Easy Language Research

This volume presents new approaches in Easy Language research from three different perspectives: text perspective, user perspective and translation perspective. It explores the field of comprehensibility-enhanced varieties at different levels (Easy Language, Plain Language, Easy Language Plus). While all are possible solutions to foster communicative inclusion of people with disabilities, they have varying impacts with regard to their comprehensibility and acceptability. The papers in this volume provide insights into the current scientific activities and results of two research teams at the Universities of Hildesheim and Mainz and present innovative theoretical and empirical perspectives on Easy Language research. The approaches comprise studies on the cognitive processing of Easy Language, on Easy Language in multimodal and multicodal texts and different situational settings as well as translatological considerations on Easy Language translation and interpreting

The CoMeRe corpus for French: structuring and annotating heterogeneous CMC genres

Final version to Special Issue of JLCL (Journal of Language Technology and Computational Linguistics (JLCL, http://jlcl.org/): BUILDING AND ANNOTATING CORPORA OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE: Issues and Challenges at the Interface of Corpus and Computational Linguistics (ed. by Michael Beißwenger, Nelleke Oostdijk, Angelika Storrer & Henk van den Heuvel)International audienceThe CoMeRe project aims to build a kernel corpus of different Computer-Mediated Com-munication (CMC) genres with interactions in French as the main language, by assembling interactions stemming from networks such as the Internet or telecommunication, as well as mono and multimodal, synchronous and asynchronous communications. Corpora are assem-bled using a standard, thanks to the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) format. This implies extending, through a European endeavor, the TEI model of text, in order to encompass the richest and the more complex CMC genres. This paper presents the Interaction Space model. We explain how this model has been encoded within the TEI corpus header and body. The model is then instantiated through the first four corpora we have processed: three corpora where interactions occurred in single-modality environments (text chat, or SMS systems) and a fourth corpus where text chat, email and forum modalities were used simultaneously. The CoMeRe project has two main research perspectives: Discourse Analysis, only alluded to in this paper, and the linguistic study of idiolects occurring in different CMC genres. As NLP algorithms are an indispensable prerequisite for such research, we present our motiva-tions for applying an automatic annotation process to the CoMeRe corpora. Our wish to guarantee generic annotations meant we did not consider any processing beyond morphosyn-tactic labelling, but prioritized the automatic annotation of any freely variant elements within the corpora. We then turn to decisions made concerning which annotations to make for which units and describe the processing pipeline for adding these. All CoMeRe corpora are verified, thanks to a staged quality control process, designed to allow corpora to move from one project phase to the next. Public release of the CoMeRe corpora is a short-term goal: corpora will be integrated into the forthcoming French National Reference Corpus, and disseminated through the national linguistic infrastructure ORTOLANG. We, therefore, highlight issues and decisions made concerning the OpenData perspective

On the effects of English elements in German print advertisements

Diese Arbeit untersucht den Einfluss von englischen Elementen in deutschen Werbeanzeigen auf die Anmutung der Anzeige, die Bewertung des beworbenen Produkts sowie der beworbenen Marke und die Einschätzung der Zielgruppe. In einer quantitativen Onlinestudie wurden vier speziell entwickelte Werbeanzeigen, die sich nur hinsichtlich der Verwendung englischer Elemente unterschieden, von 297 Teilnehmern bewertet. Dabei zeigten sich nur in wenigen Fällen statistisch signifikante Unterschiede zwischen der Bewertung der deutschen Anzeigenversionen und der englisch-deutsch gemischten Anzeigenversionen. Da den Probanden jeweils nur eine Version der Anzeige gezeigt wurde und ihnen der linguistische Hintergrund der Untersuchung unbekannt war, spiegeln die Ergebnisse die Wirkung englischer Elemente in realen Kontaktsituationen wider. Dieser Werbewirkungsstudie ging eine Untersuchung der Sprachzuordung voraus, in der getestet wurde, welche Variablen einen Einfluss darauf haben, ob ein visuell präsentiertes Stimuluswort als Deutsch oder Englisch wahrgenommen wird. Als geeignete Prädiktoren erwiesen sich neben der etymologischen Herkunft des Wortes vor allem die Integration in das deutsche Lexikon (operationalisiert durch Konsultierung des Duden Universalwörterbuchs 7. Aufl.). Des Weiteren zeigte sich ein signifikanter Einfluss graphemischer Fremdheitsmarker auf die Sprachzuordnung der Lexeme. Dieser Einfluss konnte sowohl bei Wörtern englischen Ursprungs als auch bei Wörtern, die nicht-englischen Ursprungs waren (z.B. LINEAL, CREMIG), beobachtet werden und verdeutlicht die Wichtigkeit der visuellen Wortform für die Sprachzuordnung.This thesis studies the influence of English elements in German print advertisements on the emotional appeal of the advertisement, the evaluation of the advertised product and brand, and the evaluation of the implied target group. Four especially designed print advertisements, which only differed in their use of English elements, were evaluated by 297 participants in a quantitative online study. Only in a few cases statistically significant differences between the evaluation of the German advertisement versions and the English-German mixed advertisement versions were found. Since participants were only shown one version of the advertisement and because the linguistic background of the study was disguised, the results mirror the effects of English elements in actual contact situations. Prior to this research, a study on language decisions was conducted to test which variables influence whether a visually presented word is perceived as English or German. Next to the etymological origin of a word, especially the integration into the German lexicon (operationalised by consulting the Duden Universalwörterbuchs 7th ed.) proved to be a good predictor. Moreover, graphemic markers of foreignness significantly influenced to which language lexemes were assigned. This impact was witnessed for words of English origin as well as for words of non-English origin (e.g. LINEAL, CREMIG), which emphasises the importance of visual word form for language decisions

Practice, principles, and theory in the design of instructional text

This study is concerned with an analysis of the research arising from three quite different perspectives on instructional text - the `physical characteristics' research (legibility, layout, and readability), the `improvement of text' research (visual illustrations, adjunct aids, and typographical cueing), and the `learning theories' research (representation of knowledge, human memory, and quality of learning). From this analysis there is synthesised principles for the design of instructional text against which heuristic practice in text design is evaluated and from which a nascent theory of instructional text design is evolved. The principles derived from the various research perspectives provide a basis for the manipulation of text design elements in order to ensure that (a) existing knowledge in the reader can be activated, and (b) new knowledge can be assimilated in a manner facilitative of comprehension by (i) presentation in a structured and organised way, and (ii) appropriately highlighted through verbal and typographic cueing supported, as required, by verbal illustration and organisation. The emerging theory of instructional text design suggests: a topical analysis to determine the heirarchic relationship of ideas within the topic and the desired learning outcomes or objectives; a consideration of the linguistic aspects of the text; a consideration of the role of visual illustrations; and a consideration of the physical parameters of the text. These activities are concerned, respectively, with the design areas of structure and organisation, readability, visual illustration, and legibility, and are summed up in the acronym SORVIL

A New Paradigm for Punctuation

This is a comprehensive study of punctuation, particularly the uses to which it has been put as writing developed over the centuries and as it gradually evolved from an aid to oral delivery to its use in texts that were read silently. The sudden need for standardization of punctuation which occurred with the start of printing spawned some small amount of interest in determining its purpose, but most works after printing began were devoted mainly to helping people use punctuation rather than try to discover why it was being used. Gradually, two main views on its purpose developed: it was being used for rhetorical purposes or it was needed to reveal the grammar in writing. These views are still somewhat in place. The community of linguists took little notice of writing until the last few centuries and even less notice of punctuation. The result was that few studies were done on the underlying purpose for punctuation until the twentieth century, and even those were few and far between, most of them occurring only in the last thirty years. This study argues that neither rhetoric nor grammar is directly the basis for punctuation. Rather, it responds to a schema that determines the order of the words in spoken and written English, and it is a linguistic concept without question. The special uses of the features of punctuation are discussed, as well as some anomalies in its use, some ideas for more studies, and some ideas for improving the teaching of punctuation

Off widd de spellin ov werdz: A Sociolinguistic Approximation to Respelling Practices. A Case Study of Scouse Alice

38 p. : il. -- Bibliogr.: p. 31-36A relatively uninvestigated topic in the literature (Sebba, 2007, p. 12), spelling variation is an interdisciplinary field interpretable as serving the purpose of revaluing the non-standard identities corresponding to the linguistic varieties represented by variant spellings. I aim to study the close connections between the encoding of sociophonetic variation through nonstandard spelling variants and the social evaluations of a vernacular variety, and to consolidate the typology of non-standard spelling variants by contributing more examples. To that end, I will divide this paper into two parts. Firstly, I will deal with some theoretical preliminaries to the study of non-standard spelling from a variationist and social-practice perspective while also providing a classification of the most relevant non-standard spelling categories: eye dialect, allegro forms, and dialect respellings. And secondly, I will analyse the respelling practices in a chapter of Scouse Alice so as to measure the incidence and significance of the non-standard Liverpool English phonological features represented and the sociolinguistic attitudes towards them using a corpus-based approach. In so doing, I will answer two research questions by investigating 1) the salience of Liverpool English sound features at the level of consonants and vowels and 2) the patterns of representation and distribution of these features through respellings. The empirical findings reported here show that, even though respelling practices in Scouse Alice are not entirely consistent, there is a noticeable tendency to regularise the systematic differentiation of certain features through spelling in a given social context, especially via eye dialect, in an attempt to present information about the phonological rather than just social aspects of Liverpool speech. This calls for a conceptual reformulation of the typology of non-standard spellings (Jaffe, 2008, pp. 165-166). From the results, I conclude that salience in the non-standard spellings representative of more regionalised features such as stopping of /θ, ð/, the NURSESQUARE merger, and retention of /ŋɡ/ in stressed syllables may indicate how significant and prestigious local features are becoming in Liverpool English. However, frequency and quality of respellings are not the only factors to take into consideration when assessing salience since availability of graphic resources is also determining

Assessing Usability of a Self-Produced Translation for Multinational Target Audience. A Case Study

Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastelin käyttäjäkeskeisen kääntämisen (UCT) iteratiivisen käännösprosessin hyödyntämistä omassa käännöstyössäni. Käyttäjäkeskeisen käännösmenetelmän työkaluilla kykenin tehokkaasti suunnittelemaan ja luomaan helposti lähestyttävän teknisen alan testiraportin. Testiraportti on suunnattu Euroopan markkinoille, jossa kohdeyleisö koostuu eri kansallisuuksista ja on saatavilla jokaiselle. Sen vuoksi käännöksen on oltava ymmärrettävyydeltään yksinkertainen ja selkeä kenelle tahansa. Käännösasiakkaan, persoonien ja kohdeyleisön edustajien palautteet korostivat käännöksen käytettävyysongelmia. Tässä tutkielmassa käännän testiraportin kerran ja sen jälkeen tutkin, kuinka käytettävyyttä voidaan parantaa palautteen perusteella. Ensimmäisen kerran käännän testiraportin käyttäen apuna itse luomiani persoonia, jotka edustavat kansainvälistä kohdeyleisöä. Lisäksi ensimmäinen käännösversio pohjautuu tekniikan alan standardiin Simplified Technical English, jonka tarkoitus on yksinkertaistaa englannin kieltä. Toisessa käännösversiossa käännösstrategia pohjautuu Vinay ja Darbelnet’n käännösmenetelmiin kirjaimellisen ja vapaan kääntämisen näkökulmasta. Toisessa käännösversiossa huomioin luokitteluista lainaamisen, käännöslainan, sanasanaisen käännöksen, transposition ja modulaation. Tutkimuksessa selvisi, että käyttäjäkeskeisen kääntämisen iteratiiviset heuristiset arvioinnit ovat erittäin hyödyllisiä vastaanottajan kannalta. Jokainen arviointi ja palaute nosti esiin uuden näkökulman käytettävyyden parantamisen kannalta. Lisäksi yhdistämällä osia käyttäjäkeskeisen kääntämisen eri työkaluista pystyin käännöstyössä fokusoimaan eri asioihin – tämä ei vaatinut aikaa mutta ehkä vähän vaivaa.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format