The company that words keep: comparing the statistical structure of child- versus adult-directed language

Does child-directed language differ from adult-directed language in ways that might facilitate word learning? Associative structure (the probability that a word appears with its free associates), contextual diversity, word repetitions and frequency were compared longitudinally across six language corpora, with four corpora of language directed at children aged 1 ; 0 to 5 ; 0, and two adult-directed corpora representing spoken and written language. Statistics were adjusted relative to shuffled corpora. Child-directed language was found to be more associative, repetitive and consistent than adult-directed language. Moreover, these statistical properties of child-directed language better predicted word acquisition than the same statistics in adult-directed language. Word frequency and repetitions were the best predictors within word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives and function words). For all word classes combined, associative structure, contextual diversity and word repetitions best predicted language acquisition. These results support the hypothesis that child-directed language is structured in ways that facilitate language acquisition

Economics and Engineering for Preserving Digital Content

Progress towards practical long-term preservation seems to be stalled. Preservationists cannot afford specially developed technology, but must exploit what is created for the marketplace. Economic and technical facts suggest that most preservation ork should be shifted from repository institutions to information producers and consumers. Prior publications describe solutions for all known conceptual challenges of preserving a single digital object, but do not deal with software development or scaling to large collections. Much of the document handling software needed is available. It has, however, not yet been selected, adapted, integrated, or deployed for digital preservation. The daily tools of both information producers and information consumers can be extended to embed preservation packaging without much burdening these users. We describe a practical strategy for detailed design and implementation. Document handling is intrinsically complicated because of human sensitivity to communication nuances. Our engineering section therefore starts by discussing how project managers can master the many pertinent details.

Multimodalities in Metadata: Gaia Gate

Metadata is information about objects. Existing metadata standards seldom describe details concerning an object’s context within an environment; this thesis proposes a new concept, external contextual metadata (ECM), examining metadata, digital photography, and mobile interface theory as context for a proposed multimodal framework of media that expresses the internal and external qualities of the digital object and how they might be employed in various use cases. The framework is binded to a digital image as a singular object. Information contained in these ‘images’ can then be processed by a renderer application to reinterpret the context that the image was captured, including non-visually. Two prototypes are developed through the process of designing a renderer for the new multimodal data framework: a proof-of-concept application and a demonstration of ‘figurative’ execution (titled ‘Gaia Gate’), followed by a critical design analysis of the resulting products

Metadata enrichment for digital heritage: users as co-creators

This paper espouses the concept of metadata enrichment through an expert and user-focused approach to metadata creation and management. To this end, it is argued the Web 2.0 paradigm enables users to be proactive metadata creators. As Shirky (2008, p.47) argues Web 2.0’s social tools enable “action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive”. Lagoze (2010, p. 37) advises, “the participatory nature of Web 2.0 should not be dismissed as just a popular phenomenon [or fad]”. Carletti (2016) proposes a participatory digital cultural heritage approach where Web 2.0 approaches such as crowdsourcing can be sued to enrich digital cultural objects. It is argued that “heritage crowdsourcing, community-centred projects or other forms of public participation”. On the other hand, the new collaborative approaches of Web 2.0 neither negate nor replace contemporary standards-based metadata approaches. Hence, this paper proposes a mixed metadata approach where user created metadata augments expert-created metadata and vice versa. The metadata creation process no longer remains to be the sole prerogative of the metadata expert. The Web 2.0 collaborative environment would now allow users to participate in both adding and re-using metadata. The case of expert-created (standards-based, top-down) and user-generated metadata (socially-constructed, bottom-up) approach to metadata are complementary rather than mutually-exclusive. The two approaches are often mistakenly considered as dichotomies, albeit incorrectly (Gruber, 2007; Wright, 2007) . This paper espouses the importance of enriching digital information objects with descriptions pertaining the about-ness of information objects. Such richness and diversity of description, it is argued, could chiefly be achieved by involving users in the metadata creation process. This paper presents the importance of the paradigm of metadata enriching and metadata filtering for the cultural heritage domain. Metadata enriching states that a priori metadata that is instantiated and granularly structured by metadata experts is continually enriched through socially-constructed (post-hoc) metadata, whereby users are pro-actively engaged in co-creating metadata. The principle also states that metadata that is enriched is also contextually and semantically linked and openly accessible. In addition, metadata filtering states that metadata resulting from implementing the principle of enriching should be displayed for users in line with their needs and convenience. In both enriching and filtering, users should be considered as prosumers, resulting in what is called collective metadata intelligence

Cognitive animacy and its relation to linguistic animacy: Evidence from Japanese and Persian

Animacy, commonly defined as the distinction between living and non-living entities, is a useful notion in cognitive science and linguistics employed to describe and predict variation in psychological and linguistic behaviour. In the (psycho)linguistics literature we find linguistic animacy dichotomies which are (implicitly) assumed to correspond to biological dichotomies. We argue this is problematic, as it leaves us without a cognitively grounded, universal description for non-prototypical cases. We show that ‘animacy’ in language can be better understood as universally emerging from a gradual, cognitive property by collecting animacy ratings for a great range of nouns from Japanese and Persian. We used these cognitive ratings in turn to predict linguistic variation in these languages traditionally explained through dichotomous distinctions. We show that whilst (speakers of) languages may subtly differ in their conceptualisation of animacy, universality may be found in the process of mapping conceptual animacy to linguistic variation

Proposition of pedagogical element in Learning Object metadata

Learning object metadata (LOM) is a method used to identify and describe learning object behaviour, function and used. Metadata in particular is used specifically to assist in retrieving any forms of digital objects available on the network, as such the advance based searching used in most search engines is often referred to as metadata based searching or metadata retrieval method. As learning object (LO) is a form of digital object, evidently metadata is also recognised as the method used in accessing and retrieving LO. Therefore in achieving good search results, it is pre-eminent to determine the element details that would be beneficial to users. This leads to the importance of identifying specific metadata elements needed to describe learning object, in which IEEE LTSC had taken the initiative to establish the LOM standard. The IEEE LOM standard derived has 77 metadata elements distributed among nine categories. Although the standard is widely adopted among LO practitioners and researchers world wide, currently it is highly debated that the existing LOM standard is lack of contextual and pedagogical elements. Researchers argued that existing elements on IEEE LOM do not address all aspects of LO context and the elements are merely used as a means for discovering, sharing and reusing LO. Although measures have been taken by various research groups in the American and European region to include new metadata elements to address context and pedagogical issues, these are still insufficient as most are centred to be of service to a specific learning environment or to the patron organisation. This initiate the current work to provide more general based metadata elements as such context level is enhanced and pedagogical role is included in LOM elements. The determination of new metadata element that addresses context and pedagogical role involves identification of related theories, in which these are analysed thoroughly through comparison and adaptability aspects. As a result a new extended element is proposed and it is currently being used in MELOR (Malaysian Educational Learning Object Repository). It is belief that the element proposed is able to assist users in searching specific objects tailored to their needs and also add pedagogical and context values into LOM and LO specifically. (Authors' abstract

Digital Public Space and the Creative Exchange: a Human-centred Approach to the Common Good

This keynote conference contribution, selected for the 5th International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication (University of Nicosia, 3-15 June 2013), and published in expanded form on the website http://www.ictvc.org/en/, examines current definitions of, and attitudes towards, the Digital Public Space. The research is innovative in setting out a holistic visualisation of key social, economic and technological models underpinning the Digital Public Space, and examining potential ways in which future human interactions and behaviours might be construed within such a framework. The article builds on research undertaken through the Creative Exchange, a £4m Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Creative Economy. This research focuses on two areas, ‘designing the digital public space’ and ‘dynamic structures for growth’, led by Brody with researchers based at the RCA, Lancaster and Newcastle Universities. The text was co-written with John Fass, who contributed research insights in areas of constructionism, narrativity, physical and digital interfaces, and computational thinking, working with Brody to frame key issues raised in the article. The underpinning research was also disseminated through keynote presentations focusing on the modelling of the Digital Public Space and related ethical issues at AHRC ‘Creative Exchange’ events in Manchester and London (2012 - 2013). Drawing on debates associated with ownership, protection, privacy, social applications and governance, the article presents key questions for interrogating contemporary attitudes to the creation and dissemination of human knowledge mediated by digital technologies. Through this approach, the article examines specific issues such as inclusion, learning, community cohesion, memory and social identity, and grounds these in relation to contemporary and historical thought. By expanding current applications of physical, biological and computational models to broadcasting, publishing, exchanging and cataloguing data, the article explores the potential for new approaches to dynamic information, self-organising knowledge spaces, and narrative forms of communication