The effect of the use of T and V pronouns in Dutch HR communication

In an online experiment among native speakers of Dutch we measured addressees' responses to emails written in the informal pronoun T or the formal pronoun V in HR communication. 172 participants (61 male, mean age 37 years) read either the V-versions or the T-versions of two invitation emails and two rejection emails by four different fictitious recruiters. After each email, participants had to score their appreciation of the company and the recruiter on five different scales each, such as The recruiter who wrote this email seems … [scale from friendly to unfriendly]. We hypothesized that (i) the V-pronoun would be more appreciated in letters of rejection, and the T-pronoun in letters of invitation, and (ii) older people would appreciate the V-pronoun more than the T-pronoun, and the other way around for younger people. Although neither of these hypotheses was supported, we did find a small effect of pronoun: Emails written in V were more highly appreciated than emails in T, irrespective of type of email (invitation or rejection), and irrespective of the participant's age, gender, and level of education. At the same time, we observed differences in the strength of this effect across different scales

Processing prescriptively incorrect comparative particles: Evidence from sentence-matching and eye-tracking

Speakers of a language sometimes use particular constructions which violate prescriptive grammar rules. Despite their prescriptive ungrammaticality, they can occur rather frequently. One such example is the comparative construction in Dutch and similarly in German, where the equative particle is used in comparative constructions instead of the prescriptively correct comparative particle (Dutch beter als Jan and German besser wie Jan ‘lit. better as John’). From a theoretical linguist’s point of view, these so-called grammatical norm violations are perfectly grammatical, even though they are not part of the language’s prescriptive grammar. In a series of three experiments using sentence-matching and eye-tracking methodology, we investigated whether grammatical norm violations are processed as truly grammatical, as truly ungrammatical, or whether they fall in between these two. We hypothesized that the latter would be the case. We analyzed our data using linear mixed effects models in order to capture possible individual differences. The results of the sentence-matching experiments, which were conducted in both Dutch and German, showed that the grammatical norm violation patterns with ungrammatical sentences in both languages. Our hypothesis was therefore not borne out. However, using the more sensitive eye-tracking method on Dutch speakers only, we found that the ungrammatical alternative leads to higher reading times than the grammatical norm violation. We also found significant individual variation regarding this very effect. We furthermore replicated the processing difference between the grammatical norm violation and the prescriptively correct variant. In summary, we conclude that while the results of the more sensitive eye-tracking experiment suggest that grammatical norm violations are not processed on a par with ungrammatical sentences, the results of all three experiments clearly show that grammatical norm violations cannot be considered grammatical, either

The applicability of dip moveout/azimuth moveout in the presence of caustics

Reflection seismic data continuation is the computation of data at source and receiver locations that differ from those in the original data, using whatever data are available. We develop a general theory of data continuation in the presence of caustics and illustrate it with three examples: dip moveout (DMO), azimuth moveout (AMO), and offset continuation. This theory does not require knowledge of the reflector positions. We construct the output data set from the input through the composition of three operators: an imaging operator, a modeling operator, and a restriction operator. This results in a single operator that maps directly from the input data to the desired output data. We use the calculus of Fourier integral operators to develop this theory in the presence of caustics. For both DMO and AMO, we compute impulse responses in a constant-velocity model and in a more complicated model in which caustics arise. This analysis reveals errors that can be introduced by assuming, for example, a model with a constant vertical velocity gradient when the true model is laterally heterogeneous. Data continuation uses as input a subset (common offset, common angle) of the available data, which may introduce artifacts in the continued data. One could suppress these artifacts by stacking over a neighborhood of input data (using a small range of offsets or angles, for example). We test data continuation on synthetic data from a model known to generate imaging artifacts. We show that stacking over input scattering angles suppresses artifacts in the continued data

Effects of structure and meaning on cortical tracking of linguistic units in naturalistic speech

Recent research has established that cortical activity “tracks” the presentation rate of syntactic phrases in continuous speech, even though phrases are abstract units that do not have direct correlates in the acoustic signal. We investigated whether cortical tracking of phrase structures is modulated by the extent to which these structures compositionally determine meaning. To this end, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) of 38 native speakers who listened to naturally spoken Dutch stimuli in different conditions, which parametrically modulated the degree to which syntactic structure and lexical semantics determine sentence meaning. Tracking was quantified through mutual information between the EEG data and either the speech envelopes or abstract annotations of syntax, all of which were filtered in the frequency band corresponding to the presentation rate of phrases (1.1–2.1 Hz). Overall, these mutual information analyses showed stronger tracking of phrases in regular sentences than in stimuli whose lexical-syntactic content is reduced, but no consistent differences in tracking between sentences and stimuli that contain a combination of syntactic structure and lexical content. While there were no effects of compositional meaning on the degree of phrase-structure tracking, analyses of event-related potentials elicited by sentence-final words did reveal meaning-induced differences between conditions. Our findings suggest that cortical tracking of structure in sentences indexes the internal generation of this structure, a process that is modulated by the properties of its input, but not by the compositional interpretation of its output

Masculine generic pronouns as a gender cue in generic statements

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted with speakers of Dutch (N = 84, 36 male), a language that falls between grammatical and natural-gender languages. We tested whether a masculine generic pronoun causes a male bias when used in generic statements—that is, in the absence of a specific referent. We tested two types of generic statements by varying conceptual number, hypothesizing that the pronoun zijn “his” was more likely to cause a male bias with a conceptually singular than a conceptually plural ante-cedent (e.g., Someone (conceptually singular)/Everyone (conceptually plural) with perfect pitch can tune his instrument quickly). We found male participants to exhibit a male bias but with the conceptually singular antecedent only. Female participants showed no signs of a male bias. The results show that the generically intended masculine pronoun zijn “his” leads to a male bias in conceptually singular generic contexts but that this further depends on participant gender

Structure-(in)dependent interpretation of phrases in humans and LSTMs

In this study, we compared the performance of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network to the behavior of human participants on a language task that requires hierarchically structured knowledge. We show that humans interpret ambiguous noun phrases, such as second blue ball, in line with their hierarchical constituent structure. LSTMs, instead, only do so after unambiguous training, and they do not systematically generalize to novel items. Overall, the results of our simulations indicate that a model can behave hierarchically without relying on hierarchical constituent structure

Hierarchy in language interpretation: Evidence from behavioural experiments and computational modelling

It has long been recognised that phrases and sentences are organised hierarchically, but many computational models of language treat them as sequences of words without computing constituent structure. Against this background, we conducted two experiments which showed that participants interpret ambiguous noun phrases, such as second blue ball, in terms of their abstract hierarchical structure rather than their linear surface order. When a neural network model was tested on this task, it could simulate such “hierarchical” behaviour. However, when we changed the training data such that they were not entirely unambiguous anymore, the model stopped generalising in a human-like way. It did not systematically generalise to novel items, and when it was trained on ambiguous trials, it strongly favoured the linear interpretation. We argue that these models should be endowed with a bias to make generalisations over hierarchical structure in order to be cognitively adequate models of human language

Parameter identification in a semilinear hyperbolic system

We consider the identification of a nonlinear friction law in a one-dimensional damped wave equation from additional boundary measurements. Well-posedness of the governing semilinear hyperbolic system is established via semigroup theory and contraction arguments. We then investigte the inverse problem of recovering the unknown nonlinear damping law from additional boundary measurements of the pressure drop along the pipe. This coefficient inverse problem is shown to be ill-posed and a variational regularization method is considered for its stable solution. We prove existence of minimizers for the Tikhonov functional and discuss the convergence of the regularized solutions under an approximate source condition. The meaning of this condition and some arguments for its validity are discussed in detail and numerical results are presented for illustration of the theoretical findings

Convergence Rates for Learning Linear Operators from Noisy Data

This paper studies the learning of linear operators between infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. The training data comprises pairs of random input vectors in a Hilbert space and their noisy images under an unknown self-adjoint linear operator. Assuming that the operator is diagonalizable in a known basis, this work solves the equivalent inverse problem of estimating the operator's eigenvalues given the data. Adopting a Bayesian approach, the theoretical analysis establishes posterior contraction rates in the infinite data limit with Gaussian priors that are not directly linked to the forward map of the inverse problem. The main results also include learning-theoretic generalization error guarantees for a wide range of distribution shifts. These convergence rates quantify the effects of data smoothness and true eigenvalue decay or growth, for compact or unbounded operators, respectively, on sample complexity. Numerical evidence supports the theory in diagonal and non-diagonal settings.Comment: To appear in SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification (JUQ); 34 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Retrofocusing of Acoustic Wave Fields by Iterated Time Reversal

In the present paper an iterative time-reversal algorithm, that retrofocuses an acoustic wave field to its controllable part is established. For a fixed temporal support, i.e., transducer excitation time, the algorithm generates an optimal retrofocusing in the least-squares sense. Thus the iterative time-reversal algorithm reduces the temporal support of the excitation from the requirement of negligible remaining energy to the requirement of controllability. The timereversal retrofocusing is analyzed from a boundary control perspective where time reversal is used to steer the acoustic wave field towards a desired state. The wave field is controlled by transducers located at subsets of the boundary, i.e., the controllable part of the boundary. The time-reversal cavity and time-reversal mirror cases are analyzed. In the cavity case, the transducers generate a locally plane wave in the fundamental mode through a set of ducts. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the convergence of the iterative time-reversal algorithm. In the mirror case, a homogeneous half space is considered. For this case the analytic expression for the retrofocused wave field is given for finite temporal support. It is shown that the mirror case does not have the same degree of steering as the cavity case. It is also shown that the pressure can be perfectly retrofocused for infinite temporal support. Two examples are given that indicate that the influence of the evanescent part of the wave field is small