Dr. Andrew Smith

 ARC Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology

Leximancer: A Statistical Path from Words to Meaning

Leximancer uses statistical word co-ocurrence to discover a surprising amount of information from textual data. The work presented here will describe some preliminary explorations into Chaucer's The Knight's Tale. In particular, an interlinear translation of this work is examined to quickly map the corresponding lexical usage between the original and the translation. This analysis not only builds thesauruses of corresponding terms, but the semantic map shows related terms based on similar usage. Phrasal tendencies of words are also presented.

Next, the two translations of The Knight's Tale are separated, and an analysis technique is devised which can show the alignment of terms in the two languages based on usage with respect to a kernel of common words.

Linguistics Program

The University of Queensland.

The concept of a functional phrase was introduced into syntax to distinguish inflectional and auxiliary elements (functional items) from lexical items. My thesis proposal seeks to distinguish these diametric items through analysing functional items as emergent structures, which arise from the dynamics of pattern discovery. In this presentation I will focus on the formation of tense in language acquisition.

Crutchfield (1994a and b) has introduced an approach to avoid subjectivity in pattern discovery in which regularities are extracted from the data stream, in this case - an utterance, and the corresponding pattern is represented by a particular computational model. The pattern would be classed as intrinsically emergent as the regularity only has meaning within the system (the data and the model). Functional items would then be represented as semantic and conceptual regularities, broken from the configuration of lexical items.

Functional items would be reliant on the lexical items for their meaning and thus functionality is intrinsically emergent. Emergence is a main characteristic of a complex system and as such language would be viewed as a complex system.

Crutchfield, James (1994a) Is Anything Ever New? Considering Emergence Eds. G. Cowan, D. Pines and D Melzner, Integrative Themes Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity XIX Addison-Wesley

Linguistics Program

The University of Queensland

Aspectual coercion refers to how word meaning is combined at the sentential level. It specifically describes the semantic interplay between the aspectual properties of the verb and an adverbial modifier:

1. The light shone for hours / until morning. (activity)
2. The light flashed for hours / until morning. (point action)

(a) implies that the light shone in a single continuous process, due to the durative process of the activity verb. In comparison (b) implies a repetitive function due to the punctual feature of the verb flash and the bounding feature of the adverbial modifiers for and until. Recent psycholinguistic research has placed a new emphasis on this notion of repetition or iteration at the sentential level (Piñango, Zurif & Jackendoff, 1999; Todorova, Straub, Badecker & Frank, 2000). Results show that the encoding of iteration involves an increased processing load. Two models have been put forward to explain why this is so, however the processing mechanisms of iteration still remain a puzzle.

The present study is a replication and extension of Piñango et al's (1999) original sentence stimuli set. An on-line self-paced reading task specifically tested for processing differences between verb type and adverbial modifier combinations. The results are discussed and compared against the enriched composition model that advocates an extra-linguistic conceptual process (Jackendoff, 2002) and a type-shifting approach (Moens & Steedman, 1988) that results in a non-preferred reading that is then reinterpreted.

Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moens, M., & Steedman, M. (1988). Temporal ontology and temporal reference.

Computational Linguistics, 14(2): 15-28.

Piñango, M., Zurif, E., & Jackendoff, R. (1999). Real-time processing implications of enriched composition at the syntax-semantics interface. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(4): 395-414.

Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology

The University of Queensland

Judgments of sentence well-formedness have played an important role in attempts to understand the processing impairments underlying the agrammatic comprehension deficit. A strong claim has been made in the literature on the basis of well-formedness data, i.e., that parsing operations are essentially intact in Broca’s aphasia. An offline well-formedness judgment task and its online counterpart were conducted with six Broca’s aphasics and six neurologically-intact adults. The error-types of interest were semantic errors, inflectional (agreement) errors, and thematic-role reversal errors.

Whilst retaining above-chance sensitivity to well-formedness violations, the Broca’s aphasics’ results were significantly poorer than the control group across both the offline and online paradigms. The online results reflected the general pattern from the offline testing, but with a greater proportion of errors. Across both tasks, inflectional errors proved to be the most difficult error-type to detect for the Broca’s aphasics. Thematic–role reversal errors were also compromised, especially in more complex sentence-types. Semantic violations were generally easily detected.

The results will be discussed in relation to three prominent theoretical orientations in the agrammatic comprehension literature, namely, the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis (Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000), the Mapping Hypothesis (Linebarger, Schwartz, & Saffran, 1983), and processing limitation accounts that subscribe to activation and/or timing deficit principles. The claim that parsing processes are generally well-preserved in Broca’s aphasia will also be discussed.

Grodzinsky, Y. (1995). A restrictive theory of agrammatic comprehension. Brain and

Language, 50, 27-51.

Grodzinsky, Y. (2000). The neurology of syntax: Language use without Broca’s area.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 1-71.

Linebarger, M.C., Schwartz, M.F., & Saffran, E.M. (1983). Sensitivity to grammatical

Linguistics Program EMSAH

University of Queensland

Explorations in the Classification and Presentation of Linguistic Data

School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies

The University of Queensland

Many cross-cultural issues in pedagogy arise when more and more Chinese students move to the UK to study English. In order to know how Chinese students perceive EFL teaching in the UK to help underpin their cultural assumptions, a questionnaire with 31 items concerning different aspects of EFL teaching was designed for the students. Sixty three copies were collected and 47 copies were considered valid.

An interview with two female students was video recorded to get an in-depth view. The data showed that Chinese EFL students appreciated the teaching given by native English speaker teachers and the English language environment in the UK, and at the same time they felt that the EFL teaching was not always directly aiming at their needs and not really compatible with their learning style either.

This study can help EFL teachers at all levels gain insight into the cultural assumptions and values that lie behind the students' learning style. My hope is that such information will enhance the teaching of students from different cultural backgrounds, improve the assessments of their learning, and create strategies to empower both students and teachers.

Cortazzi, M. & Jin, L. (1999) Cultural Mirrors: Materials and methods in the EFL Classroom. In E. Hinkel (Eds.), Culture in second language teaching and learning,196-219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fu, D. & Townsend, J. S. (1998) Cross-Cultural Dilemmas in Writing. College Teaching, 46 (4): 128-133.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (1991) Language learning tasks: Teacher intention and learner interpretation. ELT Journal, 45: 98-107.

Scollon, S. (1999) Not to waste words or students: Confucian and Socratic discourse n the tertiary classroom. In E. Hinkel (Eds.), Culture in second language teaching and learning, 13-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wan, G. (2001) The Learning Experience of Chinese Students in American Universities: A cross-cultural perspective. College Student Journal, 35(1): 28-45.

Department of Studies in Religion

The University of Queensland

The significant terms this paper uses are Kenneth Pike’s neologisms, ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ (derived from the linguistic ‘phonetic/phonemic’ distinction, and widely diffused throughout the behavioural and social sciences) and the converse of Edward Said’s term ‘Orientalism’, that is, ‘Occidentalism’. For Said, ‘Orientalism’ was the particular way westerners constructed and presented oriental society and culture. Its converse, ‘Occidentalism’, then, is how easterners view and construct western society. This concept is applied in the linguistic domain, particularly to the phonology of the second language during SLA, for which I coin the term ‘phonological occidentalism’. Thus ‘phonological occidentalism’ is the phonological construction and phonemic categories subconsciously employed by a non-native speaker using that speaker’s own first language ‘emic’ grid and superimposing it upon the second language.

The case study is taken from Huli, a language of about 100,000 speakers in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The field research is based on nearly two decades of participant observation, the writer having been involved in both vernacular literacy in Huli and education in English. The fact that mother tongues influence the way ESL speakers perceive and produce English is widely recognized; and much has been written about the different ‘Englishes’ which have resulted. Little attention, however, has been given to the reflexivity of the process.

This paper presents evidence of how the ‘phonological occidentalism’ of native Huli speakers generates, for the Huli whose primary oracy and language acquisition is Huli, yet whose primary literacy acquisition is in English, grapho-phonic mismatches, and thus confusion for them in attempting subsequently to read their own first language (mother tongue). Particular focus will be the ‘stop consonants’ as analysed by Rule and Rule (1954) .

References

Linguistics Program

The University of Queensland

This experiment investigated the tonal transfer in Vietnamese perception of English stress. Ninety five Vietnamese subjects including 15 advanced Vietnamese speakers of English and 80 beginning learners of English from four regional dialects (20 of each dialect: Hanoi, Saigon, Hue and Nghe An) participated in the perception test. The subjects listened to English words and marked the English syllables with the tones they perceived.

The results indicated that an English syllable could be perceived as a certain Vietnamese tone depending on the syllable structure (a closed syllable ending in an obstruent or a syllable ending in a sonorant) and stress levels (stressed and unstressed). This suggests that there is perceptual tonal transfer, which is constrained by pitch levels and the segmental composition of the syllables.

Linguistics Program,

University of Queensland

Connected speech processes (CSPs) are traditionally viewed as the consequence of reduced articulatory effort (or simplifications) that occur due to physical and communicative constraints on production - such as length of utterance, rate of speech and information load. In this sense CSPs are universal in their expression. However, cross-dialect and cross-language studies have found substantial variability in the expression of CSPs attributable to the phonological system of the speaker’s language. One source of variability derives cross-linguistically from constraints imposed by prosodic structure in blocking or promoting CSPs in various contexts. Another may lie in perceptual demands imposed by the phonological system of a given language or language family which conspire to preserve certain contrasts perhaps at the expense of others (Butcher, 1996).

The aims of this present study were (1) to identify the distribution and phonetic characteristics of CSPs in Warlpiri, a language of Central Australia, and (2) to determine the prosodic context and constraints on their expression. The study examined segmental strengthening and weakening, assimilation processes and boundary phenomena in a database of approximately 180 utterances. The data were obtained from studio recordings of two female Warlpiri speakers made by Mary Laughren at the University of Queensland in 1999 and comprised a range of complex words and short sentences representing different structures and clause types.

The study was carried out in conjunction with a related study of segment duration which found that segment lengthening systematically occurred at certain positions in a word or phrase (Pentland, 2002). A subsidiary aim of the study was therefore to supplement the duration analysis by investigating the relationship to prosodic structure of other strengthening and weakening processes in Warlpiri speech.

References:

Butcher, A. (1996). Some connected speech phenomena in Australian languages: universals and idiosyncracies. MS, Flinders University.

Pentland, C. (2002). Segment duration and word-level prosody in Warlpiri. Paper presented at the Prosody Workshop, University of Melbourne, 15 March.