Coordinating visualizations of polysemous action: Values added for grounding proportion

We contribute to research on visualization as an epistemic learning tool by inquiring into the didactical potential of having students visualize one phenomenon in accord with two different partial meanings of the same concept. 22 Grade 4-6 students participated in a design study that investigated the emergence of proportional-equivalence notions from mediated perceptuomotor schemas. Working as individuals or pairs in tutorial clinical interviews, students solved non-symbolic interaction problems that utilized remote-sensing technology. Next, they used symbolic artifacts interpolated into the problem space as semiotic means to objectify in mathematical register a variety of both additive and multiplicative solution strategies. Finally, they reflected on tensions between these competing visualizations of the space. Micro-ethnographic analyses of episodes from three paradigmatic case studies suggest that students reconciled semiotic conflicts by generating heuristic logico-mathematical inferences that integrated competing meanings into cohesive conceptual networks. These inferences hinged on revisualizing additive elements multiplicatively. Implications are drawn for rethinking didactical design for proportions. © 2013 FIZ Karlsruhe

Semi-Supervised Approach to Monitoring Clinical Depressive Symptoms in Social Media

With the rise of social media, millions of people are routinely expressing their moods, feelings, and daily struggles with mental health issues on social media platforms like Twitter. Unlike traditional observational cohort studies conducted through questionnaires and self-reported surveys, we explore the reliable detection of clinical depression from tweets obtained unobtrusively. Based on the analysis of tweets crawled from users with self-reported depressive symptoms in their Twitter profiles, we demonstrate the potential for detecting clinical depression symptoms which emulate the PHQ-9 questionnaire clinicians use today. Our study uses a semi-supervised statistical model to evaluate how the duration of these symptoms and their expression on Twitter (in terms of word usage patterns and topical preferences) align with the medical findings reported via the PHQ-9. Our proactive and automatic screening tool is able to identify clinical depressive symptoms with an accuracy of 68% and precision of 72%.Comment: 8 pages, Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), 2017 IEEE/ACM International Conferenc

Chomskyan Arguments Against Truth-Conditional Semantics Based on Variability and Co-predication

In this paper I try to show that semantics can explain word-to-world relations and that sentences can have meanings that determine truth-conditions. Critics like Chomsky typically maintain that only speakers denote, i.e., only speakers, by using words in one way or another, represent entities or events in the world. However, according to their view, individual acts of denotations are not explained just by virtue of speakers’ semantic knowledge. Against this view, I will hold that, in the typical cases considered, semantic knowledge can account for the denotational uses of words of individual speakers

Towards a Universal Wordnet by Learning from Combined Evidenc

Lexical databases are invaluable sources of knowledge about words and their meanings, with numerous applications in areas like NLP, IR, and AI. We propose a methodology for the automatic construction of a large-scale multilingual lexical database where words of many languages are hierarchically organized in terms of their meanings and their semantic relations to other words. This resource is bootstrapped from WordNet, a well-known English-language resource. Our approach extends WordNet with around 1.5 million meaning links for 800,000 words in over 200 languages, drawing on evidence extracted from a variety of resources including existing (monolingual) wordnets, (mostly bilingual) translation dictionaries, and parallel corpora. Graph-based scoring functions and statistical learning techniques are used to iteratively integrate this information and build an output graph. Experiments show that this wordnet has a high level of precision and coverage, and that it can be useful in applied tasks such as cross-lingual text classification

Teaching polysemous words to arab learners: A cognitive linguistics approach

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is to compare the pedagogic efficiency of two methods for teaching polysemous vocabulary – the image-schema-based vocabulary instruction method (ISBM) and the translation-based vocabulary instruction method (TBM). While ISBM is inspired by cognitive linguistics, and represents a new trend in teaching polysemous vocabulary, TBM embodies a traditional and well established way of teaching polysemous vocabulary in EFL contexts. Additionally, this study aims to evaluate the way in which three learner characteristics - learning styles, vocabulary learning strategies, language proficiency - contribute to individual differences in acquiring polysemous words. The subjects of this study, 40 female students studying at an intensive English program at the University of Sharjah, UAE, were placed in two groups and were taught a range of metaphorical meanings of polysemous words, in accordance with the cognitive linguistics ISBM and the mainstream TBM. In order to assess the pedagogical value of both methods, a polysemous word knowledge test (PWKT) was used as a pre and post-test. Also, a strategy assessment test (SAT) was employed to gauge the effectiveness of the strategic teaching method in accordance with which the polysemous words were instructed. Furthermore, in an attempt to explore the nature of the relationships between some of the learner characteristics and the acquisition of polysemous vocabulary, a vocabulary learning questionnaire and a style of processing scale were given to the learners. The results of the immediate post PWKT suggest that the ISBM is more effective in teaching and learning polysemous vocabulary in this setting than the TBM. In the long term, however, both of the techniques adopted in teaching polysemous words proved beneficial in long-term recall. Also, teaching polysemous vocabulary strategically – showing learners how to work out the metaphorical meanings of some polysemous words through their literal meanings - paid off in that learners were more readily able to understand metaphorical senses of new polysemous words they encountered in the SAT. Altogether, three variables seem to come into play when dealing with the acquisition of polysemous words in the framework of cognitive linguistics - learning styles, vocabulary learning strategies, language proficiency. In light of these findings, I give a number of recommendations to teachers, material developers and lexicographers. As far as the contribution to field of vocabulary acquisition is concerned, this studyattempts to shed light on the teaching of polysemous words in an Arab context (a so far unmapped territory). In that, it tries to show how polysemous words have been treated in the English syllabuses directed to UAE learners, to equip English teachers with feasible ways to teach polysemous words more efficiently, and thereby to improve the learners’ ability to comprehend some new concepts more easily. Finally, this study addresses some of the pitfalls of previous studies on teaching polysemous words within the framework of cognitive linguistics

Polysemy of symbols: Signs of ambiguity

This article explores instances of symbol polysemy within mathematics as it manifests in different areas within the mathematics register. In particular, it illustrates how even basic symbols, such as ‘+’ and ‘1’, may carry with them meaning in ‘new’ contexts that is inconsistent with their use in ‘familiar’ contexts. This article illustrates that knowledge of mathematics includes learning a meaning of a symbol, learning more than one meaning, and learning how to choose the contextually supported meaning of that symbol