Modernism’s Rubber Sole

A review of David Trotter, Literature in the First Media Age: Britain between the Wars (Harvard University Press, 2013)

A Formal Framework for Linguistic Annotation

`Linguistic annotation' covers any descriptive or analytic notations applied to raw language data. The basic data may be in the form of time functions -- audio, video and/or physiological recordings -- or it may be textual. The added notations may include transcriptions of all sorts (from phonetic features to discourse structures), part-of-speech and sense tagging, syntactic analysis, `named entity' identification, co-reference annotation, and so on. While there are several ongoing efforts to provide formats and tools for such annotations and to publish annotated linguistic databases, the lack of widely accepted standards is becoming a critical problem. Proposed standards, to the extent they exist, have focussed on file formats. This paper focuses instead on the logical structure of linguistic annotations. We survey a wide variety of existing annotation formats and demonstrate a common conceptual core, the annotation graph. This provides a formal framework for constructing, maintaining and searching linguistic annotations, while remaining consistent with many alternative data structures and file formats.Comment: 49 page

Annotation graphs as a framework for multidimensional linguistic data analysis

In recent work we have presented a formal framework for linguistic annotation based on labeled acyclic digraphs. These `annotation graphs' offer a simple yet powerful method for representing complex annotation structures incorporating hierarchy and overlap. Here, we motivate and illustrate our approach using discourse-level annotations of text and speech data drawn from the CALLHOME, COCONUT, MUC-7, DAMSL and TRAINS annotation schemes. With the help of domain specialists, we have constructed a hybrid multi-level annotation for a fragment of the Boston University Radio Speech Corpus which includes the following levels: segment, word, breath, ToBI, Tilt, Treebank, coreference and named entity. We show how annotation graphs can represent hybrid multi-level structures which derive from a diverse set of file formats. We also show how the approach facilitates substantive comparison of multiple annotations of a single signal based on different theoretical models. The discussion shows how annotation graphs open the door to wide-ranging integration of tools, formats and corpora.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Towards Standards and Tools for Discourse Tagging, Proceedings of the Workshop. pp. 1-10. Association for Computational Linguistic

Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning

Recent critiques of management and teacher education curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnection between the de-contextualised, formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in university programs and the messy, ill-structured nature of practice. At the same time research into professional expertise suggests that its development requires bringing together different forms of knowledge and the integration of formal and non-formal learning with the development of cognitive flexibility. Such complex learning outcomes are unlikely to be achieved through a 'knowledge transmission' approach to curriculum design. In this article we argue that in many ways current higher education practices create barriers to developing ways of knowing which can underpin the formation of expertise. Using examples from two practice-focused distance learning courses, we explore the role of distance learning in enabling a dialogue between academic and workplace learning and the use of 'practice dialogues' among course participants to enable integration of learning experiences. Finally, we argue that we need to find ways in higher education of enabling students to engage in relevant communities of expertise, rather than drawing them principally into a community of academic discourse which is not well aligned with practice

What Do Freshmen Really Know about Research? Assess before You Teach

The article describes an effort to assess the information literacy skills of entering first-year college students. An instrument was developed and information was gathered on students\u27 experience and comfort in conducting library research as well as their perceived competence with specific information literacy skills. In addition, students completed a skills test to assess specific knowledge and skills relating to information literacy. Entering first-year students generally self-reported their skills to be less than excellent. This finding was supported by the results of the skills test. Strengths and weaknesses in information literacy skills are reported, as well as implications for librarians who assess and teach these skills to students

Almost Split Morphisms, Preprojective Algebras and Multiplication Maps of Maximal Rank

With a grading previously introduced by the second-named author, the multiplication maps in the preprojective algebra satisfy a maximal rank property that is similar to the maximal rank property proven by Hochster and Laksov for the multiplication maps in the commutative polynomial ring. The result follows from a more general theorem about the maximal rank property of a minimal almost split morphism, which also yields a quadratic inequality for the dimensions of indecomposable modules involved

A Descriptive Analysis of the Retail Real Estate Markets at the Metropolitan Level

Gross Leasable Area (GLA) per capita is a commonly used measure to compare the retail market potential across different retail real estate markets. This study uses GLA per capita to assess the supply of the retail space across fifty-eight metropolitan areas in the United States. After a detailed descriptive analysis of the supply of retail space, we estimate GLA per capita for each metropolitan area using a modified version of the stock adjustment model. Initial findings indicate that the retail construction boom of the 1980s was not a boom at all and that GLA per capita can be predicted using a multi-factor model

Has risk management in private equity kept pace with rapid growth?

The Federal Reserve System's Private Equity Merchant Banking Knowledge Center, formed at the Chicago Fed in 2000 after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was passed, sponsors an annual conference on new industry developments. This article summarizes the 2007 conference, Private Equity Has Gone Big... Has Risk Management Kept Pace?, held August 2-3.Risk management

Navigating the new world of private equity - a conference summary

The Federal Reserve System's Private Equity Merchant Banking Knowledge Center, formed at the Chicago Fed in 2000 shortly after the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, sponsors an annual conference on new industry developments. This article summarizes the 2008 conference held on July 9 - 10.Private equity ; Investments

Challenges for private equity—the shifting wind of risk

The Federal Reserve System’s Private Equity and Merchant Banking Knowledge Center, formed at the Chicago Fed in 2000 after the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, sponsors an annual conference on new industry developments. This article summarizes the 2006 conference, “The Shifting Winds of Private Equity Risk,” held July 19–20.