Computational prediction of Greek Nominal Allomorphy

In Theoretical Morphology, an interest in the topic of stem allomorphy has been renewed the last two decades. On the other hand, the computational treatment of allomorphy is still a huge challenge since the first systematic attempts on predicting allomorphy with machine learning techniques. The goals of this paper are to predict the allomorphic changes and to show the essential contribution of various morphological, phonological and semantic characteristics. Therefore, we use a MaxEnt model to identify the weights of these characteristics that are directly dependent on allomorphy and help design a predictive model. Our model is based on AMIS and its overall accuracy was 86.49%. To improve the system, we tried a more rational approach to achieve a better performance (the correct prediction was raised to 91.43%)

The effectiveness of learning a foreign language via a distance learning tool: Τesting the Duolingo application

This research is conducted to explore the effectiveness of studying online. Among the distance learning practices there is the Duolingo application to help users learn a foreign language. In particular, this is a case study aiming at exploring whether the Duolingo application is effective enough in learning a foreign language and developing the language skills. The data for this study was collected by researching tools such as questionnaires, interviews, and tests, before and after the learning process. 31 candidates participated in this research and talked about their experience. Collecting and analyzing the data of the study distributed into making some assumptions about the application. Taking into account the participants’ opinions and suggestions, the researcher managed to identify important issues in the application. The application seems to be effective in the attempt of learning a foreign language. However, there are some issues to be explored regarding the exploration of the language skills and other technical issues on the application. These issues need to be discussed and analyzed for the further improvement of it. Additionally, the researcher gives her opinion by personal experience on using the application and then she suggests some changes to make the application more efficient

Multi-lingual Evaluation of a Natural Language Generation System

This paper describes a user evaluation of the text output from the M-PIRO (Multilingual Personalised Information Objects) system, which dynamically generates descriptions of exhibits for a virtual museum. We show that subjects performed significantly better in a factual recall test when the descriptions included more sophisticated text structuring modules. The subjects also judged the structured texts to be more interesting and readable, and felt that they had learned more from them. 1

From a Legacy Dictionary to New Lexica: An Alternative Time-Machine to Discover Neologisms

The History of Greek Lexicography has many examples of exceptional and quite “crazy” pioneer researchers, amateur lexicographers, linguist authors who travel all the country to collect data for their lexica and dictionaries. Nikos Kazantzakis travelled most areas of Greece to collect “beautiful” words for his works, especially for his epic saga, Odyssey – as a sequel of the Homer’s Odyssey. He describes the following story. Kazantzakis was taking pictures of rare flowers and trees in the coun..

What's Hot in Digital Humanities?

The newly-funded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership DARIAH-RC is seeking your help in identifying the ‘hottest’ topics in Digital Humanities today. As part of the project’s mandate to develop an open-access modular portal for teaching/training materials in the digital humanities, we are looking for your input in identifying the modules that could be developed. To take the survey go to http://bit.ly/either-or and follow us on Twitter @dariahTeach. Seven universities and research centers across Eur..

From a Legacy Dictionary to New Lexica: An Alternative Time-Machine to Discover Neologisms

The History of Greek Lexicography has many examples of exceptional and quite “crazy” pioneer researchers, amateur lexicographers, linguist authors who travel all the country to collect data for their lexica and dictionaries. Nikos Kazantzakis travelled most areas of Greece to collect “beautiful” words for his works, especially for his epic saga, Odyssey – as a sequel of the Homer’s Odyssey. He describes the following story. Kazantzakis was taking pictures of rare flowers and trees in the coun..

What's Hot in Digital Humanities?

The newly-funded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership DARIAH-RC is seeking your help in identifying the ‘hottest’ topics in Digital Humanities today. As part of the project’s mandate to develop an open-access modular portal for teaching/training materials in the digital humanities, we are looking for your input in identifying the modules that could be developed. To take the survey go to http://bit.ly/either-or and follow us on Twitter @dariahTeach. Seven universities and research centers across Eur..

Υπολογιστική επεξεργασία της αλλομορφίας στην παραγωγή λέξεων της ελληνικής

This thesis presents a systematic approach and analysis of allomorphy, while successfully demonstrates the possibility of treating the phenomenon in computational level in Greek. Previous research did not deal with allomorphy at the derivation process of Greek, while the overall efforts of morphology learning and analysis of allomorphy was extremely limited and partially successful in morphological analysis. In contrast, our work analyses the phenomenon of allomorphy with strict morphological criteria, defines the morphological environments of allomorph participants and presents examples of systematic participation in all word formation processes. More specifically, there are presented the allomorphic behavior of stems and derivational suffixes, restrictions governing the allomorphs selection and proofs of predictability and regularity of the phenomenon. We highlight the lack of defined computational strategy for dealing with allomorphy and the selective treatment of allomorphs. We test the allomorphy of derived words initially with LINGUISTICA, the gold-standard UML model. This model’s algorithm not only fails to analyze properly the derived words, but also to identify allomorphy. In addition, we test a supervised maximum entropy model (AMIS), which help us to predict the nominal allomorphy of stems and derivational suffixes. We build AlloMantIS, which manages to achieve a state-of-the-art performance and establish a solid ground for the computational prediction of allomorphic changes. Finally we propose a combination computational model for allomorphy, which combines different strategies that use allomorphic rules in cooperation with a model of characteristics for predicting allomorphy. We believe that this thesis is covered and presented a systematic theoretical and computational treatment of allomorphy in Modern Greek derivation based on the results of experiments.Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή παρουσιάζει ένα συστηματικό και συγκεκριμένο τρόπο προσέγγισης και ανάλυσης της αλλομορφίας σε θεωρητικό επίπεδο, ενώ παράλληλα αποδεικνύει επιτυχώς τη δυνατότητα επεξεργασίας του φαινομένου σε υπολογιστικό επίπεδο στα Ελληνικά. Προηγούμενες έρευνες δεν ασχολήθηκαν με την αλλομορφία στο σύστημα παραγωγής των Ελληνικών, ενώ οι γενικότερες προσπάθειες μηχανικής μάθησης και ανάλυσης της αλλομορφίας ήταν εξαιρετικά περιορισμένες και μερικώς επιτυχημένες στη μορφολογική ανάλυση. Αντίθετα, η παρούσα εργασία ορίζει το φαινόμενο της αλλομορφίας με αυστηρά μορφολογικά κριτήρια, καθορίζει τα περιβάλλοντα εμφάνισης και παρουσιάζει με παραδείγματα τη συστηματική συμμετοχή σε όλες τις διαδικασίες σχηματισμού λέξεων. Πιο συγκεκριμένα παρουσίασε συγκριτικά τις αλλομορφικές συμπεριφορές θεμάτων και προσφυμάτων, περιορισμούς που διέπουν την επιλογή αλλομόρφου και την πεποίθηση της προβλεψιμότητας και κανονικότητας του φαινομένου. Εξετάζοντας την αλλομορφία υπολογιστικά επισημαίνουμε την έλλειψη καθορισμένης στρατηγικής για την αντιμετώπισή της, καθώς και την επιλεκτική επεξεργασία των αλλομόρφων. Μετά την επιλογή των στρατηγικών της μηχανικής μάθησης, η αλλομορφία των παραγώγων δοκιμάστηκε αρχικά στο "LINGUISTICA", το κυρίαρχο υλοποιημένο μοντέλο μη-επιβλεπόμενης μορφολογικής μάθησης, όπου ο συγκεκριμένος αλγόριθμος απέτυχε όχι μόνο να αναλύσει σωστά τις παράγωγες λέξεις, αλλά και να εντοπίσει αλλόμορφα. Επιπλέον, δοκιμάζουμε ένα επιβλεπόμενο μοντέλο Μέγιστης Εντροπίας, το "AMIS", για την πρόβλεψη της αλλομορφίας των ονοματικών αλλομόρφων σε επίπεδο θεμάτων και επιθημάτων. Ο "AlloMantIS" καταφέρνει να επιτύχει μία εξαιρετικά υψηλή επίδοση και θέτει τις αρχικές βάσεις για την υπολογιστική πρόβλεψη των αλλομορφικών αλλαγών. Για την τελική υπολογιστική προσέγγιση της αλλομορφίας προτείνεται ένα συνδυαστικό μοντέλο, το οποίο θα συνδυάζει διαφορετικές στρατηγικές, όπως τη χρήση των αλλομορφικών κανόνων σε συνεργασία με το μοντέλο χαρακτηριστικών για την πρόβλεψη της αλλομορφίας. Θεωρούμε ότι η παρούσα διατριβή καλύπτει και παρουσιάζει με συστηματικότητα την υπολογιστική αντιμετώπιση της αλλομορφίας στην παραγωγή της Νέας Ελληνικής αξιοποιώντας τα αποτελέσματα των πειραμάτων