Cappadocian kinship

Cappadocian kinship systems are very interesting from a sociolinguistic and anthropological perspective because of the mixture of inherited Greek and borrowed Turkish kinship terms. Precisely because the number of Turkish kinship terms differs from one variety to another, it is necessary to talk about Cappadocian kinship systems in the plural rather than about the Cappadocian kinship system in the singular. Although reference will be made to other Cappadocian varieties, this paper will focus on the kinship systems of Mišotika and Aksenitika, the two Central Cappadocian dialects still spoken today in several communities in Greece. Particular attention will be given to the use of borrowed Turkish kinship terms, which sometimes seem to co-exist together with their inherited Greek counterparts, e.g. mána vs. néne ‘mother’, ailfó/aelfó vs. γardáš ‘brother’ etc. In the final part of the paper some kinship terms with obscure or hitherto unknown etymology will be discussed, e.g. káka ‘grandmother’, ižá ‘aunt’, lúva ‘uncle (father’s brother)’ etc

Variation in the Vowel System of Mišótika Cappadocian: Findings from Two Refugee Villages in Greec

This paper discusses changes in the vowel system of contemporary Mišótika, the Cappadocian variety originally spoken in Misti. We compare the speech of native speakers from two Cappadocian refugee communities and analyse the differences between the two, taking into consideration mechanisms of language contact and linguistic change, and also the social parameters that influence the dialectal system. The study is based on recordings of native speakers of Mišótika who live in two different villages, one in the prefecture of Kilkis (Neo Agioneri), and the other in Thessaloniki (Xirohori). Although these villages are very close to one another, they present two major differences. Neo Agioneri is a homogeneous village, whereas Xirohori is a mixed village, since not only Cappadocians but also other Greek-dialect speakers live there. 78 Another distinguishing characteristic between the two villages is the attitude of the inhabitants towards Mišótika. It seems that speakers from Neo Agioneri are more receptive to the use of the dialect. The inhabitants from Xirohori, by contrast, present a different attitude, reflecting the consequences of social stigmatization and linguistic attrition that their dialect has undergone after the population exchange of the 1920s. To conclude, the current vowel system of Mišótika seems to diverge significantly from the older one described by Dawkins (1916). At the same time, the preliminary findings of our research indicate that there are also differences in the phonological status of the vowels between speakers of the same linguistic system. Dawkins, R. M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor: a Study of the Dialects of Sílli, Cappadocia and Phárasa with Grammar, Texts, Translations and Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Digital Classical Philology

The buzzwords “Information Society” and “Age of Access” suggest that information is now universally accessible without any form of hindrance. Indeed, the German constitution calls for all citizens to have open access to information. Yet in reality, there are multifarious hurdles to information access – whether physical, economic, intellectual, linguistic, political, or technical. Thus, while new methods and practices for making information accessible arise on a daily basis, we are nevertheless confronted by limitations to information access in various domains. This new book series assembles academics and professionals in various fields in order to illuminate the various dimensions of information's inaccessability. While the series discusses principles and techniques for transcending the hurdles to information access, it also addresses necessary boundaries to accessability.This book describes the state of the art of digital philology with a focus on ancient Greek and Latin. It addresses problems such as accessibility of information about Greek and Latin sources, data entry, collection and analysis of Classical texts and describes the fundamental role of libraries in building digital catalogs and developing machine-readable citation systems

Designing a Library of Components for Textual Scholarship

Il presente lavoro affronta e descrive temi legati all'applicazione di nuove tecnologie, di metodologie informatiche e di progettazione software volti allo sviluppo di strumenti innovativi per le Digital Humanities (DH), un’area di studio caratterizzata da una forte interdisciplinarità e da una continua evoluzione. In particolare, questo contributo definisce alcuni specifici requisiti relativi al dominio del Literary Computing e al settore del Digital Textual Scholarship. Conseguentemente, il contesto principale di elaborazione tratta documenti scritti in latino, greco e arabo, nonché testi in lingue moderne contenenti temi storici e filologici. L'attività di ricerca si concentra sulla progettazione di una libreria modulare (TSLib) in grado di operare su fonti ad elevato valore culturale, al fine di editarle, elaborarle, confrontarle, analizzarle, visualizzarle e ricercarle. La tesi si articola in cinque capitoli. Il capitolo 1 riassume il contesto del dominio applicativo e fornisce un quadro generale degli obiettivi e dei benefici della ricerca. Il capitolo 2 illustra alcuni importanti lavori e iniziative analoghe, insieme a una breve panoramica dei risultati più significativi ottenuti nel settore delle DH. Il capitolo 3 ripercorre accuratamente e motiva il processo di progettazione messo a punto. Esso inizia con la descrizione dei principi tecnici adottati e mostra come essi vengono applicati al dominio d'interesse. Il capitolo continua definendo i requisiti, l'architettura e il modello del metodo proposto. Sono così evidenziati e discussi gli aspetti concernenti i design patterns e la progettazione delle Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). La parte finale del lavoro (capitolo 4) illustra i risultati ottenuti da concreti progetti di ricerca che, da un lato, hanno contribuito alla progettazione della libreria e, dall'altro, hanno avuto modo di sfruttarne gli sviluppi. Sono stati quindi discussi diversi temi: (a) l'acquisizione e la codifica del testo, (b) l'allineamento e la gestione delle varianti testuali, (c) le annotazioni multilivello. La tesi si conclude con alcune riflessioni e considerazioni indicando anche possibili percorsi d'indagine futuri (capitolo 5)

ArgMine: Argumentation Mining from Text

O objetivo da prospeção de argumentos a partir de texto é a deteção e identificação de forma automática da estrutura argumentativa contida num texto escrito em linguagem natural.Um argumento é uma estrutura retórica que é estudada desde à muitos anos e que se encontra bem fundamentada. De uma forma geral, argumentos são posições justificáveis onde factos (premissas) são apresentados em suporte de uma conclusão.A ambiguidade do texto escrito em linguagem natural, diferentes estilos de escrita, contexto implícito e a complexidade em construir estruturas argumentativas são alguns dos desafios que fazem desta tarefa muito desafiadora.Extraindo de forma automática argumentos a partir de texto, somos capazes de saber não apenas quais são os pontos de vista que estão a ser expressos, mas também quais são as razões para acreditar nesse pontos de vista. Assim sendo, a prospeção de argumentos de forma automática tem o potencial de trazer avanços em algumas áreas de investigação tais como prospeção de opiniões, sistemas de recomendação e sistemas multi-agente.A tarefa completa de prospeção de argumentos pode ser decomposta em várias sub-tarefas. Esta tese aborda a deteção e identificação, de forma automática, dos componentes argumentativos presentes no texto. Isso envolve detetar as zonas do texto que contêm conteúdo argumentativo e, a seleção dos fragmentos de texto que correspondem às unidades elementares de argumentos. Para que seja possível de uma forma automática detetar e identificar componentes argumentativos a partir de texto, algoritmos de aprendizagem máquina supervisionada serão usados.O conjunto de dados alvo que será usado para treinar os algoritmos são noticias escritas na língua Portuguesa.The aim of argumentation mining is the automatic detection and identification of the argumentative structure contained within a piece of natural language text. An argument is an ancient and well studied rhetorical structure. In a general form, arguments are justifiable positions where pieces of evidence (premises) are offered in support of a conclusion. The ambiguity of natural language text, different writing styles, implicit context and the complexity of building argument structures are some of the challenges which make this task very challenging. By automatically extracting arguments from text, we are able to tell not just what views are being expressed, but also what are the reasons to believe those particular views. Therefore, argumentation mining has the potential to improve some research topics such as opinion mining, recommender systems and multi-agent systems. The full task of argumentation mining can be decomposed into several subtasks. This thesis focuses on the automatic detection and identification of the argumentative components presented in the original text. This involves detecting the zones of text that contain argumentative content and the identification of fragments of text that will form the elementary units of the argument. In order to automatically detect and identify argumentative components in text, supervised machine learning algorithms will be used. The target corpus used to train the algorithms are news written in Portuguese language

Proceedings of the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CLiC-it 2018 : 10-12 December 2018, Torino

On behalf of the Program Committee, a very warm welcome to the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-­‐it 2018). This edition of the conference is held in Torino. The conference is locally organised by the University of Torino and hosted into its prestigious main lecture hall “Cavallerizza Reale”. The CLiC-­‐it conference series is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC) which, after five years of activity, has clearly established itself as the premier national forum for research and development in the fields of Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, where leading researchers and practitioners from academia and industry meet to share their research results, experiences, and challenges

A heuristic information retrieval study : an investigation of methods for enhanced searching of distributed data objects exploiting bidirectional relevance feedback

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of LutonThe primary aim of this research is to investigate methods of improving the effectiveness of current information retrieval systems. This aim can be achieved by accomplishing numerous supporting objectives. A foundational objective is to introduce a novel bidirectional, symmetrical fuzzy logic theory which may prove valuable to information retrieval, including internet searches of distributed data objects. A further objective is to design, implement and apply the novel theory to an experimental information retrieval system called ANACALYPSE, which automatically computes the relevance of a large number of unseen documents from expert relevance feedback on a small number of documents read. A further objective is to define a methodology used in this work as an experimental information retrieval framework consisting of multiple tables including various formulae which anow a plethora of syntheses of similarity functions, ternl weights, relative term frequencies, document weights, bidirectional relevance feedback and history adjusted term weights. The evaluation of bidirectional relevance feedback reveals a better correspondence between system ranking of documents and users' preferences than feedback free system ranking. The assessment of similarity functions reveals that the Cosine and Jaccard functions perform significantly better than the DotProduct and Overlap functions. The evaluation of history tracking of the documents visited from a root page reveals better system ranking of documents than tracking free information retrieval. The assessment of stemming reveals that system information retrieval performance remains unaffected, while stop word removal does not appear to be beneficial and can sometimes be harmful. The overall evaluation of the experimental information retrieval system in comparison to a leading edge commercial information retrieval system and also in comparison to the expert's golden standard of judged relevance according to established statistical correlation methods reveal enhanced system information retrieval effectiveness

Proceedings of the Eighth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CliC-it 2021

The eighth edition of the Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2021) was held at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca from 26th to 28th January 2022. After the edition of 2020, which was held in fully virtual mode due to the health emergency related to Covid-19, CLiC-it 2021 represented the first moment for the Italian research community of Computational Linguistics to meet in person after more than one year of full/partial lockdown

Horos

In Horos, Thea Potter explores the complex relationship between classical philosophy and the ‘horos’, a stone that Athenians erected to mark the boundaries of their marketplace, their gravestones, their roads and their private property. Potter weaves this history into a meditation on the ancient philosophical concept of horos, the foundational project of determination and definition, arguing that it is central to the development of classical philosophy and the marketplace. Horos challenges many significant interpretations of ancient thought. With nuance and insight, Potter combines the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer and archaic Greek inscriptions with the twentieth-century continental philosophy of Heidegger, Derrida and Walter Benjamin. The result is a powerful study of the theme of boundaries in classical Athenian society as evidenced by boundary stones, law and exchange, ontology, insurgency and occupation. The innovative book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of ancient Greek social history, philosophy, and literature, as well as to the general reader who is curious to know more about classical life and philosophy