A Thousand Words in a Scene

This paper presents a novel approach for visual scene modeling and classification, investigating the combined use of text modeling methods and local invariant features. Our work attempts to elucidate (1) whether a text-like \emph{bag-of-visterms} representation (histogram of quantized local visual features) is suitable for scene (rather than object) classification, (2) whether some analogies between discrete scene representations and text documents exist, and (3) whether unsupervised, latent space models can be used both as feature extractors for the classification task and to discover patterns of visual co-occurrence. Using several data sets, we validate our approach, presenting and discussing experiments on each of these issues. We first show, with extensive experiments on binary and multi-class scene classification tasks using a 9500-image data set, that the \emph{bag-of-visterms} representation consistently outperforms classical scene classification approaches. In other data sets we show that our approach competes with or outperforms other recent, more complex, methods. We also show that Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) generates a compact scene representation, discriminative for accurate classification, and more robust than the \emph{bag-of-visterms} representation when less labeled training data is available. Finally, through aspect-based image ranking experiments, we show the ability of PLSA to automatically extract visually meaningful scene patterns, making such representation useful for browsing image collections

The authority of the spoken word : Speech acts in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

In the following consideration of the Connecticut Yankee's triple-barreled verbal power I will be using the terms "speech act," "locution," "illocution," and "perlocution" as they are defined in Austin's How To Do Things with Words (1962) and further developed by John R. Searle in Speech Acts (1969). I will first give attention to a scene in which Hank is saved by an opportune eclipse (it comes just in time to save him from being burned at the stake), then move on to his restoration of the fountain of the Valley of Holiness, to the rescue of Morgan and the king by Sir Launcelot and his bicycle brigade, and finally to a concluding account of the defeat of ten thousand armored knights by Morgan and his "boys."/

Massive Online Open Courses and Language Learning: The Case for a Beginners’ English Course

AbstractMassive Online Open Courses have recently burst onto the scene in Spain and may well prove to be a good way to teach and learn foreign languages. The course analysed in this presentation was part of the first large-scale experience with MOOCs as a tool for English language learning in Spain. This course was designed so that absolute beginners could quickly learn the meanings of the thousand most frequent English words and start to read short texts. A comprehensive questionnaire was given to participants to gather qualitative and quantitative information related to their background and previous learning experiences, as well as methodological aspects related to their experience of massive online open learning. Methodological issues in this new language teaching/learning resource explored in this presentation are: crowdsourcing, explicit learning, distance teaching/learning, learner autonomy, materials design, and the development of learning strategies

Conceptualization of Space within the Tang Landscape Quatrain

The thesis explores the poet’s creation of conceptualized space within the Tang landscape quatrain in the Tang dynasty (618-907) by usage of literary techniques, the focal point being that of temporal and spatial progression to create dynamic and static space. “Space” within the thesis is defined as the “matrix of which forms emerge, medium in which they are related,” a mentalization and visualization of breadth, depth, and width created within the artistic medium. I argue that the concision of Classical Chinese allows the poet to transcend the linguistic limitations imposed by rules of verse to create boundless, semantic space by constructing vivid tableaus of scene and emotion. In Classical Chinese, there are no verb tenses, no indication of plurality in nouns, and no gender or cases for pronouns. The poet must use language to mold intangible form into tangible existence. The deliberate application of ambiguity is a vital component in the creation of multi-layered dimensions of space within Classical Chinese poetry. The Tang dynasty is often known as the golden age of Chinese poetry, dominated by the emergence of new innovations and form as poetry writing became more ubiquitous. The breaking from traditional rules of verse allowed the poet to uniquely utilize space to further their reflections in their poetry. The thesis examines the poet’s creation of spatiality through two lenses of spatiality: creation of external space through landscape, and secondly, the creation of internal space through mental reflection upon that very landscape. The Tang poet approaches the landscape not only as a place setting, but also as an entire subliminal entity in which he aims to capture with his senses and perceptions to create space in which the reader can visualize. The descriptive poetry of the landscape quatrain is simply not a limitation as a medium of visual communication as Tang poets infuse layers of meaning with the economy of a few characters. The significance of framing this study within traditional poetic concerns is to understand the intersections of nature, landscape, literary technique, and aesthetic experience. There has been much academic scholarship on the poetry of the High Tang by scholars such as James J. Y. Liu, Stephen Owen, Burton Watson, just to name a few. However, the objective of this thesis is to offer a new perspective through the lens of spatial creation. Quatrains written by famous Tang poets, Li Bai (701-762), Wang Wei (701-761), and Meng Haoran (689-740) are selected to illustrate how the technique of progression is uniquely utilized to create depth and perspective of space.Asian Studie

Theological Creative Nonfiction: Christian Literature for Christian Life

Since the Christian worldview is composed of more than theoretical truth, Christian literature should reflect these other aspects, such as how that truth is applied in the lives of the saints. Furthermore, the praxis element of worldview is reflected in literature more naturally in narrative genres than in more expository writings like systematic theology. Narrative genres mirror the complex, temporal way a person lives his life, and because of this are able to show how objective truth is applied in subjective situations. For this reason, Christians need contemporary writing that reflects the process of everyday Christian living to offer a model for growth and encouragement. Several authors have written books that can be classified as theological creative Nonfiction. They share the goal of encouraging the saints in everyday circumstances of faith as well as the methodology of drawing from the author’s own life and experience and are examples of the same model of theological writing that directly reflects and informs praxis

Painting Pictures with Words - From Theory to System

A picture paints a thousand words, or so we are told. But how many words does it take to paint a picture? And how can words create pictures in the first place? In this thesis we examine a new theory of linguistic meaning -- where the meaning of words and sentences is determined by the scenes they evoke. We describe how descriptive text is parsed and semantically interpreted and how the semantic interpretation is then depicted as a rendered 3D scene. In doing so, we describe WordsEye, our text-to-scene system, and touch upon many fascinating issues of lexical semantics, knowledge representation, and what we call "graphical semantics." We introduce the notion of vignettes as a way to bridge between function and form, between the semantics of language and the grounded semantics of 3D scenes. And we describe how VigNet, our lexical semantic and graphical knowledge base, mediates the whole process. In the second part of this thesis, we describe four different ways WordsEye has been tested. We first discuss an evaluation of the system in an educational environment where WordsEye was shown to significantly improve literacy skills for sixth grade students versus a control group. We then compare WordsEye with Google Image Search on "realistic" and "imaginative" sentences in order to evaluate its performance on a sentence-by-sentence level and test its potential as a way to augment existing image search tools. Thirdly, we describe what we have learned in testing WordsEye as an online 3D authoring system where it has attracted 20,000 real-world users who have performed almost one million scene depictions. Finally, we describe tests of WordsEye as an elicitation tool for field linguists studying endangered languages. We then sum up by presenting a roadmap for enhancing the capabilities of the system and identifying key opportunities and issues to be addressed

Ways of not reading Gertrude Stein

I situate the controversial critical strategies of “distant reading” and “surface reading” in the reception history of Gertrude Stein, an author whose work was frequently declared “unreadable.” I argue that an early twentieth-century history of compromised forms of reading, including women’s reading and information work, subtends both the technology with which distant reading may be carried out and the ways in which an author’s work comes to be understood as a “corpus.