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The article is an attempt to give an answer to the question could the semiotic approach be accepted and applied in the case musical intonation. The resolution of the problem is searched by means of а comparative study of the structures of meaning in musical and verbal systems. The author notes that the basic function of the sign is that of substitution and denotation, while intonation is vivid, natural and stands for а spontaneous expression of some experience (psychological process). The assimilation of these two forms of sound performances is realized through а study of speech intonation attesting the changes of tune, volume, timbre, tempo and melody of speech – characteristics typical for music first of all. The author draws the attention to leithmotives and thus to the role of repetitions as one of the important means of construction in music. Some other processes, such as variations in the musical folk conscience, the adequate perception of the messages (recognition, or even identification of similar sound groups), are analysed, which are essential to the sign function of music. The author mentions the studies of Assafiev on the mechanism creating the conditional associative links between intonation and the referents object. Examples are given of some signs in Bulgarian folk music. The variations and particularities of ethnical and regional, specified genre intonations and complexes are outlined with regards to their Sign function. These intonational elements are instruments of thought and communication means, they transmit the experience of past generations – i.е. they become а MUSICAL LANGUAGE.
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The ‘‘magic of the beginning” has a particular importance in the wedding night, one of the most important wedding rites, that is why most of the ritual actions have providential and prognostic purposes. They predict the future of the new family, guarantee its welfare, the birth and the health of the children. A great number of the ritual actions and texts have an erotic character linked, to the general “fecundity symbolics” of wedding. The rite has kept some archaic elements, reflecting more ancient forms of wedding and family-kinship relations. The article examines different groups of actions: preparatory (arrangement of the room and the marriage-bed, introduction of the bride and groom, the act of taking of the shoes and the dresses of the new weds, putting to bed); actions occurring at the time of the first marital intercourse (ritual behaviour of the bride and groom and the wedding guests, guarding of the bedroom, surveillance of the newly weds), terminal (awakening of the bride and groom, verification of the results of the marital intercourse, purification actions).
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In the artistic system of Children’s fiction the folk tale is built in as a deep structure. Led by the child aspect, writers of children’s stories use the symbols and the morphological model of the folk fairy tale. The latter influences the imagery as well as the narrative of the fantasy stories for children. Furthermore, the folk fairy tale has been transformed into a universal genre and a structural model for children’s fiction as a whole. Because of the common principles employed, structure in children’s fiction is typologically similar with the fairy tale structure.
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The author proposes the idea that classifying and cataloguing proverbs are two 1inked problem of equal worth. The article presents a survey of proverbial classifications existing in paremiology and of their application in Bulgaria. The classifications are subdivided into two types: scientific and complementary. The scientific ones classify the proverbs by groups according to some of their essential characteristics; the complementary ones help us to find the text quickly and easily among other materials. The specifications of the notions made, the author relates her experience in computer aided cataloguing of proverbs. The computer catalogue makes it possible to realise a systematization of proverbs according to all existing classifications, the system is open and allows incorporation of new texts and addition of new data on the memorized ones. Such a catalogue programme may be used in some specialised studies, it may become the base of an academic editions of Bulgarian proverbs, as well as of other kinds of collections.
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An inquiry, including five identical questions, was submitted to a selected group of nine contemporary Bulgarian artists. The criteria for the selection of the artists were their works and the presence of folklore in them (mainly in its traditional form), their active participation in nowadays artistic process, an additional condition was that they had to be representatives of different generations. The questions intended to determine the artists’ attitude to the notion of „folklore”, to fix the links between their works and folklore, to establish their personal vision on the character of the message sent through their works. A special attention was drawn to the type of means of expression (traditional, contemporary and the interrelation between them), to the place of folklore in contemporaneity and to the artists’ views on the culture of Bulgarians in general. The results of the inquiry showed that in spite of the fact that at a „theoretical” level the artists apprehend the notion of „folklore” mainly in its musical forms, but in their artistic practice they regard it as a phenomenon of syncretic character. It is important to note that for the artists participating in the inquiry the folklore is a phenomenon inherent to the nationality, it is regarded as an heritage engendering sortie projections on contemporaneity. The fact that the artists realize themselves as „an integral part of the people” it most significant. That interconnection is expressed in their works through a new type of synthesis including traditional and contemporary means of expression. The non-normative character of the latter conditions the possibility to create a non-normative contact with the viewer as well. The results of the inquiry outline the imperative of the presence of folklore in contemporary artistic creation.
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Developments in broadcast and multimedia technology have generated a readily available and vast supply of videos for use in second and foreign language learning contexts. However, without pedagogical direction learners are unlikely to be able to deal with the complexities of this authentic listening resource, and strategy instruction may be one route to augmenting comprehension (Cross, J, 2009). The essence of this experimental study was to investigate the impact of teaching listening strategy on comprehension of documentary videos. For the purpose of this study, 54 advanced EFL students, 27 in experimental group and 27 in control group, participated in this study procedure. In 10-week-period, the experimental group went through a well-scheduled instruction in listening strategy. On the other hand, the control group wasn’t received any instruction in listening strategy. The finding of this study has revealed that teaching listening comprehension strategies has significant influence on comprehension of authentic documentary videos.
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Terrorism is defined as use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to indulge fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, social or religious. Bioterrorism is terrorism by intentional release or dissemination of biological agents, mainly bacteria or viruses. Use of biological weapons is attractive from the terrorists’ point of view because of low production costs, major range and easiness of transmission. The first mention of the use of primitive biological weapons date back to the 6th century. Use of plague-infested corpses as offensive means in the 14th century caused a spread of bubonic plague through the whole Europe. The biggest development of biological weapons took place in the interwar period and in the cold war era. Biological weapon trails and research were conducted by super powers such as USSR, UK, USA and Japan. At the beginning of the 20th century a new form of bioterrorism occurred, which put humanity in the face of a terrifying threat. Cholera is a deadly disease that has caused a worldwide phenomenon throughout history. Its imperative weapon, the Vibrio cholerae bacterium, has allowed cholera to seize control and wipe out a huge percentage of the human population. V. cholerae’s toxins are the primary causes of cholera’s lethal symptoms. The bacterium contains toxins that help it accomplish its job of invading the human system and defeating the body’s powerful immune system. With its sibling bacterium Escherichia coli, V. cholerae has become one of the most dominant pathogens in the known world. V. cholerae’s strategies in causing the infamous deadly diarrhea have been widely studied, from the irritation of the intestinal epithelium to the stimulation of capillary leakage, as well as the internal effects of the disease such as the Peyer’s patches on the intestinal walls. Overall, the Vibrio cholera bacterium has made cholera a tough disease to overcome, and because of its deadly virulence factors, cholera has become one of the most frightening diseases a human body could ever encounter. Vibrio cholerae is a Gram-negative, comma-shaped bacterium. Some strains of V. cholerae cause the disease cholera. V. cholerae is facultatively anaerobic and has a flagellum at one cell pole. V. cholerae was first isolated as the cause of cholera by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini in 1854, but his discovery was not widely known until Robert Koch, working independently 30 years later, publicized the knowledge and the means of fighting the disease. V. cholerae pathogenicity genes code for proteins directly or indirectly involved in the virulence of the bacteria. During infection, V. cholerae secretes cholera toxin, a protein that causes profuse, watery diarrhea. Colonization of the small intestine also requires the toxin coregulated pilus (TCP), a thin, flexible, filamentous appendage on the surface of bacterial cells.
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Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a type of bacterium. It is believed to have been responsible for plagues of the early 1300s. More accurately, it is a Gram-negative rod-shaped coccobacillus. It is a facultative anaerobe that can infect humans and other animals. Human Y. pestis infection takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic plagues. All three forms are widely believed to have been responsible for a number of high-mortality epidemics throughout human history, including the Justinianic Plague of the sixth century and the Black Death that accounted for the death of at least one-third of the European population between 1347 and 1353. It has now been shown conclusively that these plagues originated in rodent populations in China. More recently, Y. pestis has gained attention as a possible biological warfare agent and the CDC has classified it as a category A pathogen requiring preparation for a possible terrorist attack. Every year, thousands of cases of plague are still reported to the World Health Organization, although, with proper treatment, the prognosis for victims is now much better. A five- to six-fold increase in cases occurred in Asia during the time of the Vietnam war, possibly due to the disruption of ecosystems and closer proximity between people and animals. Plague also has a detrimental effect on non-human mammals. In the United States of America, animals such as the black-tailed prairie dog and the endangered black-footed ferret are under threat from the disease.
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Terrorism is defined as use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to indulge fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, social or religious. Bioterrorism is terrorism by intentional release or dissemination of biological agents, mainly bacteria or viruses. Use of biological weapons is attractive from the terrorists’ point of view because of low production costs, major range and easiness of transmission. The first mention of the use of primitive biological weapons date back to the 6th century. Use of plague-infested corpses as offensive means in the 14th century caused a spread of bubonic plague through the whole Europe. The biggest development of biological weapons took place in the interwar period and in the cold war era. Biological weapon trails and research were conducted by super powers such as USSR, UK, USA and Japan. At the beginning of the 20th century a new form of bioterrorism occurred, which put humanity in the face of a terrifying threat.
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The aim of the present research is to investigate the effect of the centralized planning system on developing the critical thinking among junior school students. This research is an applied one. The statistical population of this research includes third grade junior school students of the Kurdistan province (9372 girls and 11521 boys). The selected sample in this research, in accordance with the nature of the research population and its characteristics that was selected through the multi stage cluster and classified sampling includes 220 junior school students. The Watson and Glaser critical thinking questionnaire was used for measuring the critical thinking and for analyzing the data; the Z test and Levine test were used. Results indicated that the centralized planning system will decrease critical thinking among junior school students. The centralized planning system will reduce the inference ability, deduction ability, interpretation ability, and the evaluative ability of logical arguments while it increases the ability to identify assumptions among junior school students.
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Writing skill is an essential requirement to lifelong learner success, yet the way teachers provide feedback for their students on writing is quite challenging. One of the new trends in writing skill instruction is Self Assessment. Self-assessment methods in writing instruction present meaningful ways to promote student writing achievement through reflection and meta-cognition during the writing process. This paper describes the findings of an investigation on using self assessment in EFL writing classroom. For the purpose of conducting this research, 48 Iranian upper intermediate students, all male and with age range of 20 to 23, were chosen to participate in this investigation. These participants were divided into two equal groups: an experimental group (N=24) who worked on their writings through self assessment and a control group (N=24) who worked on their writings based on the traditional ways. It was found that participants in the experimental group significantly improved their writing proficiency means score, whereas improvement in the control group was not significant. The results confirm that self assessment is successful with EFL students.
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