235 research outputs found
Anaphora Resolution and Text Retrieval
Empirical approaches based on qualitative or quantitative methods of corpus linguistics have become a central paradigm within linguistics. The series takes account of this fact and provides a platform for approaches within synchronous linguistics as well as interdisciplinary works with a linguistic focus which devise new ways of working empirically and develop new data-based methods and theoretical models for empirical linguistic analyses
Anaphora Resolution and Text Retrieval
Empirical approaches based on qualitative or quantitative methods of corpus linguistics have become a central paradigm within linguistics. The series takes account of this fact and provides a platform for approaches within synchronous linguistics as well as interdisciplinary works with a linguistic focus which devise new ways of working empirically and develop new data-based methods and theoretical models for empirical linguistic analyses
Context-based multimodal interpretation : an integrated approach to multimodal fusion and discourse processing
This thesis is concerned with the context-based interpretation of verbal and nonverbal contributions to interactions in multimodal multiparty dialogue systems. On the basis of a detailed analysis of context-dependent multimodal discourse phenomena, a comprehensive context model is developed. This context model supports the resolution of a variety of referring and elliptical expressions as well as the processing and reactive generation of turn-taking signals and the identification of the intended addressee(s) of a contribution. A major goal of this thesis is the development of a generic component for multimodal fusion and discourse processing. Based on the integration of this component into three distinct multimodal dialogue systems, the generic applicability of the approach is shown.Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit der kontextbasierten Interpretation von verbalen und nonverbalen GesprĂ€chsbeitrĂ€gen im Rahmen von multimodalen Dialogsystemen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird, basierend auf einer detaillierten Analyse multimodaler DiskursphĂ€nomene, ein umfassendes Modell des GesprĂ€chskontextes erarbeitet. Dieses Modell soll sowohl die Verarbeitung einer Vielzahl von referentiellen und elliptischen AusdrĂŒcken, als auch die Erzeugung reaktiver Aktionen wie sie fĂŒr den Sprecherwechsel benötigt werden unterstĂŒtzen. Ein zentrales Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung einer generischen Komponente zur multimodalen Fusion und Diskursverarbeitung. Anhand der Integration dieser Komponente in drei unterschiedliche Dialogsysteme soll der generische Charakter dieser Komponente gezeigt werden
Caught in the middle â language use and translation : a festschrift for Erich Steiner on the occasion of his 60th birthday
This book celebrates Erich Steinerâs scholarly work. In 25 contributions, colleagues and friends take up issues closely related to his research interests in linguistics and translation studies. The result is a colourful kaleidoscope reflecting the many strands of research questions that Erich Steiner helped advance in the past decades and the cheerful, inspiring atmosphere he continues to create
The Deleuzian Cineaste: placing movement at the heart of film analysis
In this thesis, routine interest in visual images as fundamental to film studies is displaced in favor of a focus on movement. Gilles Deleuzeâs Cinema books provide the foundation but mediation between their philosophical intentions and the demands of film analysis becomes necessary. The figure of the Deleuzian cineaste is constructed as the means to identify a systematic approach to filmic movement in its many forms and to demonstrate subsequent analysis based on movement
Towards profiles of periodic style: discourse organisation in modern English instructional writing
A notorious challenge in the study of the diachrony of English is to determine whether developments in syntax, including changing frequencies of a particular construction, or word-order
changes as suggested by perceived patterns in extant texts, represent genuine linguistic changes
or are due to changes in conventions of writing. What is intuitively clear, however, even to a
casual eye, is that a piece of English prose from, say, the 16th-century differs markedly from
texts from the 18th-century. Yet such judgements cannot be based on syntactic changes alone,
since essential grammatical features of Present-Day English are in place already by the end of
the Late Middle English period. As a result, these differences are often simply ascribed to the
notoriously elusive domain of style.
The current study attempts to come to grips with the issue of period-specific conventions of
writing by focusing on features of discourse structure and textual organisation as of the Early
Modern English period. It can be positioned at the meso-level between large-scale quantitative approaches of sentence-level linguistic features and detailed, small-scale discourse-analytic
studies of individual texts. Texts selected for the current purpose, manuals for equine care,
derive from a sub-domain of instructional writing with a long history in the vernacular. As
these texts share similar communicative purposes and deal with the same "global" topics of
feeding and looking after a horse, any differences between them cannot be attributed to different genres or differences in subject matter. This permits us to zoom in on 'agnates', different
ways of expressing the same meanings, and allows us to see how the stylistic options selected by
authors achieve the various communicative goals that have to be negotiated, such as discourse
coherence or the transition to new topics.
The three main sections in this dissertation offer different ways to identifying developments
in discourse organisation. The first section explores the traditional corpus-based approach that
is frequently used to measure the parameter of "personal involvement", an indicator of periodic
style. Initially, this approach restricts itself to measuring the contribution of frequencies of
individual lexical items like first and second person pronouns. Next, this section will focus
on the presence and linguistic realisation of the interlocutors of these instructional texts, i.e.
the writer and the reader. The second main section will try to diagnose such varying styles
by employing a completely data-driven, quantitative methodology which offers a linguistically
unbiased and theory-independent perspective on the data in the corpus. This second approach
offers cues as to how `subliminal' patterns of grammar may affect perceptions of style, and how
quantitative measures may aid in assessing whether the texts in our corpus cluster in expected
or unexpected ways. The third section draws on theories of referential coherence and textual
progression. By charting the variation with which texts from different periods in the history of
English apply conventions for discourse organisation, it offers an insight into developments of
hierarchical discourse structures (i.e., coordinated versus subordinated discourse relations) and
practices of co-reference.
Taken together, these three independent measures offer a novel, multi-angled approach to
stylistic developments in prose writing. Combining features `above the sentence' level which
involve discourse and information structural changes, this dissertation affords a glimpse into
the emergence of written textual conventions, or 'grammars of prose', in the history of English
The enigma of development :building a reflexive point of view across remote contexts
PhD ThesisThis thesis singles out point of view (POV) as the governing technical choice in creative
writing. As such it integrates creative practice with an essay on the theoretical basis for a
POV across remote contexts. The methodology follows Mikhail Bakhtinâs call for a new
story telling position through an enquiry into Western literary history, Classical Chinese
novels and Gao Xingjianâs partitioning of POV by narrative angle.
Part One
Chapter one establishes the importance of POV to motives in my own creative work and sets
out the case for Bakhtin over normative theorists, calling for a reconfiguration of POV to
withstand contextual aberrations arising from cultural or historical differences, or from the
boundaries of what Bakhtin refers to as Small Time presentism. Further, it argues against
Tzvetan Todorovâs generic view of the novel as a property of discourse, an ahistorical
constant, by considering Bakhtinâs meta-historic survey of Western literature with periods of
intensified novelistic discourse in given contexts.
Chapter two considers POV in the separate context of Chinese literature focussing on the
historiographic POV taken in Classical Chinese novels, namely The Four Great Works.
Comparisons are drawn between these and Western short story cycles noting forms given in
Andrew Plaksâ Chinese Narrative (1977) and aesthetics in François Chengâs Chinese Poetic
Writing (1982). Critical contemporary concerns arising between Classical and Modern
Chinese are addressed with reference to essays by Xi Chuan, Yang Liang and Henry Zhao.
Chapter three begins with reflexivity as an inherent property of what Bakhtin identifies as
discrete double voicing and draws parallels with the bi-polar unity of Daoism and its Chan
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(Zen) hybrid, consulting Victor SĆgen Horiâs studies of capping phrases and contemporary
techniques in the fiction, drama and essays of Gao Xingjian.
Part Two
Creative enquiry takes the form of a novel, Interesting Times, (working title: The Enigma of
Development), in which a first person protagonistâs narrative alternates with third person
short stories embedded in a historical schema. The novel depicts economic development
through the construction of a power station, following a schema of short story settings in one
location from pre-industrial salt making to sophisticated intellectual piracy, indentured
peasant labour to chaotic collateral debt finance. These short stories alternate with chapters
from the linking protagonist whose narrative encircles the whole from the rural location of his
familyâs ancient English heritage. With the cognitive ground of one POV set against that of
the other, the resulting novel is intended to create an interpretive domain for the reflex
between the two, in this case a cyclical relationship between exploiter and exploited,
interchangeable as subjects and objects
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