A Note on Emergence in Multi-Agent String Processing Systems

We propose a way to define (and, in a certain extent, even to measure) the phenomenon of emergence which appears in a complex system of interacting agents whose global behaviour can be described by a language and whose components (agents) can also be associated with grammars and languages. The basic idea is to identify the "linear composition of behaviours" with "closure under basic operations", such as the AFL (Abstract Families of Languages) operations, which are standard in the theory of formal languages

MAKING MEANING USING SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS AND VISUAL GRAMMAR ANALYSIS: COMPARISON OF SOURCE TEXT AND TARGET TEXT REFLECTED IN THE MAIN CHARACTER OF GRAPHIC NOVEL V FOR VENDETTA

This research presents a project designed to investigate a systemic way of analyzing metafunctions’ shifts between source texts and target texts using systemic functional linguistic (SFL) collaborated with visual grammar (VS; systemic functional approach for images). The study tries to examine the correlation between verbal and visual systems and how it affects the making of meaning in graphic novel. The research is descriptive qualitative with embedded case study. The data is acquired from monologue and dialogue uttered by main character of the first graphic novel book V for Vendetta. Content analysis, questionnaire and focus group discussion are conducted to obtain necessity data. The results shows there are shifts in transitivity structure, lexical items, and clauses' interdependency undergo ideational metafunction, modality system and discourse marker shifts undergo interpersonal metafunction, thematic structures, cohesion devices, physical presentation shifts undergo textual metafunction. Also shifts in target text caused by context of visual structure in representational metafunction and compositional metafunction. Those shifts demonstrate meaning changed in target text and can be identified in each metafunctions. The metafunction representational and ideational deal with interpreting content, form, context and symbolized expression in graphic novel. The shifts in transitivity structure and lexical items are caused by intertextuality and the theatricality in the content, form, context and symbolized expression of V for vendetta graphic novel. Interpersonal metafunction relates with enacting social relation. Whereas textual and compositional metafunction deal with organizing text/images, contextualizing the narrative scope and build reading order

Workshop on Formal Languages, Automata and Petri Nets

This report contains abstracts of the lectures presented at the workshop 'Formal Languages, Automata and Petri-Nets' held at the University of Stuttgart on January 16-17, 1998. The workshop brought together partners of the German-Hungarian project No. 233.6, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany, and No. D/102, TeT Foundation, Budapest, Hungary. It provided an opportunity to present work supported by this project as well as related topics

CLiFF Notes: Research In Natural Language Processing at the University of Pennsylvania

The Computational Linguistics Feedback Forum (CLIFF) is a group of students and faculty who gather once a week to discuss the members\u27 current research. As the word feedback suggests, the group\u27s purpose is the sharing of ideas. The group also promotes interdisciplinary contacts between researchers who share an interest in Cognitive Science. There is no single theme describing the research in Natural Language Processing at Penn. There is work done in CCG, Tree adjoining grammars, intonation, statistical methods, plan inference, instruction understanding, incremental interpretation, language acquisition, syntactic parsing, causal reasoning, free word order languages, ... and many other areas. With this in mind, rather than trying to summarize the varied work currently underway here at Penn, we suggest reading the following abstracts to see how the students and faculty themselves describe their work. Their abstracts illustrate the diversity of interests among the researchers, explain the areas of common interest, and describe some very interesting work in Cognitive Science. This report is a collection of abstracts from both faculty and graduate students in Computer Science, Psychology and Linguistics. We pride ourselves on the close working relations between these groups, as we believe that the communication among the different departments and the ongoing inter-departmental research not only improves the quality of our work, but makes much of that work possible

USING “CQGS” TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ WRITING COMPETENCE

Asrofin, 2010. Using “CQGS” to Improve the Students’ Writing Competence (A Collaborative Action Research at SMPN 5 Probolinggo in Academic 2009/2010). A thesis: English Education of Graduate School. Sebelas Maret University. This research done at class VIIIC of SMPN 5 Probolinggo aims at finding out whether or not: (1) “CQGS” techniques can improve the students’ writing competence; (2) “CQGS” techniques are effective to improve the students’ writing competence; (3) there are some weaknesses and strengths of using “CQGS” in teaching writing. Based on the result of the score of pre-test, questionnaire and interview to the students that had been gained by the researcher, he found out some factors causing the students’ low writing achievement. They were; (1) lack of practice; (2) unsuitable teaching technique; (3) students’ low motivation; (4) lack of students’ learning resources, and (5) less opportunity to have a lot of exposure and practice in reading English language. “CQGS” which stands for Control Composition, Questions and Answer, Guided Composition, and Sentence Combining. This research consists of four cycles. The main activity of the first and second cycle was practicing writing recount text which was focused on the correct punctuation, agreement, tenses, syntax, and diction and constructing the questions to produce a coherent text. While the main activity of the third and fourth cycle was writing Narrative text which focused on both grammatical competence and developing the ideas and imagination based on the given guided clues of the first and the last sentence of the story and writing the sentences effectively. In general, the process of teaching and learning writing in the classroom was started by; discussing students’ grammatical problem of writing and correcting the students’ own drafts; then, giving a model of the certain text type to be understood and discussing its language feature and generic structure, then, practicing some difficult grammar, and at last writing the text. The data collected in this research consists of quantitative which were taken from the writing test and qualitative data which were taken from the interview, questionnaire, and observation. Quantitative analysis was used to analyze the students’ achievement before and after the cycle was implemented by using descriptive statistics. While, constant comparative method used to analyze the qualitative data consisted of 4 steps: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category, (2) integrating categories and their properties, (3) delimiting the theory, and (4) writing the theory. The result of the study shows that there was: (1) improvement of the students’ writing competence. The score in post test was higher than the score in pre-test; (2) improvement of the teacher’s performance class. It could be seen from the direct observation of the collaborator during the process of teaching and learning in the classroom; (3) improvement of students’ motivation. By analyzing the data collection from questionnaire and interview, the researcher found out that most of the students had positive response toward writing activity.; (4) improvement of the students’ participation. In general, from the data collected from the observation, the researcher found out that the students were so quiet in the first cycle, but in the second to the fourth cycle their participation in discussing and correcting the mistakes gradually improved. The weaknesses of the “CQGS” were that: (1) Before the students had good language competence in writing, the students were not allowed to express their ideas freely in writing to avoid the interference of the grammar of students’ first language; (2) For the students who had excellent background of English lesson, “CQGS” made them disable to express their ideas freely. The strength of the “CQGS” were that: (1) The Application of “CQGS” especially Control Composition, Question and Answer, and Sentence Combining were good to improve students’ writing competence focusing on accuracy.. For Guided Composition, it was good to improve students’ writing competence focusing on generating ideas; (2) Students became more active and were motivated to improve their writing competence . (3) It helped the teacher guide the students systematically in improving their writing competence and improvise their way of teachin

Formalizing graphical notations

The thesis describes research into graphical notations for software engineering, with a principal interest in ways of formalizing them. The research seeks to provide a theoretical basis that will help in designing both notations and the software tools that process them. The work starts from a survey of literature on notation, followed by a review of techniques for formal description and for computational handling of notations. The survey concentrates on collecting views of the benefits and the problems attending notation use in software development; the review covers picture description languages, grammars and tools such as generic editors and visual programming environments. The main problem of notation is found to be a lack of any coherent, rigorous description methods. The current approaches to this problem are analysed as lacking in consensus on syntax specification and also lacking a clear focus on a defined concept of notated expression. To address these deficiencies, the thesis embarks upon an exploration of serniotic, linguistic and logical theory; this culminates in a proposed formalization of serniosis in notations, using categorial model theory as a mathematical foundation. An argument about the structure of sign systems leads to an analysis of notation into a layered system of tractable theories, spanning the gap between expressive pictorial medium and subject domain. This notion of 'tectonic' theory aims to treat both diagrams and formulae together. The research gives details of how syntactic structure can be sketched in a mathematical sense, with examples applying to software development diagrams, offering a new solution to the problem of notation specification. Based on these methods, the thesis discusses directions for resolving the harder problems of supporting notation design, processing and computer-aided generic editing. A number of future research areas are thereby opened up. For practical trial of the ideas, the work proceeds to the development and partial implementation of a system to aid the design of notations and editors. Finally the thesis is evaluated as a contribution to theory in an area which has not attracted a standard approach