Semantic transfer in Verbmobil

This paper is a detailed discussion of semantic transfer in the context of the Verbmobil Machine Translation project. The use of semantic transfer as a translation mechanism is introduced and justified by comparison with alternative approaches. Some criteria for evaluation of transfer frameworks are discussed and a comparison is made of three different approaches to the representation of translation rules or equivalences. This is followed by a discussion of control of application of transfer rules and interaction with a domain description and inference component

Case selection for robust generalisation in impact evaluation:lessons from QuIP impact evaluation studies

What wider lessons can be drawn from a single impact evaluation study? This article examines how case study and source selection contribute to useful generalisation. Practical suggestions for making these decisions are drawn from a set of qualitative impact studies. Generalising about impact is a deliberative process of building, testing and refining useful theories about how change happens. To serve this goal, purposive selection can support more credible generalisation than random selection by systematically and transparently drawing upon prior knowledge of variation in actions, contexts, and outcomes to test theory against diverse, deviant and anomalous cases

The effect of pre-exposure on family resemblance categorization for stimuli of varying levels of perceptual difficulty

This study investigated the effect that pre-exposure to a set of stimuli has on the prevalence of family resemblance categorization. 64 participants were tested to examine the effect that pre-exposure type (same-stimuli vs unrelated-stimuli) and the perceptual difficulty of the stimuli (perceptually similar vs perceptually different) has on categorization strategy. There was a significant effect of perceptual difficulty, indicating that perceptually different stimuli evoked a higher level of family resemblance sorting than perceptually similar stimuli. There was no significant main effect of pre-exposure type; however, there was a significant interaction between pre-exposure type and level of perceptual difficulty. Post-hoc tests revealed that this interaction was the result of an increase in family resemblance sorting for the perceptually different stimuli under relevant preexposure but no such effect for perceptually similar stimuli. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed

Behind the aid brand: Distinguishing between development finance and assistance

International aid is often analysed as if it was a homogeneous product exclusively distributed between a relatively small numbers of public agencies. In contrast, this paper contributes to thinking about aid as a quasi-market with many different suppliers, users, channels, products and brands. More specifically, it suggests drawing a stronger distinction between development finance and development assistance. A simple graph shows how this entails distinguishing between social impact and financial sustainability. Given that these characteristics are often far from transparent, the paper also illustrates the limitations of a rational choice approach to analysing aid. The difficulties entailed in assessing aid impact and sustainability help to explain why brand reputations matter. The argument is illustrated with references to UK aid, aid to Ethiopia, and NGO promotion of smallholder linkages into agricultural value chains in Africa. Key words: International aid; Brands; Development finance; Development assistance; Social impact; Financial sustainability; Smallholder agriculture; NGOs; Ethiop

Functional Distributional Semantics

Vector space models have become popular in distributional semantics, despite the challenges they face in capturing various semantic phenomena. We propose a novel probabilistic framework which draws on both formal semantics and recent advances in machine learning. In particular, we separate predicates from the entities they refer to, allowing us to perform Bayesian inference based on logical forms. We describe an implementation of this framework using a combination of Restricted Boltzmann Machines and feedforward neural networks. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by training it on a parsed corpus and evaluating it on established similarity datasets

Postdoctoral scholarships to promote careers in development studies:CDS experience and wider issues

Since 2012, the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Bath has employed six post-doctoral research fellows on successive two-year contracts, funded by a private donation from an alumnus. This paper draws on this experience to reflect on how to support development studies research activities and careers. It reaffirms the case for helping promising early career researchers to build upon and move beyond their doctoral work, the value of research autonomy at this stage, and balancing research autonomy with membership of relevant specialist clusters and networks

Afterglow? The long-term influence of development finance institutions on firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies.

The paper enquires into the long-term effect of development finance institutions (DFI) on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies of companies in which they have invested. It does this through a review of secondary data on the ESG policies of ten companies operating in Africa and India that were recipients of investment from CDC, the DFI owned by the UK government. We find that most of these companies did invest in and maintain ESG initiatives, and two may also have affected the adoption of ESG policies by larger organisations that took them over. But while this is consistent with the hypothesis that CDC can contribute to strengthening ESG policies (particularly through equity investment) the evidence was mostly circumstantial rather than explicit. To help fill this evidence gap we suggest that CDC and other DFIs can be more open about the ESG goals linked to specific investments, and investees about what they subsequently do. And while it may still be almost impossible to establish causal links between DFIs and ESG activities statistically, there is scope for producing stronger evidence of the link using qualitative impact evaluation methods