Looking for UG in Animals

Author(s):  
Bridget D. Samuels ◽  
Marc Hauser ◽  
Cedric Boeckx

Do animals have Universal Grammar? The short answer must be ‘no.’ Otherwise, why do human children learn language with strikingly little conscious effort, while no other animal has even come close to approximating human language, even with extensive training or exposure to massive linguistic input? However, many of the cognitive capacities which clearly serve our linguistic ability—rich conceptual systems, vocal imitation, categorical perception, and so on—are shared with other species, including some of our closest living relatives. This suggests that the question is more complicated than it might first appear. In the present work, we use phonology as a case study to show what type of cross-species evidence may bear—now and in future work—on the issue of whether animals have various components of UG, which we construe here broadly as the systems that are recruited by language but need not be specific to it.

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Irmala Sukendra ◽  
Agus Mulyana ◽  
Imam Sudarmaji

Regardless to the facts that English is being taught to Indonesian students starting from early age, many Indonesian thrive in learning English. They find it quite troublesome for some to acquire the language especially to the level of communicative competence. Although Krashen (1982:10) states that “language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication”, second language acquisition has several obstacles for learners to face and yet the successfulness of mastering the language never surmounts to the one of the native speakers. Learners have never been able to acquire the language as any native speakers do. Mistakes are made and inter-language is unavoidable. McNeili in Ellis (1985, p. 44) mentions that “the mentalist views of L1 acquisition hypothesizes the process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, by which means the grammar of the learner’s mother tongue is related to the principles of the ‘universal grammar’.” Thus this study intends to find out whether the students go through the phase of interlanguage in their attempt to acquire second language and whether their interlanguage forms similar system as postulated by linguists (Krashen).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3553
Author(s):  
Philippe Nimmegeers ◽  
Alexej Parchomenko ◽  
Paul De Meulenaere ◽  
Dagmar R. D’hooge ◽  
Paul H. M. Van Steenberge ◽  
...  

Multilevel statistical entropy analysis (SEA) is a method that has been recently proposed to evaluate circular economy strategies on the material, component and product levels to identify critical stages of resource and functionality losses. However, the comparison of technological alternatives may be difficult, and equal entropies do not necessarily correspond with equal recyclability. A coupling with energy consumption aspects is strongly recommended but largely lacking. The aim of this paper is to improve the multilevel SEA method to reliably assess the recyclability of plastics. Therefore, the multilevel SEA method is first applied to a conceptual case study of a fictitious bag filled with plastics, and the possibilities and limitations of the method are highlighted. Subsequently, it is proposed to extend the method with the computation of the relative decomposition energies of components and products. Finally, two recyclability metrics are proposed. A plastic waste collection bag filled with plastic bottles is used as a case study to illustrate the potential of the developed extended multilevel SEA method. The proposed extension allows us to estimate the recyclability of plastics. In future work, this method will be refined and other potential extensions will be studied together with applications to real-life plastic products and plastic waste streams.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Cremer ◽  
Muktha Muralee

Atmospheric emissions such as NOx from ship engines have a drastic impact on the environment. Controlling them is crucial for maintaining a sustainable growth for any logistics company. The Port of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) is using big data analytics to gain actionable insights into these emissions. Our case study deals with the implementation of the emission calculations and reporting implemented in Hadoop. In the analytical setup we introduce the method for estimating emissions based on recorded ship position data and information about its engines. We present a flexible approach that stores intermediate results allowing different levels of aggregation. These levels of aggregations are per geographical area, per grid or for a whole journey attributed to each visited berth. The results are visualized in a Geographical Information System (GIS). The estimated atmospheric emissions also serves as input for the deposition model. We present some selected results of emissions per grid as well as for pre-defined areas. These results are used by the port to make strategic decision. For future work we recommend to also implement the deposition model in Hadoop as this model is also calculative intensive and therefore it currently only accepts aggregated emissions as input, whereby its accuracy is most likely reduced.


Author(s):  
Rebecca Perry ◽  
Lydia Oakey-Neate ◽  
John Fouyaxis ◽  
Sue Boyd-Brierley ◽  
Megan Wilkinson ◽  
...  

The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the limitations of relying solely on in-person contact for diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of mental health conditions. Mobile health approaches can be used to monitor mental health patients remotely, but they are not properly integrated with existing models of healthcare service delivery. We present findings from a case study of a mobile app enabled cloud-based software program rolled out in a phone based psychological service to enable real-time/temporal monitoring. The program offered patients an app to record measures of symptoms in everyday contexts and provided clinicians with access to an accompanying dashboard to use information from the app to tailor treatments and monitor progress and ultimately facilitate earlier and personalised care decisions. Feedback related to implementation and utility was gathered from clinicians through a focus group conducted two months post-roll-out. Findings identified that the system is valuable and feasible, however implementation issues were identified. These are discussed in order to inform future work in this area to support the delivery of timely and responsive mental health care in the community.


Lithosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (Special 2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Junjie Zou ◽  
Honglin He ◽  
Yusuke Yokoyama ◽  
Adam D. Sproson ◽  
Yoshiki Shirahama ◽  
...  

Abstract The quantitative morphology of bedrock fault surfaces combined with aerial surveys and field identification is a useful approach to identify paleoearthquakes, obtain coseismic slips, and evaluate the seismogenic capacity of active faults in bedrock areas where traditional trenching methods are not applicable. Here, we report a case study of the Jiaocheng Fault (JCF) in the Shanxi Rift, China. Although several studies have been conducted on the JCF, its coseismic slip history and seismogenic capacity are still unclear. To address these problems, we investigated two bedrock fault surfaces, Sixicun (SXC) and Shanglanzhen (SLZ), on the JCF’s northern segment using quantitative morphological analysis together with aerial and field surveys. Quantitative fractal analysis based on the isotropic empirical variogram and moving window shows that both bedrock fault surfaces have the characteristics of vertical segmentation, which is likely due to periodic earthquakes, the coseismic slip of which can be determined by the height of the segments. Three seismic events at SXC, with a coseismic vertical slip of 1.74, 1.65, and 1.99 m, and three seismic events at SLZ, with a coseismic vertical slip of 1.32, 2.35, and 1.88 m, are identified. Compared with the previous studies, these three seismic events may occur in the Holocene, but it requires absolute dating ages to support, which is also the focus of our future work. Considering the seismologic capability (M>7.5) and the relationship between the recurrence interval of ~2.6 kyr and elapsed time of more than 3 kyr, the seismic hazard of the northern and middle segments of the JCF requires immediate attention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-624
Author(s):  
Mohamed Marzouk ◽  
Mohamed Zaher

Purpose This paper aims to apply a methodology that is capable to classify and localize mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) elements to assist facility managers. Furthermore, it assists in decreasing the technical complexity and sophistication of different systems to the facility management (FM) team. Design/methodology/approach This research exploits artificial intelligence (AI) in FM operations through proposing a new system that uses a deep learning pre-trained model for transfer learning. The model can identify new MEP elements through image classification with a deep convolutional neural network using a support vector machine (SVM) technique under supervised learning. Also, an expert system is developed and integrated with an Android application to the proposed system to identify the required maintenance for the identified elements. FM team can reach the identified assets with bluetooth tracker devices to perform the required maintenance. Findings The proposed system aids facility managers in their tasks and decreases the maintenance costs of facilities by maintaining, upgrading, operating assets cost-effectively using the proposed system. Research limitations/implications The paper considers three fire protection systems for proactive maintenance, where other structural or architectural systems can also significantly affect the level of service and cost expensive repairs and maintenance. Also, the proposed system relies on different platforms that required to be consolidated for facility technicians and managers end-users. Therefore, the authors will consider these limitations and expand the study as a case study in future work. Originality/value This paper assists in a proactive manner to decrease the lack of knowledge of the required maintenance to MEP elements that leads to a lower life cycle cost. These MEP elements have a big share in the operation and maintenance costs of building facilities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Miller ◽  
Karen M. Feigh

The construction of future technological systems in work domains that do not yet exist, known as the envisioned world problem, is an increasingly important topic for designers, particularly given the rapid rate of technological advancement in the modern era. This paper first discusses the theoretical underpinnings of using cognitive work analysis (CWA) for developing a decision support system (DSS) situated within the envisioned world problem and recasts the problem as pathway-dependent processes. Using this pathway-dependent framework, each stage of the envisioning process is described to reveal how human factors experts can link existing work domains to envisioned instances. Finally, a case study example of the envisioning process that incorporates CWA modelling is demonstrated as it pertains to the advancement of the human spaceflight domain. As a result, this paper provides a unified treatment of the envisioned world problem with an end-to-end example of one approach to designing future technologies for future work domains.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asterios Zacharakis ◽  
Maximos Kaliakatsos-Papakostas ◽  
Costas Tsougras ◽  
Emilios Cambouropoulos

The cognitive theory of conceptual blending may be employed to understand the way music becomes meaningful and, at the same time, it may form a basis for musical creativity per se. This work constitutes a case study whereby conceptual blending is used as a creative tool for inventing musical cadences. Specifically, the perfect and the renaissance Phrygian cadential sequences are used as input spaces to a cadence blending system that produces various cadential blends based on musicological and blending optimality criteria. A selection of “novel” cadences is subject to empirical evaluation in order to gain a better understanding of perceptual relationships between cadences. Pairwise dissimilarity ratings between cadences are transformed into a perceptual space and a verbal attribute magnitude estimation method on six descriptive axes (preference, originality, tension, closure, expectancy, and fit) is used to associate the dimensions of this space with descriptive qualities (closure and tension emerged as the most prominent qualities). The novel cadences generated by the computational blending system are mainly perceived as single-scope blends (i.e., blends where one input space is dominant), since categorical perception seems to play a significant role (especially in relation to the upward leading note movement). Insights into perceptual aspects of conceptual bending are presented and ramifications for developing sophisticated creative systems are discussed.


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