Low Resource Neural Machine Translation: Assamese to/from Other Indo-Aryan (Indic) Languages

Machine translation (MT) systems have been built using numerous different techniques for bridging the language barriers. These techniques are broadly categorized into approaches like Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) and Neural Machine Translation (NMT). End-to-end NMT systems significantly outperform SMT in translation quality on many language pairs, especially those with the adequate parallel corpus. We report comparative experiments on baseline MT systems for Assamese to other Indo-Aryan languages (in both translation directions) using the traditional Phrase-Based SMT as well as some more successful NMT architectures, namely basic sequence-to-sequence model with attention, Transformer, and finetuned Transformer. The results are evaluated using the most prominent and popular standard automatic metric BLEU (BiLingual Evaluation Understudy), as well as other well-known metrics for exploring the performance of different baseline MT systems, since this is the first such work involving Assamese. The evaluation scores are compared for SMT and NMT models for the effectiveness of bi-directional language pairs involving Assamese and other Indo-Aryan languages (Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Odia, Sinhalese, and Urdu). The highest BLEU scores obtained are for Assamese to Sinhalese for SMT (35.63) and the Assamese to Bangla for NMT systems (seq2seq is 50.92, Transformer is 50.01, and finetuned Transformer is 50.19). We also try to relate the results with the language characteristics, distances, family trees, domains, data sizes, and sentence lengths. We find that the effect of the domain is the most important factor affecting the results for the given data domains and sizes. We compare our results with the only existing MT system for Assamese (Bing Translator) and also with pairs involving Hindi.

Analysis of Matching of Corpus Input and English Proficiency Based on the Big Data Neural Network Model

In the era of “Internet +” big data, the theory and technology of English corpus are becoming more and more mature. Corpus is an important method to reflect some language characteristics and clarify some language phenomena. In terms of cultural exchanges, Chinese students majoring in English have obvious cultural differences at home and abroad and lack the atmosphere and context for cultural exchanges. In addition, students have problems such as insufficient cultural communication skills. The big data neural network model is adopted in this paper to compare and analyze the intermediary sentences in the corpus to explore the development trend of English proficiency. Through the analysis of typical cases, it explores the weak links in the corpus teaching process and summarizes a method focusing on the combination of use of corpus and English teaching.

Indonesian Language Characteristics of Deaf Children and Implications for Literacy Skills

This research aimed to reveal the characteristics of the Indonesian language in deaf children and the implications for their literacy skills. A qualitative approach was used on the subjects determined through purposive sampling. Data were collected by recording student performance portfolios, interviewing teachers, and observing video recordings. The data were analyzed descriptively and explanatively. The results showed that the Indonesian language for deaf children is limited, as seen through four ways. First, the vocabulary of deaf children is dominated by general words (hypernyms) and concrete references. Second, they do not use figures of speech or idioms, compound words, and terms. Third, their ability to form derivative words is still low. Fourth, they generally produce core and single sentences, and only a small part uses compound sentences. The main and single sentences have an inversion pattern, where the verb precedes the subject. Moreover, they fail to use linking between sentences, and the resulting discourse is a collection of separate sentences. The linguistic barriers resulted in a low effective reading speed of 33.04 – 68, 30 words per minute. This has implications for low literacy skills. Therefore, an intervention program is needed to improve the language skills of deaf children.

The effects of theatre-based vocal empowerment on young Egyptian women’s vocal and language characteristics

This study investigates the impact of a theatre-based vocal empowerment program on the vocal and language characteristics and the self-perceptions of young bilingual Egyptian women. The program used applied theatre, a dramatic practice that promotes civic action by utilizing improvisational techniques to engage participants in exploring solutions to self-identified community concerns. These techniques supported participants’ pursuit of vocal empowerment: the ability to comfortably express their intended content with a clear audible voice, accompanied by the belief that what they had to say was worthwhile. The program was implemented in Alexandria and Aswan, two Egyptian cities in different regions of the country, with distinct socio-economic profiles. Thirty-six young women from Aswan and nineteen from Alexandria participated. The program was facilitated in Arabic, for 90 minutes per day over twelve consecutive days in 2018. Participants in both groups spoke Arabic as a home language and studied English in school settings but differed in their educational experiences and English proficiency. The vocal and language characteristics of each participant were tested in Arabic and English pre- and post- program using a spontaneous speech task and a reading aloud task. Their self-perceptions were evaluated through a vocal self-perception survey. Results indicated that participants responded differently in each city. In Alexandria, participants showed significant improvement in language skills (e.g., mean length of utterance). In contrast, participants in Aswan showed a significant change in fundamental frequency. Overall, the self-surveys indicated that all participants experienced an increased sense of confidence, a stronger belief in self-authorship, and an increased desire to voice their opinions clearly in public; however, there were subtle differences between the groups. In analyzing these results, we conclude that to design effective vocal empowerment outreach programs internationally, it is necessary to consider participants’ cultural backgrounds, language diversity, and socio-economic status.

Speech characteristics of parkinson disease

Objective: Parkinson Disease (PD) is known the second most frequent neurodegenerative age-related disorder after Alzheimer’s disease. Although over the six million people worldwide suffer from PD, the main cause of the disease remains are unknown. Speech and language impairments have emerged in most patients with PD during the course of the disease. However, clinical profiles or characteristics that might differentiate individuals with PD who are predisposed to speech and language deficits are generally overlooked. Moreover, factors that expedite language disability have still been remained elusive. It is thought that the awareness of speech and language impairments in PD can significantly help to maintain language abilities as the disease progresses and also may contribute to improving communication skills with patients. For this reason, the present study aims to constitute a comprehensive frame for the speech and language characteristics of individuals with PD

Lost in Translation or Just Too Pragmatic?

The Broader Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) is a measure to assess a set of personality and language characteristics reflecting the phenotypic expression of autistic traits in neurotypically developing individuals. This paper aims to evaluate the newly developed German version of the BAPQ (BAPQ-G) in terms of its factorial validity. We performed confirmatory factor analyses and correlations with other measures of the broader autism phenotype on three German samples ( N1 = 248, N2 = 289, N3 = 255). Associations with other constructs are in line with the assumptions, yet the anticipated factor structure of the BAPQ-G did not meet the cutoff criteria. These results are discussed along with recent findings regarding other cultural versions of the BAPQ.

Bridging Interpersonal and Ecological Dynamics of Cognition through a Systems Framework of Bilingualism

Human cognition occurs within social contexts, and nowhere is this more evident than language behavior. Regularly using multiple languages is a globally ubiquitous, individual experience that is shaped by social environmental forces, ranging from interpersonal interactions to ambient language exposure. Here, we develop a Systems Framework of Bilingualism, where embedded layers of individual, interpersonal, and ecological sociolinguistic factors jointly predict people’s language behavior. Of note, we quantify interpersonal and ecological language dynamics through the novel applications of language-tagged social network analysis and geospatial demographic analysis among 106 English-French bilingual adults in Montréal, Canada. Consistent with a Systems view, we found that people’s individual language behavior, on a global level (i.e., overall language use), was jointly predicted by the language characteristics of their interpersonal social networks and the ambient linguistic patterns of their residential neighborhood environments, whereas more granular aspects of language behavior (i.e., word-level proficiency) was mainly driven by local, interpersonal social networks. Together, this work offers a novel theoretical framework, bolstered by innovative analytic techniques to quantify complex social information and empower more holistic assessments of multifaceted human behaviors and cognition, like language.

Expression of Language and Gender in the Movie “Imperfect: Karier, Cinta & Timbangan” (Sociolinguistic Studies)

The dialogues used by the male and female main character in the movie "Imperfect: Karier, Cinta & Timbangan" has many different language characteristics. This research aims to elaborate the expression of language characteristics of main male and female characters in the movie based on Qi Pan's theory and define the socio-cultural factors behind using these language characteristics. This research was qualitative descriptive research. The data source was the movie’s script of "Imperfect: Karier, Cinta & Timbangan." To collect data, the researcher used watching, listening, and writing techniques. Then, the data were analyzed using the textual analysis method. The results revealed that (a) the main female character uses 11 language characteristics according to Qi Pan's theory in dialogue. In contrast, the main male character does not use these language characteristics. Only hypercorrection characteristics are not used in both speeches, and (b) language differences in characters' speeches are influenced by socio-cultural factors that shape their personalities in the movie, creating gender stereotypes that appear in both genders based on their characters. This research represents an expression and relevance between language and gender, which can be found in real life and literary works, one of which is elaborated through Indonesian movie media.