Papers reviewed and determined not to be word norm studies. Use the flag icon to report errors or suggest re-inclusion.
16504 papers
Neuropsychological and imaging studies have shown that the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) is specifically involved in processing spatial terms (e.g. above, left of), which locate places and objects in the world. The current fMRI study focused on the nature and specificity of representing spatial language in the left SMG by combining behavioral and neuronal activation data in blind and sighted individuals. Data from the blind provide an elegant way to test the supramodal representation hypothesis, i.e. abstract codes representing spatial relations yielding no activation differences between blind and sighted. Indeed, the left SMG was activated during spatial language processing in both blind and sighted individuals implying a supramodal representation of spatial and other dimensional relations which does not require visual experience to develop. However, in the absence of vision functional reorganization of the visual cortex is known to take place. An important consideration with respec)
This paper proposes a method for shallow parsing on the basis of CRF and transformation-based error-driven learning.The method is applied to Penn Chinese Treebank and gets a good performance of chunking identification.First,CRF model is used to identify chunks to acquire candidate transformation rules by error-driven learning.Then,an evaluation function is used to filter candidate transformation rules.And last,transformation rules are used to revise the chunking results of CRF.The experimental results show that this approach is effective,and outperforms the single CRF-based approach in shallow parsing.Precision,recall and F-values are improved respectively.
In contrast to quantity processing, up to date, the nature of ordinality has received little attention from researchers despite the fact that both quantity and ordinality are embodied in numerical information. Here we ask if there are two separate core systems that lie at the foundations of numerical cognition: (1) the traditionally and well accepted numerical magnitude system but also (2) core system for representing ordinal information. We report two novel experiments of ordinal processing that explored the relation between ordinal and numerical information processing in typically developing adults and adults with developmental dyscalculia (DD). Participants made "ordered" or "non-ordered" judgments about 3 groups of dots (non-symbolic numerical stimuli; in Experiment 1) and 3 numbers (symbolic task: Experiment 2). In contrast to previous findings and arguments about quantity deficit in DD participants, when quantity and ordinality are dissociated (as in the current tasks), DD parti)
Although number words are common in everyday speech, learning their meanings is an arduous, drawn-out process for most children, and the source of this delay has long been the subject of inquiry. Children begin by identifying the few small numerosities that can be named without counting, and this has prompted further debate over whether there is a specific, capacity-limited system for representing these small sets, or whether smaller and larger sets are both represented by the same system. Here we present a formal, computational analysis of number learning that offers a possible solution to both puzzles. This analysis indicates that once the environment and the representational demands of the task of learning to identify sets are taken into consideration, a continuous system for learning, representing and discriminating set-sizes can give rise to effective discontinuities in processing. At the same time, our simulations illustrate how typical prenominal linguistic constructions (''the)
The human population history in Southeast Asia was shaped by numerous migrations and population expansions. Their reconstruction based on archaeological, linguistic or human genetic data is often hampered by the limited number of informative polymorphisms in classical human genetic markers, such as the hypervariable regions of the mitochondrial DNA. Here, we analyse housekeeping gene sequences of the human stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori from various countries in Southeast Asia and we provide evidence that H. pylori accompanied at least three ancient human migrations into this area: i) a migration from India introducing hpEurope bacteria into Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia; ii) a migration of the ancestors of Austro-Asiatic speaking people into Vietnam and Cambodia carrying hspEAsia bacteria; and iii) a migration of the ancestors of the Thai people from Southern China into Thailand carrying H. pylori of population hpAsia2. Moreover, the H. pylori sequences reflect iv) the migra)
We measured perceived depth from the optic flow (a) when showing a stationary physical or virtual object to observers who moved their head at a normal or slower speed, and (b) when simulating the same optic flow on a computer and presenting it to stationary observers. Our results show that perceived surface slant is systematically distorted, for both the active and the passive viewing of physical or virtual surfaces. These distortions are modulated by head translation speed, with perceived slant increasing directly with the local velocity gradient of the optic flow. This empirical result allows us to determine the relative merits of two alternative approaches aimed at explaining perceived surface slant in active vision: an ''inverse optics'' model that takes head motion information into account, and a probabilistic model that ignores extra-retinal signals. We compare these two approaches within the framework of the Bayesian theory. The ''inverse optics'' Bayesian model produces veridi)
We tested whether the intervening time between multiple glances influences the independence of the resulting visual percepts. Observers estimated how many dots were present in brief displays that repeated one, two, three, four, or a random number of trials later. Estimates made farther apart in time were more independent, and thus carried more information about the stimulus when combined. In addition, estimates from different visual field locations were more independent than estimates from the same location. Our results reveal a retinotopic serial dependence in visual numerosity estimates, which may be a mechanism for maintaining the continuity of visual perception in a noisy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR], Copyright of PLoS ONE is the property of Public Library of Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for indivi)
Exogenous neurotrophin delivery to the deaf cochlea can prevent deafness-induced auditory neuron degeneration, however, we have previously reported that these survival effects are rapidly lost if the treatment stops. In addition, there are concerns that current experimental techniques are not safe enough to be used clinically. Therefore, for such treatments to be clinically transferable, methods of neurotrophin treatment that are safe, biocompatible and can support long-term auditory neuron survival are necessary. Cell transplantation and gene transfer, combined with encapsulation technologies, have the potential to address these issues. This study investigated the survival-promoting effects of encapsulated BDNF over-expressing Schwann cells on auditory neurons in the deaf guinea pig. In comparison to control (empty) capsules, there was significantly greater auditory neuron survival following the cell-based BDNF treatment. Concurrent use of a cochlear implant is expected to result in )
This paper deals with the ways in which minority students in the Danish public school system bring mono-lingually based norms into their poly-lingual peer group interaction. In sequential micro-analyses of interaction we show how the students use the voice of an authority in their reproduction and negotiation of linguistic norms. We base our analyses on the Bakhtinian concept of double-voicing, the Goffmanian concept of keying and Tholander's concept of subteaching. We discuss in detail the relation between the local practices of the students and the linguistic norms expressed in broader society, for instance in newspaper editorials and government papers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
The language of a speech community can only act as an identity marker for all of its speakers if linguistic norms are widely shared and if a minimal number of language varieties are spoken. This article examines briefly how a linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland and how a situation of relative linguistic homogeneity was maintained for centuries. Sociolinguistic theory tells us that the speech community that we can reconstruct for early Iceland should lead to the establishment and maintenance of local norms. However, Iceland, arguably monodialectal, was certainly characterized by long-term linguistic homogeneity and remained a society where nucleated settlements barely formed over a thousand-year period. Scholars have argued that a mixture of dialects leveled shortly after the settlement of Iceland in the ninth century (Settlement). Studies show that dialect leveling requires dialect mixing, the convergence of people on one place, and sustained linguistic contact between the speakers. The settlement pattern of Iceland is indicative of population divergence (not convergence) and there is limited evidence of sustained contact. It is therefore proposed that the dialect leveling might be linked instead with significant population movements and social upheaval in mainland Scandinavia in the immediate pre-Viking period. The variety of Norse that was taken westward across the Atlantic might itself already have been the result of several earlier stages of mixing and koineization. It is only by combining linguistic, historical, and archaeological knowledge that this problem of how one linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland can be understood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Reviews the book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution by Dennis Baron (2009). This book addresses the impact of digital technologies on reading and writing practices by contextualizing these developments within the communication technologies that have preceded them. Though computers are often blamed for a perceived deterioration of culture and language, Baron notes that scorn and mistrust of communication technologies is not a new phenomenon; in fact, writing, the printing press, and the telegraph were all greeted at first with skepticism. And despite the pervasive anxiety that 'internet speech' is resulting in the destruction of grammar and spelling, Baron observes that online communities enforce their own linguistic norms. Rather than a linguistic free-for-all, Baron argues, 'spelling counts' in virtual spaces just as it does offline. In sum, Baron accounts for both the benefits and pitfalls of the digital revolution and analyzes it as merely another set of technological innovations, usefully situating them within a history of writing technologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
This study is a comparative analysis of Russian and Korean idioms related to women by classifying them in terms of lexical and semantic features. Idioms are considered as the reflections of daily life, culture, society, history, geological environment; that is, the mentality of each ethnic group. The purpose of this study is to comprehend aspects of women in two ethnic groups by discovering unique properties of women-related idioms in both languages. Through the comparative analysis of women-related idioms, we better understand how our ancestors look upon the female gender. This study reveals that women in both Russian and Korean society are highly valued when they play a role as obedient wife to husband, quiet housewife, gentle girl, and caring mother. When women show deviant behavior from these ethical norms accepted by the society, they are to blame. Women having characteristics of rude and intemperate behavior, high intellectual ability, unappealing physical appearance, as well as unmarried old women are also reproached. Thus, idioms reflect the social superiority of men over women.
In this paper we aim to briefly review Eugenio Coseriu’s ideas regarding synonymy and some Coserian disciples’ contributions (be they direct or indirect) concerning this issue. The largest part of this article, however, presents our own contribution to the study of synonymy, whose starting point was Coseriu’s integral linguistics, considered as an epistemological frame of reference. We have tried to apply, within the general study of synonymy (lexical, phraseological and lexico-phraseological), distinctions such as: language as activity [enérgeia], competence [dýnamis] and product [érgon] to its three levels (universal, historical and individual); norm and system; historical language and functional language, etc. As far as we are concerned, we were interested in pointing out, for each of Coseriu’s levels in turn, the difference between synonymy in actu (the real one) and synonymy in potentia (the virtual or potential one). We also aimed at drawing attention to the importance of competence (mainly the idiomatic and expressive ones) in the analysis of different types of synonymy as “knowledge” in using the synonyms.
Ingarden's phenomenological study of consciousness in the reading process sheds light on Wolfgang Iser's study of the reading activity,hence the latter's theory of aesthetic response,a branch of reception aesthetics.Iser's theory is at the juncture of phenomenology,reception theory and modern arts,highlighting the interaction in reading.It mainly contains two parts: description of the reading activity,or reading phenomenology,and his elaboration of the structure of literary texts.The former can be summarized as that the work is generated mutually between the reader and the text,with the reader shaped by reading experiences.This opinion cannot be found in Jauss.Iser argues that vacancy and negation in the text offer a special structure controlling the interaction in question.Negation means the discarding of familiar social norms,and is one of the reasons for vacancy,which,in turn,is the potential relationship in the text.Though Iser's theory is considered by some as lexically difficult and contradictory,it is still a supplement to Ingarden's phenomenology and therefore deserves recognition.
Measuring talkativeness is of interest to several areas of research. However, there are few brief, validated measures available. We examined test-retest reliability, inter-relationships and convergent/divergent validity for five brief measures of verbal productivity. Nineteen men and 32 women participated in four sessions, completing five speech tasks that varied in demand, purpose of speech and sociability. Several potential metrics (word count, duration and rate) were examined. All tasks except a novel Unprompted Speech task demonstrated good word count test-retest reliability (interclass correlation coefficients from .71 to .85). Factor analysis revealed low-demand, non-functional tasks formed one factor (“Voluntary Talkativeness”), while higher demand tasks formed a second factor (“Speech Ability”). This finding and examination of relationships with IQ, personality and gender indicate “Voluntary Talkativeness” is not wholly accounted for by verbal ability, and is only weakly related to self-reported personality. Recommendations for the measurement of “Voluntary Talkativeness” are made.
The study is focused on how to make use of the lexical database Pralex for a processing of nominal entries, how to describe a particular specific phenomenon or a partial issue in an entry form as well as which nominal data are included (mandatory items). To clarify this, the authors follow the order of individual parts of an entry form. Special attention is paid to the issue of homonymy, variation, explanation of a meaning and division of polysemantic entries.
The purpose of the current thesis is to develop a better understanding of the interaction between Spanish and Quichua in the Salcedo region and provide more information for the processes that might have given rise to Media Lengua, a ‘mixed’ language comprised of a Quichua grammar and Spanish lexicon. Muysken attributes the formation of Media Lengua to relexification, ruling out any influence from other bilingual phenomena. I argue that the only characteristic that distinguishes Media Lengua from other language contact varieties in central Ecuador is the quantity of the overall Spanish borrowings and not the type of processes that might have been employed by Quichua speakers during the genesis of Media Lengua. The results from the Salcedo data that I have collected show how processes such as adlexification, code-mixing, and structural convergence produce Media Lengua-type sentences, evidence that supports an alternative analysis to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis. \n \tOverall, this dissertation is developed around four main objectives: (1) to describe the variation of Spanish loanwords within a bilingual community in Salcedo; (2) to analyze some of the prominent and recent structural changes in Quichua and Spanish; (3) to determine whether Spanish loanword use can be explained by the relationship consultants have with particular social categories; and (4) to analyze the consultants’ language ideologies toward syncretic uses of Spanish and Quichua. \n \tOverall, 58% of the content words, 39% of the basic vocabulary, and 50% of the subject pronouns in the Salcedo corpus were derived from Spanish. When compared to Muysken’s description of highlander Quichua in the 1970’s, Spanish loanwords have more than doubled in each category. The overall level of Spanish loanwords in Salcedo Quichua has grown to a level between highlander Quichua in the 1970’s and Media Lengua. Similar to Spanish’s lexical influence in Media Lengua, the increase of Spanish borrowings in today’s rural Quichua can be seen in non-basic and basic vocabularies as well as the subject pronoun system. Significantly, most of the growth has occurred through forms of adlexification i.e., doublets, well-established borrowings, and cultural borrowings, suggesting that ‘ordinary’ lexical borrowing is also capable of producing Media Lengua-type sentences. \n \tI approach the second objective by investigating two separate phenomena related to structural convergence. The first examines the complex verbal constructions that have developed in Quichua through Spanish loan translations while the second describes the type of Quichua particles that are attached to Spanish lexemes while speaking Spanish. The calquing of the complex verbal constructions from Spanish were employed when speaking standard Quichua. Since this standard form is typically used by language purists, I argue that their use of calques is a strategy of exploiting the full range of expression from Spanish without incorporating any of the Spanish lexemes which would give the appearance of ‘contamination’. The use of Quichua particles in local varieties of Spanish is a defining characteristic of Quichuacized Spanish, spoken most frequently by women and young children in the community. Although the use of Quichua particles was probably not the main catalyst engendering Media Lengua, I argue that its contribution as a source language to other ‘mixed’ varieties, such as Media Lengua, needs to be accounted for in descriptions of BML genesis. Contrary to Muysken’s representation of relatively ‘unmixed’ Spanish and Quichua as the two source languages of Media Lengua, I propose that local varieties of Spanish might have already been ‘mixed’ to a large degree before Media Lengua was created. \n \tThe third objective attempts to draw a relationship between particular social variables and the use of Spanish loanwords. Whisker Boxplots and ANOVAs were used to determine which social group, if any, have been introducing new Spanish borrowings into the bilingual communities in Salcedo. Specifically, I controlled for age, education, native language, urban migration, and gender. The results indicate that none of the groups in each of the five social variables indicate higher or lower loanword use. The implication of these results are twofold: (a) when lexical borrowing occurs, it is immediately adopted as the community-wide norm and spoken by members from different backgrounds and generations, or (b) this level of Spanish borrowing (58%) is not a recent phenomenon. \n \tThe fourth and final objective draws on my ethnographic research that addresses the attitudes of syncretic language use. I observed that Quichuacized Spanish and Hispanicized Quichua are highly stigmatized varieties spoken by the country’s most marginalized populations and families, yet within the community, syncretic ways of speaking are in fact the norm. It was shown that there exists a range of different linguistic definitions for ‘Chaupi Lengua’ and other syncretic language practices as well as many contrasting connotations, most of which were negative. One theme that emerged from the interviews was that speaking syncretic varieties of Quichua weakened the consultant’s claim to an indigenous identity. \n \tThe linguistic and social data presented in this dissertation supports an alternative view to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis, one that has the advantage of operating with well-precedented linguistic processes and which is actually observable in the present-day Salcedo area. The results from the study on lexical borrowing are significant because they demonstrate how a dynamic bilingual speech community has gradually diversified their Quichua lexicon under intense pressure to shift toward Spanish. They also show that Hispanicized Quichua (Quichua with heavy lexical borrowing) clearly arose from adlexification and prolonged lexical borrowing, and is one of at least six identifiable speech styles found in Salcedo. These results challenge particular interpretations of language contact outcomes, such as, ones that depict sources languages as discrete and ‘unmixed.’ The bilingual continuum presented in this thesis shows on the one hand, the range of speech styles that are accessible to different speakers, and on the other hand, the overlapping, syncretic features that are shared among the different registers and language varieties. It was observed that syncretic speech styles in Salcedo are employed by different consultants in varied interactional contexts, and in turn, produce different evaluations by other fellow community members. \n \tIn the current dissertation, I challenge the claim that relexification and Media Lengua-type sentences develop in isolation and without the influence of other bilingual phenomena. Based on Muysken's Media Lengua example sentences and the speech styles from the Salcedo corpus, I argue that Media Lengua may have arisen as an institutionalized variant of the highly mixed "middle ground" within the range of the Salcedo bilingual continuum discussed above. Such syncretic forms of Spanish and Quichua strongly resemble Media Lengua sentences in Muysken’s research, and therefore demonstrate how its development could have occurred through several different language contact processes and not only through relexification.
In today’s digital multilingual world, language technology is crucial for providing access to information and opportunities for economic development. With approximately two thousand different languages, Africa is a multilingual continent par excellence, presenting acute challenges for those seeking to promote and use African languages in the areas of business development, education and relief aid. In recent times a number of researchers and institutions, both from Africa and elsewhere, have come forward to share the common goal of developing capabilities in language technology for African languages. In 2009 and 2010, the first two workshops on African Language Technology were organized (De Pauw et al. 2009, 2010a) as a forum to bring together a wide range of researchers working in this domain.
Phenomena in a variety of verbal tasks—for example, masked priming, lexical decision, and word naming—are typically explained in terms of similarity between word-forms. Despite the apparent commonalities between these sets of phenomena, the representations and similarity measures used to account for them are not often related. To show how this gap might be bridged, we build on the work of Hannagan, Dupoux, and Christophe, Cognitive Science 35:79-118, (2011) to explore several methods of representing visual word-forms using holographic reduced representations and to evaluate them on their ability to account for a wide range of effects in masked form priming, as well as data from lexical decision and word naming. A representation that assumes that word-internal letter groups are encoded relative to word-terminal letter groups is found to predict qualitative patterns in masked priming, as well as lexical decision and naming latencies. We then show how this representation can be integrated with the BEAGLE model of lexical semantics (Jones & Mewhort, Psychological Review 114:1–37, 2007) to enable the model to encompass a wider range of verbal tasks.
1 IntroductionThis paper deals with contrastive analysis of computer terms in Slovenian and Serbian language. Problematic aspects of computer jargon in two similar and related languages are considered in context of cultural and linguistic differences noticed during translation from Slovenian to Serbian. The analytic framework is grounded in concrete translator's challenges of some lexical issues in translation process. As George Steiner claims that ordinary language, literally at every moment, mutates in many forms: words enter as old words lapse. Grammatical conventions are changed under pressure of idiomatic use or by cultural ordinance. (Steiner 1998:19)When we are translating a text into another language we are confronted with cultural differences and, for translator, translating professional texts represents a big challenge. He has to be a mediator from professional idiom in one language to professional idiom in other languages. In era of rapidly changing computer technology, spreading new ways of global communication and developing of social networks, we are surrounded by computers and we use some of computer terms in our everyday lives. But, different cultures have different language politics and they relate differently to translating of terms taken from English as modern-day global language. As has been stated, all speech communities have experienced need to modernize and keep abreast of developments in science, technology, etc. (Winford 2007:37), and the spread of English loanwords into many languages across globe may fill gaps in lexicon (Winford 2007:38), but this massive lexical borrowing caused by innovation in field of computer science and technology may be regulated. Lexical borrowing is determined by norms, network structures and language ideology of community: Loyalty to one's native language and pride in its autonomy may encourage resistance to any foreign incursions (Winford 2007:41).Lexical borrowing into lexicon can have consequences on phonology, morphology or on lexicon itself. New lexical fields in recipient language may be created by using computeresse (Winford 2007:58).We attend to show correlation between language politic and accepting of English IT terms. There are two opposite attitudes about this kind of lexical borrowing in professional language: a) usage of Anglicisms is recommended because of globalisation; they provide understanding between experts from different countries; English terms in computer jargon have same purpose as Latin terms in field of medicine and natural science at all; b) translation, or at least adaptation, of these terms is necessary, they become a part of lexical system of recipient language and its standardisation is strongly recommended. We will show which of these attitudes is more common among users of computer jargon.2 Material and methodsThe research is carried out on basis of data excerpted during translation of graduate work Odnos studentov do zasebnosti na spletni skupnosti Facebook and term paper Etika in internet: oglasevanje na internetu, both published on Internet page of Faculty of Economy, University of Ljubljana, and supplemented by examples collected from internet dictionaries of computer terms (http://www.islovar.org, http://sverapoj.nedohodnik.net/gloss/, http://www.mikroknjiga.rs/pub/rmk/index.php). Islovar is project of Linguistic Section of Slovenian Society INFORMATIKA, established in year 2000, with purpose of increasing concern for professional language, equalizing IT terms and recruiting experts and common people for its modelling, through free interactive use and interactive development of dictionary. This internet dictionary has a large repertoire of computer terms and number of entries is constantly growing. …
This paper discusses the lexical, syntactic and pragmatic features of talk often associated with women and argues that such linguistic norms help women in being peacemake and in a number of domains are provided to demonstrate the use of such linguistics strategies in the discourse of women.
Until recently, most systems performing temporal extraction and reasoning from text have focused on recognizing and normalizing temporal expressions alone, for which the TIDES annotation scheme has been adopted. Temporal awareness of a text, however, involves not only identifying the temporal expressions, but the events which these expressions anchor, as well as other events which must be ordered relative to them. Because of these broader concerns, TimeML has been developed as an annotation specification that encompasses not only temporal expressions, but all temporally relevant aspects of a text. The annotation schemes, however, are not interchangeable, resulting in incompatible corpora and accompanying extraction algorithms for each standard. In this paper, we describe an automatic migration process from the TIMEX2 tags of TIDES to the TIMEX3 tags of TimeML. This transformation procedure has been implemented and evaluated with two different corpora, obtaining 93.3 and 89.2% overall F-Measure respectively.
Abstract Prior research on relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin Chinese has led to conflicting results regarding ease of processing subject-extracted RCs (SRCs) versus object-extracted RCs (ORCs) and has often used animacy configurations that are rare in corpora. Building on animacy patterns observed in a corpus, we used self-paced reading to explore how animacy influences real-time processing of Chinese RCs. Experiment 1 tested SRCs, and found marginal facilitation effects with animate heads (subjects) and inanimate objects. Experiment 2 tested ORCs and found significant facilitation effects with inanimate head (objects). Experiment 3 showed that when the subject is animate and the object inanimate, ORCs are as easy to process as SRCs, but when the subject is inanimate and the object is animate, SRCs are processed faster. Thus, the animacy of the head and the embedded noun must be taken into account when evaluating processing ease. Keywords: AnimacyRelative clause (RC)Mandarin ChineseProcessing Acknowledgments We would like to thank audiences at the 14th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP), the 2008 Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL) and the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA), where earlier versions of some of this research were presented. Preliminary analyses of some of the data reported here appeared in Wu, Kaiser, and Andersen (2010). The stimuli used in this research are a revised version of the stimuli used in Wu (2009). We thank Yanan Sheng for assistance in the stimulus revision and running of participants, Xiaomei Qiao, and Tangfeng Yang for assistance in carrying out norming studies, Mei Li for providing facilities in running Experiment 3 at Tongji University, and Rudolf Troike for help with finalising the translations of our Chinese stimuli. This research was partially supported by a project sponsored by the Scientific Research Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, and by a grant from the Shanghai Municipal Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation (2010BYY003) to the first author. Notes 1As a reviewer pointed out, the relation between head animacy and RC-type is clear with object RCs (which tend to occur with inanimate heads), but less so with subject RCs. Indeed, in Mak et al.'s (2002, pp. 54–55) German corpus, the 144 subject-extracted RCs have inanimate heads almost as frequently as animate heads: 57% animate heads and 43% inanimate heads. Also, in Roland et al.'s (2007, p. 357) analysis of the English-language Brown corpus, 47% of 100 randomly-selected subject-extracted RCs have inanimate heads. However, existing corpus data from Chinese suggest that subject RCs' head animacy patterns (at least in Chinese) may vary depending on the grammatical role of the RC's head noun. For Chinese, Pu (2007, p. 45) and Wu (2009) found that (1) when SRCs modify sentential subjects, animate heads significantly outnumber inanimate heads, but (2) when SRCs modify sentential objects, there is no particular bias toward animate or inanimate heads. 2The term "experiencer" refers to a change of psychological state on a human participant caused by someone or something in the context of certain intransitive verbs (e.g., win, die); experience-theme verbs (e.g., love, discover, like); or causer-experiencer verbs (e.g., please, amuse, amaze, and annoy). 3Lin and Garnsey (Citation2010) manipulated animacy in their stimuli, but they also topicalised their RCs to a sentence-initial position and used null head nouns. Headless RCs and topicalisation in Mandarin normally occur only when supportive discourse contexts are given, but their stimuli were presented in isolation. Thus their stimuli had a marked structure, which may have complicated their results. 4One reviewer pointed out that the percentage of RCs where both nouns have the same animacy is 28% in Mak et al.'s (2002) Dutch corpus and 40% in their German corpus. However, viewed from another perspective, this means that the percentage of RCs with contrastive animacy configuration is 72% in Dutch and 60% in German, a pattern similar to Wu's (2009) corpus analysis. Furthermore, at least in Wu's (2009) analyses of Chinese Treebank Corpus, RCs with matched animacy (double-animates or double-inanimates) occurred significantly less frequently than RCs with nonmatched animacy (p'<.05). 5In Experiment 1, the log frequencies for the different verbs and for the embedded nouns were matched. The mean log frequencies for the verbs from the SUBTLEX-CH are as follows: 3.14 for Oi-Sa and Oa-Sa, 3.32 for Oa-Si and Oi-Si. The frequencies do not differ significantly, F(3, 76) = 0.1069, p=.9558. The mean log frequencies for the verbs from the 2008 frequency dictionary are as follows: 9.46 for Oi-Sa and Oa-Sa, 9.04 for Oa-Si and Oi-Si. These frequencies also do not differ significantly, F(3, 78) = 0.6015, p=.616. The mean log frequencies for the embedded nouns from the SUBTLEX-CH are as follows: 3.07 for Oi-Sa and Oi-Si, 3.28 for Oa-Sa and Oa-Si. The frequencies do not differ significantly, F(3, 78) = 0.1726, p=.9146. The log frequencies for the embedded nouns from the 2008 frequency dictionary are as follows: 9.38 for Oi-Sa and Oi-Si, 9.36 for Oa-Sa and Oa-Si. The frequencies also do not differ significantly, F(3, 82) = 0.0087, p=.9989. Log frequencies for the head nouns were matched for the 2008 dictionary (means: 8.5 for Oi-Sa and Oa-Sa, 9.05 for Oa-Si and Oi-Si). According to this corpus, the frequencies of the different head nouns do not differ significantly, F(3, 72) = 1.7263, p=.1692. However, according to the SUBTLEX-CH corpus, the log frequencies for the head nouns are not matched [means: 4.32 for Oi-Sa and Oa-Sa, 2.88 for Oa-Si and Oi-Si; F(3, 74) = 4.8757, p=.0038]. As said, the frequency check reported above are based on an incomplete list of words that have their frequencies listed in either resource. 6At the sentence-initial RC-verb position (pos 1, e.g., raokai "bypass"), there was a marginal main effect of Head Animacy (t=1.84, p=.0663), and a marginal interaction between Head Animacy and Embedded-noun Animacy (t=−1.8, p=.073). However, given that this is the first word region, these weak effects are probably due to lexical differences. 7In Experiment 3, the log frequencies were matched for the verbs, but not for the embedded nouns and for the head nouns. The mean log frequencies of the verbs from SUBTLEX-CH are as follows: 3.83 for SRCs with animate heads and for ORCs with inanimate heads, 3.41 for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with animate heads. The frequencies do not differ significantly, F(3, 82) = 0.2254, p=.8785. The mean log frequencies of the verb from the 2008 frequency dictionary are as follows: 9.26 for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with animate heads, 9.19 for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with animate heads. These frequencies also do not differ significantly, F(3, 76) = 0.1274, p=.9436. The log frequencies for the embedded nouns from the SUBTLEX-CH are as follows: 2.86 for SRCs with animate heads and for ORCs with animate heads, 4.03 for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with inanimate heads. The differences in frequencies are marginally significant, F(3, 74) = 2.581, p=.062. The log mean frequencies of the embedded nouns from the 2008 frequency dictionary are as follows: 9.52 for SRCs with animate heads and for ORCs with animate heads, 9.11 for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with inanimate heads). These frequencies differ significantly, F(3, 76) = 2.833, p=.044. Reversely for the head nouns, their log frequencies for SRCs with inanimate heads and for ORCs with inanimate heads are more frequent than the log frequencies for SRCs with animate heads and for ORCs with animate heads. However, because we used a Latin-square design such that the different nouns rotated through the different conditions, we do not think this affects our results.
You have accessThe ASHA LeaderFeature1 Feb 2011Discourse Analyses: Characterizing Cognitive-Communication Disorders Following TBI Karen Lê, MA, CCC-SLP Jennifer Mozeiko andMA, CCC-SLP Carl CoelhoPhD, CCC-SLP, BC-ANCDS Karen Lê Google Scholar, MA, CCC-SLP, Jennifer Mozeiko Google Scholar, MA, CCC-SLP and Carl Coelho Google Scholar, PhD, CCC-SLP, BC-ANCDS https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.FTR4.16022011.18 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2011/110215/Discourse-Analyses.htm In the United States, approximately 1.4 million traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occur every year with 230,000 resulting in hospitalization and an estimated 80,000 resulting in long-term disability annually (Thurman, Coronado, & Selassie, 2007). The prevalence of TBI in the United States was estimated to be 1.1% of the U.S. civilian population at the beginning of 2005 or approximately 3.17 million people who are living with a long-term disability secondary to TBI (Zaloshnja, Miller, Langlois, & Selassie, 2008). America's armed forces engaged in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced TBIs from explosions of rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, and land mines. The prevalence of TBI has been estimated to be more than 22% among injured service members (Warden, 2006). Diffuse brain damage caused by TBI often results in persistent physical, psychosocial, cognitive, and communicative problems. Impaired discourse is the hallmark of post-TBI cognitive-communication disorder and, due to the central role discourse plays in everyday communication, impaired discourse abilities contribute to the participation restrictions that underlie the social isolation commonly experienced among individuals living with TBI. The extent of discourse impairments in individuals with TBI influences the diagnostic process, formulation of prognoses, and development of effective interventions for social reintegration. Cognitive-communication disorders, including discourse impairments associated with TBI, may be related to a disruption of executive functions (Ylvisaker & Szekeres, 1989). More than any other cognitive process, executive function skills are linked to the success of community reintegration (Sohlberg & Mateer, 2001). Aspects of executive functions thought to be critical for effective communication are self-awareness and goal-setting, planning, self-directing and initiating, self-inhibiting, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and flexible problem-solving (Ylvisaker & Szekeres, 1989). Impairments of executive functions are widely reported in the literature on TBI. For example, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a commonly used index of executive function, has been correlated with measures of monologic discourse (monologues) among children and adults with TBI (Brookshire et al., 2000; Coelho, 2002). Of the multiple and diverse sequela of TBI, memory difficulty has been reported as a leading subjective complaint from survivors and caregivers (Murray, Ramage, & Hopper, 2001). However, the relationship between memory deficits and cognitive-communication disorders remains unclear (Marsh & Knight, 1991). Importantly, working memory, which is a type of short-term memory that temporarily stores information while it is being processed, has been linked to discourse-production deficits following TBI. Modest correlations have been found between working memory and narrative discourse measures (Chapman, Gamino, Cook, Hanten, Li, & Levin, 2006; Youse & Coelho, 2005). Also, working memory has been associated with figurative language use and syntactic processing (Moran, Nippold, & Gillon, 2006; Turkstra & Holland, 1998), both of which also may affect discourse functioning. Discourse Genres Discourse genres are separated into two broad categories: monologic (monologues) and interactive. Monologues, which do not require interaction, encompass a number of genres including descriptions, narratives, and procedural and expository discourse (Cherney, 1998). Descriptive discourse entails the attribution of features and concepts of a stimulus. Narratives involve storytelling, either through story creation or story retelling. Procedural discourse includes explanations of a series of actions to perform a task. Expository discourse informs a listener of a topic through facts or interpretation and draws upon higher-level thinking skills, such as comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and generalization. In contrast, conversational discourse is interactive with participants alternating roles as speaker and listener to exchange ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Because conversation is such a prevalent mode of human communication, it may be argued that it has greater ecologic validity—how well a measure relates to real-life situations—than monologic discourse and that, therefore, assessment of discourse among individuals with TBI should focus primarily on conversational discourse. However, monologic discourse also has ecologic validity, as everyday conversation often incorporates a narrative framework. Furthermore, storytelling often is embedded in social exchanges (Mar, 2004). Monologic discourse may be more useful clinically than conversation. In a study of the relationship of discourse to functional outcomes after TBI, narrative and procedural discourse measures were better correlated than conversational discourse measures with social integration and quality of life (Galski et al., 2008). Four of the five significant predictors for social integration were monologic discourse measures related to efficiency, organization, and productivity. Additionally, quality of life was correlated only with monologic discourse measures. These findings suggest that conversational tasks may not be sufficiently difficult or cognitively demanding or may be too variable to use in the valuation of cognitive-communication abilities underlying successful community reintegration and life satisfaction. Methodologically, narrative discourse presents the possibility of systematic and quantitative examinations not offered by conversational discourse. In addition, elicitation of discourse through the use of stories or procedures makes it possible to identify the elements of the targeted output that can serve as the standard for comparison. For example, a story retelling task requires all participants to provide an account of the same basic elements of the stimulus story. By contrast, conversational tasks do not provide an equivalent target against which an elicited interaction can be evaluated. Although both conversational and monologic discourse sample distinct aspects of communication, monologic discourse has methodological advantages over conversation and therefore may be better suited for predicting and monitoring recovery following TBI. Discourse Analyses Monologic discourse affords multilevel analyses that provide a systematic way to gain insights into the nature of discourse deficits. Monologic discourse measures are organized at four levels: within-sentence, across-sentence, text-level, and story grammar. Within-sentence analyses, sometimes referred to as microlinguistic analyses, focus on lexical, semantic, and grammatical processes. Within-sentence analyses include sentential complexity, propositional analyses, verbal errors, productivity measures, and essential content units. Across-sentence measures, referred to as microstructural measures, involve measures of cohesion. Cohesion refers to inter-sentential organization that is established by meaning relations that connect one utterance to the next. Cohesive markers, such as anaphoric references (e.g., she, his), bridge meaning between sentences. Examination of cohesion may involve judgments of cohesive adequacy or identification of usage patterns. Beyond the sentence level, text-level analyses are global measures that involve the whole discourse sample. Text-level analyses, sometimes referred to as macrolinguistic analyses, include gist summarization (extrapolation and refinement of the central meaning of a discourse sample) and coherence (thematic unity of the discourse sample measures). Local coherence reflects how well two sentences are thematically linked; global coherence reflects how well each sentence of the sample relates to the overall theme. Story grammar analyses examine the over-arching discourse structure, known as the schema. Story grammar rules govern the schema and facilitate comprehension and production of a story, specifying logical connections between characters and events. The episode unit is central to measures of story grammar. An episode consists of an initiating event that provides the motivation for a character's goal-based behavior; an attempt on behalf of the character toward the goal; and a direct consequence, reflecting attainment or nonattainment of the goal. Sensitivity of discourse measures to the subtle communicative deficits of TBI varies according to the analysis used. Findings associated with within- and across-sentence measures are mixed. For example, some studies examining cohesion have found significant differences between individuals with TBI and non-brain-injured individuals; others have found comparable performance among the groups. In contrast, text-level and story grammar analyses in the TBI literature have consistently demonstrated sensitivity, indicating that global discourse analyses may be more fruitful in understanding the relationship between discourse ability and cognition (Coelho, Ylvisaker, & Turkstra, 2005; Chapman et al., 2006; Moran & Gillon, 2010). Neural Correlates of Discourse Discourse is situated at the crossroads of language and cognition. Following TBI, linguistic abilities are generally spared (i.e., phonological and syntactic aspects of single words and sentences in the absence of context) and frank aphasias are relatively uncommon. As a result, the disruption of discourse ability is thought to have cognitive underpinnings. The systematic examination of discourse in relation to cognition may shed light on the processes involved in discourse production and on organization of the neural structures involved in the production and comprehension of discourse. Imaging studies have implicated a variety of cortical areas that appear to be important for discourse production and comprehension, suggesting that discourse ability is widely distributed in the brain. Both medial and lateral prefrontal cortices (PFC), temporoparietal and anterior temporal regions, and posterior cingulate have shown activation during production of stories (Mar, 2004). The medial PFC is identified as a key site for regulation of motivation and is associated with discourse processes of sequencing and selection. Additionally, it has been implicated in theory-of-mind tasks, pointing to a potential role in inferencing. The lateral PFC has multiple efferent and afferent connections with all other lobes of the brain—temporal, parietal, and occipital (see Figure 1 [PDF]). Given such extensive circuitry, it is not surprising that the lateral PFC, particularly the dorsolateral region, has been shown to mediate a number of important cognitive processes, such as executive functions, working memory, information retrieval, and set shifting (Frattali & Grafman, 2005). Temporal sequencing of stories, which is thought to reflect working memory processes, also appears to be a function of lateral PFC. Some evidence suggests that lateral PFC mediates retrieval of episodic information. Temporoparietal and anterior temporal regions appear to be responsible for mental inferencing, such as theory of mind. Although some areas of the temporal lobes are responsible for basic semantic processes, these areas are not the same temporal areas implicated in discourse. However, some researchers have raised the possibility that the temporoparietal and anterior temporal regions may be involved in more complex sentence processing (Mar, 2004). The posterior cingulate is associated with multiple functions, such as updating schemas with new information, imagery, and retrieval of episodic information. Emotional stimuli also appear to engage the posterior cingulate, suggesting that the posterior cingulate may regulate the influence of emotions on memory-related processes. The diverse processes housed within the posterior cingulate point to its potential role as a site for mental simulation of discourse (Mar, 2004). The extensive connections of the PFC to other areas of brain make it a likely candidate for control and regulation of goal-oriented functions, such as discourse ability. Several models of PFC functioning converge on the notion that the PFC is critical for automatic and controlled processing. For example, Grafman (1995) proposed that the PFC is responsible for plan-specific knowledge, represented as memory units called structured event complexes (SECs). SECs specify goal-oriented event information in sequence. They are dynamic representations such that experience modifies their information. For example, hosting a dinner party with the goal of having the entire meal prepared by a certain time activates the appropriate SEC for that task. Sequences for this particular SEC might include sending out invitations, buying groceries to meet the needs of the selected recipes, setting the table, and sequencing the cooking so that all the food is ready on time. The organizational framework of SECs is analogous to that of story grammar and scripts, suggesting that SECs may form the basis for knowledge representation in discourse (Frattali & Grafman, 2005). Assessment Challenges Cognitive-communication impairments are characteristic of TBI and difficult to quantify because typical language batteries tend to be geared toward individuals with aphasia. These batteries generally assess linguistic form and content, abilities that are often spared following TBI. Despite the facility of their spoken language, individuals with TBI may have more difficulty in conversational exchanges than individuals without brain injury; they may be tangential, disorganized, and poorer at conversational turn-taking (Coelho, Liles, & Duffy, 1991; McDonald, 1993). Such individuals are good talkers but poor communicators, and often rely on their conversational partners to assume the burden of organizing or providing structure for the successful exchange of information. Individuals with TBI also struggle with pragmatics and in particular "reading" the social context, which in large measure determines the effectiveness of a communicative exchange (Body, Perkins, & McDonald, 1999). Successful communication depends on conveying appropriate content in a way that encourages the communication partner to sustain an interaction. The social isolation of individuals following TBI reflects their difficulty with discourse engagement. Social communication has been shown to correlate significantly with life satisfaction, social integration, social productivity, and occupational participation (Dahlberg et al., 2006; Galski, Tompkins, & Johnston, 1998). Standardized language assessment batteries may not be the best approach to assess social communication abilities as they cannot factor the context of communication into the results and thus tend to provide an inaccurate index of functional communication abilities. In a review of 84 standardized assessments recommended by speech-language pathologists in response to a survey, only 31 mentioned TBI in the test manual (Turkstra, Coelho, & Ylvisaker, 2005). Of those, seven were deemed reliable and valid according to measures established by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. The authors of the review remarked on the "striking absence of a test developed for the evaluation of communication in individuals with cognitive-communication disorders" (p. 219). Discourse is complex use of language that depends on both linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive abilities. Individuals with TBI are challenged to produce coherent and cohesive discourse, but no standardized or norm-referenced assessment can delineate the degree of difficulty they encounter. Non-standardized assessments serve a variety of functions, including determining competencies in domains for which there are no standardized tests as well as describing performance in the context of real-world settings and activities (Coelho, Ylvisaker, & Turkstra, 2005). Discourse analysis is non-standardized assessment. Discourse analyses are time-consuming to perform but yield information regarding linguistic, cognitive, and social functioning that can be helpful in designing customized interventions for individuals with TBI. Implications for Treatment As a group, individuals with TBI, particularly in the chronic stage (two or more years post-injury), demonstrate relatively preserved linguistic abilities. Impairments noted in their narrative discourse production are associated with problems at a more macro-level—what Glosser (1993) described as cognitive procedures for integrating linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge in order to maintain conceptual, semantic, and pragmatic organization of discourse. There are a variety of cognitively based explanations for these breakdowns including difficulties with executive functioning (including working memory), memory (i.e., the ability to integrate prior world knowledge within ongoing discourse), and attention. Such explanations suggest that intervention for discourse deficits may be more effective when directed toward the improvement of cognitive abilities rather than discourse alone. More research aimed at identifying the key elements of a successful rehabilitation program for individuals with TBI is critically needed, especially to address their discourse deficits as they persist and pose a significant barrier to successful community reentry. Cognitive-communication problems create serious challenges to an individual's potential for social, vocational, and academic success. Therefore, management of individuals with TBI should incorporate assessment and treatment of discourse impairments. Discourse Genres Commonly Used in Assessing Individuals With TBI Conversational discourse: interactive, requires a communicative dyad, involves turn-taking as speaker and listener alternate roles. Monologic discourse: non-interactive, but often is embedded in social exchanges. Descriptive discourse: attribution of features and concepts of a given stimulus (e.g., object) or personal experience (e.g., favorite hobby). Narrative discourse: telling of a story, typically through generation of a spontaneous story or retelling of a story previously presented. Procedural discourse: explanations of action sequences to perform a task. Expository discourse: informing a listener of a topic through facts or interpretation; draws upon higher-level thinking skills (e.g., inferencing, understanding cause and effect). Examples of Discourse Measures Within-sentence analyses Sentential complexity Propositional analyses and counts Verbal output errors (e.g., mazes, lexical errors, verbal paraphasias) Productivity Essential content units Across-sentence analyses Cohesive adequacy Cohesive errors Usage patterns for cohesive markers Text-level analyses Local and global coherence Gist summarization Story grammar analysis Episode counts Proportion of utterances in episodes References Body R., Perkins M., & McDonald S. (1999). Pragmatics, cognition, and communication in traumatic brain injury.In Code C. (Ed.), Communication disorders following traumatic brain injury. (pp. 81–112). Hove, England: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis (UK). Google Scholar Brookshire B. L., Chapman S. B., Song J., & Levin H. S. (2000). Cognitive and linguistic correlates of children's discourse after closed head injury: A three-year follow-up.Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 6(7), 741–751. doi:10.1017/S1355617700677019 Google Scholar Chapman S. B., Gamino J. F., Cook L. G., Hanten G., Li X., & Levin H. S. (2006). Impaired discourse gist and working memory in children after brain injury.Brain and Language, 97(2), 178–188. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2005.10.002 CrossrefGoogle Scholar Cherney L. R. (1998). Pragmatics and discourse: An introduction.In Cherney L. R., Shadden B. B., & Coelho C. A. (Eds.), (pp. 1–7). Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc. Google Scholar Coelho C. A. (2002). Story narratives of adults with closed head injury and non-brain-injured adults: Influence of socioeconomic status, elicitation task, and executive functioning.Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45(6), 1232–1248. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2002/099) LinkGoogle Scholar Coelho C. A., Liles B. Z., & Duffy R. J. (1991). The use of discourse analyses for the evaluation of higher level traumatically brain-injured adults.Brain Injury, 5(4), 381–392. CrossrefGoogle Scholar Coelho C., Ylvisaker M., & Turkstra L. (2005). Nonstandardized assessment approaches for individuals with traumatic brain injuries.Seminars in Speech and Language, 26(4), 223–241. doi:10.1055/s-2005-922102. CrossrefGoogle Scholar Dahlberg C., Hawley L., Morey C., Newman J., Cusick C. P., & Harrison-Felix C. (2006). Social communication skills in persons with post-acute traumatic brain injury: Three perspectives.Brain Injury, 20(4), 425–435. doi:10.1080/02699050600664574 CrossrefGoogle Scholar Frattali C., & Grafman J. (2005). Language and discourse deficits following prefrontal cortex damage.Aphasia and related neurogenic language disorders (3rd ed.) (pp. 51–67). New York, NY: Thieme. Google Scholar Galski T., Tompkins C., & Johnston M. V. (1998). Competence in discourse as a measure of social integration and quality of life in persons with traumatic brain injury.Brain Injury, 12(9), 769–782. doi:10.1080/026990598122160 CrossrefGoogle Scholar Glosser G. (1993). Discourse production patterns in neurologically impaired and aged populations.In Brownell H.H., Joanette Y. (Eds.) Narrative discourse in neurologically impaired and normal aging adults. 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S. and Carl A. of Assessment of Cognitive-Communication Following A Jennifer and J. of Speech, Language, and Hearing of the Assessment of Verbal and Test in the and to in Feb &
In this paper we describe preparatory work for constructing a Treebank for Latvian as no such resource currently exists. Previously elaborated SemTi-Kamols hybrid dependency based grammar model has been extended to make it appropriate for broad coverage text annotation. We also have integrated extended SemTi-Kamols model with graphical tree editor TrEd and complementary toolkit, which originally was developed for Prague Dependency Treebank. Using the obtained environment we have annotated small amount of Latvian text.
The paper addresses the core problems of foreign students' communicative competence and justifies the «language culture» course as mean to build the required skills; the paper also proposes methodology of teaching those skills in the lexical norms study.
Automatic acquisition and recognition of collocation is one of the basic work in natural language processing.Considering with the affects by sentence structure,this paper proposes a collocation acquisition method by reserving the headwords and a collocation recognition method adding with the syntax restrictions.The result shows that the collocation acquisition method runs effectively,and the collocation recognition method has the effect of 10%~15% increase compared with the baseline.
Many languages in Africa are written using Latin-based scripts, but often with extra diacritics (e.g. dots below in Igbo: \({\d i}, {\d o}, {\d u}\)) or modifications to the letters themselves (e.g. open vowels “e” and “o” in Lingala: ɛ, ɔ). While it is possible to render these characters accurately in Unicode, oftentimes keyboard input methods are not easily accessible or are cumbersome to use, and so the vast majority of electronic texts in many African languages are written in plain ASCII. We call the process of converting an ASCII text to its proper Unicode form unicodification. This paper describes an open-source package which performs automatic unicodification, implementing a variant of an algorithm described in previous work of De Pauw, Wagacha, and de Schryver. We have trained models for more than 100 languages using web data, and have evaluated each language using a range of feature sets.
Reading class tends to get the meaning of a text through a scientific way of text analysis.The ideology of the course should develop as linguistic theory develops.Foregrounding is a very important theory in Halliday's Functional Linguistics.Once when the theory was proposed,it was widely used in the area of linguistic pragmatism.It's of great importance to apply the theory into the teaching practice of reading class.By figuring out the linguistic norm concealed behind the phonetic,lexical,syntactic and discourse systems,the tenor of the text can hereby be disclosed.So,the application of the theory will be of great help to fulfill the purpose of reading class.
The Internet has facilitated both the dissemination of anonymous texts as well as easy “borrowing” of ideas and words of others. This has raised a number of important questions regarding authorship. Can we identify the anonymous author of a text by comparing the text with the writings of known authors? Can we determine if a text, or parts of it, has been plagiarized? Such questions are clearly of both academic and commercial importance.
Presents the Theory of Norms and Exploitations in German; discusses the relationship between valencies and lexical sets (collocations). This paper shows the importance of a lexically based approach to meaning analysis and a statistical approach to the measurement of collocations.
Reaction time tasks are used widely in basic and applied psychology. There is a need for an easy-to-use, freely available programme that can run simple and choice reaction time tasks with no special software. We report the development of, and make available, the Deary-Liewald reaction time task. It is initially tested here on 150 participants, aged from 18 to 80, alongside another widely used reaction time device and tests of fluid and crystallised intelligence and processing speed. The new task’s parameters perform as expected with respect to age and intelligence differences. The new task’s parameters are reliable, and have very high correlations with the existing task. We also provide instructions for downloading and using the new reaction time programme, and we encourage other researchers to use it.
The reconstruction of standardized texts in the Prague Dependency Treebank of Spoken Czech enables the comparison of authentic spoken utterances and standardized texts The authors concentrate on the questions: What does the syntactic identity of the Czech spoken and written texts consist of? What syntactic constructions are „natural“ in the spoken and in the written text? What is the difference in the density of the cohesive links, in the explicit and implicite relations between units?
This article describes the RMediation package,which offers various methods for building confidence intervals (CIs) for mediated effects. The mediated effect is the product of two regression coefficients. The distribution-of-the-product method has the best statistical performance of existing methods for building CIs for the mediated effect. RMediation produces CIs using methods based on the distribution of product, Monte Carlo simulations, and an asymptotic normal distribution. Furthermore, RMediation generates percentiles, quantiles, and the plot of the distribution and CI for the mediated effect. An existing program, called PRODCLIN, published in Behavior Research Methods, has been widely cited and used by researchers to build accurate CIs. PRODCLIN has several limitations: The program is somewhat cumbersome to access and yields no result for several cases. RMediation described herein is based on the widely available R software, includes several capabilities not available in PRODCLIN, and provides accurate results that PRODCLIN could not.
This study examined the performance of selection criteria available in the major statistical packages for both mean model and covariance structure. Unbalanced designs due to missing data involving both a moderate and large number of repeated measurements and varying total sample sizes were investigated. The study also investigated the impact of using different estimation strategies for information criteria, the impact of different adjustments for calculating the criteria, and the impact of different distribution shapes. Overall, we found that the ability of consistent criteria in any of the their examined forms to select the correct model was superior under simple covariance patterns than under complex covariance patterns, and vice versa for the efficient criteria. The simulation studies covered in this paper also revealed that, regardless of method of estimation used, the consistent criteria based on number of subjects were more effective than the consistent criteria based on total number of observations, and vice versa for the efficient criteria. Furthermore, results indicated that, given a dataset with missing values, the efficient criteria were more affected than the consistent criteria by the lack of normality.
Cognitive effort is reflected in pupil dilation, but the assessment of pupil size is potentially susceptible to changes in gaze position. This study exemplarily used sentence reading as a stand-in for paradigms that assess pupil size in tasks during which changes in gaze position are unavoidable. The influence of gaze position on pupil size was first investigated by an artificial eye model with a fixed pupil size. Despite its fixed pupil size, the systematic measurements of the artificial eye model revealed substantial gaze-position-dependent changes in the measured pupil size. We evaluated two functions and showed that they can accurately capture and correct the gaze-dependent measurement error of pupil size recorded during a sentence-reading and an effortless z-string-scanning task. Implications for previous studies are discussed, and recommendations for future studies are provided.
We propose a method to improve the accuracy of parsing bilingual texts (bitexts) with the help of statistical machine translation (SMT) systems. Previous bitext parsing methods use human-annotated bilingual treebanks that are hard to obtain. Instead, our approach uses an auto-generated bilingual treebank to produce bilingual constraints. However, because the auto-generated bilingual treebank contains errors, the bilingual constraints are noisy. To overcome this problem, we use large-scale unannotated data to verify the constraints and design a set of effective bilingual features for parsing models based on the verified results. The experimental results show that our new parsers significantly outperform state-of-the-art baselines. Moreover, our approach is still able to provide improvement when we use a larger monolingual treebank that results in a much stronger baseline. Especially notable is that our approach can be used in a purely monolingual setting with the help of SMT.
This paper makes two contributions. First, we describe the Hindi Proposition Bank that contains annotations of predicate argument structures of verb predicates. Unlike PropBanks in most other languages, the Hind PropBank is annotated on top of dependency structure, the Hindi Dependency Treebank. We explore the similarities between dependency and predicate argument structures, so the PropBank annotation can be faster and more accurate. Second, we present a probabilistic rule-based system that maps syntactic dependents to semantic arguments. With simple rules, we classify about 47 % of the entire PropBank arguments with over 90 % confidence. These preliminary results are promising; they show how well these two frameworks are correlated. This can also be used to speed up our annotations. 1
Two experiments examined the effects of repetition on listeners' emotional response to music. Listeners heard recordings of orchestral music that contained a large section repeated twice. The music had a symmetric phrase structure (same-length phrases) in Experiment 1 and an asymmetric phrase structure (different-length phrases) in Experiment 2, hypothesized to alter the predictability of sensitivity to musical repetition. Continuous measures of arousal and valence were compared across music that contained identical repetition, variation (related), or contrasting (unrelated) structure. Listeners' emotional arousal ratings differed most for contrasting music, moderately for variations, and least for repeating musical segments. A computational model for the detection of repeated musical segments was applied to the listeners' emotional responses. The model detected the locations of phrase boundaries from the emotional responses better than from performed tempo or physical intensity in both experiments. These findings indicate the importance of repetition in listeners' emotional response to music and in the perceptual segmentation of musical structure.
BACKGROUND: The neuroanatomic basis of affective processing deficits in Huntington disease is insufficiently understood. We investigated whether Huntington disease-related deficits in emotion recognition and experience are associated with specific changes in grey matter volume. METHOD: We assessed grey matter volume in symptomatic patients with Huntington disease and healthy controls using voxel-based morphometry, and we correlated regional grey matter volume with participants' affective ratings. RESULTS: We enrolled 18 patients with Huntington disease and 18 healthy controls in our study. Patients with Huntington disease showed normal affective experience but impaired recognition of negative emotions (disgust, anger, sadness). The patients perceived the emotions as less intense and made more classification errors than controls. These deficits were correlated with regional atrophy in emotion-relevant areas (insula, orbitofrontal cortex) and in memory-relevant areas (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, hippocampus). LIMITATIONS: Our study was limited by the small sample size and the resulting modest statistical power relative to the number of tests. CONCLUSION: Our study sheds new light on the importance of a cognitive-affective brain circuit involved in the affect recognition impairment in patients with Huntington disease.
BACKGROUND: Traumatized individuals and particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients are characterized by memory disturbances that suggest altered memory control. The present study investigated the issue using an item method, directed forgetting (DF) paradigm in 51 civil war victims in Uganda. All participants had been exposed to severe traumatic stress and 26 additionally suffered from PTSD. METHOD: In an item cued, DF paradigm photographs were presented, each followed by an instruction to either remember or forget it. A recognition test for all initially presented photographs and thematically similar distracters followed. DF patterns were compared between the non-PTSD and the PTSD groups. Post-experimental ratings of picture valence and arousal were collected and correlated with DF. RESULTS: Results revealed DF, that is, reduced recognition for 'to-be-forgotten' items in the non-PTSD but not in the PTSD group. Moreover, in the non-PTSD, but not in the PTSD group, false alarms were reduced for 'to-be-remembered' items. Finally, DF was reduced in those participants who rated the pictures as more arousing, the PTSD group giving, on average, higher arousal ratings. CONCLUSIONS: Data indicate that DF is reduced in PTSD and that the reduction is related to stimulus arousal. Furthermore, individuals with PTSD are characterized by a more global encoding style than individuals without PTSD, reflected in a higher false alarm rate. In sum, traumatized individuals with (but not without) PTSD are impaired in their ability to selectively control episodic memory encoding. This impairment may contribute to clinical features of the disorder such as intrusions and flashbacks.
We present a novel approach to Data-Oriented Parsing (DOP). Like other DOP models, our parser utilizes syntactic fragments of arbitrary size from a treebank to analyze new sentences, but, crucially, it uses only those which are encountered at least twice. This criterion al-lows us to work with a relatively small but representative set of fragments, which can be employed as the symbolic backbone of sev-eral probabilistic generative models. For pars-ing we define a transform-backtransform ap-proach that allows us to use standard PCFG technology, making our results easily replica-ble. According to standard Parseval metrics, our best model is on par with many state-of-the-art parsers, while offering some comple-mentary benefits: a simple generative proba-bility model, and an explicit representation of the larger units of grammar. 1