Handling non-compositionality in multilingual CNLs

In this paper, we describe methods for handling multilingual non-compositional constructions in the framework of GF. We specifically look at methods to detect and extract non-compositional phrases from parallel texts and propose methods to handle such constructions in GF grammars. We expect that the methods to handle non-compositional constructions will enrich CNLs by providing more flexibility in the design of controlled languages. We look at two specific use cases of non-compositional constructions: a general-purpose method to detect and extract multilingual multiword expressions and a procedure to identify nominal compounds in German. We evaluate our procedure for multiword expressions by performing a qualitative analysis of the results. For the experiments on nominal compounds, we incorporate the detected compounds in a full SMT pipeline and evaluate the impact of our method in machine translation process.Comment: CNL workshop in COLING 201

Adjectives in Destination Promotion Texts

As tourism texts act as an important source of information for prospective tourists, this paper looks into the use of adjectives in English tourism texts by analyzing a small, specialized corpus of texts promoting destinations. The self-compiled corpus had its data taken from the official tourism website of Vietnam. Using TermoStat Web 3.0 (Drouin, 2003) and Antconc (Anthony, 2011) to identify adjectives in the corpus, the study seeks to explore adjectival usage in a discourse which is known for its hyperbolic language and offers a better understanding of ways adjectives help create persuasive texts. Results revealed a high percentage of adjectives in the analyzed texts. Besides, the extensive use and high selectivity of adjectives in the corpus help paint a complete picture of the destinations being described, hence connect those places with the reader. Notably, compound adjectives were found to be widely utilized for compact but detailed expressions. The findings are beneficial to instructors and learners of English for tourism and English writing as well as translation training and practice

Static and dynamic metaphoricity in U.S.-China trade discourse:A transdisciplinary perspective

Metaphor scholars have widely explored metaphor use in political discourse. Nevertheless, the current research does not account for the ‘gradable metaphoricity’ in political discourse analysis. This dissertation fills this gap by addressing this specific issue in two frameworks: (1) viewing political metaphor from a static and gradient perspective (Source-Target mapping; Conventional vs. Novel vs. Dead), and (2) viewing political metaphor from a gradable and dynamic perspective (a matter of salience and awareness of metaphoricity). A systematic literature review in chapter 2 points out that the static and dynamic perspectives differ significantly in underlying assumptions and organizing principles, although both are indistinctly referred to by metaphor scholars as constituting a ‘gradable’ view. The former takes metaphor as a static conceptual unit or lexical unit, but the latter tends to accord a central role of activation of metaphoricity to metaphorical expressions. To launch a theoretical advancement about the dynamic view in political discourse, chapter 3 offers a usage-based model of gradable and dynamic metaphors—the YinYang Dynamics of Metaphoricity (YYDM). In addition, this thesis investigates political metaphors from an interdisciplinary angle, incorporating theory from the field of International Relations. An empirical evaluation of political (discourse) studies in chapter 4 shows the large absence of transdisciplinary perspectives. Addressing the abovementioned gaps, this dissertation reports on two empirical analyses of trade metaphors in a big corpus that represents the official trade positions of the United States and China during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin (1993-1997) as well as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (2017-2021). Based on a codebook of a cross-linguistic metaphor identification procedure in chapter 5, the first empirical part contributes to the static and gradient perspective and includes two corpus-based studies of metaphorical framing about trade (chapters 6-7). The diachronic and cross-linguistic use of source domains from a socio-cognitive approach in chapter 6 reveals that source domains are semantic fields that vary with trade discourse contexts (interests, power, and power relations). Chapter 7 shows that the use of trade metaphors (source domains of Conventional and Novel metaphors) to construct and legitimize political ideologies correlates with differences between political genres. The second part contributes to the gradable and dynamic view by applying the transdisciplinary model of YinYang Dynamics of Metaphoricity in chapters 8-10. In chapter 8, an evaluation of the new model in the Clinton-Jiang trade discourse shows that the dynamic cognitive process (transformation of metaphoricity) and rhetorical process (argumentation and persuasion) mutually develop with the evolution of the socio-political process (trade perspectives and trade events). Chapter 9 investigates the transformation of metaphoricity in the Trump-Xi trade discourse and finds that cognitive processes (patterns of metaphoricity activation) and affective processes (emotions or sentiments) mutually develop with the evolution of socio-political processes (trade perspectives and trade events). Based on the findings in chapters 8-9, chapter 10 further shows several phenomena in the Clinton-Jiang and Trump-Xi trade discourses: the movement of metaphors on the metaphoricity spectrum, the bodily motivation of gradable and dynamic metaphoricity, and the interconnected political discourse systems. Drawing on all the theoretical and empirical insights revealed in the dissertation, the final section of the thesis outlines a future direction, i.e., moving towards a transdisciplinary and dynamic approach to metaphor in political discourse analysis

Natural Language Processing Resources for Finnish. Corpus Development in the General and Clinical Domains

Siirretty Doriast

Dual developmental mode: the top-down and bottom-up progress of language change in the Korean community of China since 1948

The language change resulting from outside contacts in the Yǒnbyǒn Korean language in China possesses distinctive characteristics. Unlike studies of language contact and change in most contexts, which often observe unidirectional contact-induced changes, the linguistic variation within the Chinese Korean community reveals a dual developmental mode. Ethnic Koreans in China have actively engaged with the Chinese language due to its sociopolitical dominance in China, resulting in significant top-down impacts on the Korean language. Conversely, the cognate Korean language has exerted an increasing influence on Yǒnbyǒn Korean speakers through a bottom-up mode. This research argues that the evolution of the Yǒnbyǒn Korean language possesses a distinctive characteristic: it can potentially be redirected and contested by social factors. Firstly, the sociopolitical landscape plays a pivotal role, exerting top-down influence stemming from modern standard Chinese. Secondly, sociocultural and economic factors, as experienced in the daily lives of ordinary Korean speakers, act as a bottom-up force, drawing influence from South Korean and English language. This research offers insights into the interplay of sociopolitical influences, sociocultural dynamics, economic forces, and individual preferences, by examining the dual developmental mode, driven by social contexts and mechanisms. The research sheds light on the contact-induced changes that affect the lexical, semantic, and structural dimensions of this minority language. The study has made methodological contributions by establishing a specialised corpus containing language data from Yǒnbyǒn Korean spanning the period between 1948 and 2020, filling a substantial gap in data related to this minority language in China that has been influenced by cross-border cognate languages. The research employs the Open-source Korean Text Processor, highlighting its appropriateness for studying the Korean language in the Chinese diaspora

Foundation, Implementation and Evaluation of the MorphoSaurus System: Subword Indexing, Lexical Learning and Word Sense Disambiguation for Medical Cross-Language Information Retrieval

Im medizinischen Alltag, zu welchem viel Dokumentations- und Recherchearbeit gehört, ist mittlerweile der überwiegende Teil textuell kodierter Information elektronisch verfügbar. Hiermit kommt der Entwicklung leistungsfähiger Methoden zur effizienten Recherche eine vorrangige Bedeutung zu. Bewertet man die Nützlichkeit gängiger Textretrievalsysteme aus dem Blickwinkel der medizinischen Fachsprache, dann mangelt es ihnen an morphologischer Funktionalität (Flexion, Derivation und Komposition), lexikalisch-semantischer Funktionalität und der Fähigkeit zu einer sprachübergreifenden Analyse großer Dokumentenbestände. In der vorliegenden Promotionsschrift werden die theoretischen Grundlagen des MorphoSaurus-Systems (ein Akronym für Morphem-Thesaurus) behandelt. Dessen methodischer Kern stellt ein um Morpheme der medizinischen Fach- und Laiensprache gruppierter Thesaurus dar, dessen Einträge mittels semantischer Relationen sprachübergreifend verknüpft sind. Darauf aufbauend wird ein Verfahren vorgestellt, welches (komplexe) Wörter in Morpheme segmentiert, die durch sprachunabhängige, konzeptklassenartige Symbole ersetzt werden. Die resultierende Repräsentation ist die Basis für das sprachübergreifende, morphemorientierte Textretrieval. Neben der Kerntechnologie wird eine Methode zur automatischen Akquise von Lexikoneinträgen vorgestellt, wodurch bestehende Morphemlexika um weitere Sprachen ergänzt werden. Die Berücksichtigung sprachübergreifender Phänomene führt im Anschluss zu einem neuartigen Verfahren zur Auflösung von semantischen Ambiguitäten. Die Leistungsfähigkeit des morphemorientierten Textretrievals wird im Rahmen umfangreicher, standardisierter Evaluationen empirisch getestet und gängigen Herangehensweisen gegenübergestellt

Proceedings

Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Editors: Markus Dickinson, Kaili Müürisep and Marco Passarotti. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 9 (2010), 268 pages. © 2010 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/15891