An investigation of concurrent validity of the Non-ah Speech Disturbance Ratio (Non-ah SDR) with the State Form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Twenty male college students talked on an anxiety-arousing topic before female audiences who rated observed anxiety. Each subject completed the State and Trait Forms of the STAI. Reliabilities were, by the Intraclass correlation for Raters on Day 1, .63 (p<.01) and Day 2, .20 (p<.05). Pearson's r for scorers was .98 (p<.01). The Non-ah SDR and all other measures of anxiety correlated. A partial correlation test found the naive ratings significantly determined by manifest speech disturbance, as measured by the Non-ah SDR. Certain categories of speech disturbance were only infrequently utilized and added little to the measure as a whole.

The purpose of this work is to characterize the problem of semantic presuppositions generated by definite descriptions in subject-position in the light of a reassessment of the semantic framework of the Russell/Strawson controversy and analyze what would be the early and the later Wittgenstein's solution to such a problem. In the first part, the Russell/Strawson controversy is characterized. On the basis of Strawson's account, a general concept of semantic presupposition against which other theories may be tested is constructed. This allows the formulation of the problem above mentioned. Further analysis of the accounts involved reveals that Frege's concept of a 'semantic prerequisite' generated by definite descriptions in subject-position is an instance of the general concept. But Frege also held the view that simple proper names do not generate semantic prerequisites. The Fregean referential dualism suggests that the Russell/Strawson controversy, as far as only these authors' accounts are involved, is undecidable at the purely semantic level. This is the semantic framework against which Wittgenstein's philosophies are tested in the second part. The "Tractatus" adopts a modified version of the Russellian Theory of Descriptions. Even so, the Tractarian account seems to be ultimately equivalent to Russell's. Further analysis reveals that the doctrine of simple signs in isolation, but not its conjunction with the picture theory, is consistent with the general concept of semantic presupposition. The "Investigations " adopts the programmatic principle of searching for the use of the words. But the question about the 'referring use' of descriptions in a specific language-game is consistent with, and in the spirit of, the "Investigations". The framework of the question involves the appeal to the Kripkean notions of 'semantic referent' and 'speaker's referent'. The analysis of the referring use in the language-game of reporting an event reveals that the later Wittgenstein tends to reject the semantic concept of presupposition. Further analysis reveals that he would tend to reject Russell's Theory of Descriptions and most of the variants of the pragmatic concept. The analysis seems to confirm that the Russell/Strawson dispute is idle at the purely semantic level. Even so, the later Wittgenstein's account of language is such that it is possible to imagine some particular language-games in which relationships occur that bear some analogies with the one of semantic presupposition.

In Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference, Saul Kripke posited two kinds of reference involved in every use of a designator—a semantic reference, to the object picked out by the meaning of the words used—and a speaker reference, to the object to which the speaker aimed to call attention by deploying the designator. Kripke tentatively defined the notion of the speaker’s referent as the object that (i) the speaker wishes to call attention to, on a given occasion, and (ii) that he believes fulfills the conditions for being the description’s semantic referent. Although offered as a definition, this account is best interpreted as a tentative statement of the normal success conditions of speaker reference. As such, it raises the question of how special a role semantic reference plays in successful speaker reference. This report addresses that question by evaluating Kripke’s tentative account in the light of an extended series of examples in which definite descriptions are used to speaker refer to objects other than the objects to which the descriptions uniquely semantically refer. The report concludes that words’ semantic characteristics are only one of several forms of evidence that audiences regularly rely on to discern what object a speaker intends to call attention to by a particular act of reference. / text

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This thesis examines question tags right and isn't it from pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspectives. English question tags have most frequently been analyzed from the sociolinguistic angle while at the same time completely avoiding the pragmatic aspects that represent a key factor in the sociolinguistic background. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces sociolinguistic aspects and approaches to question tags, as well as their formal aspects. This thesis is a corpus based study (British National Corpus chosen as the primary source of material) where 200 examples were extracted from the corpus and further studied (100 examples on the question tag right and 100 examples on the question tag isn't it). The study analyzes the question tags from the sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on the type of conversation (cross-gender or same-sex conversations) and relating the pragmatic functions of question tags to speakers' gender and speakers' age. Further, the analysis also inquires into what sentence types precede the two question tags. The paper also offers a revised classification of pragmatic functions of the two question tags. Key words: question tags, pragmatic functions of question tags, immediate and postponed response, speaker's gender

The master thesis called "Semiotics Han Tombs" does not only deal with the semiotics view of space of Han dynasty tombs, when we are examining the number of structures, which are permeating Han graves, we find structures of the world of man living in China, but this process also points to problems of culture interpretation which cultural semiotics helps to eliminate. Problems associated with the sign plays an important role in shaping the very cultural and social identity. The issue of understanding and interpretation of cultures occurs at the time when we select certain features or characters from the structure of a culture to freely create a system without having analyzed the real culture. Always all these elements must be considered in the context of the overall system or structure, or we only deal with empty concepts or definitions. In other words, we do not see the whole picture. Han tomb as a text is polysemous and in many respects incomprehensible. However, the creation, reading and semiosis takes place in it and it is the statement of understanding of this world. So revealing the speaker's worldview depends on the process of interpretation, because the statement may involve a degree of ideological connotations which determined the interpretation independently on the previous coding. Key...

Mgr. Lenka Picková Vitality of the current Galician language Abstract: Never in the field of human history has the dying out of languages been as intense as it is in the present day. The goal of this paper is to assess the vitality of the one of the co- official languages in Spain, the Galician language. After an indispensable definition of the social-historical context, a deep, qualitative and quantitative analysis of nine factors is performed: inter-generational language transmission, education, the absolute and relative number of speakers, trends in existing language domains and media, governmental and institutional language attitudes, and, above all, the attitudes of Galician citizens toward their languages. In the final chapter, a summary of the results of these individual factors, as well as an assessment of their influence on the vitality of the Galician language, is provided. Key words: endangered languages, assessment of language vitality, Galician, language attitudes, minority languages, diglossia, languages in contact, national identity, speaker's attitudes.