The grammar of negative polarity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1980.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES.Bibliography: leaves 256-259.by Marcia Christine Linebarger.Ph.D

Informativeness Ratings of Messages Created on an AAC Processing Prosthesis

The SentenceShaperTM is an AAC processing prosthesis that supports spoken language production in aphasia. Prior research comparing narratives produced on and off the system (aided vs. unaided) found that the aided utterances were longer and showed more grammatical structure. Here we show that the “aided effect” also manifests in greater informativeness of messages with functional content. Thirteen unfamiliar listeners used direct magnitude estimation to rate the informativeness of functional narratives produced by five chronic aphasic participants on and off the SentenceShaper. In support of an aided effect, the narratives of four participants were judged more informative in the aided condition

“The Words Get Stuck in My Brain. It Helps Me Get Them Out:” Perspectives on an AAC Aid from Persons with Aphasia

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices carry risk of avoidance or abandonment by persons with aphasia (PWA). Practice in a controlled setting can offset such risks and establish the context for attitudes assessment as a prelude to real-world deployment. This paper reports on an attitudes assessment carried out with seven PWA following extended practice with SentenceShaper To Go, a high flexibility AAC aid now featuring portability. Aphasia-tailored individual interviews were conducted and analyzed by qualitative methods. Results elucidate attitudes towards this AAC aid and, by extension, others with similar properties

Speech and Language

This chapter introduces speech and language from a clinical speech and language therapy perspective. It describes key challenges that can impact upon speech and language with a focus on the needs of individuals with aphasia, an acquired language disorder. The spe-cific impact that aphasia may have upon Web accessibility is dis-cussed with reference to existing work which illuminates what we currently do and do not know about speech, language and Web ac-cessibility. The authors provide guidance for accommodating the needs of users with aphasia within the design of Web interactions and propose future directions for development and research

A portable approach to last resort parsing and interpretation

This paper describes an approach to robust processing which is domain-independent in its design, yet which can easily take advantage of domain-specific information. Robust processing is well-integrated into standard processing in this approach, requiring essentially only a single new BNF rule in the grammar. We describe the results of implementing this approach in two different domains. 1

Sentence Fragments Regular Structures

This paper describes an analysis of telegraphic fragments as regular structures (not errors) handled by rn~n~nal extensions to a system designed for processing the standard language. The modular approach which has been implemented in the Unlsys natural language processing system PUNDIT is based on a division of labor in which syntax regulates the occurrence and distribution of elided elements, and semantics and pragumtics use the system's standard mechankms to interpret them. 1