Baltic Journal of English Language, Literature and Culture, Vol.10

Kontorslokaler nyttjas generellt cirka 2500 av årets 8760 timmar. Ett vanligt problem med kontorslokaler är det termiska klimatet, antingen är det för varmt, för kallt, eller så drar det. Höga temperaturer, över ca 26°C, bidrar till trötthet, nedsatt koncentration och gör att luften känns mindre fräsch. Stora variationen av lasten mellan dag och nattetid kan också resultera i att lokalerna överventileras under nattetid och underventileras under dagtid. Syftet med examensarbetet var att undersöka och jämföra Ecoclimes komforttaks lösning med andra olika värme och kylsystem i kontorslokaler. Att undersöka vilka eventuella fördelar Ecoclimes komforttak har gällande komfort, kyla, ventilation och ur energisynpunkt. Simuleringsprogrammet IDA ICE har använts för att simulera komforten och rumstemperaturer för ett kontor och ett konferensrum i en byggnad placerad i centrala Umeå. Resultaten från simuleringar indikerar att Ecoclimes komforttak, sänker den operativa temperaturen och höjer komforten med en mindre andel missnöjda i sitt rum jämfört med andra system trots samma rumstemperatur. För att bedömma andelen missnöjda i ett rum har komfortindexet PMV(Predicted mean vote) och PPD(Predicted percentage dissatisfied) använts. Den höga passiva effekten bidrar också till mindre energianvändning av ventilationsfläktar ifall ett VAV-system med rumstempertaurreglering används. Vidare har en känslighetsanalys genomförts på komforttaken där det undersöks hur kyleffekten påverkar kyltider, temperatur och komfort. Känslighetsanalysen visar att en ökning eller minskning av kyleffekten med 10% påverkar resultaten mest under en mycket varm dag jämfört med en normalvarm. Skillnaden i komfort var dock liten, endast 0,2 procentenheter från grundfallet

People with larger social networks show poorer voice recognition

The way we process language is influenced by our experience. We are more likely to attend to features that proved to be useful in the past. Importantly, the size of individuals’ social network can influence their experience, and consequently, how they process language. In the case of voice recognition, having a larger social network might provide more variable input and thus enhance the ability to recognise new voices. On the other hand, learning to recognise voices is more demanding and less beneficial for people with a larger social network as they have more speakers to learn yet spend less time with each. This paper tests whether social network size influences voice recognition, and if so, in which direction. Native Dutch speakers listed their social network and performed a voice recognition task. Results showed that people with larger social networks were poorer at learning to recognise voices. Experiment 2 replicated the results with a British sample and English stimuli. Experiment 3 showed that the effect does not generalise to voice recognition in an unfamiliar language suggesting that social network size influences attention to the linguistic rather than non-linguistic markers that differentiate speakers. The studies thus show that our social network size influences our inclination to learn speaker-specific patterns in our environment, and consequently, the development of skills that rely on such learned patterns, such as voice recognition

Metaphoric competence and communicative language ability

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language teaching and language testing, namely Bachman (1990), and argue, giving a range of examples of language use and learner difficulty, that metaphoric competence has in fact an important role to play in all areas of communicative competence. In other words, it can contribute centrally to grammatical competence, textual competence, illocutionary competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Metaphor is thus highly relevant to second language learning, teaching and testing, from the earliest to the most advanced stages of learning

Machine learning for Arabic phonemes recognition using electrolarynx speech

Automatic speech recognition system is one of the essential ways of interaction with machines. Interests in speech based intelligent systems have grown in the past few decades. Therefore, there is a need to develop more efficient methods for human speech recognition to ensure the reliability of communication between individuals and machines. This paper is concerned with Arabic phoneme recognition of electrolarynx device. Electrolarynx is a device used by cancer patients having vocal laryngeal cords removed. Speech recognition here is considered to find the preferred machine learning model that can classify phonemes produced by electrolarynx device. The phonemes recognition employs different machine learning schemes, including convolutional neural network, recurrent neural network, artificial neural network (ANN), random forest, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and long short-term memory. Modern standard Arabic is utilized for testing and training phases of the recognition system. The dataset covers both an ordinary speech and electrolarynx device speech recorded by the same person. Mel frequency cepstral coefficients are considered as speech features. The results show that the ANN machine learning method outperformed other methods with an accuracy rate of 75%, a precision value of 77%, and a phoneme error rate (PER) of 21.85%

Enlightened Romanticism: Mary Gartside’s colour theory in the age of Moses Harris, Goethe and George Field

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the work of Mary Gartside, a British female colour theorist, active in London between 1781 and 1808. She published three books between 1805 and 1808. In chronological and intellectual terms Gartside can cautiously be regarded an exemplary link between Moses Harris, who published a short but important theory of colour in the second half of the eighteenth century, and J.W. von Goethe’s highly influential Zur Farbenlehre, published in Germany in 1810. Gartside’s colour theory was published privately under the disguise of a traditional water colouring manual, illustrated with stunning abstract colour blots (see example above). Until well into the twentieth century, she remained the only woman known to have published a theory of colour. In contrast to Goethe and other colour theorists in the late 18th and early 19th century Gartside was less inclined to follow the anti-Newtonian attitudes of the Romantic movement

The role of input variability and learner age in second language vocabulary learning

Input variability is key in many aspects of linguistic learning, yet variability increases input complexity, which may cause difficulty in some learning contexts. The current work investigates this trade-off by comparing speaker variability effects on L2 vocabulary learning in different age-groups. Existing literature suggests that speaker variability benefits L2 vocabulary learning in adults, but this may not be the case for younger learners. In this study, native English-speaking adults, 7-8 year-olds, and 10-11 year-olds learned six novel Lithuanian words from a single speaker, and six from eight speakers. In line with previous research, adults showed better production of the multi-speaker items at test. No such benefit was found for either group of children either in production or comprehension. Children also had greater difficulties in processing multiple-speaker cues during training. We conclude that age-related capacity limitations may constrain the ability to utilise speaker variability when learning words in a new language

Distributional effects and individual differences in L2 morphology learning

Second language (L2) learning outcomes may depend on the structure of the input and learners’ cognitive abilities. This study tested whether less predictable input might facilitate learning and generalization of L2 morphology while evaluating contributions of statistical learning ability, nonverbal intelligence, phonological short-term memory, and verbal working memory. Over three sessions, 54 adults were exposed to a Russian case-marking paradigm with a balanced or skewed item distribution in the input. Whereas statistical learning ability and nonverbal intelligence predicted learning of trained items, only nonverbal intelligence also predicted generalization of case-marking inflections to new vocabulary. Neither measure of temporary storage capacity predicted learning. Balanced, less predictable input was associated with higher accuracy in generalization but only in the initial test session. These results suggest that individual differences in pattern extraction play a more sustained role in L2 acquisition than instructional manipulations that vary the predictability of lexical items in the input

The phonological functions of segmental and subsegmental duration

The paper discusses the role segmental and subsegmental duration in the organization of a sound system in English and Polish. It analyses how duration contributes to signaling phonological phenomena such as voicing, words stress and word boundary. Special emphasis is put on cross-linguistic differences between English and Polish and how those differences emerge in the process of learning English by speakers of Polish