Search results for "Natural language"
showing 10 items of 650 documents
Register Variation Across English Pharmaceutical Texts: A Corpus-driven Study of Keywords, Lexical Bundles and Phrase Frames in Patient Information L…
2013
Abstract This study constitutes an initial step towards filling a gap in corpus linguistics studies of linguistic and phraseological variation across English pharmaceutical texts, in particular in terms of recurrent linguistic patterns. The study conducted from a register- perspective ( Biber & Conrad, 2009 ), which employs both quantitative and qualitative research procedures, aims to provide a corpus-driven description of vocabulary and phraseology, namely key words, lexical bundles, and phrase frames, used in patient information leaflets and summaries of product characteristics (represented by 463 and 146 texts, respectively) written originally in English and collected in two domain-spec…
Learning nonadjacent dependencies : No need for algebraic-like computations.
2004
Is it possible to learn the relation between 2 nonadjacent events? M. Pena, L. L. Bonatti, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler (2002) claimed this to be possible, but only in conditions suggesting the involvement of algebraic-like computations. The present article reports simulation studies and experimental data showing that the observations on which Pena et al. grounded their reasoning were flawed by deep methodological inadequacies. When the invalid data are set aside, the available evidence fits exactly with the predictions of a theory relying on ubiquitous associative mechanisms. Because nonadjacent dependencies are frequent in natural language, this reappraisal has far-reaching implications for t…
First results of PACTE group's experimental research on translation competence acquisition : the acquisition of declarative knowledge of translation
2014
Autors llistats per ordre alfabètic. Investigadora principal: A. Hurtado Albir This paper presents the first results of empirical-experimental research into the Acquisition of Translation Competence (ATC): the acquisition of declarative knowledge about translation. This study is based on our previous research about Translation Competence (TC). Some of the data collection instruments have, however, been adapted for current use. Details of our research design include type of study, universe and sample population, study variables, data collection instruments, and data analysis processes. The dependent variables were knowledge of translation; translation project; identification and solution of …
Non-cognate translation priming effects in the same–different task: evidence for the impact of “higher level” information
2015
Norris and colleagues have proposed that priming effects observed in the masked prime same–different task are based solely on pre-lexical orthographic information. This proposal was evaluated by examining translation priming effects from non-cognate translation equivalents using both Spanish–English and Japanese–English bilinguals in the same–different task. Although no priming was observed for Spanish–English bilinguals, who also produced very little translation priming in a lexical decision task, significant priming was observed for Japanese–English bilinguals. These results indicate that, although most of the priming in the same–different task has an orthographic basis, other types of pr…
A probabilistic approach to learning a visually grounded language model through human-robot interaction
2010
A Language is among the most fascinating and complex cognitive activities that develops rapidly since the early months of infants' life. The aim of the present work is to provide a humanoid robot with cognitive, perceptual and motor skills fundamental for the acquisition of a rudimentary form of language. We present a novel probabilistic model, inspired by the findings in cognitive sciences, able to associate spoken words with their perceptually grounded meanings. The main focus is set on acquiring the meaning of various perceptual categories (e. g. red, blue, circle, above, etc.), rather than specific world entities (e. g. an apple, a toy, etc.). Our probabilistic model is based on a varia…
Semi-automatic Quasi-morphological Word Segmentation for Neural Machine Translation
2018
This paper proposes the Prefix-Root-Postfix-Encoding (PRPE) algorithm, which performs close-to-morphological segmentation of words as part of text pre-processing in machine translation. PRPE is a cross-language algorithm requiring only minor tweaking to adapt it for any particular language, a property which makes it potentially useful for morphologically rich languages with no morphological analysers available. As a key part of the proposed algorithm we introduce the ‘Root alignment’ principle to extract potential sub-words from a corpus, as well as a special technique for constructing words from potential sub-words. We conducted experiments with two different neural machine translation sys…
What to Expect and What to Focus on in SQL Query Teaching
2019
In the process of learning a new computer language, writing erroneous statements is part of the learning experience. However, some errors persist throughout the query writing process and are never corrected. Structured Query Language (SQL) consists of a number of different concepts such as expressions, joins, grouping and ordering, all of which by nature invite different possible errors in the query writing process. Furthermore, some of these errors are relatively easy for a student to fix when compared to others. Using a data set from three student cohorts with the total of 744 students, we set out to explore which types of errors are persistent, i.e., more likely to be left uncorrected by…
Tarski’s t-scheme as an alleged basis of Montague semantics
2007
My point in this paper is to focus on some details of Alfred Tarski’s writing that in my opinion have not been aptly represented — or aptly rejected — in Richard Montague’s grammar and to agree with those who share Tarski’s view that human language is something uncapturable. The paper consists of two parts, concerning 1) some attempts to formalize the non-declarative utterances, and 2) the limitations of T-scheme and of Montague grammar.
A Neural Network model for the Evaluation of Text Complexity in Italian Language: a Representation Point of View
2018
Abstract The goal of a text simplification system (TS) is to create a new text suited to the characteristics of a reader, with the final goal of making it more understandable.The building of an Automatic Text Simplification System (ATS) cannot be separated from a correct evaluation of the text complexity. In fact the ATS must be capable of understanding if a text should be simplified for the target reader or not. In a previous work we have presented a model capable of classifying Italian sentences based on their complexity level. Our model is a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) Neural Network capable of learning the features of easy-to-read and complex-to-read sentences autonomously from a anno…
Formative feedback to transfer self-regulation of task-oriented reading strategies
2016
The study includes two experiments to analyse the effects of automatic formative feedback designed to promote the transfer of self-regulation of strategic decisions in task-oriented reading e.g. answering questions from an available text. Secondary-school students read and answered multiple-choice comprehension questions from two texts having them available while receiving consistent feedback about their performance and strategic decisions. Then, they read a different text and answered questions also with the text available, but receiving no feedback. In Experiment 1, we tested two feedback procedures that differed in task conditions and the feedback information associated to these conditio…