1,720,964 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The language factor in the development of Africa: A case for the compilation of specialised dictionaries in indigenous African languages
No full textThe pace at which African countries are developing has been in the spotlight for a long time, with many in agreement that it is generally slow as mirrored by rampant hunger, unemployment, disease and poverty. Many reasons, ranging from economic, political, educational, historical, and others have been cited as key explanations for this sluggish rate. In all this, the language question rarely features as a crucial development factor. When it comes to key processes of national development, indigenous African languages continue to be ignored in favour of foreign and former colonial languages such as English, French and Portuguese. In this article, an argument is made that development in Africa will remain unachievable unless indigenous African languages are used for all key socio-economic and political transactions in African communities. This argument is premised on the fact that mother tongue communication is at the centre of any kind of development, be it personal or communal. However, for it to be effective as a communicative tool, a language has to be developed or empowered. This article thus develops further by proposing the compilation of specialised dictionaries in African languages as one sure way of empowering the languages so that they become usable in all domains of life, including those that are highly technical.South African Journal of African Languages 2013, 33(1): 51–5
A cognitive grammatical approach to the semantics of Nambya extended verbs
No full textThis article is an analysis of the meanings of extended verbs in Nambya. Put simply, an extended verb is a complex verb that is a consequence of combining a verb base and a verbal extension. Using the principles adopted in the theory of Cognitive Grammar (CG), it will be argued that the addition of different kinds of verbal extensions to verb bases often result in constructions with multiple meanings that are related. Unlike earlier scholarship on the meanings of extended verbs in Nambya that treats them as a result of a simple mathematical addition of the individual meanings of the verb base and the verbal extension, this article aims
to show that the addition of derivational morphemes such as verbal extensions onto verb bases significantly modifies the meanings of the respective base forms. It is argued that the addition of the verbal extensions often results in two kinds of related meanings, that is, those that are mathematically derivable from the verb base by composition and those that are not easily traceable owing to the fact that they are generally idiosyncratic - hence the reason why extended verbs should sometimes be treated as new verbs that are different from their bases. In this regard, therefore, the proposal being made is that verbal extensions should be treated as highly productive morphemes in lexeme formatio
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Linguistic Variation in Shona with Special Reference to Monolingual Dictionaries
No full textThis article focuses on the problems lexicographers of monolingual dictionaries face when dealing with a language characterised by differences associated with geographical variation. The article specifically seeks to explore problems with which Shona lexicographers are confranted when working on monolingual shona dictionaries. It does so by looking at some lexicographic aspects such as tone marking, sense ordering and treatment of synonyms and variants. Linguistic variation has always been a problem for writers of reference works, especially those normative in nature and function. The challenge is that of representativeness, that is, the production of the work which incorporates all the information it is supposed to provide. If the work fails to represent the language of the total population it is assumed to cover, then it is prone to criticism, usually by those whose dialect is not well represented. The article contains the writer's experience in the Afircan Languages Lexical (ALLEX) Project, at present the African Languages Research Institute (ALRI). The ALRI, accommodated at the University of Zimbabwe, has compilation of monolingual dictionaries for the indigenous languages of Zimbabwe as one of its major objectives. Although illustrative examples are drawn from Shona alone, it is, however, believed that the problems highlighted in this article may not be perculiar to Shona, but can also apply to other Bantu and world languages
A cognitive grammatical approach to the semantics of Nambya extended verbs
Get PDFThis article is an analysis of the meanings of extended verbs in Nambya. Put simply, an extended verb is a complex verb that is a consequence of combining a verb base and a verbal extension. Using the principles adopted in the theory of Cognitive Grammar (CG), it will be argued that the addition of different kinds of verbal extensions to verb bases often result in constructions with multiple meanings that are related. Unlike earlier scholarship on the meanings of extended verbs in Nambya that treats them as a result of a simple mathematical addition of the individual meanings of the verb base and the verbal extension, this article aims to show that the addition of derivational morphemes such as verbal extensions onto verb bases significantly modifies the meanings of the respective base forms. It is argued that the addition of the verbal extensions often results in two kinds of related meanings, that is, those that are mathematically derivable from the verb base by composition and those that are not easily traceable owing to the fact that they are generally idiosyncratic - hence the reason why extended verbs should sometimes be treated as new verbs that are different from their bases. In this regard, therefore, the proposal being made is that verbal extensions should be treated as highly productive morphemes in lexeme formatio
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