A Pali Grammar. William Geiger. Translated into English by Batakrishna Ghosh, revised and edited by K. R. Norman. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1994. xxix, 220 pp. Hardback £12.95, paperback £6.75.

Introduction of deep neural networks to the machine translation research ameliorated conventional machine translation systems in multiple ways, specifically in terms of translation quality. The ability of deep neural networks to learn a sensible representation of words is one of the major reasons for this improvement. Despite machine translation using deep neural architecture is showing state-of-the-art results in translating European languages, we cannot directly apply these algorithms in Indian languages mainly because of two reasons: unavailability of the good corpus and (...) Indian languages are morphologically rich. In this paper, we propose a neural machine translation (NMT) system for four language pairs: English–Malayalam, English–Hindi, English–Tamil, and English–Punjabi. We also collected sentences from different sources and cleaned them to make four parallel corpora for each of the language pairs, and then used them to model the translation system. The encoder network in the NMT architecture was designed with long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and bi-directional recurrent neural networks (Bi-RNN). Evaluation of the obtained models was performed both automatically and manually. For automatic evaluation, the bilingual evaluation understudy (BLEU) score was used, and for manual evaluation, three metrics such as adequacy, fluency, and overall ranking were used. Analysis of the results showed the presence of lengthy sentences in English–Malayalam, and the English–Hindi corpus affected the translation. Attention mechanism was employed with a view to addressing the problem of translating lengthy sentences (sentences contain more than 50 words), and the system was able to perceive long-term contexts in the sentences. (shrink)

Legislative writing, which is one of the key genres in the practice of law, has mostly been overlooked in pedagogic applications in English for Legal Communication (ELC), even though more than any other professional writing, it demonstrates very typical and distinctive use of linguistic and other semiotic resources, including some of the specific rhetorical conventions and constraints. However, it is surprising that despite its distinctive prominence in legal practice, it has never figured in English for Legal Communication programmes. (...) It seems to be the result of pedagogic convenience rather than curriculum need. In this paper, I would like to argue for the inclusion of legislative genres in English for Legal Communication curriculum design as input to teaching materials, to make it easier for learners to understand and interpret other forms of legal communication, such as cases, judgements, contracts, agreements, and even courtroom interaction. (shrink)

The UK Supreme Court in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board adopts an approach to information disclosure in connection with clinical treatment that moves away from medical paternalism towards a more patient-centred approach. In doing so, it reinforces the protection afforded to informed consent and autonomous patient decision making under the law of negligence. However, some commentators have expressed a concern that the widening of the healthcare providers’ duty of disclosure may provide impetus, in future cases, for courts to adopt a (...) more rigorous approach to the application of causation principles. The aim would be to limit liability but, in turn, it would also limit autonomy protection. Such a restrictive approach has recently been adopted in Australia as a result of the High Court decision in Wallace v Kam. This paper considers whether such an approach is likely under English negligence law and discusses case law from both jurisdictions in order to provide a point of comparison from which to scope the post- Montgomery future. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to (...) _The Ethical Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

This study investigates the use of modal verbs in Chinese–English government press conference interpretation. Modal verbs mark the speaker’s opinion of or attitude toward the event described in a sentence. Interpreters also use modal verbs to indicate the stances of the source language speakers. The use of modal verbs has been examined in such contexts as research papers, textbooks, and second language learners’ output; however, studies that compare differences in modal verbs between source and target languages in the context (...) of interpreting are sparse. The investigation being reported is based on a comparable corpus—an original Chinese GPC and its English-translated version—and a parallel corpus—a translated English GPC and the original English version from the US. The results of the comparable corpus analysis indicate that the frequency of modal verbs in translated English is significantly higher than in original Chinese, in which only 40% of the modal verbs in translated English are consistent with their Chinese counterparts, while others are employed through amplification and value variation. The results of the parallel corpus analysis suggest that the increase of modal verbs in the target texts may help to achieve certain types of pragmatic functions in English. (shrink)

Ogden spent over forty years attempting "to deal... with the whole of the linguistic problem." This study gives his work an enduring quality which is of particular relevance to late twentieth century linguistics.

Sangharakkhita's Vuttodaya: a study of Pali metre. Pali text and translated into English by R. Siddhartha. Preface by Professor J. W. de Jong. Sri Satguru Publications, India 1981. Distributed by Indian Books Centre, Delhi. v + 54pp. Rs. 50.

The Master from Mountains and Fields is a fully annotated translation of the prose texts from the "collected works" of Sŏ Kyŏngdŏk (1489-1546), an influential Confucian scholar from the early Chosŏn period (1392-1910). A native of Songdo (also known as Kaesŏng) in present-day North Korea, Sŏ has loomed large in the Korean cultural imagination and appeared as an exceptional sage and popular hero in numerous tales, dramas, and films, yet his writings are little known outside the academic milieu. Also called (...) Master Hwadam, Sŏ embodied an archetype of the secluded scholar who remains hidden in "mountains and forests" to devote himself to his studies. Held in esteem in both South and North Korea today (a notable exception in contemporary studies on Chosŏn Neo-Confucianism), Sŏ and his ideas about Vital Energy influenced the great Korean Neo-Confucian debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries surrounding the psychophysiological origins of morality as well as various non-orthodox intellectual trends in the late Chosŏn. His thought is fundamentally rooted in the cosmology based on the exegesis of the Book of Changes and follows the teachings of various early Chinese Neo-Confucian thinkers; it presents a vivid example of the eclectic nature of ideas and intellectual trends coexisting within what is generically called Neo-Confucianism out of convenience. This volume presents the first English translation of all prose writings attributed to Sŏ and most of the peritexts from his posthumously published collection Hwadam chip. It reflects the importance of literary compilations (munjip) in the intellectual history of Chosŏn and the complex process of the making of Confucian masters in Korea. Sŏ's prose works are concise and diverse and offer a glimpse at an author who thwarts stereotyping; an introduction and annotations provide further context. The lengthy endnotes that accompany each text make this a useful handbook for anybody interested in Chosŏn Korea and Confucianism, from students in East Asian and Korean studies to specialists in literary Chinese (hanmun) or East Asian intellectual history. (shrink)

Some recent evidence has suggested that perspective taking skills in everyday life situations may differ across cultural groups. In the present study, we investigated this effect via culture priming in a group of Chinese-English bilingual adults in the context of a communication game. Results showed that the participants made more perspective taking errors when interpreting the game instruction under the Western than the Chinese primes. The findings suggest that the ability to assume others' mental states not only can be (...) used strategically but is also influenced by the currently active cultural frame in the mind of the bilingual. The present study provides the first evidence for a cultural effect on perspective taking using a within-sample approach via culture priming. (shrink)

Many African American children make use of African American English in their everyday lives, and face academic barriers when introduced to Standard American English in the classroom. Research has shown that students who can adapt and use SAE for academic purposes demonstrate significantly better test scores than their less adaptable peers. Accordingly, AAE use and its confirmed inverse relationship to reading achievement have been implicated in the Black-White Test Score Gap, thus becoming the focus of intense research and (...) practical interest. This volume discusses dialectal code-switching from AAE to SAE and stresses the benefits and importance of African American students becoming bi-dialectal. It provides background theory and science supporting the most promising educational approach to date, Contrastive Analysis, a set of longstanding methods drawn from Second Language research and used effectively with students ranging from kindergarten through college. It offers a deeper knowledge of AAE use by students, the critical features of Contrastive Analysis, and detailed information about successful applications which teachers can apply in their own pedagogy. (shrink)

Was society’s response adequate in the cases of Mrs Pretty and Ms B?On the 11th of May, less than two weeks after losing her final legal appeal, Mrs Diane Pretty died, under sedation and in the care of a hospice. It was not the end she had pursued through the English High Court, the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords, and the European Court of Human Rights. Paralysed by motor neurone disease and unable to take her own life, (...) Mrs Pretty wanted her husband to be allowed to help her to die when they decided the time had come. But in England, assisting suicide is a crime, although suicide itself no longer is, and the English courts refused Mrs Pretty’s request to grant her husband legal immunity. In turning to the European Court of Human Rights, Mrs Pretty argued that the English courts’ refusal had violated the European Convention on Human Rights.The European court, however, judged that there had been no violation. The right to life could not be construed as conferring a “right to die”, and consequently the state could not be required to “sanction actions intended to terminate life” in order to protect Mrs Pretty from the “inhuman or degrading treatment” to which she claimed the law on assisted suicide subjected her. The right to respect for private life , moreover, had to be exercised “in accordance with the law” of the state concerned. “States were entitled to regulate through the operation of the general criminal law activities which were detrimental to the life and safety of other individuals”; and such activities were what the English law against assisting suicide was designed to prevent. Exceptions to this law could not be allowed without undermining the …. (shrink)

In the article, the problem of speech understanding/misunderstanding between non-native speakers using English as lingua franca is discussed. It is argued that the mechanism of EFL discourse comprehensibility and interpretability can be explained basing on Shannon’s model of information exchange, which is constructed of sender and receiver, message, two channels, coding and decoding of information, mutual feedback, noise and context. A malfunction of one or more of these components may result in ‘language noise‘ or interruption of intelligibility of speech. (...) In ELF communication malfunction of these components provokes deviations from language norms in pronunciation, grammar structure and semantics. Recurrent deviations in EFL speech production can increase or reduce noise in the coding and/or decoding channel and, correspondingly, in the information processing. Following Jenkins’ classification of kernel and non-kernel phonological deviations in EFL speech, the author maintains that the kernel deviations increase noise only if they are present in one channel and absent in the other one. If they are inherent to both speakers’ production they don’t hinder intelligibility. Non-kernel deviations affect intelligibility by the same pattern though in a weaker mode. It is claimed that comfortable intelligibility in transnational communication does not necessarily require standardization of norms and high ELF proficiency of speakers. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic affected education institutions just like several other sectors. These institutions, which are among the places where people are found collectively, were the first places that were closed for precaution. Some problems of distance education conducted in online platforms which were assumed upon the termination of face-to-face education emerged in time. Especially in this urgent solution, where the workload of teachers has increased, some application difficulties have been identified in foreign language teaching. From this point of view, considering (...) the foreign language education policy and planning, this study deals with the distance education practices of English teachers, the difficulties they encounter in the process, and their solution proposals. The research, which was designed as a qualitative study, was conducted with a case study design. The participants of the research are 13 English teachers working at the secondary school level in different districts of Northern Cyprus determined by the homogeneous sampling method. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews developed by the researchers. The qualitative data were analyzed with descriptive analysis. As a result of the interviews with the teachers, it has been determined that there are problems related to technology, students, online classes, and planning in English teaching carried out with distance education applications. Accordingly, the teachers offered their recommendations that could be a solution to the existing problems. (shrink)

This study adapts a Medical English Language Anxiety Scale based on Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and examines students’ anxiety in medical English vocabulary, listening and speaking, communication, literature reading, and academic paper writing. The biographical factors related to medical English language anxiety were also tested. The questionnaire sets including five dimensions were distributed to the students from a medical university in Sichuan, China, and were statistically analyzed by using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 21.0. By employing (...) the adapted MELAS, it was found that 85.2% of the medical students surveyed suffered moderate and higher anxiety. Among all dimensions, students with listening and speaking anxiety recorded the highest, followed by literature reading anxiety, English academic writing anxiety, communication anxiety, and vocabulary learning anxiety. We also found that the anxiety of rural medical students in each dimension was higher than that of urban medical students. This study suggests that English teachers should be fully aware of their students’ language anxiety situation, design interesting class activities, and create a relaxed English learning atmosphere in classroom teaching to make students less nervous when learning medical English in class. (shrink)

Objective To ascertain and improve the understanding and use of chaperones among the patients of an English general practice (GP). Background Doctors have long been advised to have a third party present during intimate physical examinations. Little is known about the understanding of the term in the general population in England and the consequences of this for the promotion and use of chaperones in GP. We audited the understanding and use of chaperones in an English GP. The aim (...) of the study was to increase the awareness of the availability of chaperones in our population. Methods A questionnaire was given randomly to 100 patients attending the GP surgery. Participants were asked about their awareness of and frequency of requesting a chaperone while undergoing intimate examinations. Based on the initial results, a poster was designed for the waiting room to increase awareness. Data were collected with the same questionnaire to see if the new poster altered surgery attendees understanding and likely subsequent use of chaperones. Results In the initial audit, 29% of patients were unaware of the term chaperone, and only one person (1%) had ever requested a chaperone. After the introduction of a specially designed poster, the results showed an improvement in awareness from 71% to 89%, and the likely frequency of using a chaperone increased from 1% to 4%. Conclusion There is a need to improve the understanding of the general population about chaperones if we are to see greater use of chaperones in GP. (shrink)

Greenleaf combines solid historical scholarship with philosophical understanding in this useful and detailed study of political thought in 16th and 17th century England. The first half of the book reconstructs the position of the royalists and argues that the philosophical defense of absolute monarchy is much stronger than Locke would lead us to believe in his attack on Filmer. After a chapter on Bodin the empiricists are discussed as the forerunners of empirical and historical study of politics. The concluding chapter (...) summarizes the discussion and establishes the background for Locke's political writings.—K. A. M. (shrink)

Abstract25.6 Million people in the United States have Limited English Proficiency (LEP), defined as insufficient ability to read, write, or understand English. We will (1) Delineate the merits of approaching language as a social determinant of health, (2) highlight pertinent public health values and guidelines which are most relevant to the plight of populations with LEP and (3) Use the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of how a breakdown in public health ethics values created harm for populations and (...) patients with LEP. We define a framework to tease out public health responsibilities given some populations’ limited proficiency in a society’s predominant language. The American Public Health Association (APHA) public health ethics core values serve as a framework to interrogate current practices. We use the COVID-19 case to illustrate gaps between health policy and healthcare disparities experienced by populations with LEP. (shrink)

English deictic and existential there-constructions have been analyzed as constituting a single radial category of form—meaning pairings, related through motivated links, such as metaphor (Lakoff 1987). By comparison, existentials and deictic demonstratives in French make use of two distinct radial categories. The current study analyzes the varied senses of French deictic demonstratives (voilà ‘there is’ and voici ‘here is’) and the existential (il y a ‘there is’). We argue that the syntactic behavior of each of their senses is best (...) explained by the semantic and pragmatic function of that sense, in combination with constraints imposed by its relation to other senses. A cross-linguistic comparison of the deictic demonstrative and existential constructions in French and English supports this claim: despite the different historical origins of these forms in the two languages, they display a strikingly similar array of uses and formal constraints. The parallel evolution of deictics and existentials in these two languages is interpreted as a case of convergent evolution of linguistic items, much like convergent evolution in biological species. (shrink)

'This is a work of seminal importance in educating scholars on how to perceive art in any medium precisely because Heninger provides a successful methodology for understanding what lies behind the apparent content of texts and images.

A SUMMARY IN ENGLISH [by Editor] Since Brouwer, Weyl, and, more recently, Lorenzen, KANT as an authority [in the philosophy of mathematics in general] has often been called in against some “uncritical” Formalism and Structuralism. The core of the present paper is to show, in the main, that the Denkmuster (patterns of thinking) of Kant is still very much alive in mathematics today to be in harmony with Formalism. The study is carried out in three parts, in the light (...) of the “concept of construction” of (i) Kant himself, (ii) Lorenzen's Operationalism, and (iii) Formalism in general. (shrink)