The role of linguistics in language teaching: the case of two, less widely taught languages - Finnish and Hungarian

This paper discusses the role of various linguistic sub-disciplines in teaching Finnish and Hungarian. We explain the status of Finnish and Hungarian at University College London and in the UK, and present the principle difficulties in learning and teaching these two languages. We also introduce our courses and student profiles. With the support of examples from our own teaching, we argue that a linguistically oriented approach is well suited for less widely used and less taught languages as it enables students to draw comparative and historical parallels, question terminologies and raise their sociolinguistic and pragmatic awareness. A linguistic approach also provides students with skills for further language learning

Formulaic sequences in Early Modern English: A corpus-assisted historical pragmatic study

This doctoral project identifies formulaic sequences (hereinafter FS and the plural form FSs) in Early Modern English (hereinafter EModE) and intends to investigate the functions they serve in communication and different text types, namely EModE dialogues and letters. Main contributions of the study include, firstly, the study provides solid arguments and further evidence that FSs are constructions in the Construction Grammar instead of exceptions in the traditional grammar-dictionary model. Within this theoreticall framework, I proposed a new working definition of FSs that is inclusive, descriptive, and methodologically neutral. The study also argues that there are fundamental differences between FSs and lexical bundles (LBs), although the latter often treated as an alternative term of FSs or sub-groups of FSs. Nevertheless, after a thorogh review of the characteristics of the two mult-word units, the study argues that despite of the differences, LBs can be upgrated to FSs as long as they fulfill certail sematic, syntactic, and pragmatic criteria. THis forms the fundation of the methodology design of the study. Secondly, the study enhanced the corpus-assisted approach to the identification of FSs, esp. in EModE texts. The approach consists of three steps: preparation, identification, and generalisation. The identification step was further conducted within two phases: automatic generation of LBs for a corpus and manual identification of FSs from LBs. Specifically, in the preparation step, the dissertation critically discussed how spelling variation in EModE texts shall be dealt with in investigations on FSs. I designed a series of criteria for the two-phase identification of FSs. For one thing, I disagree with previous research that two-word LBs shall be excluded from examination by arguing that many of them are formulaic and cannot be captured from longer LBs and the workload of processing the massive number of two-word LBs is actually manageable. For another, the study contributes an easy-to-follow flow chart demonstrating the procedure of the manual identification of FSs from LBs and listing the criteria that guide the decision-making process. Thirdly, the study provides systematic and comprehensive accounts of FSs in EModE dialogues and letters, esp. how their forms are conventionally mapped to their functions. Data analysis were conducted from aspects such as degree of fixedness, grammatical structures, distribution across function categories, multi-functional FSs, genre-specific FSs, etc. General findings suggest that EModE dialogues and letters actually have many similarities regarding the form and function of FSs and general trends of distribution across function categories. However, outstanding differences between the two text types can be observed too. From the perspective of form, the distinction lies in word choice in realisations of certain FSs. From the perspective of meaning/function, the distinction lies in the kinds of functions that need FSs the most or the least and common function combinations. More importantly, the study observed two types of relationships among FSs themselves and the discourse, including horizonal networks and vertical networks, which reflects the complexity of FSs and their identity as constructions. Specifically, three types of horizontal networks of FSs are embedding, attaching, and joining. A pair of new concepts is proposed to describe the vertical networks: superordinate FSs and subordinate FSs. As a result of the vertical networks, three types of functional diviation are observed: function extension, shifting, and specification

Students´ language in computer-assisted tutoring of mathematical proofs

Truth and proof are central to mathematics. Proving (or disproving) seemingly simple statements often turns out to be one of the hardest mathematical tasks. Yet, doing proofs is rarely taught in the classroom. Studies on cognitive difficulties in learning to do proofs have shown that pupils and students not only often do not understand or cannot apply basic formal reasoning techniques and do not know how to use formal mathematical language, but, at a far more fundamental level, they also do not understand what it means to prove a statement or even do not see the purpose of proof at all. Since insight into the importance of proof and doing proofs as such cannot be learnt other than by practice, learning support through individualised tutoring is in demand. This volume presents a part of an interdisciplinary project, set at the intersection of pedagogical science, artificial intelligence, and (computational) linguistics, which investigated issues involved in provisioning computer-based tutoring of mathematical proofs through dialogue in natural language. The ultimate goal in this context, addressing the above-mentioned need for learning support, is to build intelligent automated tutoring systems for mathematical proofs. The research presented here has been focused on the language that students use while interacting with such a system: its linguistic propeties and computational modelling. Contribution is made at three levels: first, an analysis of language phenomena found in students´ input to a (simulated) proof tutoring system is conducted and the variety of students´ verbalisations is quantitatively assessed, second, a general computational processing strategy for informal mathematical language and methods of modelling prominent language phenomena are proposed, and third, the prospects for natural language as an input modality for proof tutoring systems is evaluated based on collected corpora

Natural interaction with a virtual guide in a virtual environment: A multimodal dialogue system

This paper describes the Virtual Guide, a multimodal dialogue system represented by an embodied conversational agent that can help users to find their way in a virtual environment, while adapting its affective linguistic style to that of the user. We discuss the modular architecture of the system, and describe the entire loop from multimodal input analysis to multimodal output generation. We also describe how the Virtual Guide detects the level of politeness of the user’s utterances in real-time during the dialogue and aligns its own language to that of the user, using different politeness strategies. Finally we report on our first user tests, and discuss some potential extensions to improve the system

Towards an Indexical Model of Situated Language Comprehension for Cognitive Agents in Physical Worlds

We propose a computational model of situated language comprehension based on the Indexical Hypothesis that generates meaning representations by translating amodal linguistic symbols to modal representations of beliefs, knowledge, and experience external to the linguistic system. This Indexical Model incorporates multiple information sources, including perceptions, domain knowledge, and short-term and long-term experiences during comprehension. We show that exploiting diverse information sources can alleviate ambiguities that arise from contextual use of underspecific referring expressions and unexpressed argument alternations of verbs. The model is being used to support linguistic interactions in Rosie, an agent implemented in Soar that learns from instruction.Comment: Advances in Cognitive Systems 3 (2014

Pronominal types and abstract reference in the Danish and Italian DAD corpora

Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Anaphora Resolution (WAR II). Editor: Christer Johansson. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 2 (2008), 63-71. © 2008 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/7129

Use of videogames as resource for the development of listening and speaking skills in utn students.

To implement videogames as means to develop speaking and listening skills in an environment free of academic stress in students of the Técnica del Norte university.El principal objetivo de esta tesis es usar videojuegos para liberar al estudiante del estrés que se genera dentro de un ambiente convencional de aprendizaje para que pueda desarrollar sus habilidades de lenguaje de una forma distinta. Los ejes centrales en los cuales se basa el desarrollo de este proyecto son el aprendizaje basado en el contenido, el método audio lingual y la gamificación. El proceso de recolección de información tiene como participantes a profesores y estudiantes de la UTN. Para esto, la metodología cualitativa es usada en este proyecto ya que brinda una información más relevante para el desarrollo de la propuesta. Los resultados de las entrevistas y encuestan evidencian la preferencia de los participantes por juegos de disparos. Además, los profesores entrevistados en este estudio comparten sus experiencias usando la gamificación para la mejora del ambiente académico, el ánimo de los estudiantes y una mejora en la relación profesor-estudiante. Por lo tanto, el desarrollo de la propuesta da como lugar la creación de una guía de actividades que se pueden realizar dentro del juego como fuera de este; determinar las ventajas y desventajas que estas actividades presentan en relación con el desarrollo de destrezas de lenguaje en el jugador. Finalmente, se presenta un ejemplo real de las actividades que un jugador realiza mientras está jugando y actividades extra que dan como resultado la mejora de las destrezas como lo son el habla y el escucha.Licenciatur