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We investigate how Tamil- and Dutch-speaking adults and four- to five-year-old children use caused posture verbs (‘lay/stand a bottle on a table’) to label placement events in which objects are oriented vertically or horizontally. Tamil caused posture verbs consist of morphemes that individually label the causal and result subevents (nikka veyyii ‘make stand’; paDka veyyii ‘make lie’), occurring in situational and discourse contexts where object orientation is at issue. Dutch caused posture verbs are less semantically transparent: they are monomorphemic (zetten ‘set/stand’; leggen ‘lay’), often occurring in contexts where factors other than object orientation determine use. Caused posture verbs occur rarely in Tamil input corpora; in Dutch input, they are used frequently. Elicited production data reveal that Tamil four-year-olds use infrequent placement verbs appropriately whereas Dutch children use high-frequency placement verbs inappropriately even at age five. Semantic transparency exerts a stronger influence than input frequency in constraining children's verb meaning acquisition.

Empathy is a key cognitive attribute among healthcare professionals that fosters better patient- healthcare provider relationships. The Jefferson scale of empathy (JSE) measures self-rated empathy among various groups of healthcare professionals-health professionals, medical students and health professions students (HPS). The authors present the experience in translating the JSE-HPS version into an Indian regional language with insights into the issues faced in every step. With official permission from the Thomas Jefferson University, the authors embarked on the translation proceeding through forward translation (three rounds of modification), back translation (two independent translates), and synthesis of a final translated version. While targeting literary accuracy, the simplicity and comprehensibility of the instrument by the study population were also ensured. Variations in regional dialects and accents across the population were considered. The back-translated version was evaluated for semantic, content, cultural, and technical equivalence. It was then pretested on ten students followed by a group discussion with them to ensure the comprehensibility of the tool and the differences between written and spoken language were addressed through necessary modifications. The Tamil translation of the HPS version of JSE is now approved by and officially available with the Thomas Jefferson University.

Objective. This study is aimed at translating the Home Falls and Accidents Screening Tool (HOME FAST) into the three main languages spoken in Malaysia and investigating its reliability through an alternative technology-based evaluation. Methods. Translation into three languages and cross-cultural adaptation of the HOME FAST was conducted via the five steps adopted from the Mapi Institute. For interrater reliability, occupational therapists who attended a face-to-face home hazard workshop were recruited. Each therapist rated the HOME FAST by using the provided combination of videos and photographs of stroke survivors manoeuvring in their home. For test-retest reliability, the same occupational therapists were invited to rate the same combination of photographs and videos again. Reliability was analysed using Gwet’s AC1 and Bland and Altman’s plot to describe agreement. Results. The translation challenges were minimal and rectifiable. A Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin, and Tamil versions of the HOME FAST were developed. Overall interrater reliability for both video (AC1=0.91) and photograph (AC1=0.91) were good. The test-retest reliability yielded similar outcome (video: overall AC1=0.92 and photograph: overall AC1=0.93). Conclusion. Using alternative technology (video and photograph) to do a home hazard assessment was feasible. However, the asynchronous nature of these methods has limitations in clarifying certain aspects in the home. Moving forward, potential investigation on other technologies such as telehealth for synchronous and real-time interaction is warranted.

HIV-related stigma has been associated with depression, poor adherence, and nondisclosure of HIV-positive status, all of which can lead to increased transmission of HIV and poorer health outcomes for HIV-infected individuals. The Berger HIV Stigma scale has been used in multiple settings but never adapted and validated in India, home to the world’s second largest HIV-infected population. We assessed the reliability and validity of a Tamil translation of the original 40-item scale, and conducted confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses to assess cultural appropriateness and abbreviate the scale. Reliability and validity were high (alpha = 0.91; test–retest reliability ICC = 0.89). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in an abridged 25-item version of the scale that possessed better psychometric properties than the 40-item version. This culturally validated, abridged HIV-Stigma scale can be used in busy clinical settings to identify individuals in need of psychosocial support and assess post-intervention changes in stigma in Southern India.

English-learning children have been shown to reliably use cues from argument structure in learning verbs. However, languages pair overtly expressed arguments with verbs to varying extents, raising the question of whether children learning all languages expect the same, universal mapping between arguments and relational roles. Three experiments examined this question by asking how strongly early-learned verbs by themselves, without their corresponding explicitly expressed arguments, point to ‘conceptual arguments’ – the relational roles in a scene. Children aged two to four years and adult speakers of two languages that differ structurally in terms of whether the arguments of a verb are explicitly expressed more (English) or less (Tamil) frequently were compared in their mapping of verbs, presented without any overtly expressed arguments, to a range of scenes. The results suggest different developmental trajectories for language learners, as well as different patterns of adult interpretation, and offer new ways of thinking about the nature of verbs cross-linguistically.

Why does a dissident group go through phases of violence and nonviolence? Many studies of states and dissidents examine related issues by focusing on structural or rarely changing factors. In contrast, some more recent work focuses on dynamic interaction of participants. We suggest forecasting state—dissident interaction using insights from this dynamic approach while also incorporating structural factors. We explore this question by offering new data on the behavior of groups and governments collected using automated natural language processing techniques. These data provide information on who is doing what to whom at a directed-dyadic level. We also collected new data on the attitudes or sentiment of the masses using novel automated techniques. Since obtaining valid and reliable time-series public opinion data on mass attitudes towards a dissident group is extremely difficult, we have created automated sentiment data by scraping publicly available information written by members of the population and aggregating this information to create a poll of opinion at a discrete time period. We model the violence and nonviolence perpetrated by two groups: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines. We find encouraging results for predicting future phase shifts in violence when accounting for behaviors modeled with our data as opposed to models based solely on structural factors.

Through an analysis of gramophone recordings of mimicry of scenes of public city life made in Tamil in South India between 1904 and 1907 and marketed to a new urban middle class in the colonial city of Madras, this article examines the relationship between emerging class structures and the technologies that are contemporaneous with them. I argue that through these recordings the gramophone is constructed on analogy with the mimicry artist as a faithful recorder of linguistic difference, while the intertwining of realism and parody inherent in mimicry is used here to recruit an omniscient middle-class listening subject.

Graziosi examines how India dealt with the linguistic state reorganization and the problem of Hindi. Nation is intended in the Soviet meaning of the term, derived from the continental European one: a nation is a people defined by historically produced characteristics, among which language is paramount, and capable of thinking of itself as such thanks to the efforts of an intellectual and political \"vanguard.\" The nation is thus neither purely objective, nor a pure act of will or \"imagination,\" but a combination of the two; hence a historical phenomenon upon which politics can operate. The 1956 linguistic state reorganization raised great concern that the States would be concerned primarily with their own development, that national authority would be eroded. In fact, the new Indian states revived the European interwar Prague School's experience of \"cultivating\" the locally dominant languages,88 and launched a wave of ideologically inspired architectural building, while the local, language-based film industry fed nationalistic trends, especially but not solely in Tamil Nadu, where the movie community also provided a large part of the political elite.

In this article we examine the requirement that the minimal word be a disyllabic trochee being satisfied partially or fully in different ways in three unrelated languages spoken in India, namely, Punjabi, Bangla & Tamil. In Bangla, which does not have a phonemic vowel length distinction & where closed syllables count as bimoraic & heavy attracting prominence, monosyllables whether closed or open invariably have a long vowel. We argue that the monosyllabic lengthening is due to a catalectic syllable making these minimal words 'virtual' disyllables. Punjabi has a three-way distinction in syllable weight, a monomoraic light syllable, a bimoraic heavy syllable & a trimoraic superheavy syllable. Following the assumption in the literature, we assume that trimoraic syllables are virtual disyllables. We find that, by & large, monosyllables are trimoraic with a geminate final consonant augmenting the monosyllable to a superheavy status satisfying the disyllabic requirement. Finally, we examine an intriguing pattern of optional, final epenthesis in monosyllables in Tamil, once again arguing for a disyllabic word minimum. Between the three languages, we observe that the disyllabic minimality requirement is met in different ways, exhausting the three logical possibilities of stem augmentation, namely, vowel lengthening (in Bangla), consonant gemination (in Punjabi) & both consonant gemination & vowel epenthesis (in Tamil). References. Adapted from the source document