Exploring automatic text-to-sign translation in a healthcare setting

Communication between healthcare professionals and deaf patients has been particularly challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have explored the possibility to automatically translate phrases that are frequently used in the diagnosis and treatment of hospital patients, in particular phrases related to COVID-19, from Dutch or English to Dutch Sign Language (NGT). The prototype system we developed displays translations either by means of pre-recorded videos featuring a deaf human signer (for a limited number of sentences) or by means of animations featuring a computer-generated signing avatar (for a larger, though still restricted number of sentences). We evaluated the comprehensibility of the signing avatar, as compared to the human signer. We found that, while individual signs are recognized correctly when signed by the avatar almost as frequently as when signed by a human, sentence comprehension rates and clarity scores for the avatar are substantially lower than for the human signer. We identify a number of concrete limitations of the JASigning avatar engine that underlies our system. Namely, the engine currently does not offer sufficient control over mouth shapes, the relative speed and intensity of signs in a sentence (prosody), and transitions between signs. These limitations need to be overcome in future work for the engine to become usable in practice.</p

The comparative and degree pluralities

Quantifiers in phrasal and clausal comparatives often seem to take distributive scope in the matrix clause: for instance, the sentence John is taller than every girl is is true iff for every girl it holds that John is taller than that girl. Broadly speaking, two approaches exist that derive this reading without postulating the (problematic) wide scope of the quantifier: the negation analysis and the interval analysis of than-clauses. We propose a modification of the interval analysis in which than-clauses are not treated as degree intervals but as degree pluralities. This small change has significant consequences: it yields a straightforward account of differentials in comparatives and it correctly predicts the existence of hitherto unnoticed readings, viz. cumulative readings of clausal comparatives. Finally, this paper also makes the case that using degree pluralities is conceptually appealing: it allows us to restrict the analysis of comparatives by mechanisms that are postulated independently in the semantics of pluralities

Drought tolerance of land races of emmer wheat in comparison to soft wheat

As water deficiency becomes a more frequent cause of the reduction in wheat yield levels, the search for donors of drought tolerance to be bred into adapted land races becomes urgent. Drought tolerance has been evaluated by the 13 C discrimination method in six land races of emmer wheat ( Triticum dicoccum SCHRANK), compared with land races, obsolete cultivars and modern varieties of soft wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.). The results of a two-year trial show that most of the genetic resources of emmer wheat, and intermediate land races of wheat are predisposed to drought tolerance. These varieties respond to dry conditions more sensitively, as they close their pores earlier (a lower value of the discrimination of 13 C isotope). As for other land races and the top modern varieties of soft wheat, they are not thought to be predisposed to drought tolerance and their crop stands are liable to serious damage