-2008. He has been freelancing since 2009.
This document discusses the work of Australian linguist Michael Halliday and his theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). [Halliday identified seven language functions that children acquire: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative, and representational.] Halliday's approach analyzes language in terms of context (field, tenor, mode), semantics, and lexico-grammar. Central to SFL is the use of "system networks" to represent linguistic choices. According to Halliday, language is a functional system organized to express three primary meanings: ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
Here are some examples of the different cohesive devices:
Anaphoric Reference: The girl walked to the park. She sat on the bench.
Cataphoric Reference: Here is the book. I recommend reading it.
Substitution: Do you want tea or coffee? I'll have tea.
Ellipses: We went shopping after work and then to the movies.
Conjunction: We were tired but decided to go for a walk anyway.
Michael Halliday is an internationally renowned linguist who has significantly contributed to theories of language and related areas since the late 1950s. He is best known for developing systemic functional linguistics (SFL), shifting the focus from syntax to a more semiotic approach. SFL analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational which conceptualizes the world, the interpersonal which represents the speaker, and the textual which manages discourse flow.
A corpus driven comparative analysis of modal verbs in pakistani and british ...Alexander Decker
This document discusses a corpus-driven comparative analysis of modal verbs in Pakistani and British English fiction. It begins by introducing the study, which compiled corpora of 1 million words each from Pakistani English fiction (PEF) and British English fiction (BEF). Part-of-speech tagging was performed on both corpora using CLAWS tagging, and concordance lines of modal verbs were manually explored using Antconc software. The study aims to identify differences in modal verb usage between PEF and BEF and provide stylistic interpretations. A literature review covers previous research on modal verb classification and analyses of modal verbs in different varieties of English. The methodology explains that both qualitative and quantitative methods are used, including corpus compilation, POS tagging, and concord
This document discusses discourse analysis and discourse relations in Arabic texts. It defines discourse as written or spoken language and explains that texts have cohesive devices that link words, clauses, and sentences. There are two types of discourse relations: explicitly signaled relations indicated by connectives, and implicitly inferred relations without signaling. The document also describes different types of discourse connectives in Arabic and presents an annotation scheme for connectives and their arguments. It discusses related work on Arabic corpora and efforts to collect and analyze Arabic connectives. Finally, it introduces Rhetorical Structure Theory as one of the most popular theories for representing discourse structure.
Genre analysis is a process used to analyze types of documents produced in particular discourse communities. It examines similarities and differences in genres' purposes, structures, and language features. Key aspects of genre analysis include identifying the communicative purposes and intended audiences of genres, analyzing their macro-level organizational patterns and sections, and studying language features like verb tense and voice. Genre analysis provides insight into how language is used within important discourse communities and can inform applied linguistics in educational settings.
Functional grammar analyzes language based on its communicative functions rather than formal rules. It views grammar as a set of options or choices used to construct texts and make meaning in different contexts. Functional grammar looks at various levels of language, including the clause, phrase, word class, and morpheme levels, to understand the resources used for analyzing experiences, interactions, and message construction. There are several frameworks that employ a functional approach, including systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, and lexical functional grammar.
Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description developed by Michael Halliday that views language as a network of systems used to make meaning. It is influenced by the work of linguists such as Saussure, Firth, and Whorf. SFG analyzes language according to three metafunctions - the ideational for construing experience, the interpersonal for enacting social relations, and the textual for organizing coherent texts. Grammatical systems like mood and process types play a role in construing different types of meanings associated with these metafunctions. SFG differs from theories like Chomsky's generative grammar by focusing on language use and meaning rather than grammatical rules.
Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Scientific Texts: A Hallidayan PerspectiveBahram Kazemian
This document summarizes a research paper that analyzes the use of ideational grammatical metaphor in scientific texts using a Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics perspective. The paper examines nominalization frequency and process types through an analysis of a corpus of 10 scientific texts. The analysis found that scientific texts highly utilize nominalization as a form of ideational grammatical metaphor. This allows scientific writing to achieve technicality and rationality through more abstract and condensed information presentation.
Discourse analysis involves studying language beyond the sentence level, including conversations and written texts. There are various approaches to discourse analysis from different fields like sociology, linguistics, and philosophy. Sociological approaches include conversational analysis which examines turn-taking, openings/closings of conversations. Systemic functional linguistics views language as evolving based on its social functions and analyzes texts in relation to social contexts. Critical discourse analysis considers how power and social domination are reproduced through language.
This study examined the complex factors that motivate 547 English as a second language (ESL) learners in Pakistan to learn English. The results showed that no single factor predicted L2 motivation for this population. Instead, their motivation was influenced by an interconnected combination of language learning experience, international orientation, ideal L2 self, and instrumentality. English as an international language had a strong influence on ESL learning for Pakistani learners given their colonial past. The study suggested teachers should focus on attitudinal, situational, and self-related factors to keep students motivated over the long process of L2 learning.
The document discusses Shahid Mehmood's presentation on schema analysis. It defines schemas as patterns of thought or behavior that organize information. Schemas help interpret new situations based on prior experiences. The presentation covers the history of schema analysis, types of schemas, methods of studying schemas, and folk theories. Bartlett's work in the 1920s established that schemas influence how stories are remembered and retold over time.
The document analyzes the pragmatic functions of discourse markers used by interpreters in simultaneously interpreting the 2012 Chinese Spring Festival Gala from Chinese to English. It categorizes discourse markers into 7 types, and discusses how markers help reduce cognitive load or enhance communication. The study aims to determine the distribution and purposes of different discourse marker categories through analyzing over 3 hours of interpreting data.
This document discusses genre analysis and different types of genres. It defines genre as a way to group texts that share common communicative purposes. There are three main approaches to genre analysis in applied linguistics: English for Specific Purposes, New Rhetoric, and functional-systematic. The document also discusses public genres that are openly accessible versus occluded genres that are more closed. It provides examples of academic and professional genres and describes characteristics of professional genres like genre integrity and being products of established disciplinary procedures. The conclusion states that genre analysis enhances understanding of language use within important discourse communities.
Cognitive grammar is a cognitive linguistic theory developed by Ronald Langacker that views grammar as symbolic structures pairing semantic and phonological representations. It considers the basic units of language to be conventional pairings of semantic and phonological structures. Like construction grammar, cognitive grammar views grammar as extending to the entire language. Langacker developed the theory in his two volume work Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. He assumes linguistic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes and draws on principles of gestalt psychology.
The document discusses Systemic Functional Grammar, which views a clause as realizing three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational metafunction represents experiences through transitivity. The interpersonal metafunction concerns social exchanges through the mood system. The textual metafunction concerns information flow through the theme system. These metafunctions work interdependently in language.
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed systemic functional linguistics, which views language as a social semiotic system. He sees language as a meaning potential that allows humans to exchange meanings through communication. Halliday rejects generative grammar and argues that language cannot be reduced to grammatical sentences. Instead, he developed the concept of lexicogrammar to show how lexis and grammar are interrelated aspects of meaning. Halliday sees language as encoding three types of meanings simultaneously: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. He also pioneered eco-linguistics by analyzing how language reflects ideological assumptions about economic growth.
This document provides an overview of systemic functional grammar and linguistics. It discusses traditional grammar, formal grammar, and functional grammar. Functional grammar is concerned with both language structures and how those structures construct meaning. It analyzes clauses in terms of participants, processes, and circumstances rather than parts of speech. The document also discusses the connection between context and text, explaining how context of situation and culture influence language use and meaning. Context of situation includes factors like field, tenor, and mode. Finally, the document defines genre as culturally specific text types used to accomplish purposes, with distinctive stages and linguistic features.
This paper presents an alternative approach to teaching the be-verb construction in English based on cognitive linguistics. It outlines how cognitive grammar views grammar and learning as motivated by general cognitive processes. The paper proposes teaching the be-verb using cognitive grammar's "being schema" which relates subjects to identifiers, class membership, attributions, locations, or existential states. Examples are given and two designs for presenting and practicing this approach deductively or inductively are suggested. The cognitive approach is argued to help students better understand the concept of the verb "to be".
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) views language as a social semiotic system used to exchange meanings in social contexts. SFL was developed by Michael Halliday to study the relationship between language and its functions in social settings. It treats grammar as a meaning-making resource and considers how language evolves under the pressure of functions it must serve in society. SFL analyzes language through three metafunctions - the ideational to express experience, the interpersonal to enact social relationships, and the textual to create coherent messages.
This document provides guidance on writing a grant proposal for research. It discusses the different types of proposals, including solicited proposals in response to a request and unsolicited proposals. It notes that for this assignment, the student should write a research proposal. It provides information on the required components of the proposal, including an abstract, budget, cover letter, narrative, and additional information. The narrative should follow specific headings, such as objectives, importance, methods, timeline, and bibliography. Background information is included with the objectives to provide context. The importance section explains how the research contributes to various fields. The methods and timeline detail the procedures and planned schedule.
Daniel Kupr provides his contact information and resume. He studied English at Charles University from 1999-2000 and graphic and packaging design at VOS OT from 2000-2003. His work experience includes positions at IDMZ as a graphic designer from 2003-2004, Ogilvy & Mather as a designer from 2004-2006 and junior art director in 2007, and Kaspen as an art director from 2007-2008. He has been freelancing since 2009.
La publicación multimedia Conexión Europa de Grupo SODERCAN en NetLifegruposodercan
The document summarizes activities of the Enterprise Europe Network in promoting intellectual property protection to small and medium enterprises. It discusses initiatives in several European countries to raise awareness of IP through seminars, conferences, and referrals to IP help desks. It also presents a success story of a German solar mapping project that was commercialized in Austria through Network collaboration.
The document discusses research proposals and their structure. It begins by defining a research proposal as an academic text that stands in place of a larger work, helping readers decide whether to support, fund, or publish the proposed research. It then outlines the basic structure of a research proposal, which typically includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, expected results, and bibliography. The document also discusses the basic structure of a thesis proposal and defines a proposal abstract as a short text that introduces the proposed research.
This document is a call for participation in the 45th Annual TESOL Convention & Exhibit to be held March 17-19, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana. It provides information on the types of proposals being accepted, evaluation criteria, presenter responsibilities, and deadlines. Proposals are due by June 1, 2010 and must be submitted online. The convention aims to provide professional development opportunities for those working in English language teaching through presentations, discussions, and workshops.
This document summarizes and reviews literature on the term "code switching" in sociocultural linguistics. It defines code switching as the practice of selecting or altering linguistic elements to contextualize talk in interaction. This contextualization may relate to local discourse practices or make relevant broader social and identity information beyond the current exchange. The document traces the emergence of code switching studies from early linguistic anthropology works and discusses calls for linguistics to engage more with social and cultural analysis. It positions its discussion within the framework of sociocultural linguistics.
The Six Highest Performing B2B Blog Post FormatsBarry Feldman
If your B2B blogging goals include earning social media shares and backlinks to boost your search rankings, this infographic lists the size best approaches.
1) The document discusses the opportunity for technology to improve organizational efficiency and transition economies into a "smart and clean world."
2) It argues that aggregate efficiency has stalled at around 22% for 30 years due to limitations of the Second Industrial Revolution, but that digitizing transport, energy, and communication through technologies like blockchain can help manage resources and increase efficiency.
3) Technologies like precision agriculture, cloud computing, robotics, and autonomous vehicles may allow for "dematerialization" and do more with fewer physical resources through effects like reduced waste and need for transportation/logistics infrastructure.
Theme and rheme theory divides any clause into two parts: the theme, which is the starting point or what the clause is about, and the rheme, which is the remainder of the clause that comments on or adds new information about the theme. The theme is often realized by the subject of the clause but can also be marked elements like objects or adverbials. Different types of clauses can have different unmarked themes, such as wh- words for interrogatives or the predicator for imperatives. Theme helps structure discourse and link ideas between sentences and paragraphs.
Analysing The Grammar Of Clause As Message In Ann Iwuagwu s Arrow Of Destiny ...Sarah Morrow
This document summarizes a research paper that analyzes the grammar of clauses, specifically themes, in Ann Iwuagwu's novel Arrow of Destiny using Systemic Functional Linguistics. The study explores how themes are organized to convey textual meaning and define the author's literary style. Two extracts from the novel are analyzed in terms of topical, interpersonal, structural, and textual theme components and their frequencies. The study finds a predominance of topical unmarked and textual themes, pointing to prominent linguistic and rhetorical features of the novel.
AN ANALYSIS OF COHESION OF EXPOSITION TEXTS AN INDONESIAN CONTEXTSheila Sinclair
This document summarizes a study that analyzed the cohesion of exposition texts written by 11th grade students in Indonesia. The study analyzed 6 student texts (2 low achievers, 2 mid achievers, 2 high achievers) based on their schematic structure and linguistic features like theme progression and cohesive devices. The results found that all students demonstrated an understanding of exposition structure but only high achievers used complex theme patterns. In terms of cohesive devices, all students used simple references, lexical cohesion, and conjunctions. However, the texts had grammatical errors and needed more elaboration, suggesting students need more guidance to write at a professional level. The study recommends further research on teaching writing using systemic functional linguistics
An article on applying theme and rheme analysis in translationRusdi Noor Rosa
This paper focuses on the use of theme and rheme analysis as a criterion for judging good translation as judgement without criterion is just a pain. The purpose of translation is to convey the same message in different language for understanding process assistance. However, a translated text sometimes contains a slightly different message from its source. This will certainly lead to ineffective use of translation for delivering different messages in different languages. Every message has a core realized in a theme informing the focus of the message. Different focus shapes different mental pattern of how the message is understood. Moreover, in translating extremely important documents, e.g. Act of the Republic of Indonesia Number 20 Year 2003 on National Education System, the theme of every clause must be carefully controlled. This Act serves as the legal framework for the major educational goal, policies and plans in Indonesia. Considering its vital role in the Indonesian education system, it should be well translated.
Pragmatics and discourse analysis are closely related fields that both study language in use and context-dependent aspects of language. While they overlap considerably, pragmatics focuses more on utterances and speech acts, and recovering a speaker's intended meaning based on context. Discourse analysis examines longer stretches of language and how units are combined. Discourse pragmatics represents the intersection between the two fields. Key differences are that pragmatics considers context as dynamic while discourse analysis views it as more static, and pragmatics emphasizes inferring a speaker's intention across contexts. Both fields have evolved over time with different approaches emerging.
An Investigation of the Reading Text ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ (Long Live Pakistan)...Bahram Kazemian
This paper is a critical study in Critical Discourse Analysis paradigm of a Textbook prescribed for intermediate students (Second Language Learners) in Government Colleges affiliated to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Larkana, Sindh, Pakistan. The textbook contains selected texts to improve students reading skills integrated with writing activities. Each of the texts contains questions at the end to be answered. It is observed that the reading tasks are badly designed and there is no mental activity to involve students in the text discourse. The study focuses on critical discourse of the underlying text to inspect whether the text reading involves students in the critical discourse or not; it also attempts to analyze the Reading Text ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ to identify problems showing the gap and unawareness on the part of teachers and students regarding the critical discourse of the text in classroom reading context. It is also suggested that teachers need to bring about a change in their traditional teaching methods in order to tackle the issue. The awareness of critical discourse analysis is recommended on the part of the teachers in order to analyze and understand the real meaning of the text. In result, it may develop the critical approach which is very essential for a reader.
Here are the key points about cultural diversity and language in Australia:
- Australia has significant cultural and linguistic diversity due to large immigrant populations. According to the ABS, 28.2% of Australians were born overseas, speaking various first languages.
- In addition to English, many world languages are spoken in Australia, reflecting the cultural backgrounds of immigrant communities. Some examples include Chinese, Italian, Arabic, Vietnamese and Greek.
- The concept of "World Englishes" is relevant to Australia. Immigrants have influenced the evolution of Australian English, adapting it to their own cultures and languages. This has created linguistically diverse forms of English.
- Language diversity is both standard and non-standard in Australia. While English remains
The document discusses lexical cohesion and its role in reading and writing for EFL students. It reviews literature on discourse-organizing vocabulary and lexical cohesion, including reference words, conjunctions, adverbials, and lexical relations like reiteration and collocation. The paper aims to investigate how knowledge of lexical cohesion can help students with reading comprehension and writing by analyzing exercises that emphasize guessing word meanings from context clues. While cohesion aids interpretation, coherence is also important, as cohesive ties alone do not guarantee a coherent text.
A Study Of Pakistani English Newspaper Texts An Application Of Halliday And ...Jennifer Daniel
This document summarizes a study that analyzed the use of cohesive devices in Pakistani English newspaper texts based on Halliday and Hasan's model of cohesion. The study examined weekly articles from The Daily Dawn newspaper by Cyril Almeida. It found the most frequently used cohesive devices were referencing, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion like reiteration. Reference from grammatical cohesion occurred more than other cohesion subcategories. Many literary terms in the articles helped uncover political contexts. Overall, lexical cohesion like reiteration and collocation were dominant, suggesting the texts' cohesion came mainly from semantic vocabulary linkage rather than grammar.
Under the guidance of the theory of theme and rheme as well as thematic progression patterns, two significant components in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper discusses the thematic structure and thematic progression patterns of the Queen’s national speech “We will meet again!” which was delivered on April 5, 2020, when both England and the rest of the world were in the throes of the growing pandemic. With the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods, their distributions and the reasons are explored to figure out the thematic features, the effects, or the functions that have been achieved in Queen’s speech.
This document analyzes the use of formal links in selected English poems. It discusses Guy Cook's theory of formal links, which identifies seven types of formal links: verb form, parallelism, referring expressions, repetition and lexical chains, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. The analysis of poems using this framework found that each poem employs at least five formal links. These formal links play important roles such as creating coherence, showing plot progression, emphasizing points, and avoiding ambiguity.
Formal Links in English Selected Poems: A Discourse AnalysisAJHSSR Journal
This document analyzes the use of formal links in selected English poems. It begins with an introduction to discourse analysis and cohesion. Cohesion refers to the relationships between different parts of a text that create unity. Formal links are the linguistic devices that create cohesion, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, repetition, and conjunction. The study examines several English poems to identify the types of formal links used and their roles. It finds that each poem uses at least five formal links that help create coherence and emphasize important points. The analysis contributes to understanding how formal links establish relationships between different parts of poems.
This document discusses how the textual component of discourse aids in creating the flow of information through a text. Specifically, it examines thematization and topic at the clause, clause complex, and paragraph levels to understand how meaning unfolds linearly in a discourse. As an example, it analyzes the thematic structure of 1 John 2:28-3:17 to demonstrate how this approach can be used in biblical exegesis. The key points are that discourse has a linear structure which constraints how meaning is conveyed, and that examining thematic elements at different ranks allows one to determine the topic of a discourse.
Chapter 1 - A Comparative Study of Units of Translation in English-Persian L...gholami7508
This chapter introduces the background and purpose of the study. The study aims to investigate the most frequent unit of translation used by professional literary translators as well as the relationship between translation units and the type of translation (free vs literal). The chapter defines key terms such as translation unit, shift, dynamic/textual equivalence vs formal equivalence. It outlines the significance of better understanding translation units to improve translation instruction and outlines limitations of the study due to unavailable resources and time constraints.
A Clinica No Inicio Da Formacao A Experiencia De Uma Rede De Atendimento Psic...Erica Thompson
This document summarizes a study examining 50 TED talks through move analysis to identify common structures. The study found:
1) TED talks contain 3 stages - an opening, body, and closing stage. The body stage contains 4 problem-solution moves: the problem move, response move, evaluation move, and situation move.
2) Certain moves, like the restated thesis, are used in both the body and closing stages.
3) The study aims to contribute to materials design and classroom practice for oral presentation skills by identifying common rhetorical structures in successful TED talks.
Skeptical Discourse Analysis for non-LinguistsDominik Lukes
The document provides an overview of discourse analysis, including:
1) Defining discourse and the different approaches to discourse analysis.
2) Outlining some of the key concepts in discourse analysis like semiotics, meaning, and how discourse works.
3) Discussing the tools and techniques used in discourse analysis like conceptual frameworks, close reading, and quantitative analysis methods.
4) Critiquing the use of discourse analysis in education and providing guidance on when it may or may not be appropriate.
A Study Of Lexical Ties Used In Medical Science Articles Written By Iranian A...Lindsey Sais
This document summarizes a study that compared the use of lexical ties in medical science articles written by Iranian and English authors. The study analyzed 20 research articles (10 written by native English speakers and 10 written by Iranian authors) to examine the frequency of two types of lexical ties (reiteration and collocation) in the abstracts, introductions, and discussions/conclusions. The results found no statistically significant difference in the use of lexical ties between the native and non-native authored articles. The document provides background on lexical ties and previous related studies before describing the methodology used to analyze the frequency of lexical ties in the two corpora of articles.
This chapter discusses definitions of discourse and discourse analysis, including "little d" discourse referring to language in context and "big D" discourse as specialized language of social groups. It outlines structural and functional approaches to discourse analysis and describes various disciplines and main approaches. Context and models of communication are examined, including Hymes' 16 contextual features and Halliday's three parameters of context. The development of the concept of communicative competence from Hymes to Canale and Swain to Celce-Murcia is summarized.
An Investigation Of The Political Discourse Of Obama S Selected Speeches ----...Cynthia King
This document analyzes three speeches given by Barack Obama between 2002-2008 using Halliday's model of transitivity systems. The analysis focuses on Obama's use of processes, participants, and circumstances in his clauses. It finds that Obama uses material processes of action to engage listeners, mental processes of affection to connect with them, and relational processes to craft a positive image. He also employs circumstances of location and reason to make his arguments seem objective and reliable. The document examines Obama's linguistic choices in several paragraphs from his speeches and argues they demonstrate his skill at persuasive political discourse.
Abnormalities of hormones and inflammatory cytokines in women affected with p...Alexander Decker
Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have elevated levels of hormones like luteinizing hormone and testosterone, as well as higher levels of insulin and insulin resistance compared to healthy women. They also have increased levels of inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, and leptin. This study found these abnormalities in the hormones and inflammatory cytokines of women with PCOS ages 23-40, indicating that hormone imbalances associated with insulin resistance and elevated inflammatory markers may worsen infertility in women with PCOS.
A usability evaluation framework for b2 c e commerce websitesAlexander Decker
This document presents a framework for evaluating the usability of B2C e-commerce websites. It involves user testing methods like usability testing and interviews to identify usability problems in areas like navigation, design, purchasing processes, and customer service. The framework specifies goals for the evaluation, determines which website aspects to evaluate, and identifies target users. It then describes collecting data through user testing and analyzing the results to identify usability problems and suggest improvements.
A universal model for managing the marketing executives in nigerian banksAlexander Decker
This document discusses a study that aimed to synthesize motivation theories into a universal model for managing marketing executives in Nigerian banks. The study was guided by Maslow and McGregor's theories. A sample of 303 marketing executives was used. The results showed that managers will be most effective at motivating marketing executives if they consider individual needs and create challenging but attainable goals. The emerged model suggests managers should provide job satisfaction by tailoring assignments to abilities and monitoring performance with feedback. This addresses confusion faced by Nigerian bank managers in determining effective motivation strategies.
A unique common fixed point theorems in generalized dAlexander Decker
This document presents definitions and properties related to generalized D*-metric spaces and establishes some common fixed point theorems for contractive type mappings in these spaces. It begins by introducing D*-metric spaces and generalized D*-metric spaces, defines concepts like convergence and Cauchy sequences. It presents lemmas showing the uniqueness of limits in these spaces and the equivalence of different definitions of convergence. The goal of the paper is then stated as obtaining a unique common fixed point theorem for generalized D*-metric spaces.
A trends of salmonella and antibiotic resistanceAlexander Decker
This document provides a review of trends in Salmonella and antibiotic resistance. It begins with an introduction to Salmonella as a facultative anaerobe that causes nontyphoidal salmonellosis. The emergence of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella is then discussed. The document proceeds to cover the historical perspective and classification of Salmonella, definitions of antimicrobials and antibiotic resistance, and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in Salmonella including modification or destruction of antimicrobial agents, efflux pumps, modification of antibiotic targets, and decreased membrane permeability. Specific resistance mechanisms are discussed for several classes of antimicrobials.
A transformational generative approach towards understanding al-istifhamAlexander Decker
This document discusses a transformational-generative approach to understanding Al-Istifham, which refers to interrogative sentences in Arabic. It begins with an introduction to the origin and development of Arabic grammar. The paper then explains the theoretical framework of transformational-generative grammar that is used. Basic linguistic concepts and terms related to Arabic grammar are defined. The document analyzes how interrogative sentences in Arabic can be derived and transformed via tools from transformational-generative grammar, categorizing Al-Istifham into linguistic and literary questions.
A time series analysis of the determinants of savings in namibiaAlexander Decker
This document summarizes a study on the determinants of savings in Namibia from 1991 to 2012. It reviews previous literature on savings determinants in developing countries. The study uses time series analysis including unit root tests, cointegration, and error correction models to analyze the relationship between savings and variables like income, inflation, population growth, deposit rates, and financial deepening in Namibia. The results found inflation and income have a positive impact on savings, while population growth negatively impacts savings. Deposit rates and financial deepening were found to have no significant impact. The study reinforces previous work and emphasizes the importance of improving income levels to achieve higher savings rates in Namibia.
A therapy for physical and mental fitness of school childrenAlexander Decker
This document summarizes a study on the importance of exercise in maintaining physical and mental fitness for school children. It discusses how physical and mental fitness are developed through participation in regular physical exercises and cannot be achieved solely through classroom learning. The document outlines different types and components of fitness and argues that developing fitness should be a key objective of education systems. It recommends that schools ensure pupils engage in graded physical activities and exercises to support their overall development.
A theory of efficiency for managing the marketing executives in nigerian banksAlexander Decker
This document summarizes a study examining efficiency in managing marketing executives in Nigerian banks. The study was examined through the lenses of Kaizen theory (continuous improvement) and efficiency theory. A survey of 303 marketing executives from Nigerian banks found that management plays a key role in identifying and implementing efficiency improvements. The document recommends adopting a "3H grand strategy" to improve the heads, hearts, and hands of management and marketing executives by enhancing their knowledge, attitudes, and tools.
This document discusses evaluating the link budget for effective 900MHz GSM communication. It describes the basic parameters needed for a high-level link budget calculation, including transmitter power, antenna gains, path loss, and propagation models. Common propagation models for 900MHz that are described include Okumura model for urban areas and Hata model for urban, suburban, and open areas. Rain attenuation is also incorporated using the updated ITU model to improve communication during rainfall.
A synthetic review of contraceptive supplies in punjabAlexander Decker
This document discusses contraceptive use in Punjab, Pakistan. It begins by providing background on the benefits of family planning and contraceptive use for maternal and child health. It then analyzes contraceptive commodity data from Punjab, finding that use is still low despite efforts to improve access. The document concludes by emphasizing the need for strategies to bridge gaps and meet the unmet need for effective and affordable contraceptive methods and supplies in Punjab in order to improve health outcomes.
A synthesis of taylor’s and fayol’s management approaches for managing market...Alexander Decker
1) The document discusses synthesizing Taylor's scientific management approach and Fayol's process management approach to identify an effective way to manage marketing executives in Nigerian banks.
2) It reviews Taylor's emphasis on efficiency and breaking tasks into small parts, and Fayol's focus on developing general management principles.
3) The study administered a survey to 303 marketing executives in Nigerian banks to test if combining elements of Taylor and Fayol's approaches would help manage their performance through clear roles, accountability, and motivation. Statistical analysis supported combining the two approaches.
A survey paper on sequence pattern mining with incrementalAlexander Decker
This document summarizes four algorithms for sequential pattern mining: GSP, ISM, FreeSpan, and PrefixSpan. GSP is an Apriori-based algorithm that incorporates time constraints. ISM extends SPADE to incrementally update patterns after database changes. FreeSpan uses frequent items to recursively project databases and grow subsequences. PrefixSpan also uses projection but claims to not require candidate generation. It recursively projects databases based on short prefix patterns. The document concludes by stating the goal was to find an efficient scheme for extracting sequential patterns from transactional datasets.
A survey on live virtual machine migrations and its techniquesAlexander Decker
This document summarizes several techniques for live virtual machine migration in cloud computing. It discusses works that have proposed affinity-aware migration models to improve resource utilization, energy efficient migration approaches using storage migration and live VM migration, and a dynamic consolidation technique using migration control to avoid unnecessary migrations. The document also summarizes works that have designed methods to minimize migration downtime and network traffic, proposed a resource reservation framework for efficient migration of multiple VMs, and addressed real-time issues in live migration. Finally, it provides a table summarizing the techniques, tools used, and potential future work or gaps identified for each discussed work.
A survey on data mining and analysis in hadoop and mongo dbAlexander Decker
This document discusses data mining of big data using Hadoop and MongoDB. It provides an overview of Hadoop and MongoDB and their uses in big data analysis. Specifically, it proposes using Hadoop for distributed processing and MongoDB for data storage and input. The document reviews several related works that discuss big data analysis using these tools, as well as their capabilities for scalable data storage and mining. It aims to improve computational time and fault tolerance for big data analysis by mining data stored in Hadoop using MongoDB and MapReduce.
1. The document discusses several challenges for integrating media with cloud computing including media content convergence, scalability and expandability, finding appropriate applications, and reliability.
2. Media content convergence challenges include dealing with the heterogeneity of media types, services, networks, devices, and quality of service requirements as well as integrating technologies used by media providers and consumers.
3. Scalability and expandability challenges involve adapting to the increasing volume of media content and being able to support new media formats and outlets over time.
This document surveys trust architectures that leverage provenance in wireless sensor networks. It begins with background on provenance, which refers to the documented history or derivation of data. Provenance can be used to assess trust by providing metadata about how data was processed. The document then discusses challenges for using provenance to establish trust in wireless sensor networks, which have constraints on energy and computation. Finally, it provides background on trust, which is the subjective probability that a node will behave dependably. Trust architectures need to be lightweight to account for the constraints of wireless sensor networks.
This document discusses private equity investments in Kenya. It provides background on private equity and discusses trends in various regions. The objectives of the study discussed are to establish the extent of private equity adoption in Kenya, identify common forms of private equity utilized, and determine typical exit strategies. Private equity can involve venture capital, leveraged buyouts, or mezzanine financing. Exits allow recycling of capital into new opportunities. The document provides context on private equity globally and in developing markets like Africa to frame the goals of the study.
This document discusses a study that analyzes the financial health of the Indian logistics industry from 2005-2012 using Altman's Z-score model. The study finds that the average Z-score for selected logistics firms was in the healthy to very healthy range during the study period. The average Z-score increased from 2006 to 2010 when the Indian economy was hit by the global recession, indicating the overall performance of the Indian logistics industry was good. The document reviews previous literature on measuring financial performance and distress using ratios and Z-scores, and outlines the objectives and methodology used in the current study.
Discover top-tier mobile app development services, offering innovative solutions for iOS and Android. Enhance your business with custom, user-friendly mobile applications.
This talk will cover ScyllaDB Architecture from the cluster-level view and zoom in on data distribution and internal node architecture. In the process, we will learn the secret sauce used to get ScyllaDB's high availability and superior performance. We will also touch on the upcoming changes to ScyllaDB architecture, moving to strongly consistent metadata and tablets.
LF Energy Webinar: Carbon Data Specifications: Mechanisms to Improve Data Acc...DanBrown980551
This LF Energy webinar took place June 20, 2024. It featured:
-Alex Thornton, LF Energy
-Hallie Cramer, Google
-Daniel Roesler, UtilityAPI
-Henry Richardson, WattTime
In response to the urgency and scale required to effectively address climate change, open source solutions offer significant potential for driving innovation and progress. Currently, there is a growing demand for standardization and interoperability in energy data and modeling. Open source standards and specifications within the energy sector can also alleviate challenges associated with data fragmentation, transparency, and accessibility. At the same time, it is crucial to consider privacy and security concerns throughout the development of open source platforms.
This webinar will delve into the motivations behind establishing LF Energy’s Carbon Data Specification Consortium. It will provide an overview of the draft specifications and the ongoing progress made by the respective working groups.
Three primary specifications will be discussed:
-Discovery and client registration, emphasizing transparent processes and secure and private access
-Customer data, centering around customer tariffs, bills, energy usage, and full consumption disclosure
-Power systems data, focusing on grid data, inclusive of transmission and distribution networks, generation, intergrid power flows, and market settlement data
"$10 thousand per minute of downtime: architecture, queues, streaming and fin...Fwdays
Direct losses from downtime in 1 minute = $5-$10 thousand dollars. Reputation is priceless.
As part of the talk, we will consider the architectural strategies necessary for the development of highly loaded fintech solutions. We will focus on using queues and streaming to efficiently work and manage large amounts of data in real-time and to minimize latency.
We will focus special attention on the architectural patterns used in the design of the fintech system, microservices and event-driven architecture, which ensure scalability, fault tolerance, and consistency of the entire system.
"NATO Hackathon Winner: AI-Powered Drug Search", Taras KlobaFwdays
This is a session that details how PostgreSQL's features and Azure AI Services can be effectively used to significantly enhance the search functionality in any application.
In this session, we'll share insights on how we used PostgreSQL to facilitate precise searches across multiple fields in our mobile application. The techniques include using LIKE and ILIKE operators and integrating a trigram-based search to handle potential misspellings, thereby increasing the search accuracy.
We'll also discuss how the azure_ai extension on PostgreSQL databases in Azure and Azure AI Services were utilized to create vectors from user input, a feature beneficial when users wish to find specific items based on text prompts. While our application's case study involves a drug search, the techniques and principles shared in this session can be adapted to improve search functionality in a wide range of applications. Join us to learn how PostgreSQL and Azure AI can be harnessed to enhance your application's search capability.
From Natural Language to Structured Solr Queries using LLMsSease
This talk draws on experimentation to enable AI applications with Solr. One important use case is to use AI for better accessibility and discoverability of the data: while User eXperience techniques, lexical search improvements, and data harmonization can take organizations to a good level of accessibility, a structural (or “cognitive” gap) remains between the data user needs and the data producer constraints.
That is where AI – and most importantly, Natural Language Processing and Large Language Model techniques – could make a difference. This natural language, conversational engine could facilitate access and usage of the data leveraging the semantics of any data source.
The objective of the presentation is to propose a technical approach and a way forward to achieve this goal.
The key concept is to enable users to express their search queries in natural language, which the LLM then enriches, interprets, and translates into structured queries based on the Solr index’s metadata.
This approach leverages the LLM’s ability to understand the nuances of natural language and the structure of documents within Apache Solr.
The LLM acts as an intermediary agent, offering a transparent experience to users automatically and potentially uncovering relevant documents that conventional search methods might overlook. The presentation will include the results of this experimental work, lessons learned, best practices, and the scope of future work that should improve the approach and make it production-ready.
[OReilly Superstream] Occupy the Space: A grassroots guide to engineering (an...Jason Yip
The typical problem in product engineering is not bad strategy, so much as “no strategy”. This leads to confusion, lack of motivation, and incoherent action. The next time you look for a strategy and find an empty space, instead of waiting for it to be filled, I will show you how to fill it in yourself. If you’re wrong, it forces a correction. If you’re right, it helps create focus. I’ll share how I’ve approached this in the past, both what works and lessons for what didn’t work so well.
For the full video of this presentation, please visit: https://www.edge-ai-vision.com/2024/06/temporal-event-neural-networks-a-more-efficient-alternative-to-the-transformer-a-presentation-from-brainchip/
Chris Jones, Director of Product Management at BrainChip , presents the “Temporal Event Neural Networks: A More Efficient Alternative to the Transformer” tutorial at the May 2024 Embedded Vision Summit.
The expansion of AI services necessitates enhanced computational capabilities on edge devices. Temporal Event Neural Networks (TENNs), developed by BrainChip, represent a novel and highly efficient state-space network. TENNs demonstrate exceptional proficiency in handling multi-dimensional streaming data, facilitating advancements in object detection, action recognition, speech enhancement and language model/sequence generation. Through the utilization of polynomial-based continuous convolutions, TENNs streamline models, expedite training processes and significantly diminish memory requirements, achieving notable reductions of up to 50x in parameters and 5,000x in energy consumption compared to prevailing methodologies like transformers.
Integration with BrainChip’s Akida neuromorphic hardware IP further enhances TENNs’ capabilities, enabling the realization of highly capable, portable and passively cooled edge devices. This presentation delves into the technical innovations underlying TENNs, presents real-world benchmarks, and elucidates how this cutting-edge approach is positioned to revolutionize edge AI across diverse applications.
Dandelion Hashtable: beyond billion requests per second on a commodity serverAntonios Katsarakis
This slide deck presents DLHT, a concurrent in-memory hashtable. Despite efforts to optimize hashtables, that go as far as sacrificing core functionality, state-of-the-art designs still incur multiple memory accesses per request and block request processing in three cases. First, most hashtables block while waiting for data to be retrieved from memory. Second, open-addressing designs, which represent the current state-of-the-art, either cannot free index slots on deletes or must block all requests to do so. Third, index resizes block every request until all objects are copied to the new index. Defying folklore wisdom, DLHT forgoes open-addressing and adopts a fully-featured and memory-aware closed-addressing design based on bounded cache-line-chaining. This design offers lock-free index operations and deletes that free slots instantly, (2) completes most requests with a single memory access, (3) utilizes software prefetching to hide memory latencies, and (4) employs a novel non-blocking and parallel resizing. In a commodity server and a memory-resident workload, DLHT surpasses 1.6B requests per second and provides 3.5x (12x) the throughput of the state-of-the-art closed-addressing (open-addressing) resizable hashtable on Gets (Deletes).
High performance Serverless Java on AWS- GoTo Amsterdam 2024Vadym Kazulkin
Java is for many years one of the most popular programming languages, but it used to have hard times in the Serverless community. Java is known for its high cold start times and high memory footprint, comparing to other programming languages like Node.js and Python. In this talk I'll look at the general best practices and techniques we can use to decrease memory consumption, cold start times for Java Serverless development on AWS including GraalVM (Native Image) and AWS own offering SnapStart based on Firecracker microVM snapshot and restore and CRaC (Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint) runtime hooks. I'll also provide a lot of benchmarking on Lambda functions trying out various deployment package sizes, Lambda memory settings, Java compilation options and HTTP (a)synchronous clients and measure their impact on cold and warm start times.
What is an RPA CoE? Session 2 – CoE RolesDianaGray10
In this session, we will review the players involved in the CoE and how each role impacts opportunities.
Topics covered:
• What roles are essential?
• What place in the automation journey does each role play?
Speaker:
Chris Bolin, Senior Intelligent Automation Architect Anika Systems
zkStudyClub - LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Application...Alex Pruden
Folding is a recent technique for building efficient recursive SNARKs. Several elegant folding protocols have been proposed, such as Nova, Supernova, Hypernova, Protostar, and others. However, all of them rely on an additively homomorphic commitment scheme based on discrete log, and are therefore not post-quantum secure. In this work we present LatticeFold, the first lattice-based folding protocol based on the Module SIS problem. This folding protocol naturally leads to an efficient recursive lattice-based SNARK and an efficient PCD scheme. LatticeFold supports folding low-degree relations, such as R1CS, as well as high-degree relations, such as CCS. The key challenge is to construct a secure folding protocol that works with the Ajtai commitment scheme. The difficulty, is ensuring that extracted witnesses are low norm through many rounds of folding. We present a novel technique using the sumcheck protocol to ensure that extracted witnesses are always low norm no matter how many rounds of folding are used. Our evaluation of the final proof system suggests that it is as performant as Hypernova, while providing post-quantum security.
Paper Link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/257
Northern Engraving | Nameplate Manufacturing Process - 2024Northern Engraving
Manufacturing custom quality metal nameplates and badges involves several standard operations. Processes include sheet prep, lithography, screening, coating, punch press and inspection. All decoration is completed in the flat sheet with adhesive and tooling operations following. The possibilities for creating unique durable nameplates are endless. How will you create your brand identity? We can help!
Introduction of Cybersecurity with OSS at Code Europe 2024Hiroshi SHIBATA
I develop the Ruby programming language, RubyGems, and Bundler, which are package managers for Ruby. Today, I will introduce how to enhance the security of your application using open-source software (OSS) examples from Ruby and RubyGems.
The first topic is CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures). I have published CVEs many times. But what exactly is a CVE? I'll provide a basic understanding of CVEs and explain how to detect and handle vulnerabilities in OSS.
Next, let's discuss package managers. Package managers play a critical role in the OSS ecosystem. I'll explain how to manage library dependencies in your application.
I'll share insights into how the Ruby and RubyGems core team works to keep our ecosystem safe. By the end of this talk, you'll have a better understanding of how to safeguard your code.
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) invited Taylor Paschal, Knowledge & Information Management Consultant at Enterprise Knowledge, to speak at a Knowledge Management Lunch and Learn hosted on June 12, 2024. All Office of Administration staff were invited to attend and received professional development credit for participating in the voluntary event.
The objectives of the Lunch and Learn presentation were to:
- Review what KM ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’
- Understand the value of KM and the benefits of engaging
- Define and reflect on your “what’s in it for me?”
- Share actionable ways you can participate in Knowledge - - Capture & Transfer
Northern Engraving | Modern Metal Trim, Nameplates and Appliance PanelsNorthern Engraving
What began over 115 years ago as a supplier of precision gauges to the automotive industry has evolved into being an industry leader in the manufacture of product branding, automotive cockpit trim and decorative appliance trim. Value-added services include in-house Design, Engineering, Program Management, Test Lab and Tool Shops.
ScyllaDB is making a major architecture shift. We’re moving from vNode replication to tablets – fragments of tables that are distributed independently, enabling dynamic data distribution and extreme elasticity. In this keynote, ScyllaDB co-founder and CTO Avi Kivity explains the reason for this shift, provides a look at the implementation and roadmap, and shares how this shift benefits ScyllaDB users.
The essence of thematic structures in the academic translated texts
1. Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org
ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online)
Vol 3, No 1, 2012
The Essence of Thematic Structures in the Academic
Translated Texts
Mohsen Khedri1* Seyed Foad Ebrahimi2
1. Ph.D Candidate in Applied Comparative Linguistics, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
2. Department of English, Shadegan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shadegan, Iran
* E-mail of the corresponding author: khedri295@yahoo.com
Abstract
Thematic structure and progression play a major role in organizing the message and in enabling it to be
communicated and understood clearly. One issue in translation is how translators tackle these cohesive
devices when a text is translated into another language. This paper was centered on reviewing the status of
thematic development and progression cross-linguistically taking translation into account. Reviewing
previously conducted studies attest to the fact that thematic structures are greatly effective and valuable tools
in translation process. They let translators to be conscious where they are losing their effectiveness in their
arguments in terms of theme/rheme organization. Both writers and translators should have enough knowledge
about thematic structures in creation and interpretation of texts. Translators should get mastery over the
grammar and structure of both source and target languages at least in terms of thematic structure. Since, as
stated by Ventola (1995), in academic texts the theme/rheme patterns are important in guiding the reader
through the logical paths constructed by the writer. If little attention is paid in translation to these rhetorical
effects, the writer's attempts to help the reader are destroyed (p. 102).
Keywords: Theme, Rheme, Thematic organization, Thematic progression, Translation.
1. Introduction
1.1 Thematic Structures: Theme and Rheme
According to Weil (1844 as cited in Wang, 2007, p. 2), the theoretical principles underlying the study of
theme and rheme are derived mainly from the Systemic-Functional Linguistics. To Martin and Rose (2007),
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a big multi-perspectival theory with more
dimensions in its theory banks that might be required for any one job. SFL is called
systemic because compared with other theories it foregrounds the organization of language
as options for meaning and is also functional because it interprets the design of language
with respect to ways people use it to live (pp. 21, 24).
Thematic choices and patterning have been discussed widely in the existing linguistic literature, especially
within Prague School of linguistics and systemic-functional theory. Theme/rheme structures have been
defined by some scholars such as: (Blmonte & McCabe, 2001; Brown & Yule, 1983; Danes, 1974; Firbas,
1964; Fries, 1995; Green et al, 2000; Halliday, 1985, 1994; Matthiessen, 2004; McCabe, 1999; McCarthy,
1991).
According to Firbas’s (1964 as cited in Davidse, 1987, p. 65), "theme is constituted by the element(s) of
sentence carrying the lowest level(s) of communicative dynamism (CD) within the sentence”. By degree of
CD, he explains that we understand the extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development
of the communication.
Fries (1983) establishes two approaches to the definition of theme: the “combining” and the “separating”
approach. Combiners merge the concepts of theme/rheme and given/new, but separators believe that these
two sets of concepts belong to two different systems. Halliday and other scholars working in systemic
tradition represent this last approach, whereas Prague School followers merge the concept of theme as the
point of departure with information focus (p. 2).
Halliday (1985) defines theme as:
“An element which serves as the point of departure of the message, what the speaker has in
mind to start with, and also organizes the clause as message. The remainder of the message
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is called the rheme. Therefore, a clause consists of a theme combined with a rheme and the
structure is expressed by order. The order for this is theme followed by rheme (p. 30).”
He also elaborated further by stating that, "theme is what the clause is about and it comes in the first position,
but this position is not what defines the theme; it is a means which realizes the function of the theme" (p. 39).
Halliday (1994) argues that one of the various structures which makes up clause and gives it its character as
message is thematic structure. In all languages the clause has the character of a message; it has some form of
organization, giving it the status of a communicative event. But there are different ways in which this may be
achieved. In English, as in many other languages, the clause is organized as a message by having a special
status assigned to one part of it. One element in the clause is enunciated as the theme; this then combines
with the reminder as rheme so that the two parts together constitute a message. This organization is known as
thematic structure (p. 37).
There are two important notes in Halliday’s work on theme: Firstly, it is not restricted to the level of the
clause, but is also found beneath and beyond the clause, e.g. , group rank, complex clause, as well as
paragraph. Secondly, the theme must be interpreted as a meaning not as this or that specific item that realizes
the meaning.
He also proposes that the choice of clause theme plays a fundamental role in the discourse; it is this which
constitutes what is known as the “method of development” of the text (1994, p. 61). As stated by Fries (1995,
p. 323), “the way thereby a text develops its ideas is so called as the method of development of the text”. It
affects the reactions of its readers. The concept of method of development is not a structural idea but a
semantic one. Different texts may express single methods of development to varying levels. In other words,
some texts develop their ideas in simple ways, while other ones develop their ideas through complicated
ways.
Besides Halliday, other scholars such as Brown and Yule (1983, p. 126) regard theme as a formal category in
the analysis of sentences or clauses in a complex or compound sentence. For Brown and Yule (1983),
Theme is not only the starting point of the message, but it also has a role of connecting to
what has been said. They assume that it is the left-most constituent of the sentence which
has two important functions:
1) It maintains a coherent point of view by connecting back and linking into the previous
discourse.
2) It serves as a point of departure for the further development of the discourse (p. 133).
They also point out that sometimes theme is referred to as object, idea’s notion, topic entity or main
character. To them, thematization happens when a referent is established in the foreground of consciousness
and the other referents remain in background. Theme does not refer to a constituent directly but to the
referent of the constituent coming to develop as the central subject of the discourse. These parts of discourse
which are about a main character are referred to by noun phrase acting as syntactic subject (p. 135).
McCarthy (1991) states that the front position of a clause signals a framework. The rest of the clause
transmits what we decide to say within this framework. He calls the item brought to the first place as theme
or topic (p. 52).
Green, Christopher, and Mei (2000) define theme as a material immediately preceding the main verb of the
main clause. The material which includes the main verb and all other remaining constituents of the sentence
constitutes the rheme (p.100).
1.2 Thematic Organization
Halliday (1985, p. 54) categorized the elements which occur in initial position of the clause as follows:
1. Topical theme which is presented by a nominal group (e.g., everyone), a prepositional phrase (e.g., with
ships continually at sea), or an adverbial group (e.g., by the middle of 15th century).
2. Interpersonal theme which consists of any combination of vocatives (direct addresses such as: personal
names), modal adjuncts and mood marking elements (finite verbal operator (temporal & modal),
WH-interrogatives and imperative let's.
3. Textual theme that includes continuatives (small set of discourse items which signal that a new move is
beginning, such as: yes, no, oh…), structural elements (coordinates & subordinates) and conjunctive adjuncts
which relate the clause to the preceding texts (e.g., in other words).
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Following the above classification, Halliday (1985) introduced simple and multiple themes.
1. Simple themes always have a topical element.
For example: she was so kind to her four cats.
topical
2. Multiple themes may have the interpersonal and textual themes in addition to topical theme ( p. 55).
For example: and, the servant was waiting for the cats.
textual topical
The other categorization made by Halliday (1985) is marked and unmarked theme.
When an element that occupies the theme position of the clause conflates with grammatical subject, this
theme is called unmarked theme.
For example: the goat went shopping.
unmarked
But in marked theme, an element other than the subject occupies the theme position, so a condition is created
for the appearance of marked theme (p.44)
For example: in the morning, the goat went to jungle to find the wolf.
marked
1.3 Thematic Progression
As with Hallidyan (1994) classification of thematic development, Danes (1974, as cited in Downing 2001, p.
3) introduced the concept of thematic progression, part of the language theory known as Functional Sentence
Perspective (FSP), propounded by scholars of the Prague School. This theory is used to analyze the sequence
of thematic choices in texts with the purpose of determining how the semantic and syntactic elements of the
sentence function in fulfilling the communicative message. In other words, thematic progression means how
theme and rheme are linked to the material which comes next in the text.
Lores (2004) argues that the concept of "thematic progression" was first introduced by Danes (1974) as “an
originating principle with the purpose of ordering information in discourse beyond the sentence level”
(p.288). By thematic progression, Danes (1974 as cited in Downing, 2001, p. 5) means “the choice and
ordering of utterance themes, their mutual concentration and hierarchy, as well as their relation to the
hyperthemes of the superior text unit to the whole text, and to the situation”. He claims that the way in which
lexical strings and reference chains interact with theme is not random. In his view, it is the relationship
between rheme and the given theme that is communicatively relevant.
Danes (1974 as cited in Downing, 2001, p. 5) states that the implementation of these models relies on the
features of the given language, e.g, on the various means accessible for expressing FSP. He also points out
that in applying this notion to a pro-drop language such as Spanish the manifestation of theme must be
interpreted differently from that in English or French.
Hutchins (1977) maintains that one of the important characteristics of all texts at the micro-structure level is
that their sentences are linked by some kind of thematic progression. To him, every sentence adds some new
semantic content to what has preceded, so the informational or computational content of each sentence
gradually increases from a low point at or near the beginning to a peak at or near the end. He pin-points that
the first sentence plays the role of starting point for the following sentences. He also suggests that there are
two ways for relating a theme to a preceding sentence (pp. 18-19):
1. It refers to the element of the foregoing rheme.
2. It represents some or all of the proceed theme.
Danes (1974, as cited in Downing, 2001, p. 5) proposed a number of thematic progression patterns that
manifest differently in different genres as follows: linear TP, constant TP (or thematic iteration), split rheme,
and split theme progression.
Adopting the Danes' thematic progression patterns, McCabe (1999, p. 176) considered a revised model of
Danes' TP patterns. She catagorized these patterns into 2 overall types: a) theme progression including
constant theme and split theme and b) rheme progression including simple linear and split rheme. McCabe
(1999) did not consider derived theme as a different sort of TP, since it may be related to proceeding themes
and rhemes through some types of inference involved in simple linear or constant theme (p. 171). According
to McCabe (1999), there are a rather large percentage of clauses which do not fit into any of the TP patterns
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proposed by Danes, since it appears that Danes employed a standard for theme specification which accords
more with the notion of “given”. Therefore, it is necessary to modify Danes’ model in order to apply it in
other analyses which use a different standard for theme specification (p. 270). What’s more is that, Danes’
model was only tested on English texts and a few other languages. So, more evidence is needed from other
languages to see whether other systematic patterns emerge in texts in other languages.
2. Thematization and Translation
Indeed, one way of achieving cohesion in text and even translated texts is through thematic patterning, which
involves the relationships between clauses based on the information contained in their theme. Ventola (1995)
states that there is no question about the usefulness of the analytical devices --thematic structures, but these
tools are not expected to function in the same way in various languages. Contrastive linguistics has paid some
attention to these differences. But an area that is relatively unexplored is what happens to the texts' thematic
organization and their thematic progression when the text goes through a translation process (p. 85). This area
is a fruitful one if investigated extensively. She suggests that “what is needed by is a more thorough
investigation of the theme/rheme issues and the role they play in creating textuality and cohesion in
translation of texts” (1995, p. 102).
In recent years a number of researchers have incorporated the issue of thematic structures and translation, and
how thematic structures change when they go through a translation process. Researches have shown that
thematic structure, organization, and progression are not quite the same among various languages. With
respect to this notion, Matthiessen (2004) asserts that, for example, in Japanese, as in Tagalog, interpersonal
theme is realized positionally by initial position; and the same is true about textual themes. Japanese, in
contrast to Tagalog, tends to place topical theme early in the clause, after textual and interpersonal themes,
but in line with Tagalog, Japanese may mark topical themes segmentally by a ‘postposition” such as wa or
mo (p. 550).
Ghabanchi (1990) performed a contrastive analysis of the target sentences of English and Persian texts. The
corpus used in his study consisted of 40 short English and Persian texts written for the beginners by the
native speakers. The total number of the English sentences was 237 ones, and that of Persian sentences was
315 ones. The English texts were drawn from the book Practice and Progress and the Persian texts were
selected from Taalimat Dini, and Farsi Reading selection for second, third, forth, and fifth grades of
elementary school. He found three types of theme-rheme structures existing in his data: the reciprocal type,
type (R), which indicates the simultaneous relationship between theme and rheme of a sentence with theme
and rheme of the subsequent one; theme omission, type (O), which exists in Persian texts, and type (E) which
is rare in both languages, the relation of the preceding theme to the subsequent rheme. Findings showed that
most of the common references to theme in English are pronouns whereas in Persian most of the common
references to theme are pronouns and synonyms.
As a systemic functional linguist who has investigated different aspects of the thematic structure, Ventola
(1995) carried out a study in which she compared the role of thematic structure in German philosophy texts
produced by German authors and their parallel texts in English, their translation. She analyzed 19 paragraphs
as sample texts drawn from two philosophy texts produced by a German author. Both texts were translated
twice by different translators into English. Results showed that thematic patterns change in translation, and
this change is likely to complicate the reading process of translated academic texts.
McCabe (1999) compared the thematic patterning in both English and Spanish history textbooks. She
analyzed the ideational, textual, and interpersonal themes in both corpora and concluded that the similarity in
content, purpose and audience results in texts which show similarities in textual features.
Belmonte and McCabe (2001) worked on the notion of theme from a cognitive perspective. They also
explored whether a cognitive approach to the notion of theme can contribute to different fields like translation
and contrastive rethoric. They believed that the thematization of particular constituents throughout a text
partly reflects the speaker perception of reality. They also added that cognitive-communicative motivations
together with contextual extralinguistic factors are determining in the selection of thematic options in each
text, and these motivations are not culturally specific (p. 21 ).
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They selected texts written in both Spanish and English. Results revealed that the same global spatial strategy
of thematization was chosen by writers both in English and Spanish when dealing with place relations in
descriptive texts, and this strategy was generally marked by the selection of locative themes every time there
is a change from one place to another. They found that the way in which text procedures view the field of
discourse is a contributing factor in motivation for theme selection, for theme choice is linked to the
contextual configuration of the text. They also concluded that theme choice was managed by several different
factors: textual concerns, interpersonal concerns, grammatical constraints, and experiential iconism or a
desire to present the order of constituents of the clause in a way which reflects the text producers’ perceptions
of reality.
Williams (2005) performed the analysis of thematic items referring to research and researchers in the
discussion section of Spanish biomedical articles and English-Spanish translation. The corpus used in his
study contained approximately half a million words and consisted of 192 research articles with Introduction,
Method, Result, and Discussion (IMRD) format. The results showed that the Spanish texts had more integral
references and more general researcher nouns in their themes whereas the translations had more singular
research nouns associated with more propositional adjuncts in the Spanish texts but with more subject themes
in the translations.
Jalilifar and Khedri (2011) scrutinized thematic development and progression in English academic texts and
their translations in Persian. Applying Halliday's (1994) thematic organization and McCabe's (1999) thematic
progression, they analyzed sample academic texts selected from the first three pages of the first chapters of
nine English applied linguistics books and their translation versions that were representatives of applied
linguistics books taught in the Iranian universities at undergraduate and graduate levels. Analyses of original
texts and their Persian counterparts indicated that there were significant differences between the two text
types regarding thematic development and progression especially in terms of unmarked and multiple themes.
3. Conclusion
Ventola (1995) contends that “the analysis of theme/rheme structures in the clauses and the thematic
progression helps us to see whether the text is unsuccessful in its realizations” (p. 98). Analysis of texts and
their translations in other languages in terms of thematic structures would enable one to see how texts
unfold in different languages at the micro-structure level.
She adds that sometimes readers may find texts fuzzy since they consider some odd thematic structures that
are not typical of the target language. The fault in these texts is very often placed on the author’s failures of
argumentation and rhetorical skills; it is presumed that the author’s logic is not functioning well and his/her
argumentation and rhetorics are seen to fail. But often the original argumentation is clear and
well-structured rhetorically in the source text; it is the translation that fails and distorts the argumentative
and rhetorical patterns (p. 91).
Finally, the obtained findings taken from reviewing previously done researches attest to the fact that thematic
structures are greatly effective and valuable tools in translation process. They let translators to be aware
where they are losing their effectiveness in their arguments in terms of theme/rheme organization. They
increase and highlight the relationship between ideas in the text. Both writers and translators should have
enough knowledge about thematic organization and progression in creation and interpretation of texts.
Translators should get mastery over the grammar and structure of both source and target languages at least in
terms of thematic structure. Since, as stated by Ventola (1995), in academic texts the theme/rheme patterns
are important in guiding the reader through the logical paths constructed by the writer. If little attention is
paid in translation to these rhetorical effects, the writer's attempts to help the reader are destroyed (p. 102).
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