Sublanguages and Registers -- A Note On Terminology

The term sublanguage from mathematical linguistics confuses interaction researchers and leads them to believe that implementing natural language interfaces is easier than it is. The term register from sociolinguistics is proposed instead

Extended logic-plus-functional programming

Extensions of logic and functional programming are integrated in RELFUN. Its valued clauses comprise Horn clauses (true\u27-valued) and clauses with a distinguished foot\u27 premise (returning arbitrary values). Both the logic and functional components permit LISP-like varying-arity and higher-order operators. The DATAFUN sublanguage of the functional component is shown to be preferable to relational encodings of functions in DATALOG. RELFUN permits non-ground, non-deterministic functions, hence certain functions can be inverted using an is\u27-primitive generalizing that of PROLOG. For function nestings a strict call-by-value strategy is employed. The reduction of these extensions to a relational sublanguage is discussed and their WAM compilation is sketched. Three examples (serialise\u27, wang\u27, and eval\u27) demonstrate the relational/functional style in use. The list expressions of RELFUN\u27s LISP implementation are presented in an extended PROLOG-like syntax

Automated Testing of Speech-to-Speech Machine Translation in Telecom Networks

Globalisoituvassa maailmassa kyky kommunikoida kielimuurien yli käy yhä tärkeämmäksi. Kielten opiskelu on työlästä ja siksi halutaan kehittää automaattisia konekäännösjärjestelmiä. Ericsson on kehittänyt prototyypin nimeltä Real-Time Interpretation System (RTIS), joka toimii mobiiliverkossa ja kääntää matkailuun liittyviä fraaseja puhemuodossa kahden kielen välillä. Nykyisten konekäännösjärjestelmien suorituskyky on suhteellisen huono ja siksi testauksella on suuri merkitys järjestelmien suunnittelussa. Testauksen tarkoituksena on varmistaa, että järjestelmä säilyttää käännösekvivalenssin sekä puhekäännösjärjestelmän tapauksessa myös riittävän puheenlaadun. Luotettavimmin testaus voidaan suorittaa ihmisten antamiin arviointeihin perustuen, mutta tällaisen testauksen kustannukset ovat suuria ja tulokset subjektiivisia. Tässä työssä suunniteltiin ja analysoitiin automatisoitu testiympäristö Real-Time Interpretation System -käännösprototyypille. Tavoitteina oli tutkia, voidaanko testaus suorittaa automatisoidusti ja pystytäänkö todellinen, käyttäjän havaitsema käännösten laatu mittaamaan automatisoidun testauksen keinoin. Tulokset osoittavat että mobiiliverkoissa puheenlaadun testaukseen käytetyt menetelmät eivät ole optimaalisesti sovellettavissa konekäännösten testaukseen. Nykytuntemuksen mukaan ihmisten suorittama arviointi on ainoa luotettava tapa mitata käännösekvivalenssia ja puheen ymmärrettävyyttä. Konekäännösten testauksen automatisointi vaatii lisää tutkimusta, jota ennen subjektiivinen arviointi tulisi säilyttää ensisijaisena testausmenetelmänä RTIS-testauksessa.In the globalizing world, the ability to communicate over language barriers is increasingly important. Learning languages is laborious, which is why there is a strong desire to develop automatic machine translation applications. Ericsson has developed a speech-to-speech translation prototype called the Real-Time Interpretation System (RTIS). The service runs in a mobile network and translates travel phrases between two languages in speech format. The state-of-the-art machine translation systems suffer from a relatively poor performance and therefore evaluation plays a big role in machine translation development. The purpose of evaluation is to ensure the system preserves the translational equivalence, and in case of a speech-to-speech system, the speech quality. The evaluation is most reliably done by human judges. However, human-conducted evaluation is costly and subjective. In this thesis, a test environment for Ericsson Real-Time Interpretation System prototype is designed and analyzed. The goals are to investigate if the RTIS verification can be conducted automatically, and if the test environment can truthfully measure the end-to-end performance of the system. The results conclude that methods used in end-to-end speech quality verification in mobile networks can not be optimally adapted for machine translation evaluation. With current knowledge, human-conducted evaluation is the only method that can truthfully measure translational equivalence and the speech intelligibility. Automating machine translation evaluation needs further research, until which human-conducted evaluation should remain the preferred method in RTIS verification

Aviation English: An Introduction

Aviation is a specialized, technology-based area that covers a broad range of activities, from esoteric analyses of compressible fluids, to selling tickets, to getting a clearance for takeoff. Accordingly, the language behavior inherent to such activities is diverse, often requiring specialized uses of English that are collectively labeled here as Aviation English. Aviation English figures prominently in most fields of aviation/aerospace education and practice, in regulatory and administrative agencies concerned with national and international commerce, norms and standards, and in academic, industrial, and government research and development. A greater awareness of the nature of Aviation English and of relevant resources can assist those aviation professionals whose daily work depends significantly on the use of language. Toward this end, this paper has been written for the aviation professional, not the language specialist. It serves as a general introduction to Aviation English by presenting background for the need to address this issue of language, describing the nature of aviation uses of language, reviewing selected, pertinent writings on the subject, and concluding with ideas for advancing our knowledge and refining our use of Aviation English

Software Architecture Trends and Promising Technology for Ambient Assisted Living Systems

Driven by the ongoing demographical, structural, and social changes in all modern, industrialized countries, there is a huge interest in IT-based equipment and services these days that enable independent living of people with specific needs. Despite of promising concepts, approaches and technology, those systems are still rather a vision than reality. In order to pave the way towards a common understanding of the problem and overall software solution approaches, this paper (i) characterizes the Ambient Assisted Living domain, (ii) briefly presents relevant software architecture trends, esp. applicable styles and patterns and (iii) discusses promising software technology already available to solve the problems

Implemeting a component-based tool for interactive synthesis of UML statechart diagrams

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has an indisputable role in objectoriented software development. It provides several diagram types viewing a system from different perspectives. Currently available systems have relatively modest tool support for comparing, merging, synthesizing, and slicing UML diagrams based on their semantical relationships. Minimally Adequate Synthesizer (MAS) is a tool that synthesizes UML statechart diagrams from sequence diagrams in an interactive manner. It follows Angluin's framework of minimally adequate teacher to infer the desired statechart diagram with the help of membership and equivalence queries. MAS can also synthesize sequence diagrams into an edited or manually constructed statechart diagram. In this paper we discuss problems related to a practical implementation of MAS and its integration with two existing tools (Nokia TED and Rational Rose) supporting UML-based modeling. We also discuss information exchange techniques that could be used to allow the usage of other CASE tools supporting UML

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