Synonymy Expansion Using Link Prediction Methods: A Case Study of Assamese WordNet

WordNets built for low-resource languages, such as Assamese, often use the expansion methodology. This may result in missing lexical entries and missing synonymy relations. As the Assamese WordNet is also built using the expansion method, using the Hindi WordNet, it also has missing synonymy relations. As WordNets can be visualized as a network of unique words connected by synonymy relations, link prediction in complex network analysis is an effective way of predicting missing relations in a network. Hence, to predict the missing synonyms in the Assamese WordNet, link prediction methods were used in the current work that proved effective. It is also observed that for discovering missing relations in the Assamese WordNet, simple local proximity-based methods might be more effective as compared to global and complex supervised models using network embedding. Further, it is noticed that though a set of retrieved words are not synonyms per se, they are semantically related to the target word and may be categorized as semantic cohorts.

Delayed lexical access and cascading effects on semantic activation during spoken word recognition in children with hearing aids and cochlear implants: Evidence from eye-tracking

Objective: The objective of this study was to characterize the dynamics of real-time lexical access, including lexical competition among phonologically similar words, and semantic activation in school-age children with hearing aids (HAs) and children with cochlear implants (CIs). We hypothesized that developing spoken language via degraded auditory input would lead children with HAs or CIs to adapt their approach to spoken word recognition, especially by slowing down lexical access.Design: Participants were children ages 9-12 years old with normal hearing (NH), HAs, or CIs. Participants completed a Visual World Paradigm task in which they heard a spoken word and selected the matching picture from four options. Competitor items were either phonologically similar, semantically similar, or unrelated to the target word. As the target word unfolded, children’s fixations to the target word, cohort competitor, rhyme competitor, semantically related item, and unrelated item were recorded as indices of ongoing lexical and semantic activation.Results: Children with HAs and children with CIs showed slower fixations to the target, reduced fixations to the cohort, and increased fixations to the rhyme, relative to children with NH. This wait-and-see profile was more pronounced in the children with CIs than the children with HAs. Children with HAs and children with CIs also showed delayed fixations to the semantically related item, though this delay was attributable to their delay in activating words in general, not to a distinct semantic source.Conclusions: Children with HAs and children with CIs showed qualitatively similar patterns of real-time spoken word recognition. Findings suggest that developing spoken language via degraded auditory input causes long-term cognitive adaptations to how listeners recognize spoken words, regardless of the type of hearing device used. Delayed lexical activation directly led to delayed semantic activation in children with HAs and CIs. This delay in semantic processing may impact these children’s ability to understand connected speech in everyday life.

Sentiment-Target Word Pair Extraction Model Using Statistical Analysis of Sentence Structures

Product information has been propagated online via forums and social media. Lots of merchandise are recommended via an expert system method and is considered for purchase by online comments or product reviews. For predicting people’s opinions on products, studying people’s thoughts via extracting information in documents is referred to as sentiment analysis. Finding sentiment-target word pairs is an important sentiment mining research issue. With the Korean language, as the predicate appears at the very end, it is not easy to find the exact word pairs without first identifying the syntactic structure of the sentence. In this study, we propose a model that parses sentence structures and extracts sentiment-target word pairs from the parse tree. The proposed model extracts the sentiment-target word pairs that appear in the sentence by using parsing and statistical methods. For extracting sentiment-target word pairs, this model uses a sentiment word extractor and a target word extractor. After testing data from 4000 movie reviews, the applicable model showed high performance in both accuracy 93.25 (+14.45) and F1-score 82.29 (+3.31) compared with others. However, improvements in the recall rate (−0.35) are needed and computational costs must be reduced.

Referring to arbitrary entities with placeholders

A speaker/writer uses a placeholder (PH) to fill in the syntactic slot of a target word when she has no immediate access to the word or prefers to avoid explicitly mentioning it for contextual reasons. In the present article, I point out a hitherto understudied usage of PHs: a speaker/writer who does not have in mind a specific target form may use a PH to refer to an arbitrary entity (e.g. person, object, action, event, proposition). I substantiate this claim by analysing a variety of original data on Japanese wh-derived PHs. Further evidence for this claim comes from a cross-linguistic survey of wh-derived PHs in Korean and demonstrative-derived PHs in Romanian and Bulgarian. I show that the arbitrary-referential function is observed in PHs in all these languages, regardless of their origins (i.e. wh word, demonstrative) and their categories (i.e. nominal, verbal).

Vocabulary development through reading: A comparison of approaches

<p>This thesis compares two approaches to extensive reading to determine the extent that they facilitate vocabulary development. The first approach is a traditional reading-only approach, and the second approach is a task-based approach which supplements reading with post-reading meaning-focused discussions. These two approaches are compared using a battery of tests, most notably a measure for productive knowledge of word associations. For years, scholars have believed that word associations have potential to reveal important information about a person’s language proficiency. One reason word associations are intriguing is that a large amount of a person’s lexicon can be assessed (Meara, 2009). This is possible because a large amount of data from the learner can be gathered in a short period of time. Another intriguing aspect of word association data is that it is one aspect of vocabulary knowledge that is not based on correct performance. This raises the question of an appropriate means of assigning value to the associations, a question which still hinders research to this day. Recent research has made progress in this area with a multi-level taxonomy (i.e., Fitzpatrick, 2007), creating a picture of the types of associations which exist in a learner’s lexicon. However, this taxonomy does not address the strength of the association. Wilks and Meara (2007) have attempted to tackle association strength through the use of self-report measures, whereby a test-taker reports strength of association on a four-point scale from weak to strong. This has left them with "...problems which we have not yet solved, notably a tendency for some test takers to claim that most associations are strong, while others appear to be very reluctant to identify strong associations..." (Meara, 2009, p. 80). In other words, the question of how to appropriately determine association strength is still unanswered. In the current study lexical development, in the form of word association knowledge, was measured using a multi-response word association test. Participants were assessed on their knowledge of 60 target words which occurred in five graded readers that they read over the course of the study. The learners first self-reported their knowledge of the 60 target words in terms of no knowledge, form knowledge, or meaning knowledge. The students provided up to five associations for each word that they reported at either the form or meaning levels. They did this once before reading the five graded readers, and again after finishing the graded readers. The associations provided by the students were analyzed using Latent Semantic Analysis, a method for computing semantic similarity between words (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The associations a learner provided for each target word were assigned a similarity value representing how similar they were to the target word to which they were provided. The hypothesis was that the students who engaged in the post-reading discussion activities would show greater increases in associational knowledge of the target words than those students who did not participate in the discussions. The major finding from this thesis was that the students who struggled with a word during the post-reading discussion and were provided an opportunity to discuss the word with their group developed associational knowledge to a significantly greater degree than those students who did not encounter the words during the discussions. This emphasizes the facilitative role that meaning-focused output activities have on vocabulary development. In addition, the associational knowledge developed at the initial stages of word learning (i.e., from no knowledge to form knowledge), continued to develop from form knowledge of a word to meaning knowledge of the word, and was also developing even when words did not change in reported knowledge. This suggests a continual restructuring of the learners’ lexicon, exemplifying past research (e.g., Henriksen, 1999). Overall, the findings suggest that an extensive reading approach which includes opportunities for meaning-focused interaction has greater benefits for lexical development when compared to a traditional reading-only approach to extensive reading.</p>

Vocabulary development through reading: A comparison of approaches

<p>This thesis compares two approaches to extensive reading to determine the extent that they facilitate vocabulary development. The first approach is a traditional reading-only approach, and the second approach is a task-based approach which supplements reading with post-reading meaning-focused discussions. These two approaches are compared using a battery of tests, most notably a measure for productive knowledge of word associations. For years, scholars have believed that word associations have potential to reveal important information about a person’s language proficiency. One reason word associations are intriguing is that a large amount of a person’s lexicon can be assessed (Meara, 2009). This is possible because a large amount of data from the learner can be gathered in a short period of time. Another intriguing aspect of word association data is that it is one aspect of vocabulary knowledge that is not based on correct performance. This raises the question of an appropriate means of assigning value to the associations, a question which still hinders research to this day. Recent research has made progress in this area with a multi-level taxonomy (i.e., Fitzpatrick, 2007), creating a picture of the types of associations which exist in a learner’s lexicon. However, this taxonomy does not address the strength of the association. Wilks and Meara (2007) have attempted to tackle association strength through the use of self-report measures, whereby a test-taker reports strength of association on a four-point scale from weak to strong. This has left them with "...problems which we have not yet solved, notably a tendency for some test takers to claim that most associations are strong, while others appear to be very reluctant to identify strong associations..." (Meara, 2009, p. 80). In other words, the question of how to appropriately determine association strength is still unanswered. In the current study lexical development, in the form of word association knowledge, was measured using a multi-response word association test. Participants were assessed on their knowledge of 60 target words which occurred in five graded readers that they read over the course of the study. The learners first self-reported their knowledge of the 60 target words in terms of no knowledge, form knowledge, or meaning knowledge. The students provided up to five associations for each word that they reported at either the form or meaning levels. They did this once before reading the five graded readers, and again after finishing the graded readers. The associations provided by the students were analyzed using Latent Semantic Analysis, a method for computing semantic similarity between words (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The associations a learner provided for each target word were assigned a similarity value representing how similar they were to the target word to which they were provided. The hypothesis was that the students who engaged in the post-reading discussion activities would show greater increases in associational knowledge of the target words than those students who did not participate in the discussions. The major finding from this thesis was that the students who struggled with a word during the post-reading discussion and were provided an opportunity to discuss the word with their group developed associational knowledge to a significantly greater degree than those students who did not encounter the words during the discussions. This emphasizes the facilitative role that meaning-focused output activities have on vocabulary development. In addition, the associational knowledge developed at the initial stages of word learning (i.e., from no knowledge to form knowledge), continued to develop from form knowledge of a word to meaning knowledge of the word, and was also developing even when words did not change in reported knowledge. This suggests a continual restructuring of the learners’ lexicon, exemplifying past research (e.g., Henriksen, 1999). Overall, the findings suggest that an extensive reading approach which includes opportunities for meaning-focused interaction has greater benefits for lexical development when compared to a traditional reading-only approach to extensive reading.</p>

Syllabic organization and phonetic indices in German stop-lateral clusters

Using articulatory data from five German speakers, we study how segmental sequences under different syllabic organizations respond to perturbations of phonetic parameters in the segments that compose them. Target words contained stop-lateral clusters /bl, gl, kl, pl/ in a word-initial and a cross-word context and were embedded in carrier phrases with different prosodic boundary strengths, i.e., no phrase boundary versus an utterance phrase boundary preceded the target word in the case of word-initial clusters or separated the consonants in the case of cross-word clusters. For word-initial cluster onsets, we find that increasing the lag between two consonants and C1 stop duration leads to earlier vowel initiation and reduced local timing stability across CV and CCV. Furthermore, as the inter-consonantal lag increases, C2 lateral duration decreases. In contrast, for cross-word clusters, increasing the lag between two consonants does not lead to earlier vowel initiation across CV and C#CV and robust local timing stability is maintained across CV and C#CV. Overall, the findings indicate that the effect of phonetic perturbations on the coordination patterns depends on the syllabic organization superimposed on these clusters.

The Processing of the Second Syllable in Recognizing Chinese Disyllabic Spoken Words: Evidence From Eye Tracking

In the current study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of the second syllable (which was considered as the rhyme at the word level) during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition using a printed-word paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants heard a spoken target word and were simultaneously presented with a visual display of four printed words: a target word, a phonological competitor, and two unrelated distractors. The phonological competitors were manipulated to share either full phonemic overlap of the second syllable with targets (the syllabic overlap condition; e.g., 小篆, xiao3zhuan4, “calligraphy” vs. 公转, gong1zhuan4, “revolution”) or the initial phonemic overlap of the second syllable (the sub-syllabic overlap condition; e.g., 圆柱, yuan2zhu4, “cylinder” vs. 公转, gong1zhuan4, “revolution”) with targets. Participants were asked to select the target words and their eye movements were simultaneously recorded. The results did not show any phonological competition effect in either the syllabic overlap condition or the sub-syllabic overlap condition. In Experiment 2, to maximize the likelihood of observing the phonological competition effect, a target-absent version of the printed-word paradigm was adopted, in which target words were removed from the visual display. The results of Experiment 2 showed significant phonological competition effects in both conditions, i.e., more fixations were made to the phonological competitors than to the distractors. Moreover, the phonological competition effect was found to be larger in the syllabic overlap condition than in the sub-syllabic overlap condition. These findings shed light on the effect of the second syllable competition at the word level during spoken word recognition and, more importantly, showed that the initial phonemes of the second syllable at the syllabic level are also accessed during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition.

Dynamic large-scale connectivity of intrinsic cortical oscillations supports adaptive listening in challenging conditions

In multi-talker situations, individuals adapt behaviorally to the listening challenge mostly with ease, but how do brain neural networks shape this adaptation? We here establish a long-sought link between large-scale neural communications in electrophysiology and behavioral success in the control of attention in difficult listening situations. In an age-varying sample of N = 154 individuals, we find that connectivity between intrinsic neural oscillations extracted from source-reconstructed electroencephalography is regulated according to the listener’s goal during a challenging dual-talker task. These dynamics occur as spatially organized modulations in power-envelope correlations of alpha and low-beta neural oscillations during approximately 2-s intervals most critical for listening behavior relative to resting-state baseline. First, left frontoparietal low-beta connectivity (16 to 24 Hz) increased during anticipation and processing of spatial-attention cue before speech presentation. Second, posterior alpha connectivity (7 to 11 Hz) decreased during comprehension of competing speech, particularly around target-word presentation. Connectivity dynamics of these networks were predictive of individual differences in the speed and accuracy of target-word identification, respectively, but proved unconfounded by changes in neural oscillatory activity strength. Successful adaptation to a listening challenge thus latches onto 2 distinct yet complementary neural systems: a beta-tuned frontoparietal network enabling the flexible adaptation to attentive listening state and an alpha-tuned posterior network supporting attention to speech.

Enacting burikko

Adopting a single case analysis, this article examines how the learning of the Japanese word burikko is occasioned in a bilingual lunch conversation through enactments that are employed for three interactional purposes: (a) renewal of laughter, (b) vocabulary explanation (VE), and (c) demonstration of understanding. The interactional analysis is enhanced by Praat to respecify the role of prosody in enactments. I first describe how burikko, the laughable of a humor sequence, becomes a learnable through a repair sequence. I then analyze a reinitiated joking sequence, where the VE recipient categorizes one of the co-participants as burikko and escalates the categorization through multimodal enactments. I argue that this jocular mockery, occasioning a demonstration of understanding, exhibits that the learning opportunity has been taken. Furthermore, I discuss how a repair work embedded within a larger humor-oriented activity may afford resources for language learning outside of the classroom, while sacrificing progressivity for intersubjectivity. The fact that the VE recipient, after intersubjectivity has been achieved, resumes the original activity of pursuing humor through the same means employed for the explanation of the target word offers interesting implications for CA-SLA and pragmatics.