On Accessibility and Coreference

1994 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Halmari

Anaphors and the grammatical roles of their antecedents are examined in Finnish language data in order to establish a correlation between two universal hierarchies: the Keenan & Comrie (1977) NP Accessibility Hierarchy and the hierarchy of accessibility of referential expressions (Accessibility Marking Scale) (Ariel 1985, 1988, 1990). A more or less clear correlation pattern between the type of anaphoric NPs and the grammatical roles of their antecedents arises in Finnish intuition data (Section 2), and this pattern is corroborated by the data from prose text counts (Section 3). Even though a one-to-one mapping between the two hierarchies remains an idealization, it is clear that grammatical relations do bear on the type of anaphoric expression employed.


Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.28 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser

Research on reference resolution has shown that there exists a connection between the form of a referring expression and the accessibility/salience of its referent. More specifically, the most salient referents – i.e. those currently at the center of attention and most prominent at that point in the discourse – are referred to with the most reduced referring expressions. This raises the question: What kinds of factors influence a referent’s salience, i.e. make it a good candidate to be referred to with a reduced anaphoric expression? This paper focuses on two factors which have been claimed to influence referent salience: (1) grammatical/syntactic role and (2) word order. These issues are addressed from the perspective of Finnish, a highly inflected, flexible word order language which has canonical SVO order and two kinds of third person anaphors: the gender-neutral pronoun <em>hän</em> ‘s/he’ and the demonstrative <em>tämä</em> ‘this.’ In this paper, I present the results of three psycholinguistic experiments investigating the referential properties of these two anaphors, and show that <em>hän</em> and <em>tämä</em> differ in their referential properties and are sensitive to different kinds of factors. The results indicate that instead of trying to define the referential properties of these forms according to a unified notion of salience, we should investigate how different factors may be relevant for different referential expressions. The implications that these findings have for our view of how referential systems work are also discussed.





1994 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henna Grunblatt ◽  
Lisa Daar

A program for providing information to children who are deaf about their deafness and addressing common concerns about deafness is detailed. Developed by a school audiologist and the school counselor, this two-part program is geared for children from 3 years to 15 years of age. The first part is an educational audiology program consisting of varied informational classes conducted by the audiologist. Five topics are addressed in this part of the program, including basic audiology, hearing aids, FM systems, audiograms, and student concerns. The second part of the program consists of individualized counseling. This involves both one-to-one counseling sessions between a student and the school counselor, as well as conjoint sessions conducted—with the student’s permission—by both the audiologist and the school counselor.



2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 479-493
Author(s):  
Jenny A. Roberts ◽  
Evelyn P. Altenberg ◽  
Madison Hunter

Purpose The results of automatic machine scoring of the Index of Productive Syntax from the Computerized Language ANalysis (CLAN) tools of the Child Language Data Exchange System of TalkBank (MacWhinney, 2000) were compared to manual scoring to determine the accuracy of the machine-scored method. Method Twenty transcripts of 10 children from archival data of the Weismer Corpus from the Child Language Data Exchange System at 30 and 42 months were examined. Measures of absolute point difference and point-to-point accuracy were compared, as well as points erroneously given and missed. Two new measures for evaluating automatic scoring of the Index of Productive Syntax were introduced: Machine Item Accuracy (MIA) and Cascade Failure Rate— these measures further analyze points erroneously given and missed. Differences in total scores, subscale scores, and individual structures were also reported. Results Mean absolute point difference between machine and hand scoring was 3.65, point-to-point agreement was 72.6%, and MIA was 74.9%. There were large differences in subscales, with Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase subscales generally providing greater accuracy and agreement than Question/Negation and Sentence Structures subscales. There were significantly more erroneous than missed items in machine scoring, attributed to problems of mistagging of elements, imprecise search patterns, and other errors. Cascade failure resulted in an average of 4.65 points lost per transcript. Conclusions The CLAN program showed relatively inaccurate outcomes in comparison to manual scoring on both traditional and new measures of accuracy. Recommendations for improvement of the program include accounting for second exemplar violations and applying cascaded credit, among other suggestions. It was proposed that research on machine-scored syntax routinely report accuracy measures detailing erroneous and missed scores, including MIA, so that researchers and clinicians are aware of the limitations of a machine-scoring program. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11984364



Author(s):  
Eun Jin Paek ◽  
Si On Yoon

Purpose Speakers adjust referential expressions to the listeners' knowledge while communicating, a phenomenon called “audience design.” While individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show difficulties in discourse production, it is unclear whether they exhibit preserved partner-specific audience design. The current study examined if individuals with AD demonstrate partner-specific audience design skills. Method Ten adults with mild-to-moderate AD and 12 healthy older adults performed a referential communication task with two experimenters (E1 and E2). At first, E1 and participants completed an image-sorting task, allowing them to establish shared labels. Then, during testing, both experimenters were present in the room, and participants described images to either E1 or E2 (randomly alternating). Analyses focused on the number of words participants used to describe each image and whether they reused shared labels. Results During testing, participants in both groups produced shorter descriptions when describing familiar images versus new images, demonstrating their ability to learn novel knowledge. When they described familiar images, healthy older adults modified their expressions depending on the current partner's knowledge, producing shorter expressions and more established labels for the knowledgeable partner (E1) versus the naïve partner (E2), but individuals with AD were less likely to do so. Conclusions The current study revealed that both individuals with AD and the control participants were able to acquire novel knowledge, but individuals with AD tended not to flexibly adjust expressions depending on the partner's knowledge state. Conversational inefficiency and difficulties observed in AD may, in part, stem from disrupted audience design skills.



1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 958-958
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  


1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Ledoux ◽  
Peter C. Gordon


1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (04) ◽  
pp. 275-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Pietrzyk

Abstract:Much information about patients is stored in free text. Hence, the computerized processing of medical language data has been a well-known goal of medical informatics resulting in different paradigms. In Gottingen, a Medical Text Analysis System for German (abbr. MediTAS) has been under development for some time, trying to combine and to extend these paradigms. This article concentrates on the automated syntax analysis of German medical utterances. The investigated text material consists of 8,790 distinct utterances extracted from the summary sections of about 18,400 cytopathological findings reports. The parsing is based upon a new approach called Left-Associative Grammar (LAG) developed by Hausser. By extending considerably the LAG approach, most of the grammatical constructions occurring in the text material could be covered.



TAPPI Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 643-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT J. OGLESBY ◽  
HUMPHREY J. MOYNIHAN ◽  
RICARDO B. SANTOS ◽  
ASHOK GHOSH ◽  
PETER W. HART

The impact of commercially prepared, fully bleached pulp viscosity variation on handsheet physical properties was evaluated at different levels of pulp refining. Hardwood pulps from the same brownstock species mix, cooking parameters, and kappa numbers were processed through two different commercial bleach plants: one with a D0(EP)D1D2 sequence and the second with an OD0(EOP)D1 sequence. Additionally, a commercial softwood (predominately Scotts pine) brownstock pulp bleached by an OD0(EP)D1D2 sequence was employed in this study. Pulps with viscosities ranging from 14 to 21 mPa∙s were refined in a Valley beater to two freeness levels, and the associated handsheet physical properties were measured in this study. Over the pulp viscosity range of 14 to 21 mPa∙s, no clear correlation was found to exist between pulp viscosity and related paper physical properties. Finally, a series of laboratory prepared bleached pulps were purposely prepared under non-ideal conditions to reduce their final viscosities to lower values. Handsheets made from these pulps were tested in their unbeaten condition for physical strength properties. Significant and rapid strength loss occurred when the measured pulp viscosity dropped below 12 mPa∙s; overall strength properties showed no correlation to viscosity above the critical 12 mPa∙s value.



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