Volume 4, Issue 2

This study investigated the effect of motivational factors on English achievement in an intensive English course. The participants consisted of 164 Iranian male military staff, aged from 20 to 30. The participants filled a translated and adapted version of the mini-Attitude Motivation Test Battery (α=.70). Factor analysis of the questionnaire yielded four principal variables namely, motivation, integrativeness, organizational influence, and anxiety. Descriptive statistics indicated that the military staff were highly motivated in learning English and had low English learning Anxiety. It also suggested that the military organization was not so much supportive in learners’ studying English. Furthermore, path analysis indicated that integrativeness predicted the motivation to learn English positively, and that motivation was a positive predictor of English achievement, whereas organizational influence was a negative predictor of English achievement. This study confirmed that motivation is the single most influential factor of language learning achievement, all other things being equal. The wider concluding argument of this paper is that motivation and its constructs are context dependent and therefore, any language learning context has its own uniquemotivational model. Finally, based on the context of language learning a path analytic model of L2 motivation was proposed.

SMIT (2007) discusses the possibility that Hengeveld’s parts-of-speech systems of types 1-4, when viewed diachronically, represent stages of a dynamic development with intermediate types as transition stages. In the present paper, grammar efficiency is calculated for each stage of this development. The results are analogous to those observed in other syntactic changes. This confirms the plausibility of the suggested diachronic development

Authorship attribution and identifying time period of literary works are fundamental problems in quantitative analysis of languages. We investigate two fundamentally different machine learning text categorization methods, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Naive Bayes (NB), and several style markers in the categorization of Ottoman poems according to their poets and time periods. We use the collected works (divans) of ten different Ottoman poets: two poets from each of the five different hundred-year periods ranging from the 15 th to 19 th century. Our experimental evaluation and statistical assessments show that it is possible to obtain highly accurate and reliable classifications and to distinguish the methods and style markers in terms of their effectiveness

The present study is devoted to semantic and phonetic features of Proto-Indo-European vocabulary. Based on a statistical analysis of dictionary entries the similarity and coincidence of lexical roots is explored

The aim of this paper is to compare two kinds of features in topic-based clustering of some literary poems by the Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu. Using Precision, Recall, Rand Index, Relative Precision and Purity measures for evaluating the clustering results, we conclude that the topics of poems are better characterized by the phonemes as features than by some geometric properties (described by the indicators: V/N; A; Λ; Var(Λ); Gini; Var(Gini), of the rank-frequency sequence of word forms.

The aim of this paper is to show how German right-wing extremists - by communicating their political attitude online - employ linguistic means as to approach a broad and heterogeneous target audience. It will be shown which linguistic strategies are used in order to link nationalist and racist ideas with commonly accepted values and virtues conventionally characterized as positive or negative. The study focuses on lexical items and includes both semantic and semiotic aspects as well as theories of text comprehension.

Rongorongo script is characterized by a choice of scribal techniques, allowing for adjustments and paraphrasing within the analyzed texts. Variation, interchanging and permutation techniques, “harmonic”-like and “rhythmic” features, plus mirror-reflection sequences are common in the Easter Island’s script. They often hint at lax and diverse spelling conventions, and occasionally reveal the Old scribes as authentic punsters. If we wish to achieve real progress, the structural method is a non-biased avenue that tells us what to expect out of the encoded glyphs. The paper concentrates on the “harmonic”-like feature (Guy 2006) and intends to ground it in the ancient lore of the islanders (Routledge 1919; Campbell 1971; Fischer 1997). The line of arguing may also help us in re-addressing the dilemma of the nature of Rapanui’s classical script.