Subset Of Language Research Articles

Analysis of techniques and technologies for processing trajectory measurements

The article discusses the uncertainty factors of processing trajectory measurements. The purpose of the work: to consider uncertainty factors, to analyze methods for solving poorly formalized problems, as well as the methodology for solving them when processing trajectory measurements using artificial intelligence and expert systems. An important uncertainty factor in the development of methods for processing trajectory measurements is the fuzziness or ambiguity associated with a subset of natural language. Considering the tasks at various stages of the development of methods for processing trajectory measurements as decision-making tasks, it is advisable to indicate the uncertainty factors that occur in various situations when solving these tasks. These include vagueness, ambiguity, and uncertainty: arising from the description of resources allocated for modeling; arising in the case when the available numerical information does not allow to find solutions by formal methods, but nevertheless, there are such solutions; arising in the early stages of processing, when there are a number of alternative options; arising from the interpretation of the results of computational experiments; arising in the case when, despite the possibility of using precise mathematical relations to solve selection problems, it is convenient for experts to use informal methods that reduce the time required to solve the required tasks. The analysis of methods for solving problems of processing trajectory measurements is carried out. A new methodology is presented, the essence of which is to change the traditional scheme of formalization of the tasks of the subject area of interest to engineers, in cases where the use of the traditional scheme is impossible for some reason. A methodology for solving poorly formalized problems is presented, as well as expert systems for processing trajectory data.

Parameterization of General Organic Polymers within the Open Force Field Framework.

Polymer and chemically modified biopolymer systems present unique challenges to traditional molecular simulation preparation workflows. First, typical polymer and biomolecular input formats, such as Protein Data Bank (PDB) files, lack adequate chemical information needed for the parameterization of new chemistries. Second, polymers are typically too large for accurate partial charge generation methods. In this work, we employ direct chemical perception through the Open Force Field toolkit to create a flexible polymer simulation workflow for organic polymers, encompassing everything from biopolymers to soft materials. We propose and test a new input specification for monomer information that can, along with a 3D conformational geometry, parametrize and simulate most soft-material systems within the same workflow used for smaller ligands. The monomer format encompasses a subset of the SMIRKS substructure query language to uniquely identify chemical information and repeating charges in underspecified systems through matching atomic connectivity. This workflow is combined with several different approaches for automatic partial-charge generation for larger systems. As an initial proof of concept, a variety of diverse polymeric systems were parametrized with the Open Force Field toolkit, including functionalized proteins, DNA, homopolymers, cross-linked systems, and sugars. Additionally, shape properties and radial distribution functions were computed from molecular dynamics simulations of poly(ethylene glycol), polyacrylamide, and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) homopolymers in aqueous solution and compared to previous simulation results in order to demonstrate a start-to-finish workflow for simulation and property prediction. We expect that these tools will greatly expedite the day-to-day computational research of soft-matter simulations and create a robust atomic-scale polymer specification in conjunction with existing polymer structural notations.

An intent recognition pipeline for conversational AI

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the Artificial Intelligence applications that is entitled to allow computers to process and understand human language. These models are utilized to analyze large volumes of text and also support aspects like text summarization, language translation, context modeling, and sentiment analysis. Natural language, a subset of Natural Language Understanding (NLU), turns natural language into structured data. NLU accomplishes intent classification and entity extraction. The paper focuses on a pipeline to maximize the coverage of a conversational AI (chatbot) by extracting maximum meaningful intents from a data corpus. A conversational AI can best answer queries with respect to the dataset if it is trained on the maximum number of intents that can be gathered from the dataset which is what we focus on getting in this paper. The higher the intent we gather from the dataset, the more of the dataset we cover in training the conversational AI. The pipeline is modularized into three broad categories - Gathering the intents from the corpus, finding misspellings and synonyms of the intents, and finally deciding the order of intents to be picked up for training any classifier ML model. Several heuristic and machine-learning approaches have been considered for optimum results. For finding misspellings and synonyms, they are extracted through text vector neural network-based algorithms. Then the system concludes with a suggestive priority list of intents that should be fed to a classification model. In the end, an example of three intents from the corpus is picked, and their order is suggested for the optimum functioning of the pipeline. This paper attempts to pick intents in descending order of their coverage in the corpus in the most optimal way possible.

A comparative study on effects of controlled English on the translatability of Technical texts from English to Turkish

Controlled language, as a subset of natural language, refers to the restricted or standardised use of lexicon, grammar and style. It has been hypothesised that the use of controlled language makes technical texts more translatable and therefore more understandable. This paper reports the results of an experimental study designed to test this hypothesis. The results showed that controlled technical language improved the comprehensibility and translatability of technical documentation in terms of accuracy, style and text quality. The study suggests that international companies should employ technical writers and translators who prioritise the language and extralinguistic norms of the target audience, rather than blindly adhering to the source text.

Effects of Damage to the Integrity of the Left Dual-Stream Frontotemporal Network Mediated by the Arcuate Fasciculus and Uncinate Fasciculus on Acute/Subacute Post-Stroke Aphasia.

(1) Background: To investigate the correlation between the integrity of the left dual-stream frontotemporal network mediated by the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and uncinate fasciculus (UF), and acute/subacute post-stroke aphasia (PSA). (2) Methods: Thirty-six patients were recruited and received both a language assessment and a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scan. Correlations between diffusion indices in the bilateral LSAF/UF and language performance assessment were analyzed with correlation analyses. Multiple linear regression analysis was also implemented to investigate the effects of the integrity of the left LSAF/UF on language performance. (3) Results: Correlation analyses showed that the diffusion indices, including mean fractional anisotropy (FA) values and the fiber number of the left LSAF rather than the left UF was significantly positively associated with language domain scores (p < 0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis revealed an independent and positive association between the mean FA value of the left LSAF and the percentage score of language subsets. In addition, no interaction effect of the integrity of the left LSAF and UF on language performance was found (p > 0.05). (4) Conclusions: The integrity of the left LSAF, but not the UF, might play important roles in supporting residual language ability in individuals with acute/subacute PSA; simultaneous disruption of the dual-stream frontotemporal network mediated by the left LSAF and UF would not result in more severe aphasia than damage to either pathway alone.

Binding and Anticataphora in Mayan

This article examines a puzzle pertaining to the distribution of covalued nominals in two understudied Mayan languages, Chuj and Ch’ol. While Ch’ol behaves as expected with regard to the binding conditions, Chuj appears to consistently tolerate violations of Condition C. The Chuj data thus cast doubt on the widely held view that the binding conditions reflect a universal property of human language (e.g., Grodzinsky and Reinhart 1993, Reuland 2011). I argue that the difference between Chuj and Ch’ol can be largely explained if, contrary to Ch’ol, Chuj exhibits “high-absolutive” syntax, independently proposed by Coon, Mateo Pedro, and Preminger (2014) to explain a constellation of morphosyntactic properties shared by a subset of Mayan languages. This syntax bleeds otherwise expected binding relations from the subject into the object, explaining the apparent violations. I further show that linear precedence plays a fundamental role in regulating the distribution of covalued nominals across Mayan, which I argue is due to a general ban on cataphoric “free” pronouns. Thus, the Mayan data not only are consistent with the binding conditions, but also provide further evidence in favor of a deep typological parameter within the Mayan language family.

Verified Density Compilation for a Probabilistic Programming Language

This paper presents ProbCompCert, a compiler for a subset of the Stan probabilistic programming language (PPL), in which several key compiler passes have been formally verified using the Coq proof assistant. Because of the probabilistic nature of PPLs, bugs in their compilers can be difficult to detect and fix, making verification an interesting possibility. However, proving correctness of PPL compilation requires new techniques because certain transformations performed by compilers for PPLs are quite different from other kinds of languages. This paper describes techniques for verifying such transformations and their application in ProbCompCert. In the course of verifying ProbCompCert, we found an error in the Stan language reference manual related to the semantics and implementation of a key language construct.

Pragmatic verification and validation of industrial executable SysML models

AbstractIn recent years, Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practices have been applied in various industries to design, simulate and verify complex systems. The verification and validation (V&amp;V) of such systems engineering models are crucial to develop high‐quality systems. However, this is a challenging problem due to the complexity of the models and semantic differences in how different tools interpret the models, which can undermine the validity of the obtained results if they go undiscovered. To address these issues, we propose (i) a subset of the SysML language for which the practical semantic integrity of tools can be achieved and (ii) a cloud‐based V&amp;V framework for this subset, lifting verification to an industrial scale. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on an industrial‐scale model from the aerospace domain and summarize the lessons learned during transitioning formal verification tools to an industrial context.

Centering social justice in speech and hearing acoustics pedagogy

Science can be seen as a collaborative activity designed to help humans be better adapted to the world that we find ourselves in and that we and our ancestors created. It is imperative that all scientists, including acousticians, create knowledge that helps all human beings, which acknowledges salient characteristics of the worlds we find ourselves in, and which highlights the human-created features of those worlds. This talk opens the special session by talking about three issues. We argue that there is woefully poor representation of the speech, language, and hearing (SLH) of people of color and of other marginalized groups. Studies of the normative behaviors of human beings are based on a woefully small and unrepresentative subset of languages and speech communities. We must also grapple with the consequences of our fields’ historical focus on the normativity of different speech and hearing behaviors. This involves interrogating what broader social structures benefit from a focus on normativity and pathologization. We argue that our field should follow the lead of Plaut (2010, Psych. Inquiry) in understanding not just differences in acoustic communication across individuals and groups, but differences in the perception of differences in SLH ability.

Leveraging Bias in Pre-trained Word Embeddings for Unsupervised Microaggression Detection

Microaggressions are subtle manifestations of bias (Breitfeller et al. 2019). These demonstrations of bias can often be classified as a subset of abusive language. However, not much focus has been placed on the recognition of these instances. As a result, limited data is available on the topic, and only in English. Being able to detect microaggressions without the need for labeled data would be advantageous since it would allow content moderation also for languages lacking annotated data. In this study, we introduce an unsupervised method to detect microaggressions in natural language expressions. The algorithm relies on pre-trained word-embeddings, leveraging the bias encoded in the model in order to detect microaggressions in unseen textual instances. We test the method on a dataset of racial and gender-based microaggressions, reporting promising results. We further run the algorithm on out-of-domain unseen data with the purpose of bootstrapping corpora of microaggressions “in the wild”, perform a pilot experiment with prompt-based learning, and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of our proposed method.

Constrained spherical deconvolution -based tractography of major language tracts reveals post-stroke bilateral white matter changes correlated to aphasia

PurposeUsing constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD)-based tractography, we aimed to obtain conjoint analysis of diffusion measures of major language white matter (WM) tracts in post-stroke aphasic patients bilaterally, and to correlate the measures of each tract to the different language deficits. Material and methods17 aphasic patients with left hemispheric stroke, at the subacute stage, and ten age- matched controls underwent diffusion MRI examination. CSD-based tractography was performed. Diffusion measures [fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), axial diffusivity (AD)] were extracted after dissection of major language tracts bilaterally. Aphasia was assessed using language subset of hemispheric stroke scale. Comparisons of diffusion measures, for all tracts, between the two groups were performed. Partial correlations between the diffusion measures and different language components were obtained. ResultsIn the left hemisphere, significant lower FA and or higher MD with higher RD of patients' WM tracts compared to the control group. Significant differences of diffusion measures were also evident in the right hemisphere yet, less prominent. All changes reflected damage of the tracts' integrity. Significant correlations were found between comprehension and FA of the left arcuate fasciculus (AF) and left inferior longitudinal fasciculus. Additionally, a significant correlation was found between MD of the right AF and repetition. ConclusionConjoint analysis of diffusion measures, based on CSD tractography, can provide important markers for the underlying WM changes bilaterally. Moreover, our findings emphasize that language processing can be mediated by both ventral and dorsal streams and further highlight the contribution of the right AF in repetition.

Priming the Arabic dative: Evidence for syntactic abstractness and implicit learning

Language speakers are more likely to reuse a recently experienced syntactic structure, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. However, empirical evidence for syntactic priming comes primarily from a small subset of Indo-European languages. Using a comprehension-to-production priming task, this preliminary study examined immediate and cumulative syntactic priming in Arabic, a language with a different typology than studied thus far. Nine native speakers of Arabic were primed to the Arabic double object (DO) dative construction. Results from a logistic regression model indicate that there were significant priming effects across all priming phases, with increased productions of the DO dative (a) during the priming task, (b) immediately after, (c) and 2 weeks later. These findings provide some support for the proposal that syntactic priming arises from an abstract syntactic level as well as the idea that priming is a form of implicit learning.

Integrity of the Left Arcuate Fasciculus Segments Significantly Affects Language Performance in Individuals with Acute/Subacute Post-Stroke Aphasia: A Cross-Sectional Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study.

Objective: To investigate the correlation between the left arcuate fasciculus (AF) segments and acute/subacute post-stroke aphasia (PSA). Methods: Twenty-six patients underwent language assessment and MRI scanning. The integrity of the AF based on a three-segment model was evaluated using diffusion tensor imaging. All patients were classified into three groups according to the reconstruction of the left AF: completely reconstructed (group A, 8 cases), non-reconstructed (group B, 6 cases), and partially reconstructed (group C, 12 cases). The correlations and intergroup differences in language performance and diffusion indices were comprehensively estimated. Results: A correlation analyses showed that the lesion load of the language areas and diffusion indices on the left AF posterior and long segments was significantly related to some language subsets, respectively. When controlled lesion load was variable, significant correlations between diffusion indices on the posterior and long segments and comprehension, repetition, naming, and aphasia quotient were retained. Multiple comparison tests revealed intergroup differences in diffusion indices on the left AF posterior and long segments, as well as these language subsets. No significant correlation was found between the anterior segment and language performance. Conclusions: The integrity of the left AF segments, particularly the posterior segment, is crucial for the residual comprehension and repetition abilities in individuals with acute/subacute PSA, and lesion load in cortical language areas is an important factor that should be taken into account when illustrating the contributions of damage to special fiber tracts to language impairments.

Detecting contact in language trees: a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer

Phylogenetic trees are a central tool for studying language evolution and have wide implications for understanding cultural evolution as a whole. For example, they have been the basis of studies on the evolution of musical instruments, religious beliefs and political complexity. Bayesian phylogenetic methods are transparent regarding the data and assumptions underlying the inference. One of these assumptions—that languages change independently—is incompatible with the reality of language evolution, particularly with language contact. When speakers interact, languages frequently borrow linguistic traits from each other. Phylogenetic methods ignore this issue, which can lead to errors in the reconstruction. More importantly, they neglect the rich history of language contact. A principled way of integrating language contact in phylogenetic methods is sorely missing. We present contacTrees, a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer for language evolution. The model efficiently infers the phylogenetic tree of a language family and contact events between its clades. The implementation is available as a package for the phylogenetics software BEAST 2. We apply contacTrees in a simulation study and a case study on a subset of well-documented Indo-European languages. The simulation study demonstrates that contacTrees correctly reconstructs the history of a simulated language family, including simulated contact events. Moreover, it shows that ignoring contact can lead to systematic errors in the estimated tree height, rate of change and tree topology, which can be avoided with contacTrees. The case study confirms that contacTrees reconstructs known contact events in the history of Indo-European and finds known loanwords, demonstrating its practical potential. The model has a higher statistical fit to the data than a conventional phylogenetic reconstruction, and the reconstructed tree height is significantly closer to well-attested estimates. Our method closes a long-standing gap between the theoretical and empirical models of cultural evolution. The implications are especially relevant for less documented language families, where our knowledge of past contacts and linguistic borrowings is limited. Since linguistic phylogenies have become the backbone of many studies of cultural evolution, the addition of this integral piece of the puzzle is crucial in the endeavour to understand the history of human culture.

An Evaluation of a Language Processor for an African Native Language-based Programming Language

Abstract The design and prototype implementation of a subset of an African indigenous language-based programming language has been carried out and reported. In this study, an evaluation of the processor developed for the native language-based programming language was carried out in order to assess its level of conformance to the characteristics required of a good software product as set by the international organization for standardization (ISO). The developed language processor was evaluated using some metrics for evaluating the quality of software systems including structural and time complexity. A usability test was also conducted to assess users’ perception of the system concerning its relevance and ease of use. The result of system evaluation indicated that the system contains 1558 lines of code, its cyclomatic complexity is 14 and its asymptotic time complexity is of order big oh O (n3), where n is the size of the input to the system. Over 86% of the participants in the usability test attested to the system’s relevance while the usability rating was 86%. The developed system can be inferred to be of good quality as the results of its evaluation are positively on the high side for satisfying most of the ISO criteria for adjudging a software product as being of good quality. Furthermore, the high usability rating for the system indicates that the programming language whose compiler was evaluated satisfies most of the criteria set by the Department of Defense (DOD) for assessing the ‘goodness’ or otherwise of a programming language.

Locality and attachment preferences in preverbal versus post-verbal Relative Clauses

ABSTRACT The universality of locality is a long-standing debate that has endured in psycholinguistics in spite of the challenges. The non-local preference of attachment in Relative Clauses (RCs) with double antecedent (DP1-of-DP2-RC) reported in a subset of languages (i.e. Spanish) represented an important challenge that locality-based accounts had to address. The forces responsible for attachment preferences turned out to be multifactorial, with relevant roles for prosody, referentiality, lexical semantics and Pseudo-Relative availability. In the present eye-tracking study, we explore the timing of disambiguation in Spanish DP1-of-DP2-RC structures placed in preverbal and post-verbal positions, while also controlling for the previously mentioned influencing factors. Our results are straightforward: an early processing cost arises when the RC is disambiguated non-locally, irrespective of the position. The implications of this work contribute to a better understanding of parsing processes and suggest that locality is at the centre of the forces that influence RC attachment.

Cross-clause planning in Nungon (Papua New Guinea): Eye-tracking evidence.

Hundreds of languages worldwide use a sentence structure known as the "clause chain," in which 20 or more clauses can be stacked to form a sentence. The Papuan language Nungon is among a subset of clause chaining languages that require "switch-reference" suffixes on nonfinal verbs in chains. These suffixes announce whether the subject of each upcoming clause will differ from the subject of the previous clause. We examine two major issues in psycholinguistics: predictive processing in comprehension, and advance planning in production. Whereas previous work on other languages has demonstrated that sentence planning can be incremental, switch-reference marking would seem to prohibit strictly incremental planning, as it requires speakers to plan the next clause before they can finish producing the current one. This suggests an intriguing possibility: planning strategies may be fundamentally different in Nungon. We used a mobile eye-tracker and solar-powered laptops in a remote village in Papua, New Guinea, to track Nungon speakers' gaze in two experiments: comprehension and production. Curiously, during comprehension, fixation data failed to find evidence that switch-reference marking is used for predictive processing. However, during production, we found evidence for advance planning of switch-reference markers, and, by extension, the subjects they presage. We propose that this degree of advance syntactic planning pushes the boundaries of what is known about sentence planning, drawing on data from a novel morpheme type in an understudied language.

Lawmaps: enabling legal AI development through visualisation of the implicit structure of legislation and lawyerly process

Modelling that exploits visual elements and information visualisation are important areas that have contributed immensely to understanding and the computerisation advancements in many domains and yet remain unexplored for the benefit of the law and legal practice. This paper investigates the challenge of modelling and expressing structures and processes in legislation and the law by using visual modelling and information visualisation (InfoVis) to assist accessibility of legal knowledge, practice and knowledge formalisation as a basis for legal AI. The paper uses a subset of the well-defined Unified Modelling Language (UML) to visually express the structure and process of the legislation and the law to create visual flow diagrams called lawmaps, which form the basis of further formalisation. A lawmap development methodology is presented and evaluated by creating a set of lawmaps for the practice of conveyancing and the Landlords and Tenants Act 1954 of the United Kingdom. This paper is the first of a new breed of preliminary solutions capable of application across all aspects, from legislation to practice; and capable of accelerating development of legal AI.

Объектные модели как микросервисы: язык запросов

We are designing an application development technology based on an extended object-oriented approach, in which object models are enriched to the functionality of microservices. This variation is called microservice object-oriented programming. An object model as a microservice is an autonomous information system that behaves as a persistent storage and interacts with other models and external actors through the API. Moreover, understanding object models as microservices provides a fundamentally new low-code technology based on model visualization. This paper presents a query language for object models that works efficiently with persistent models. It is a subset of the Libretto language. The logical semantics of the language is described, as well as the method of compiling it into SQL, based on the use of an intermediate relational language. A SQL query language compiler has been implemented within the Ontobox platform. It shows high efficiency and is now actively used in real-life application development tasks solving.

GRAMMAR OF THE IDIOSTYLE IN POETRY (on the example of Georgy Ivanov`s poems)

The article deals with the study of the grammar of idiostyle in poetry. Theoretical basis of the study of grammar of poetic idiostyle based on the material of poetry is the doctrine of the inner form of a word and language features, the theory of morphological field and achievements of functional grammar, modern developments in the field of linguistics, linguopoetics, and poetic aesthetics. In the structure of the poetic text, a unit of any of the levels is capable of possessing expressiveness, being an expressive unit, interacting with other levels. The semantic and functional enrichment of grammatical means in the poetic language of the 19th-20th centuries has an individual-author character, based on the systemic grammatical potential of the national language. As a consequence, these enriched units and categories form the grammatical system of poetic language as a subset of the national language. “Poetic cognition” is verbal in nature. The tools of “poetic cognition” are the artistic word and the structure of language as a system of connections and relations between linguistic units. Linguopoetic mechanisms of grammatical meanings actualization and neutralization in poetic language are based on general linguistic characteristics of morphological categories and on the regularities of poetic functioning, the selection of neutral and marked grammemes. In addition to the violation of the grammatical norm, poetic language has a variety of artistic techniques and forms patterns, the basis of which is morphological selection and the formation of homogeneous groups, series, texts and their fragments, morphological attraction (assimilation of some morphological units to others). Besides, verse localization is a means of isolating and neutralizing the semantics of a certain unit. Within the framework of general poetic patterns in each text and “idiostyle” an authorial system of morphological selection and attraction is formed, which forms units and unities. The dynamics of the development of techniques and poetic means can be considered both within the framework of an individual work and in the comparative dimension, at the level of describing the idiostyle of an individual artist and in the idiostyles of different authors. Grammatical selection creates a variety of morphological dominants in individual works.