Translating near-synonyms: Possibilities and preferences in the interlingua

This paper argues that an interlingual representation must explicitly represent some parts of the meaning of a situation as possibilities (or preferences), not as necessary or definite components of meaning (or constraints). Possibilities enable the analysis and generation of nuance, something required for faithful translation. Furthermore, the representation of the meaning of words, especially of near-synonyms, is crucial, because it specifies which nuances words can convey in which contexts.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX2e, 1 eps figure, uses colacl.sty, epsfig.sty, avm.sty, times.st

Improving Ontology Recommendation and Reuse in WebCORE by Collaborative Assessments

In this work, we present an extension of CORE [8], a tool for Collaborative Ontology Reuse and Evaluation. The system receives an informal description of a specific semantic domain and determines which ontologies from a repository are the most appropriate to describe the given domain. For this task, the environment is divided into three modules. The first component receives the problem description as a set of terms, and allows the user to refine and enlarge it using WordNet. The second module applies multiple automatic criteria to evaluate the ontologies of the repository, and determines which ones fit best the problem description. A ranked list of ontologies is returned for each criterion, and the lists are combined by means of rank fusion techniques. Finally, the third component uses manual user evaluations in order to incorporate a human, collaborative assessment of the ontologies. The new version of the system incorporates several novelties, such as its implementation as a web application; the incorporation of a NLP module to manage the problem definitions; modifications on the automatic ontology retrieval strategies; and a collaborative framework to find potential relevant terms according to previous user queries. Finally, we present some early experiments on ontology retrieval and evaluation, showing the benefits of our system

Use of single- vs. multi-word verbs in the written discourse of Iranian EFL learners

Age is being evermore complained as an impediment to language competency, either given as a pretext or raised as a real challenge, taken for granted by foreign language learners. This study seeks to prod about the verb choices among EFL learners. In so doing, the two completely different radiuses of EFL learners, a group of university students in distance education, with part-time class participation and another from a private language institute in Qom province were recruited and compared on their choices of verbs in respect of single- and multi-word forms put into the written tasks. The results of the rating of the students' assignments showed that adult Iranian EFL learners' written language was deprived of phrasal verbs, even in informal writing assigned the use of informal language were scarcely captured. The study corroborates the former studies for the avoidance and incompetency of EFL learners in the use of phrasal verbs

On the Similarities Between Native, Non-native and Translated Texts

We present a computational analysis of three language varieties: native, advanced non-native, and translation. Our goal is to investigate the similarities and differences between non-native language productions and translations, contrasting both with native language. Using a collection of computational methods we establish three main results: (1) the three types of texts are easily distinguishable; (2) non-native language and translations are closer to each other than each of them is to native language; and (3) some of these characteristics depend on the source or native language, while others do not, reflecting, perhaps, unified principles that similarly affect translations and non-native language.Comment: ACL2016, 12 page

Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future

Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent

The Electrophysiology of Written Informal Language

Language is an essential component of human behavior. It is ubiquitous, but more importantly, it is malleable and it is constantly changing. Part of the dynamic nature of informal communication is the introduction and adoption of new linguistic elements. Online communication provides a window into this informal public discourse; therefore, it may be useful for testing hypotheses about the processes underlying the acquisition and use of new words. The comprehension of informal language may lead to an understanding of how these new informal words are integrated into our mental lexicon. The current study was an electroencephalographic (EEG) investigation of the brain processes that underlie informal language. We recorded event-related potentials while participants engaged in a lexical decision task. For this experiment, participants made judgments about Twitter targets primed with semantically related or unrelated words. Classic psycholinguistic studies have shown very specific event-related potentials (ERPs) for semantic processing. Most notably, the N400 event-related potential component is an index of lexical expectancy and semantic relatedness. In contrast to the literature, we did not find classic N400 priming effects. However, our results revealed marked differences between informal and traditional targets. Our results suggest that informal language is more difficult to process than traditional language