The Aramaic of the Old Testament : a grammatical and lexical study of its relations with other early Aramaic dialects

by H. H. Rowley

From metaphor to practice in the crafting of strategy

The editors of Strategy as Practice, Johnson, Langley, Melin and Whittington, illustrate theoretical perspectives and alternative methodologies of 'strategy as practice' research by reflecting and commenting on selected 'classic' research papers such as Buergi, Jacobs and Roos' "From metaphor to practice in the crafting of strategy". Their paper explores how the link between the hand and the mind might be exploited in the making of strategy. Using Mintzberg's image of a potter, Buergi et al. develop a three-level theoretical schema, progressing from the physiological to the psychological to the social to trace the consequences of the hand-mind link. They discuss their model in view of an indicative case of managers from a large telecommunications firm experimenting with a process for strategy making in which they actively use their hands to construct representations of their organization and its environment.

Using the Journalistic Metaphor to Design User Interfaces That Explain Sensor Data

Facilitating general access to data from sensor networks (including traffic, hydrology and other domains) increases their utility. In this paper we argue that the journalistic metaphor can be effectively used to automatically generate multimedia presentations that help non-expert users analyze and understand sensor data. The journalistic layout and style are familiar to most users. Furthermore, the journalistic approach of ordering information from most general to most specific helps users obtain a high-level understanding while providing them the freedom to choose the depth of analysis to which they want to go. We describe the general characteristics and architectural requirements for an interactive intelligent user interface for exploring sensor data that uses the journalistic metaphor. We also describe our experience in developing this interface in real-world domains (e.g., hydrology).

The Optimal combination: Grammatical Swarm, Particle Swarm Optimization and Neural Networks.

Social behaviour is mainly based on swarm colonies, in which each individual shares its knowledge about the environment with other individuals to get optimal solutions. Such co-operative model differs from competitive models in the way that individuals die and are born by combining information of alive ones. This paper presents the particle swarm optimization with differential evolution algorithm in order to train a neural network instead the classic back propagation algorithm. The performance of a neural network for particular problems is critically dependant on the choice of the processing elements, the net architecture and the learning algorithm. This work is focused in the development of methods for the evolutionary design of artificial neural networks. This paper focuses in optimizing the topology and structure of connectivity for these networks.

Metaphor and Genre: An Approach to improve the learning process of English for Aeronautics

This study suggests a theoretical framework for improving the teaching/ learning process of English employed in the Aeronautical discourse that brings together cognitive learning strategies, Genre Analysis and the Contemporary theory of Metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1993). It maintains that cognitive strategies such as imagery, deduction, inference and grouping can be enhanced by means of metaphor and genre awareness in the context of content based approach to language learning. A list of image metaphors and conceptual metaphors which comes from the terminological database METACITEC is provided. The metaphorical terms from the area of Aeronautics have been taken from specialised dictionaries and have been categorised according to the conceptual metaphors they respond to, by establishing the source domains and the target domains, as well as the semantic networks found. This information makes reference to the internal mappings underlying the discourse of aeronautics reflected in five aviation accident case studies which are related to accident reports from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and provides an important source for designing language teaching tasks. La Lingüística Cognitiva y el Análisis del Género han contribuido a la mejora de la enseñanza de segundas lenguas y, en particular, al desarrollo de la competencia lingüística de los alumnos de inglés para fines específicos. Este trabajo pretende perfeccionar los procesos de enseñanza y el aprendizaje del lenguaje empleado en el discurso aeronáutico por medio de la práctica de estrategias cognitivas y prestando atención a la Teoría del análisis del género y a la Teoría contemporánea de la metáfora (Lakoff y Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1993). Con el propósito de crear recursos didácticos en los que se apliquen estrategias metafóricas, se ha elaborado un listado de metáforas de imagen y de metáforas conceptuales proveniente de la base de datos terminológica META-CITEC. Estos términos se han clasificado de acuerdo con las metáforas conceptuales y de imagen existentes en esta área de conocimiento. Para la enseñanza de este lenguaje de especialidad, se proponen las correspondencias y las proyecciones entre el dominio origen y el dominio meta que se han hallado en los informes de accidentes aéreos tomados de la Junta federal de la Seguridad en el Transporte (NTSB)

Rocks are human beings: researching the humanizing metaphor in earth science scientific texts

This paper describes a corpus-based analysis of the humanizing metaphor and supports that constitutive metaphor in science and technology may be highly metaphorical and active. The study, grounded in Lakoff’s Theory of Metaphor and in Langacker’s relational networks, consists of two phases: firstly, Earth Science metaphorical terms were extracted from databases and dictionaries and, then, contextualized by means of the “Wordsmith” tool in a digitalized corpus created to establish their productivity. Secondly, the terms were classified to disclose the main conceptual metaphors underlying them; then, the mappings and the relational networks of the metaphor were described. Results confirm the systematicity and productivity of the metaphor in this field, show evidence that metaphoricity of scientific terms is gradable, and support that Earth Science metaphors are not only created in terms of their concrete salient properties and attributes, but also on abstract human anthropocentric projections.

Types of metaphor in civil engineering communication

La metáfora y otros mecanismos imaginativos subyacentes al pensa- miento y lenguaje humanos pueden ser utilizados en el discurso diario y especializado (Lakoff y Johnson 1980; Lakoff y Nuñez 2000). Asimismo pueden aparecer en la comunicación no verbal (Forceville y Urios-Aparisi 2009; Littlemore et al. Este volumen).Partiendo de estudios cognitivos y de la teoría de integración conceptual (Fauconnier 1997; Fauconnier y Turner 2002), este artículo examina la presencia de la metáfora en la ingeniería. Primeramente, se analiza un corpus lingüístico procedente de artículos de investigación de ingeniería civil. Los datos revelan el uso de la metáfora antropomórfica, sobre todo en expresiones relativas a la salud, como “diagnóstico”, “auscultación” o “proceso de curación”. Se exploran además ejemplos de ingeniería cuya fuente son proyecciones conceptuales corporales. Finalmente, abordamos la función de la metáfora visual bajo la teoría de integración conceptual mediante representaciones de ingeniería que evocan la anatomía humana o animal. Metaphor and other imaginative mechanisms that underlie human thought and language such as metonymy are used in everyday and specialised discourse (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Nuñez 2000) They can also be involved in non- verbal forms of communication (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009; Littlemore et al. this volume). Drawing on metaphor cognitive studies and on conceptual integration theory (Fauconnier 1997; Fauconnier and Turner 2002) this paper examines the occurrence of metaphor in engineering. First, we analyse results from a linguistic corpus formed by research papers from civil engineering journals. These data reveal the use of anthropomorphic metaphor, especially related to health or medical mappings such as “diagnosing”, “auscultation” or “curing”. Then, we explore how engineering notions are instantiated by bodily conceptual mappings according to conceptual integration theory. Finally, the function of visual metaphor is examined with conceptual integration theory by using engineering images evoking parts of human or animal anatomy.