Inducing the Cross-Disciplinary Usage of Morphological Language Data Through Semantic Modelling

Despite the enormous technological advancements in the area of data creation and management the vast majority of language data still exists as digital single-use artefacts that are inaccessible for further research efforts. At the same time the advent of digitisation in science increased the possibilities for knowledge acquisition through the computational application of linguistic information for various disciplines. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to create the preconditions that enable the cross-disciplinary usage of morphological language data as a sub-area of linguistic data in order to induce a shared reusability for every research area that relies on such data. This involves the provision of morphological data on the Web under an open license and needs to take the prevalent diversity of data compilation into account. Various representation standards emerged across single disciplines which lead to heterogeneous data that differs with regard to complexity, scope and data formats. This situation requires a unifying foundation enabling direct reusability. As a solution to fill the gap of missing open data and to overcome the presence of isolated datasets a semantic data modelling approach is applied. Being rooted in the Linked Open Data (LOD) paradigm it pursues the creation of data as uniquely identifiable resources that are realised as URIs, accessible on the Web, available under an open license, interlinked with other resources, and adhere to Linked Data representation standards such as the RDF format. Each resource then contributes to the LOD cloud in which they are all interconnected. This unification results from ontologically shared bases that formally define the classification of resources and their relation to other resources in a semantically interoperable manner. Subsequently, the possibility of creating semantically structured data has sparked the formation of the Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) research community and LOD sub-cloud containing primarily language resources. Over the last decade, ontologies emerged mainly for the domain of lexical language data which lead to a significant increase in Linked Data-based linguistic datasets. However, an equivalent model for morphological data is still missing, leading to a lack of this type of language data within the LLOD cloud. This thesis presents six publications that are concerned with the peculiarities of morphological data and the exploration of their semantic representation as an enabler of cross-disciplinary reuse. The Multilingual Morpheme Ontology (MMoOn Core) as well as an architectural framework for morphemic dataset creation as RDF resources are proposed as the first comprehensive domain representation model adhering to the LOD paradigm. It will be shown that MMoOn Core permits the joint representation of heterogeneous data sources such as interlinear glossed texts, inflection tables, the outputs of morphological analysers, lists of morphemic glosses or word-formation rules which are all equally labelled as “morphological data” across different research areas. Evidence for the applicability and adequacy of the semantic modelling entailed by the MMoOn Core ontology is provided by two datasets that were transformed from tabular data into RDF: the Hebrew Morpheme Inventory and Xhosa RDF dataset. Both further demonstrate how their integration into the LLOD cloud - by interlinking them with external language resources - yields insights that could not be obtained from the initial source data. Altogether the research conducted in this thesis establishes the foundation for an interoperable data exchange and the enrichment of morphological language data. It strives to achieve the broader goal of advancing language data-driven research by overcoming data barriers and discipline boundaries

A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM SIGNED LANGUAGES

This dissertation uses corpus data from ASL and Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), to investigate the distribution of a series of static and dynamic handshapes across the two languages. While traditional phonological frameworks argue handshape distribution to be a facet of well-formedness constraints and articulatory ease (Brentari, 1998), the data analyzed here suggests that the majority of handshapes cluster around schematic form-meaning mappings. Furthermore, these schematic mappings are shown to be motivated by both language-internal and language-external construals of formal articulatory properties and embodied experiential gestalts. Usage-based approaches to phonology (Bybee, 2001) and cognitively oriented constructional approaches (Langacker, 1987) have recognized that phonology is not modular. Instead, phonology is expected to interact with all levels of grammar, including semantic association. In this dissertation I begin to develop a cognitive model of phonology which views phonological content as similar in kind to other constructional units of language. I argue that, because formal units of linguistic structure emerge from the extraction of commonalities across usage events, phonological form is not immune from an accumulation of semantic associations. Finally, I demonstrate that appealing to such approaches allows one to account for both idiosyncratic, unconventionalized mappings seen in creative language use, as well as motivation in highly conventionalized form-meaning associations

Syllable-based constraints on properties of English sounds

Also issued as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1989.Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-174).Work sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research. N00014-82-K-0727Mark A. Randolph

Essential Speech and Language Technology for Dutch: Results by the STEVIN-programme

Computational Linguistics; Germanic Languages; Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics); Computing Methodologie

The effects of semantic clustering in L2 word learning : evidence from an action research study. Vol.1.

In recent years, contradictory advice to teachers has been emerging from studies into the use of semantic links or networks in classroom materials and activities for vocabulary learning in a L2. There is some experimental evidence which suggests that learning semantically related words (e.g., body parts) at the same time makes learning more difficult (Tinkham, 1993, 1997; Waring, 1997; Finkbeiner, Nicol, 2003). There is also a theoretical framework that strongly supports the idea that it is very useful to present words of related meaning together so that learners can see the distinctions between them and gain a complete coverage of the defined area of meaning (Channell, 1981, 1990; Neuner, 1992; Dunbar, 1992). The following paradox appears: while the experimental evidence suggests that semantically related vocabulary does not help vocabulary learning, the EFL coursebook-writers present vocabulary in semantic clusters. The experimental evidence mainly derives from research using artificial language and not a natural L2. The purpose of our research is to investigate which of the two contrasting views will prove to be a useful tool in L2 vocabulary learning. The present study was influenced by action research. It was conducted in EFL classrooms with natural learners in Greece. The subjects were 31 intermediate EFL children and 32 beginners EFL adults. Two different ways of organizing new vocabulary for presentation were employed: a) presenting semantically related words (topic-related vocabulary i.e. mugging, terrorism,jorgery, synonyms, antonyms or homonyms) together at the same time, and b) presenting vocabulary in an unrelated fashion (i.e. carpenter, tornado, sage). Short and long-term tests were administered to the students. The presentation will focus on the main conclusion that semantically related vocabulary impedes L2 vocabulary learning. Adult beginners performed significantly better on the unrelated vocabulary test compared to their performance on the related vocabulary test. Word frequency (in language) when combined with unrelated presentation of new L2 vocabulary appears to make a difference in students' performance