Ambiguous Phrase Research Articles

Syntactic Adaptation and Word Learning in 3‐ to 4‐Year‐Olds

AbstractIn a recent study, preschoolers adapted their syntactic expectations about a familiar phrase in French; this adaptation affected later word learning. In two experiments, we probed the generality of this finding by replicating the experiment and extending it to a different expression in English. We examined the ambiguous phrase the baby, which can be followed by nouns (the baby monkeys) or verbs (the baby sleeps). In induction trials, the baby consistently preceded either familiar nouns (noun condition) or verbs (verb condition). In later novel‐word trials, children in the verb condition were more likely to interpret novel words following the baby (The baby gorps!) as verbs than were children in the noun condition. In Experiment 2, a modified design isolated the effect of experience with the critical phrase from possible effects of task structure, and an added baseline condition showed the adaptation effect to be asymmetrical, suggesting frequency or surprisal effects on adaptation.

Age effects on prosodic boundary perception.

The redundancy hypothesis proposes that older listeners need a larger array of acoustic cues than younger listeners for effective speech perception. This research investigated this hypothesis by examining the aging effects on the use of prosodic cues in speech segmentation in Mandarin Chinese. We examined how younger and older listeners perceived prosodic boundaries using three main prosodic cues (pause, final lengthening, and pitch change) across eight conditions involving different cue combinations. The stimuli consisted of syntactically ambiguous phrase pairs, each containing two or three objects. Participants (22 younger listeners and 22 older listeners) performed a speech recognition task to judge the number of objects they heard. Both groups primarily relied on the pause cue for identifying prosodic boundaries, using final lengthening and pitch change as secondary cues. However, older listeners showed reduced sensitivity to these cues, compensating by integrating the primary cue pause with the secondary cue pitch change for more precise segmentation. The present study reveals older listeners' integration strategy in using prosodic cues for speech segmentation, supporting the redundancy hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Construction of Algorithms for English Learners to Read Foreign Literature Based on Machine Translation Technology

The construction of algorithms for English learners to read foreign literature based on machine translation technology involves several key steps. Initially, the algorithm utilizes machine translation to convert the foreign text into English, ensuring accessibility for learners. Next, it employs natural language processing (NLP) techniques to enhance the readability and comprehension of the translated text, such as simplifying complex sentences, clarifying ambiguous phrases, and providing annotations or explanations for cultural or linguistic nuances. Additionally, the algorithm may incorporate adaptive learning mechanisms to personalize the reading experience, adjusting the difficulty level and content based on the learner's proficiency and preferences. This paper explores the development and implementation of algorithms designed to facilitate English learners' comprehension of foreign literature using machine translation technology. Leveraging Probability Path analysis and classification techniques, investigate the effectiveness of various algorithms in improving translation accuracy, fluency, and comprehension for English learners. Through the Probability Path analysis, we delve into the complexities of language structures, translation probabilities, learner interaction, and linguistic adaptation, illuminating the intricate dynamics of machine translation in the context of language learning. Additionally, classification results provide insights into the performance of different algorithms in translating diverse literary genres, showcasing their potential to support English learners in comprehending foreign texts. The findings reveal translation accuracies ranging from 87.8% to 92.0%, with corresponding fluency scores ranging from 4.0 to 4.6. Additionally, algorithms result in comprehension improvements of 23% to 30% for English learners.

Optimized RMDL with Transfer Learning for Sentiment Classification in the MapReduce Framework

A core task in sentiment analysis is sentiment categorization, and it is crucial to understand user feelings based on their remarks in social media or product evaluations. Due to ambiguous phrases, refusal words, and other factors, categorizing sentiment presents several challenging issues. The objective of this research is to develop a hybrid optimization-based deep learning model and MapReduce framework-based sentiment categorization approach. The review document is taken from a dataset and used in this case with the MapReduce methodology. MapReduce is a software framework and programming model for analyzing massive volumes of data that consists of two phases, mapper and reducer. BERT tokenization and aspect term extraction are executed in the mapper phase, whereas sentiment analysis is performed in the reducer stage utilizing random multimodal deep learning (RMDL) with transfer learning and AlexNet and ResNet 50 as pre-trained models. In addition, the exponential coot political algorithm (ECPA) is offered as an optimization algorithm for weight optimization in RMDL. The ECPA is obtained by combining the exponential weighted moving average model (EWMA) with the coot algorithm, as well as a political optimizer (PO). The proposed ECPA_RMDL model has acquired 90.9% precision, 89.7% recall, and 89.9% f-measure.

Causality and signalling of garden-path sentences.

Sheaves are mathematical objects that describe the globally compatible data associated with open sets of a topological space. Original examples of sheaves were continuous functions; later they also became powerful tools in algebraic geometry, as well as logic and set theory. More recently, sheaves have been applied to the theory of contextuality in quantum mechanics. Whenever the local data are not necessarily compatible, sheaves are replaced by the simpler setting of presheaves. In previous work, we used presheaves to model lexically ambiguous phrases in natural language and identified the order of their disambiguation. In the work presented here, we model syntactic ambiguities and study a phenomenon in human parsing called garden-pathing. It has been shown that the information-theoretic quantity known as 'surprisal' correlates with human reading times in natural language but fails to do so in garden-path sentences. We compute the degree of signalling in our presheaves using probabilities from the large language model BERT and evaluate predictions on two psycholinguistic datasets. Our degree of signalling outperforms surprisal in two ways: (i) it distinguishes between hard and easy garden-path sentences (with a [Formula: see text]-value [Formula: see text]), whereas existing work could not, (ii) its garden-path effect is larger in one of the datasets (32 ms versus 8.75 ms per word), leading to better prediction accuracies. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum contextuality, causality and freedom of choice'.

The Duality of "Goals of Care" Language: A Qualitative Focus Group Study With Frontline Clinicians.

The phrase "goals of care" (GOC) is common in serious illness care, yet it lacks clarity and consistency. Understanding how GOC is used across healthcare contexts is an opportunity to identify and mitigate root causes of serious illness miscommunication. We sought to characterize frontline palliative and critical care clinicians' understanding and use of the phrase GOC in clinical practice. We conducted a secondary qualitative thematic analysis of focus group transcripts (n=10), gathered as part of a parent study of care delivery for patients with respiratory failure. Participants (n=59) were members of the palliative and critical care interprofessional teams at two academic medical centers. Clinicians primarily use GOC as a shorthand signal among team members to indicate a patient is nearing the end of life. This signal can also indicate conflict with patients and families when clinicians' expectations-typically an expected "transition" toward a different type of care-are not met. Clinicians distinguish their clinical use of GOC from an "ideal" meaning of the phrase, which is broader than end of life and focused on patients' values. Palliative care specialists encourage other clinicians to shift toward the "ideal" GOC concept in clinical practice. Frontline palliative and critical care clinicians understand a duality in GOC, as an idealized concept and as an expeditious signal for clinical care. Our findings suggest ambiguous phrases like GOC persist because of unmet needs for better ways to discuss and address diverse and complex priorities for patients with serious illness.

Algorithm to Annotate Epileptiform Abnormalities in EEG Reports (P10-1.002)

<h3>Objective:</h3> To create code that expedites the analysis of electroencephalography (EEG) reports by detecting and automatically tabulating epileptiform abnormalities (EAs). <h3>Background:</h3> EAs are important in seizure/epilepsy detection and in acute brain injury monitoring like delayed cerebral ischemia after subarachnoid hemorrhages (Kim et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2022, Punia et al., 2015). However, reviewing EEG reports is time-consuming and error-prone; thus, we created an algorithm for rapid EEG report EA annotation. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> We manually reviewed 1274 reports for EAs: seizures, sporadic epileptiform discharges, generalized and lateralized periodic discharges (GPDs, LPDs), lateralized rhythmic delta activity (LRDA), bilateral independent periodic discharges (BIPDs), brief potentially ictal rhythmic discharges (BIRDs), and bilateral independent rhythmic delta activity (BIRDA). We also reviewed for generalized rhythmic delta activity (GRDA). We compiled 104 positive and 240 negative phrases indicating EA+GRDA presence/absence, which were then used to build code that phrase matched and tabulated findings in each report. 80% of data was used for training, 20% for testing. Due to conflicts in reports and phrasing ambiguities, a “needs review” category was created for secondary manual review. 39 ambiguous phrases triggered this secondary review (ex: GRDA cannot be excluded). <h3>Results:</h3> The algorithm had 1.56% reports with errors identifying EAs+GRDA. 62.11% were accurately matched without need for secondary review. 36.33% were marked as needing review. Of those, 53.76% were marked for potential conflicts stating both the presence and the absence of an EA+GRDA, 26.88% for “periodic” or “rhythmic” term use without localization specified (generalized vs. lateralized), 2.15% for phrases that could indicate multiple forms of EAs+GRDA, requiring manual clarification, and 17.20% for a coding error (later rectified). <h3>Conclusions:</h3> These results suggest that this algorithm can automate EAs+GRDA extraction and expedite review of EEG reports. This tool allows researchers to assess the relationship of EAs+GRDA in large datasets more easily in future research. <b>Disclosure:</b> Ms. Choi has nothing to disclose. Mr. Uppal has nothing to disclose. Ms. Chen has nothing to disclose. The institution of Dr. Gilmore has received research support from NIH. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Aquestive. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Ceribell. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for marinus. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $0-$499 for serving as a Consultant for Medtronic. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for UCB. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $0-$499 for serving as a Consultant for Accure. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Neuropace. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Neurelis. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Eisai. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Rafa Laboratories, Ltd. Dr. Hirsch has received publishing royalties from a publication relating to health care. Dr. Hirsch has received publishing royalties from a publication relating to health care. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Speaker with Neuropace. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Speaker with Natus. Dr. Hirsch has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a speaker with UCB. Dr. Sivaraju has nothing to disclose. Dr. Westover has stock in Beacon Biosignals. The institution of Dr. Westover has received research support from NIH. Dr. Westover has received publishing royalties from a publication relating to health care. Dr. Westover has a non-compensated relationship as a cofounder with Beacon Biosignals that is relevant to AAN interests or activities. Dr. Kim has nothing to disclose.

Phrase Rhythm and Loss in the Music of Maurice Ravel

ABSTRACTA particular subset of Ravel's output features a phrase‐rhythmic technique wherein tonal and thematic returns are accompanied by surprisingly asymmetrical or ambiguous phrase rhythm. This defies both generic conventions linking thematic reprise and tonal closure to relatively stable phrase rhythm and specific expectations created by these works’ formal processes, and contrasts with trajectories moving from phrase‐rhythmic instability to stability which Ravel deploys in other works. The set of pieces which features this technique includes À la manière de … Chabrier, the Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn, pieces from Le Tombeau de Couperin, the last of the Valses nobles et sentimentales, and the ‘Blues’ movement from the Violin Sonata. This study notes how themes of loss and distance connect these pieces, allowing for the phrase‐rhythmic technique to be bound up with interpretative implications which can enhance our understanding of how phrase rhythm can carry expressive freight.

In the eye of the beholder: Situational and dispositional predictors of perceiving harm in others' words

One manifestation of society's increased sensitivity and reactivity to harm is the notion that words can be labeled as harmful, regardless of how subtle and regardless of their intent, if perceived as harmful by the receiver of that speech (Haslam, 2016). However, it is unclear what specific words should be considered harmful, particularly if harm is in the eye of the beholder (Lilienfeld, 2017). Here, we tested the hypothesis that situational and dispositional factors can prime individuals to interpret others' verbal communications as harmful. In Study 1 (n = 217 U.S. college students), a one-sentence prime about harmful words led individuals to perceive ambiguous phrases from others as harmful. In Study 2 (n = 1092 U.S. college students), participants showed far more within-person than between-person consistency in their emotional reactions to widely varying ambiguous statements, and negative emotionality was a consistent predictor of between-person differences in feeling hurt and anxious by such statements. Taken together, findings from the two studies raise the possibility that well-intentioned efforts to boost awareness of the potential harm conveyed in others' words may have the inadvertent effect of exacerbating perceptions of harm, particularly among individuals already inclined toward such perceptions.

Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II ParisJazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation

Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II ParisJazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation

Quantum computations for disambiguation and question answering

Automatic text processing is now a mature discipline in computer science, and so attempts at advancements using quantum computation have emerged as the new frontier, often under the term of quantum natural language processing. The main challenges consist in finding the most adequate ways of encoding words and their interactions on a quantum computer, considering hardware constraints, as well as building algorithms that take advantage of quantum architectures, so as to show improvement on the performance of natural language tasks. In this paper, we introduce a new framework that starts from a grammar that can be interpreted by means of tensor contraction, to build word representations as quantum states that serve as input to a quantum algorithm. We start by introducing an operator measurement to contract the representations of words, resulting in the representation of larger fragments of text. We then go on to develop pipelines for the tasks of sentence meaning disambiguation and question answering that take advantage of quantum features. For the first task, we show that our contraction scheme deals with syntactically ambiguous phrases storing the various different meanings in quantum superposition, a solution not available on a classical setting. For the second task, we obtain a question representation that contains all possible answers in equal quantum superposition, and we implement Grover’s quantum search algorithm to find the correct answer, agnostic to the specific question, an implementation with the potential of delivering a result with quadratic speedup.

The format of the text as an inclusive practice in modern society

The article discusses discursive treatment of the texts in the context of inclusive pragmatics of the modern society. The key problem the article is devoted to is the necessity to specify the requirements of creating texts for people with cognitive impairment. The goal of the study is to unify theoretical material of clinical linguistics, logopedics and neurology to understand how the recipients with Alzheimer’s disease (primarily on the stage of predementia and on the early stage of the disease) decode texts and to test to what extent the texts created by social institu tions for a wide range of social groups are comprehensible for people with cognitive decline. The empirical material of the article are informational and directive texts located on the in formation boards and stands of social institutions of Krasnoyarsk in 2021. Linguistic features that complicate the text comprehension are inter alia the use of low-frequency words, polyse mes, ambiguous phrases, reversible constructions, inversions. The patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other mental features have difficulties when reading. These difficulties are not taken into consideration when the texts are being created for social groups. The perspectives to provide accessibility of linguistic information for the mentioned group of recipients lie in discursive technology text transformation.

To Be Torn Between Approximation and Critique: A Case Study of Christiane Nord’s Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained

This paper aims at introducing the experiment of rendering one of the most remarkable books of Christiane Nord, who is regarded as one of the most prominent translation scholars and a salient professor of applied linguistics in Germany, into Arabic, under the title of «الترجمة بوصفها نشاطا هادفا: مداخل نظرية مشروحة». In her book, she dealt with the functional approaches to translation, including new concepts, in theory, which require re-adaptation matching the other culture, i.e., the target Arabic, trying to find a full equivalent or a near-equivalent thereof. The novelty in this field lies in the theorization of translation studies and its theories and concepts as well, except for some cases. It is commonly acknowledged that translation, as a branch of knowledge, is early practiced; it bridged the gap between civilizations and some branches of knowledge among the peoples of the world over ages. However, it was basically based on the axiomatic practice, devoid of any theoretical and interpretative restrictions and criteria indicating the various approaches to translation, not to mention its multiple forms adopted more or less by the translator. Thus, this paper attempts particularly to 1) investigate the obstacles faced by the translator on the onset process of translation, such as the theoretical terms and concepts, including assignment, translational act, translation proper, etc.; 2) analyze Nord’s style, which is characterized sometimes with flexibility and sometimes with contrast, representing an arduous task for the translator, especially when decomposing the codes of the original. Additionally, she uses too long sentences, embedded with other parenthetical clauses, which are challenging for either the reader or the translator, whose task is to put things back together and to re-connect the scattered elements of the image; 3) demonstrate some solutions and strategies adopted in translation, such as glosses, especially in cases of ambiguity or inconsistency, consulting other references for the purpose of documentation and authenticity. Last but not least, it attempts to answer a set of questions represented in the challenges of rendering such a book, including the following:&#x0D; &#x0D; Why did Nord create sometimes inappropriate compound technical terms in German?&#x0D; Why did not she adopt an appropriate equivalent to German words?&#x0D; What is the purpose behind both the excessive use of details and the concise statements or explanations?&#x0D; What is the purpose behind the ambiguous explanations and unnecessary lengthy phrases adopted by Nord in her book?&#x0D; &#x0D; What are the possible strategies and solutions the translator adopted to render the meaning adequately and honestly with no excess or negligence?

A framework to standardize causes of construction delay

Available literature shows no standard method or framework to identify critical causes of delay and assess its impact on the construction project. The use of ambiguous phrases and unstructured identification of causes has resulted in the ineffectiveness of the study findings. Therefore, this study has developed a framework to identify critical causes of delay through a systematic approach. This systematic approach helps to identify critical causes of delay in a standardized format. The framework categorically sequences causes of delay and connects them to the responsible party. From the obtained data, three hundred thirty-five critical causes of delay were extracted, categorized into 14 groups, and summarized into 48 major critical causes presented in tables. This study provides a comprehensive list and reference of the critical causes identified in the past 10 years. The study also quantitatively analysed the collected data presented in tables. The developed framework and approach minimize alternate and ambiguous phrasing, enhance study findings application in practice, and increases the research outcome’s consistency.

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

ABSTRACT 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.

Focus Attracts Attachment.

There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.

A Commentary on James

A Commentary on James

Processing of an ambiguous time phrase in posttraumatic stress disorder: Eye movements suggest a passive, oncoming perception of the future

Metaphorically, the future can be perceived as approaching us (time-moving metaphor) or as being approached by us (ego-moving metaphor). Also, in line with findings that our eyes look more up when thinking about the future than the past, the future's location can be conceptualized in upwards terms. Eye movements were recorded in 19 participants with PTSD and 20 healthy controls. Participants with PTSD showed downward and healthy controls upward eye movements while processing an ego/time-moving ambiguous phrase, suggesting a passive (time-moving) outlook toward the future. If replicated, our findings may have implications for the conceptualization and treatment of PTSD.

Ambiguity and context learning in signalling games

Abstract Lexical ambiguity is present in many natural languages, but ambiguous words and phrases do not seem to be advantageous. Therefore, the presence of ambiguous words in natural language warrants explanation. We justify the existence of ambiguity from the perspective of context dependence. The main contribution of the paper is that we constructed a context learning process such that each interlocutor can infer their opponent’s private belief from the conversation. A sufficient condition for successful learning is provided. Furthermore, for cases in which learning fails, we investigate how the interlocutors choose among degrees of ambiguous expressions through an adaptive learning process. Lastly, we apply our model in the lattice network, demonstrating that structural evolution favours ambiguity as well.

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences.

When faced with an ambiguous pronoun, comprehenders use both multimodal cues (e.g., gestures) and linguistic cues to identify the antecedent. While research has shown that gestures facilitate language comprehension, improve reference tracking, and influence the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns, literature on reference resolution suggests that a wide set of linguistic constraints influences the successful resolution of ambiguous pronouns and that linguistic cues are more powerful than some multimodal cues. To address the outstanding question of the importance of gesture as a cue in reference resolution relative to cues in the speech signal, we have previously investigated the comprehension of contrastive gestures that indexed abstract referents – in this case expressions of personal preference – and found that such gestures did facilitate the resolution of ambiguous statements of preference. In this study, we extend this work to investigate whether the effect of gesture on resolution is diminished when the gesture indexes a statement that is less likely to be interpreted as the correct referent. Participants watched videos in which a speaker contrasted two ideas that were either neutral (e.g., whether to take the train to a ballgame or drive) or moral (e.g., human cloning is (un)acceptable). A gesture to the left or right side co-occurred with speech expressing each position. In gesture-disambiguating trials, an ambiguous phrase (e.g., I agree with that, where that is ambiguous) was accompanied by a gesture to one side or the other. In gesture non-disambiguating trials, no third gesture occurred with the ambiguous phrase. Participants were more likely to choose the idea accompanied by gesture as the stimulus speaker’s preference. We found no effect of scenario type. Regardless of whether the linguistic cue expressed a view that was morally charged or neutral, observers used gesture to understand the speaker’s opinion. This finding contributes to our understanding of the strength and range of cues, both linguistic and multimodal, that listeners use to resolve ambiguous references.