Classifying Amharic News Text Using Self-Organizing Maps

The paper addresses using artificial neural networks for classification of Amharic news items. Amharic is the language for countrywide communication in Ethiopia and has its own writing system containing extensive systematic redundancy. It is quite dialectally diversified and probably representative of the languages of a continent that so far has received little attention within the language processing field. The experiments investigated document clustering around user queries using Self-Organizing Maps, an unsupervised learning neural network strategy. The best ANN model showed a precision of 60.0% when trying to cluster unseen data, and a 69.5% precision when trying to classify it

Contrastive Analysis, Transfer Analysis, Error Analysis, And Interlanguage: Four Concepts One Goal

AbstractContrastive Analysis, Transfer Analysis, Error Analysis, and Interlanguage are methods used for second language learning investigation. They constitute evolutionary phases in the attempt to understand and explain the nature of the target language learners’ performance. Each theory has its own view, especially in the attitude toward learners’ errors and the explanatory hypotheses regarding the sources of errors. They also appear to have one goal, that is, an attempt to facilitate the process of target language learning or teaching by studying learners’ errors. They are complement to one another; they constitute four phases with one goal.Contrastive analisis aims to provide teachers and/or textbook writers with information that can be utilized in the preparation of instructional materials, the planning of courses, and the development of classroom techniques. Contranstive studies are carried out in order to describe the differences between learners’ native language amd the target language. They believe that it is on these differences that the learning difficulties lie, consequently errors exist. Transfer analysis is a new lebel given to contrastive analysis. Other sister terms are language transfer and crosslinguistic influence. This is an analytical tool which constitutes a sub discipline within error analysis. Its basic assumption is that certain errors in learner performance are the result of native language transfer. Error Analisis disproves the predictions of theory lying behind the comparison of native language and target language. It is an experimental technique for validating the theory of transfer. Its goal is to find out something about the psycholinguistic process of language learning. It enables us to draw a certain conclusions about the strategies used by the learner in his learning process. Interlanguage is a popular term to refer to learners’ versions of the target language. It usually contains elements of both the learners’ native language and target language. Interlanguage is resulted from the learner’s attempts to produce the target language construction. In other words, it is the product of the second language learning process

Mapping Grammatical Errors In Speech Production Of Junior And Senior Students: A Case Study

Acquiring a foreign language requires a student to master the two elements of language, vocabulary and grammar, and the four language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Within each skill, these two language elements play a considerably essential role since they are seen as the very core aspects of language learning and that they are regarded inherent in each of these skills. Thus, vocabulary and grammatical aspects cannot be separated from the four language skills in language acquisition as without any one of which each skill is never acquired. Since the implementation of communicative approach in 1984 to the application of the competency-based language teaching in Indonesia, English programs at high schools have been meaning or message based rather than language USAge or form oriented. As a result, grammar learning has been significantly kept aside if not totally ignored in class interactions, and that communication success becomes the main target in instructional objectives. This study attempts to map grammatical errors the students make in their speech productions. It employs an interview technique for data collection by recording the conversations of twenty respondents - - junior and senior students - - on a selected issue of a particular topic and transcribing them in the form of written transcripts which are then to be analyzed from a grammatical perspective with the reference of grammar books. Those violating the grammatical norms will be considered as grammatical errors. It has been found out that learners\u27 grammatical errors are derived from two major causes - - translating concepts of L1 into L2 and their approximative system. This study concludes that the communicative classrooms which utilize the competency-based language teaching bring about a positive impact upon grammar learning. This research is significant as it gives a great contribution to structure and speaking class teachers, students, as well as to the department for policy making

Supporting Data mining of large databases by visual feedback queries

In this paper, we describe a query system that provides visual relevance feedback in querying large databases. Our goal is to support the process of data mining by representing as many data items as possible on the display. By arranging and coloring the data items as pixels according to their relevance for the query, the user gets a visual impression of the resulting data set. Using an interactive query interface, the user may change the query dynamically and receives immediate feedback by the visual representation of the resulting data set. Furthermore, by using multiple windows for different parts of a complex query, the user gets visual feedback for each part of the query and, therefore, may easier understand the overall result. Our system allows to represent the largest amount of data that can be visualized on current display technology, provides valuable feedback in querying the database, and allows the user to find results which, otherwise, would remain hidden in the database

Numerals and what counts

This study discusses the way different numerals and related expressions are currently annotated in the Universal Dependencies project, with a specific focus on the Uralic language family and only occasional references to the other language groups. We analyse different annotation conventions between individual treebanks, and aim to highlight some areas where further development work and systematization could prove beneficial. At the same time, the Universal Dependencies project already offers a wide range of conventions to mark nuanced variation in numerals and counting expressions, and the harmonization of conventions between different languages could be the next step to take. The discussion here makes specific reference to Universal Dependencies version 2.8, and some differences found may already have been harmonized in version 2.9. Regardless of whether this takes place or not, we believe that the study still forms an important documentation of this period in the project.Peer reviewe

MAPPING GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN SPEECH PRODUCTION OF JUNIOR AND SENIOR STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY

Acquiring a foreign language requires a student to master the two elements of language, vocabulary and grammar, and the four language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Within each skill, these two language elements play a considerably essential role since they are seen as the very core aspects of language learning and that they are regarded inherent in each of these skills. Thus, vocabulary and grammatical aspects cannot be separated from the four language skills in language acquisition as without any one of which each skill is never acquired. Since the implementation of communicative approach in 1984 to the application of the competency-based language teaching in Indonesia, English programs at high schools have been meaning or message based rather than language usage or form oriented. As a result, grammar learning has been significantly kept aside if not totally ignored in class interactions, and that communication success becomes the main target in instructional objectives. This study attempts to map grammatical errors the students make in their speech productions. It employs an interview technique for data collection by recording the conversations of twenty respondents - - junior and senior students - - on a selected issue of a particular topic and transcribing them in the form of written transcripts which are then to be analyzed from a grammatical perspective with the reference of grammar books. Those violating the grammatical norms will be considered as grammatical errors. It has been found out that learners’ grammatical errors are derived from two major causes - - translating concepts of L1 into L2 and their approximative system. This study concludes that the communicative classrooms which utilize the competency-based language teaching bring about a positive impact upon grammar learning. This research is significant as it gives a great contribution to structure and speaking class teachers, students, as well as to the department for policy making