Symbols in the Ukrainian Public Discourse (Analysis of Presidential Speeches on the Occasion of Constitution Day)

This article develops the understanding of symbols as a certain type of signs, the meaning of which is established by agreement or habit. There is an opinion that symbols in public discourse are a reflection of values and anti-values of the society, which are formed in the process of mass communication. This article identifies the main features of the characters, including emotional engagement, attachment to a particular act of communication, as well informativeness. The types of meaning are determined, and the mechanism of nomination is explained. The article reveals the concept of semantic competition. M. Edelman’s opinion that value structures can be divided into mono-, bi- and multimodal — depending on the number of values assigned to key symbols. The presidential speeches delivered before the Ukrainian Constitution Day in 2017–2020 were analyzed in this article. Thanks to the content analysis of emotionally colored words, the symbols, which are characteristic for the speeches of P. Poroshenko and V. Zelensky, were identified focusing both on similarities and differences of Ukrainian values and anti-values. This article analyzes the nominations used by speakers to give meaning to key symbols. Aspects of semantic competition of the key symbols are defined here as well. It was revealed that during the tenure of President Poroshenko, other symbols circulated mostly in the Ukrainian public discourse than those during the presidency of V. Zelensky. Among the common key values for both presidents, we can find “Constitution,” “Constitution Day” and “freedom”. There is a semantic competition in their use. Both presidents underline the negative meaning of the term “parliamentary immunity.” Poroshenko expresses the threat using symbols such as “Russian aggressor”, “fifth column,” “corruption,” “Russian Empire” and “war.” On the other hand, V. Zelensky does not use symbols of external threat. It was found that the value structure formed by Poroshenko’s speeches showed signs of bimodality, and the one created by V. Zelensky’s speeches — multimodality.

Age-Related Differences in the Online Processing of Spoken Semantic Context and the Effect of Semantic Competition: Evidence From Eye Gaze

Purpose The study examined age-related differences in the use of semantic context and in the effect of semantic competition in spoken sentence processing. We used offline (response latency) and online (eye gaze) measures, using the “visual world” eye-tracking paradigm. Method Thirty younger and 30 older adults heard sentences related to one of four images presented on a computer monitor. They were asked to touch the image corresponding to the final word of the sentence (target word). Three conditions were used: a nonpredictive sentence, a predictive sentence suggesting one of the four images on the screen (semantic context), and a predictive sentence suggesting two possible images (semantic competition). Results Online eye gaze data showed no age-related differences with nonpredictive sentences, but revealed slowed processing for older adults when context was presented. With the addition of semantic competition to context, older adults were slower to look at the target word after it had been heard. In contrast, offline latency analysis did not show age-related differences in the effects of context and competition. As expected, older adults were generally slower to touch the image than younger adults. Conclusions Traditional offline measures were not able to reveal the complex effect of aging on spoken semantic context processing. Online eye gaze measures suggest that older adults were slower than younger adults to predict an indicated object based on semantic context. Semantic competition affected online processing for older adults more than for younger adults, with no accompanying age-related differences in latency. This supports an early age-related inhibition deficit, interfering with processing, and not necessarily with response execution.

Evaluativity and structural competition

In this paper, I develop an account of evaluativity in comparative constructions that improves upon Jessica Rett’s theory of evaluativity (2007, 2008). Rett proposes that evaluative interpretations result from the presence of a freely-occurring EVAL morpheme which introduces the reference to a contextual standard. According to Rett, whenever a degree construction is obligatorily evaluative, it is because its non-evaluative parse is blocked by a markedness competition. A limit of this proposal is that markedness comes as a stipulation. In this paper, I propose a principled way for generating competing candidates based on the structural complexity of aPs. I introduce the LF-principle Minimize aPs! that penalizes structurally complex degree expressions whenever they have semantically equivalent, yet structurally simpler counterparts. In addition, a PF-filter, Myers' Generalization, is argued to impose a wellformedness condition on morphologically complex expressions, thereby restricting further the set of competitors for semantic competition. The resulting picture regards the solution to the evaluativity puzzle as being at the crossroads of the different modules of the grammar.

Spatial narrative context modulates semantic (but not visual) competition during discourse processing

Recent research highlights the influence of (e.g., task) context on conceptual retrieval. In order to assess whether conceptual representations are context-dependent rather than static, we investigated the influence of spatial narrative context on accessibility for lexical-semantic information by exploring competition effects. In two visual world experiments, participants listened to narratives describing semantically related (piano-trumpet; Experiment 1) or visually similar (bat-cigarette; Experiment 2) objects in the same or separate narrative locations while viewing arrays displaying these (“target” and “competitor”) objects and other distractors. Upon re-mention of the target, we analysed eye movements to the competitor. In Experiment 1, we observed semantic competition only when targets and competitors were described in the same location; in Experiment 2, we observed visual competition regardless of context. We interpret these results as consistent with context-dependent approaches, such that spatial narrative context dampens accessibility for semantic but not visual information in the visual world.