Employing geographical principles for sampling in state of the art dialectological projects

The aims of this paper are twofold: First, we locate the most effective human geographical methods for sampling across space in large-scale dialectological projects. We propose two geographical concepts as a basis for sampling decisions: Geo-demographic classification, which is a multidimensional method used for the socio-economic grouping of areas. We also develop an updated version of functional regions that can be used in sociolinguistic research. We then report on the results of a pilot project that applies these models to collect data regarding the acceptability of vernacular morpho-syntactic forms in the North-East of England. Following the method of natural breaks advocated for dialectology by Horvath and Horvath (2002), we interpret breaks in the probabilistic patterns as areas of dialect transitions. This study contributes to the debate about the role and limitations of spatiality in linguistic analysis. It intends to broaden our knowledge about the interfaces between human geography and dialectology

Reduction of Survey Sites in Dialectology: A New Methodology Based on Clustering

Many language change studies aim for a partial revisitation, i.e., selecting survey sites from previous dialect studies. The central issue of survey site reduction, however, has often been addressed only qualitatively. Cluster analysis offers an innovative means of identifying the most representative survey sites among a set of original survey sites. In this paper, we present a general methodology for finding representative sites for an intended study, potentially applicable to any collection of data about dialects or linguistic variation. We elaborate the quantitative steps of the proposedmethodology in the context of the “Linguistic Atlas of Japan” (LAJ). Next, we demonstrate the full application of the methodology on the “Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland” (Germ.: “Sprachatlas der Deutschen Schweiz”—SDS), with the explicit aim of selecting survey sites corresponding to the aims of the current project “Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space” (SDATS), which revisits SDS 70 years later. We find that depending on the circumstances and requirements of a study, the proposed methodology, introducing cluster analysis into the survey site reduction process, allows for a greater objectivity in comparison to traditional approaches. We suggest, however, that the suitability of any set of candidate survey sites resulting from the proposed methodology be rigorously revised by experts due to potential incongruences, such as the overlap of objectives and variables across the original and intended studies and ongoing dialect change

LextPT: A reliable and efficient vocabulary size test for L2 Portuguese proficiency

Vocabulary size has been repeatedly shown to be a good indicator of second language (L2) proficiency. Among the many existing vocabulary tests, the LexTALE test and its equivalents are growing in popularity since they provide a rapid (within 5 minutes) and objective way to assess the L2 proficiency of several languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian) in experimental research. In this study, expanding on the standard procedure of test construction in previous LexTALE tests, we develop a vocabulary size test for L2 Portuguese proficiency: LextPT. The selected lexical items fall in the same frequency interval in European and Brazilian Portuguese, so that LextPT accommodates both varieties. A large-scale validation study with 452 L2 learners of Portuguese shows that LextPT is not only a sound and effective instrument to measure L2 lexical knowledge and indicate the proficiency of both European and Brazilian Portuguese, but is also appropriate for learners with different L1 backgrounds (e.g. Chinese, Germanic, Romance, Slavic). The construction of LextPT, apart from joining the effort to provide a standardised assessment of L2 proficiency across languages, shows that the LexTALE tests can be extended to cover different varieties of a language, and that they are applicable to bilinguals with different linguistic experience

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Mapping Acoustic and Semantic Dimensions of Auditory Perception

Auditory categorisation is a function of sensory perception which allows humans to generalise across many different sounds present in the environment and classify them into behaviourally relevant categories. These categories cover not only the variance of acoustic properties of the signal but also a wide variety of sound sources. However, it is unclear to what extent the acoustic structure of sound is associated with, and conveys, different facets of semantic category information. Whether people use such data and what drives their decisions when both acoustic and semantic information about the sound is available, also remains unknown. To answer these questions, we used the existing methods broadly practised in linguistics, acoustics and cognitive science, and bridged these domains by delineating their shared space. Firstly, we took a model-free exploratory approach to examine the underlying structure and inherent patterns in our dataset. To this end, we ran principal components, clustering and multidimensional scaling analyses. At the same time, we drew sound labels’ semantic space topography based on corpus-based word embeddings vectors. We then built an LDA model predicting class membership and compared the model-free approach and model predictions with the actual taxonomy. Finally, by conducting a series of web-based behavioural experiments, we investigated whether acoustic and semantic topographies relate to perceptual judgements. This analysis pipeline showed that natural sound categories could be successfully predicted based on the acoustic information alone and that perception of natural sound categories has some acoustic grounding. Results from our studies help to recognise the role of physical sound characteristics and their meaning in the process of sound perception and give an invaluable insight into the mechanisms governing the machine-based and human classifications

Unsupervised video indexing on audiovisual characterization of persons

Cette thèse consiste à proposer une méthode de caractérisation non-supervisée des intervenants dans les documents audiovisuels, en exploitant des données liées à leur apparence physique et à leur voix. De manière générale, les méthodes d'identification automatique, que ce soit en vidéo ou en audio, nécessitent une quantité importante de connaissances a priori sur le contenu. Dans ce travail, le but est d'étudier les deux modes de façon corrélée et d'exploiter leur propriété respective de manière collaborative et robuste, afin de produire un résultat fiable aussi indépendant que possible de toute connaissance a priori. Plus particulièrement, nous avons étudié les caractéristiques du flux audio et nous avons proposé plusieurs méthodes pour la segmentation et le regroupement en locuteurs que nous avons évaluées dans le cadre d'une campagne d'évaluation. Ensuite, nous avons mené une étude approfondie sur les descripteurs visuels (visage, costume) qui nous ont servis à proposer de nouvelles approches pour la détection, le suivi et le regroupement des personnes. Enfin, le travail s'est focalisé sur la fusion des données audio et vidéo en proposant une approche basée sur le calcul d'une matrice de cooccurrence qui nous a permis d'établir une association entre l'index audio et l'index vidéo et d'effectuer leur correction. Nous pouvons ainsi produire un modèle audiovisuel dynamique des intervenants.This thesis consists to propose a method for an unsupervised characterization of persons within audiovisual documents, by exploring the data related for their physical appearance and their voice. From a general manner, the automatic recognition methods, either in video or audio, need a huge amount of a priori knowledge about their content. In this work, the goal is to study the two modes in a correlated way and to explore their properties in a collaborative and robust way, in order to produce a reliable result as independent as possible from any a priori knowledge. More particularly, we have studied the characteristics of the audio stream and we have proposed many methods for speaker segmentation and clustering and that we have evaluated in a french competition. Then, we have carried a deep study on visual descriptors (face, clothing) that helped us to propose novel approches for detecting, tracking, and clustering of people within the document. Finally, the work was focused on the audiovisual fusion by proposing a method based on computing the cooccurrence matrix that allowed us to establish an association between audio and video indexes, and to correct them. That will enable us to produce a dynamic audiovisual model for each speaker

Most Ligand-Based Classification Benchmarks Reward Memorization Rather than Generalization

Undetected overfitting can occur when there are significant redundancies between training and validation data. We describe AVE, a new measure of training-validation redundancy for ligand-based classification problems that accounts for the similarity amongst inactive molecules as well as active. We investigated seven widely-used benchmarks for virtual screening and classification, and show that the amount of AVE bias strongly correlates with the performance of ligand-based predictive methods irrespective of the predicted property, chemical fingerprint, similarity measure, or previously-applied unbiasing techniques. Therefore, it may be that the previously-reported performance of most ligand-based methods can be explained by overfitting to benchmarks rather than good prospective accuracy

Reflective Versus Normative Thinking: Habitus Study on American and Indonesian Graduation Speech

Graduation and the future are closely related. Graduation is the end of education and the beginning of the future. The ways to perceive these two things might vary due to the influence of cultural backgrounds. This study compares Indonesian and American graduates’ perceptions about graduation and the future by looking at the verbal expressions used in their graduation speeches. Ten speeches by Indonesian graduates and ten speeches by American graduates were selected as data sources. The verbal expression data analysis combines linguistic theory (metaphor) and Bourdieu’s social theory of Cultural Capital and Habitus. The results show that Indonesian and American graduates share nearly the same perceptions about graduation and the future; however, they have different expressions due to different cultural capital and habitus. American graduates express their perceptions reflectively, while Indonesian graduates do it normatively. It is concluded that American graduates’ speeches reflect society’s intellectuality expectations while Indonesian graduates’ speeches reflect expectations for mannershi