Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber Syllabification is Quantifier-Free

Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber (ITB) is unusual due to its tolerance of non-vocalic syllabic nuclei. Rule-based and constraint-based accounts of ITB syllabification do not directly address the question of how complex the process is. Model theory and formal logic allow for comparison of complexity across different theories of phonology by identifying the computational power (or expressivity) of linguistic formalisms in a grammar-independent way. With these tools, I develop a mathematical formalism for representing ITB syllabification using Quantifier-Free (QF) logic, one of the least powerful logics known. This result indicates that ITB syllabification is relatively simple from a computational standpoint and that grammatical formalisms could succeed with even less powerful mechanisms than are currently accepted

¿Qué es la fonología computacional?

Computational phonology is not one thing. Rather, it is an umbrella term which may refer to work on formal language theory, computer-implemented models of cognitive processes, and corpus methods derived from the literature on natural language processing (NLP). This article gives an overview of these distinct areas, identifying commonalities and differences in the goals of each area, as well as highlighting recent results of interest. The overview is necessarily brief and subjective. Broadly speaking, it is argued that learning is a pervasive theme in these areas, but the core questions and concerns vary too much to define a coherent field. Computational phonologists are more united by a shared body of formal knowledge than they are by a shared sense of what the important questions are.La fonología computacional no representa un campo unitario, sino que es un término genérico que puede hacer referencia a obras sobre teorías de lenguajes formales; a modelos de procesos cognitivos implementados por ordenador; y a métodos de trabajo con corpus, derivados de la bibliografía sobre procesamiento del lenguaje natural (PLN). Este artículo ofrece una visión de conjunto de estas distintas áreas, identifica los puntos comunes y las diferencias en los objetivos de cada una, y pone de relieve algunos de los últimos resultados más relevantes. Esta visión de conjunto es necesariamente breve y subjetiva. En términos generales, se argumenta que el aprendizaje es un tema recurrente en estos ámbitos, pero las preguntas y los problemas centrales varían demasiado como para definir un área de estudio unitaria y coherente. Los fonólogos computacionales están unidos por un cúmulo común de conocimientos formales más que por un parecer compartido acerca de cuáles son las preguntas importantes

The Complexity of Optimizing Over Strictly Local Constraints

We show that in Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993), optimization over strictly local (SL; McNaughton and Papert 1971) constraints can generate fully regular patterns. We show that a set of stress constraints defined as SL but evaluated in parallel OT predicts an unattested ``sour grapes\u27\u27-type stress assignment pattern, in which iterative foot assignment occurs if and only if it generates a full parse. We show that this pattern is fully regular, thus demonstrating that SL constraints are not closed under optimization. Furthermore, while sour grapes has received attention in harmony (Padgett 1995, Wilson 2003, Wilson 2006, McCarthy 2010) and tone phenomena (Jardine 2016), the possibility of sour grapes-like stress has not previously been discussed

Foot structure enables strict locality in phonological processes

The metrical foot has a long pedigree as a theoretical device in generative phonology (Liberman & Prince, 1977; Halle & Vergnaud, 1978; Selkirk, 1980; Hammond, 1984; Halle & Vergnaud, 1987; Idsardi, 1992; Hayes, 1995). While the motivations for foot structure are typically studied in terms of stress, this paper provides evidence from the principles of formal language theory (Chomsky, 1956; Hopcroft & Ullman, 1979) for foot-based analyses of non-stress processes. Though use of foot structure in these analyses is not novel (see Gonzalez (2018) for an overview) this paper contributes a precise characterization of what is at stake in terms of the computation of these processes when foot structure is present versus when it is not. This formal computational analysis indicates that feet have measurable implications for the predicted typology of these patterns. Thus, support is provided for a specific substantive phonological proposal based on the well-defined measures of complexity that formal language theory offers.

Multi Layer Analysis

This thesis presents a new methodology to analyze one-dimensional signals trough a new approach called Multi Layer Analysis, for short MLA. It also provides some new insights on the relationship between one-dimensional signals processed by MLA and tree kernels, test of randomness and signal processing techniques. The MLA approach has a wide range of application to the fields of pattern discovery and matching, computational biology and many other areas of computer science and signal processing. This thesis includes also some applications of this approach to real problems in biology and seismology

Expression and Composition of Optimization-Based Applications for Software-Defined Networking

Motivated by the adoption of the Software Defined Networking and its increasing focus on applications for resource management, we propose a novel framework for expressing network optimization applications. Named the SDN Optimization Layer (SOL), the framework and its extensions alleviate the burden of constructing optimization applications by abstracting the low-level details of mathematical optimization techniques such as linear programming. SOL utilizes the path abstraction to express a wide variety of network constraints and resource-management logic. We show that the framework is general and efficient enough to support various classes of applications. We extend SOL to support composition of multiple applications in a fair and resource-efficient way. We demonstrate that SOL’s composition produces better resource efficiency than previously available composition approaches and is tolerant to network variations. Finally, as a case study, we develop a new application for load balancing network intrusion prevention systems, called SNIPS. We highlight the challenges in developing the SNIPS optimization from the ground up, show SOL’s (conceptually) simplified version, and verify that both produce nearly identical solutions.Doctor of Philosoph