Automating Metadata Extraction: Genre Classification

A problem that frequently arises in the management and integration of scientific data is the lack of context and semantics that would link data encoded in disparate ways. To bridge the discrepancy, it often helps to mine scientific texts to aid the understanding of the database. Mining relevant text can be significantly aided by the availability of descriptive and semantic metadata. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) has undertaken research to automate the extraction of metadata from documents in PDF([22]). Documents may include scientific journal papers, lab notes or even emails. We suggest genre classification as a first step toward automating metadata extraction. The classification method will be built on looking at the documents from five directions; as an object of specific visual format, a layout of strings with characteristic grammar, an object with stylo-metric signatures, an object with meaning and purpose, and an object linked to previously classified objects and external sources. Some results of experiments in relation to the first two directions are described here; they are meant to be indicative of the promise underlying this multi-faceted approach.

Suicide Among Young Alaska Native Men: Community Risk Factors and Alcohol Control

Indigenous residents of Alaska (Alaska Natives) die by suicide at a rate nearly 4 times the US average and the average for all American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs).1---3 An astonishing 7% of Alaska respondents to a 2003 international household survey of Arctic Indigenous people indicated that they had seriously contemplated suicide within the past year.4 Studies have shown that alcohol is directly or indirectly involved in most of these deaths.5---9 Although Alaska Natives have encountered alcohol for well over a century, the high suicide risk is an entrenched but comparatively recent phenomenon affecting only the past 2 generations.9,10 Figure 1 shows that crude suicide rates for this group rose rapidly in the decade after Alaska achieved statehood in 1959. The 3-year moving average rate peaked at more than 50 per 100 000 in the early 1980s, before declining to a level of about 40 per 100 000 during the past decade. The dip in suicide rates in the late 1970s likely represents faulty data rather than a real departure from the secular trend.11 An emerging new pattern of risk drove the increase in suicide rates in the 1960s. Higher suicide rates among young men led the rise in suicide as a whole.9,12,13 More recently, another important pattern of differential risk emerged as more Alaska Natives moved to the state’s growing urban areas in search of jobs. Suicide rates among Alaska Native residents remaining in small rural communities are more than twice as high as those among Native residents of urban areas and vary greatly among communities even in the same region (Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics, unpublished data).13 In fact, suicide rates may have declined since the peak in the 1980s (Figure 1) only because the lower risk population of urbandwelling Alaska Natives has grown relative to the more vulnerable rural population. The large disparities among populations with similar ethnicity and histories suggest that the elevated suicide risk is not simply an unfortunate side effect of rapid social change but may be influenced directly by contemporary living conditions. The associationYe

The translatability of metaphor in LSP: application of a decision-making model

The pragmatic approach to translation implies the consideration of translation as a useful test case for understanding the role of language in social life. Under this view this article analyses the decision-making stage translators go through in the course of formulating a TT. Hence this article contributes both to enhance the status of translation theory and to explain some of the decisions taken by the Spanish translators of three English Manuals of Economics. In short, we have argued that the use of a 'maximax' strategy for translating English metaphors as Spanish similarity-creating metaphors can be attributed to subjective factors, especially to the translators' cognitive system, their knowledge bases, the task specification, and the text type specific problem space. As a result, we have also claimed that proposals for translating microtextual problems —for example, metaphors — can benefit from the study of the above-mentioned subjective factors since they allow or inhibit the translators' choices in the decision-making stage of the translation process

The translatability of metaphor in LSP: application of a decision-making model

The pragmatic approach to translation implies the consideration of translation as a useful test case for understanding the role of language in social life. Under this view this article analyses the decision-making stage translators go through in the course of formulating a TT. Hence this article contributes both to enhance the status of translation theory and to explain some of the decisions taken by the Spanish translators of three English Manuals of Economics. In short, we have argued that the use of a 'maximax' strategy for translating English metaphors as Spanish similarity-creating metaphors can be attributed to subjective factors, especially to the translators' cognitive system, their knowledge bases, the task specification, and the text type specific problem space. As a result, we have also claimed that proposals for translating microtextual problems —for example, metaphors — can benefit from the study of the above-mentioned subjective factors since they allow or inhibit the translators' choices in the decision-making stage of the translation process

Machine Learning Theory and Practice as a Source of Insight into Universal Grammar

Articl

A Pragmatic Analysis of the Pedagogical Implications of the Use of English Epistemic Modality Written Literary Discourse

This is a pragmatic study of the use of the items of epistemic modality in a literary discourse with the main aims to identify, analyze and describe the ways the items of epistemic modality are used. Their contextual meanings, functions, and implication to the pedagogical attempts are also unfolded. The results of the interpretative and descriptive analysis reveal that the items of epistemic modality are found to be very dominant which also suggests that the genre of narrative fiction is linguistically characterized by the utterances that are established on the basis of knowledge and reasoning. The items of epistemic modality are found to be polysemous and polyfunctional which are reflected pragmatically in the forms of politeness, negotiative and constructive functions. All these lead to the acknowledgement that the use of the items of linguistic modality in literary discourse and their usage for language teaching in the applied linguistic contexts is worth conducting