Optimality Theory as a Framework for Lexical Acquisition

This paper re-investigates a lexical acquisition system initially developed for French.We show that, interestingly, the architecture of the system reproduces and implements the main components of Optimality Theory. However, we formulate the hypothesis that some of its limitations are mainly due to a poor representation of the constraints used. Finally, we show how a better representation of the constraints used would yield better results

The effect of the prompt on writing product and process: a mixed methods approach

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe aim of this thesis is to investigate the effect of the writing prompt on test takers in terms of their test taking processes and the final written product in a second language writing assessment context. The study employs a mixed methods approach, with a quantitative and a qualitative strand. The quantitative study focuses on an analysis of the responses to six different writing prompts, with the responses being analyzed for significant differences in a range of key textual features, such as syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication, fluency and cohesion. The qualitative study incorporates stimulated recall interviews with test takers to learn about the aspects of the writing prompt that can have an effect on test taking processes, such as selecting a prompt, planning a response, and composing a response. The results of the quantitative study indicate that characteristics of the writing prompt (domain, response mode, focus, number of rhetorical cues) have an effect on numerous textual features of the response; for example, fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication, and cohesion. The qualitative results indicate that similar characteristics of the writing prompt can have an effect on how test takers select a prompt, and that the test time constraint interacts with the prompt characteristics to affect how test takers plan and compose their responses. The topic and the number of rhetorical cues are the prompt characteristics that have the greatest effect on test taking processes. The main conclusion drawn from the study findings are that several prompt characteristics should be controlled if prompts are to be considered equivalent. Without controlling certain prompt characteristics, both test taking processes and the written product will vary as a result of the prompt. The findings raise some serious questions regarding the inferences that may legitimately be drawn from writing scores. The findings provide clear guidance on prompt characteristics that should be controlled to help ensure that prompts present an equivalent challenge and opportunity to test takers to demonstrate their writing proficiency. This thesis makes an original contribution to the second language writing assessment literature in the detailed understanding of the relationships between specific prompt characteristics and textual features of the response

‘In the name of capability’: a critical discursive evaluation of competency-based management development

This paper illustrates a number of ways in which competency or capability-based management development (CBMD) can work simultaneously both for and against the interests of organizational agents. It does so by demonstrating how CBMD might usefully be understood as both ideological and quasi-religiously faith-based. These features are shown to provide opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation alongside those for repression and subordination. The study employs a combination of ‘middle range’ discourse analytical techniques. In the first instance, critical discourse analysis is applied to company documentation to distil the ideological stance of an international organization’s CBMD programme. Critical discursive psychology is then used to assess the ways in which employees’ evaluative accounts both support and resist such stance. The analysis builds upon previous insights from Foucauldian studies of CBMD by foregrounding processes of discursive agency. It also renders more visible and discussible the assumptions and dilemmas that CBMD might imply

A modular architecture for systematic text categorisation

This work examines and attempts to overcome issues caused by the lack of formal standardisation when defining text categorisation techniques and detailing how they might be appropriately integrated with each other. Despite text categorisation’s long history the concept of automation is relatively new, coinciding with the evolution of computing technology and subsequent increase in quantity and availability of electronic textual data. Nevertheless insufficient descriptions of the diverse algorithms discovered have lead to an acknowledged ambiguity when trying to accurately replicate methods, which has made reliable comparative evaluations impossible. Existing interpretations of general data mining and text categorisation methodologies are analysed in the first half of the thesis and common elements are extracted to create a distinct set of significant stages. Their possible interactions are logically determined and a unique universal architecture is generated that encapsulates all complexities and highlights the critical components. A variety of text related algorithms are also comprehensively surveyed and grouped according to which stage they belong in order to demonstrate how they can be mapped. The second part reviews several open-source data mining applications, placing an emphasis on their ability to handle the proposed architecture, potential for expansion and text processing capabilities. Finding these inflexible and too elaborate to be readily adapted, designs for a novel framework are introduced that focus on rapid prototyping through lightweight customisations and reusable atomic components. Being a consequence of inadequacies with existing options, a rudimentary implementation is realised along with a selection of text categorisation modules. Finally a series of experiments are conducted that validate the feasibility of the outlined methodology and importance of its composition, whilst also establishing the practicality of the framework for research purposes. The simplicity of experiments and results gathered clearly indicate the potential benefits that can be gained when a formalised approach is utilised

Novel Heuristic Recurrent Neural Network Framework to Handle Automatic Telugu Text Categorization from Handwritten Text Image

In the near future, the digitization and processing of the current paper documents describe efficient role in the creation of a paperless environment. Deep learning techniques for handwritten recognition have been extensively studied by various researchers. Deep neural networks can be trained quickly thanks to a lot of data and other algorithmic advancements. Various methods for extracting text from handwritten manuscripts have been developed in literature. To extract features from written Telugu Text image having some other neural network approaches like convolution neural network (CNN), recurrent neural networks (RNN), long short-term memory (LSTM). Different deep learning related approaches are widely used to identification of handwritten Telugu Text; various techniques are used in literature for the identification of Telugu Text from documents. For automatic identification of Telugu written script efficiently to eliminate noise and other semantic features present in Telugu Text, in this paper, proposes Novel Heuristic Advanced Neural Network based Telugu Text Categorization Model (NHANNTCM) based on sequence-to-sequence feature extraction procedure. Proposed approach extracts the features using RNN and then represents Telugu Text in sequence-to-sequence format for the identification advanced neural network performs both encoding and decoding to identify and explore visual features from sequence of Telugu Text in input data. The classification accuracy rates for Telugu words, Telugu numerals, Telugu characters, Telugu sentences, and the corresponding Telugu sentences were 99.66%, 93.63%, 91.36%, 99.05%, and 97.73% consequently. Experimental evaluation describe extracted with revealed which are textured i.e. TENG shown considerable operations in applications such as private information protection, security defense, and personal handwriting signature identification