Syntactic Similarity Research Articles

OWLS-MX: A hybrid Semantic Web service matchmaker for OWL-S services

In this paper, we describe the first hybrid Semantic Web service matchmaker for OWL-S services, called OWLS-MX. It complements crisp logic-based semantic matching of OWL-S services with token-based syntactic similarity measurements in case the former fails. The results of the experimental evaluation of OWLS-MX provide strong evidence for the claim that logic-based semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating non-logic-based information retrieval techniques. An additional analysis of false positives and false negatives of the hybrid matching filters of OWLS-MX led to an even further improved matchmaker version called OWLS-MX2.

A Unified Analysis of Indicative and Biscuit Conditionals as Topics

No abstract.

Assessing Text Readability Using Cognitively Based Indices

Many programs designed to compute the readability of texts are narrowly based on surface‐level linguistic features and take too little account of the processes which a reader brings to the text. This study is an exploratory examination of the use of Coh‐Metrix, a computational tool that measures cohesion and text difficulty at various levels of language, discourse, and conceptual analysis. It is suggested that Coh‐Metrix provides an improved means of measuring English text readability for second language (L2) readers, not least because three Coh‐Metrix variables, one employing lexical coreferentiality, one measuring syntactic sentence similarity, and one measuring word frequency, have correlates in psycholinguistic theory. The current study draws on the validation exercise conducted by Greenfield (1999) with Japanese EFL students, which partially replicated Bormuth's (1971) study with American students. It finds that Coh‐Metrix, with its inclusion of the three variables, yields a more accurate prediction of reading difficulty than traditional readability measures. The finding indicates that linguistic variables related to cognitive reading processes contribute significantly to better readability prediction than the surface variables used in traditional formulas. Additionally, because these Coh‐Metrix variables better reflect psycholinguistic factors in reading comprehension such as decoding, syntactic parsing, and meaning construction, the formula appears to be more soundly based and avoids criticism on the grounds of construct validity.

A critical review of ERP and fMRI evidence on L2 syntactic processing

The current review focuses on recent event-related brain potential (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in L2 syntactic processing data. To this end, critical factors influencing both the dynamics of neural mechanisms (ERPs) and critical functional brain correlates (fMRI) are discussed. These entail the critical period hypothesis, levels of proficiency, cross-linguistic syntactic similarities and dissimilarities as well as brain bases that may or may not be shared during syntactic processing in a first (L1) and a second (L2) language. The data to date reveal that (i) the critical period hypothesis plays less of a significant role than initially discussed, (ii) L2 proficiency is a driving factor influencing peak and extent of activation in brain correlates and in neurophysiological mechanisms as a function of learning, and (iii) language transfer effects (i.e., positive transfer effects when L1 and L2 are structurally similar or negative transfer effects when L1 and L2 are structurally dissimilar) primarily from the L1 to the L2 and potentially vice versa need to be critically considered in future research.

Syntax and Semantics of It-Clefts: A Tree Adjoining Grammar Analysis

In this paper, we examine two main approaches to the syntax and semantics of it-clefts as in 'It was Ohno who won': an expletive approach where the cleft pronoun is an expletive and the cleft clause bears a direct syntactic or semantic relation to the clefted constituent, and a discontinuous constituent approach where the cleft pronoun has a semantic content and the cleft clause bears a direct syntactic or semantic relation to the cleft pronoun. We argue for an analysis using Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) that captures the best of both approaches. We use Tree-Local Multi-Component Tree Adjoining Grammar to propose a syntax of it-clefts and Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (STAG) to define a compositional semantics on the proposed syntax. It will be shown that the distinction TAG makes between the derivation tree and the derived tree, the extended domain of locality characterizing TAG and the direct syntax-semantics mapping characterizing STAG allow for a simple and straightforward account of the syntax and semantics of it-clefts, capturing the insights and arguments of both the expletive and the discontinuous constituent approaches. Our analysis reduces the syntax and semantics of it-clefts to copular sentences containing definite description subjects, such as 'The person that won is Ohno'. We show that this is a welcome result, as evidenced by the syntactic and semantic similarities between it-clefts and the corresponding copular sentences.

The Undergoer Focus ma - in Kavalan

This study aims to explore the functions and grammatical status of the Kavalan preverbal affix ma -. In addition to agent focus, locative focus, and referential focus (mainly used to focus the instrumental or benefactive case), Kavalan ma - is found to mark specific sentential focus. This marker behaves like agent focus in terms of its grammatical behavior, and is mainly used in two scenarios: spontaneous events, when the event is conceived of as happening spontaneously without an extraneous causer; and anticausatives, when the patient is the focus and the agent is conceived of as insignificant. In some limited cases, ma - is also used for naturally collective/reciprocal events. In ma -marked clauses, the clausal subject is typically conceived of as a spontaneously affected role, and this marker is therefore termed "undergoer focus" in the present study. Similar grammatical devices are found in two other Formosan languages, Paiwan and Amis, both of which share semantic and syntactic similarities with Kavalan ma -. It has been suggested by Evans and Ross (2001) that the same form ma - is commonly found in Oceanic languages, with different functional manifestations cross-linguistically. Further investigation into the manifestations of similar devices in other genetically related languages may help us to gain a better understanding of internal relationships within the Austronesian language family.

Providing entertainment by content-based filtering and semantic reasoning in intelligent recommender systems

Recommender systems arose in view of the information overload present in numerous domains. The so-called content-based recommenders offer products similar to those the users liked in the past. However, due to the use of syntactic similarity metrics, these systems elaborate overspecialized recommendations including products very similar to those the user already knows. In this paper, we present a strategy that overcomes overspecialization by applying reasoning techniques borrowed from the semantic Web. Thanks to the reasoning, our strategy discovers a huge amount of knowledge about the user's preferences, and compares them with available products in a more flexible way, beyond the conventional syntactic metrics. Our reasoning-based strategy has been implemented in a recommender system for interactive digital television, with which we checked that the proposed technique offers accurate enhanced suggestions that would go unnoticed in the traditional approaches.

A Matching Approach for Object-Oriented Formal Specifications.

Software merging is needed at different stages of software development to combine the artifacts created or modified by the parallel work of the different developers involved in the project. An accurate matching approach is the key to successful software merging as well as to conflicts identification. In this paper, a new matching approach for ObjectOriented formal specifications is proposed. Object-Z is used as a specification language. However, the proposed approach is meant to be applicable to a wide range of Object-Oriented software artifacts. Merging formal requirements specifications is motivated by the fact that it could help in identifying (and resolving) conflicts that will cost higher to identify (and resolve) at later stages of software development. The proposed approach incorporates heuristics for both syntactic and structural similarity. The empirical results obtained through a prototype implementation of the proposed approach were very encouraging.

Multifaceted image similarity criteria as revealed by sorting tasks

AbstractThis paper reports a study on the types of image categories constructed from magazine photographs. A novel sorting procedure was tested with the aim of providing more data on image similarity and possible category overlap. Expert and non‐expert participants were compared in their categorizations. The new similarity sorting procedure resulted in an average of 67%–111% increase in similarity data gathered compared to basic free sorting. Categories were constructed on various levels of similarity: image Function, main visual content (People, Objects and Scene), conceptual content (Theme) and descriptors (Story, Affective, Description, Photography and Visual). Most categories were based on the theme and people portrayed in the photograph, and in the case of the expert subjects, image function. Also abstract and syntactic similarity criteria were employed by the subjects. The categories created by each subject showed on average a 35%–53% overlap. Participants also demonstrated a tendency to use multiple similarity criteria simultaneously and to combine terms from different levels in a single category name. These results indicate a need for a multifaceted approach in image categorization.

Discourse cohesion in text and tutorial dialogue

Discourse cohesion is presumably an important facilitator of comprehension when individuals read texts and hold conversations. This study investigated components of cohesion and language in different types of discourse about Newtonian physics: A textbook, textoids written by experimental psychologists, naturalistic tutorial dialoguebetween expert human tutors and college students, andAutoTutor tutorial dialogue between a computer tutor and students (AutoTutor is an animated pedagogical agent that helps students learn about physics by holding conversations in natural language). We analyzed the four types of discourse with Coh-Metrix, a software tool that measures discourse on different components of cohesion, language, and readability. The cohesion indices included co-reference, syntactic and semantic similarity, causal cohesion, incidence of cohesion signals (e.g., connectives, logical operators), and many other measures. Cohesion data were quite similar for the two forms of discourse in expository monologue (textbooks and textoids) and for the two types of tutorial dialogue (i.e., students interacting with human tutors and AutoTutor), but very different between the discourse of expository monologue and tutorial dialogue. Coh-Metrix was also able to detect subtle differences in the language and discourse of AutoTutor versus human tutoring.

Detection of interesting rules using visualization of differences between rules' syntactic and semantic similarities using multidimensional scaling

One of the most important problems with rule induction methods is that it is very difficult for domain experts to check millions of rules generated from large datasets, although the discovery from these rules requires deep interpretation from domain

Effect of syntactic similarity on cortical activation during second language processing: A comparison of English and Japanese among native Korean trilinguals

In this study of native Korean trilinguals we examined the effect of syntactic similarity between first (L1) and second (L2) languages on cortical activation during the processing of Japanese and English, which are, respectively, very similar to and different from Korean. Subjects had equivalent proficiency in Japanese and English. They performed auditory sentence comprehension tasks in Korean, Japanese, and English during functional MRI (fMRI). The bilateral superior temporal cortex was activated during the comprehension of three languages. The pars triangularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was additionally activated for L2 processing. Furthermore, the right cerebellum, the pars opercularis of the left IFG, and the posteriomedial part of the superior frontal gyrus were activated during the English tasks only. We observed significantly greater activation in the pars opercularis of the left IFG, the right cerebellum, and the right superior temporal cortex during the English than Japanese task; activation in these regions did not differ significantly between Korean and Japanese. Differential activation of the pars opercularis of the left IFG and the right cerebellum likely reflects syntactic distance and differential activation in the right superior temporal cortex may reflect the prosodic distance between English from Korean and Japanese. Furthermore, in the pars oparcularis of the left IFG and the right cerebellum, significant negative correlation between the activation and duration of exposure was observed for English, but not for Japanese. Our research supports the notion that linguistic similarity between L1 and L2 affects the cortical processing of second language.

Niuean and Eastern Polynesian: A View from Syntax

While the Tongic subgroup of Polynesian, consisting of Niuean and Tongan, is defined by a number of shared innovations, Niuean is known to exhibit phonological and lexical features that can be taken as evidence of Eastern Polynesian (EPN) influence. Niuean also shows syntactic features that are prominent among EPN languages, but absent in Tongan. This paper examines whether these syntactic features can be taken to be shared innovations and hence constitute a basis for a subgroup including EPN and Niuean. The current study suggests that convergent development is the probable explanation for the syntactic similarities between Niuean and EPN.

Language, Filiation, and Affiliation in Le�la Sebbar's Autobiographical Narratives

This article examines how Sebbar's ambivalent relationship with the Arabic language is intertwined with issues of filiation and affiliation in various autobiographical narratives that span her publishing career. Sebbar, whose mother is French and whose father is Arab, does not speak Arabic and received a Eurocentric upbringing in colonial Algeria. I analyze how a recurrent syntactic similarity and periphrasis across several texts' titles intertwine language abilities and filiations, and demonstrate that they create the filial and linguistic links that were displaced by the French language. In addition, I trace the role that contemporary events, such as the Algerian civil war, play in the variations of a scene which is recounted over time in several texts, in which boys insulted Sebbar in Arabic daily on her way to school. I study how Sebbar's treatment of language and gender issues strengthens her Algerian filiation through affiliation with Algerian women.

Equivalence of linear, free, liberal, structured program schemas is decidable in polynomial time

A program schema defines a class of programs, all of which have identical statement structure, but whose expressions may differ. We define a class of syntactic similarity binary relations between linear structured schemas, which characterise schema equivalence for structured schemas that are linear, free and liberal. In this paper we report that similarity implies equivalence for linear schemas, and that a near-converse holds for schemas that are linear, free and liberal. We also show that the similarity of two linear schemas is polynomial-time decidable. Our main result considerably extends the class of program schemas for which equivalence is known to be decidable, and suggests that linearity is a constraint worthy of further investigation.

Mining semantically related terms from biomedical literature

Discovering links and relationships is one of the main challenges in biomedical research, as scientists are interested in uncovering entities that have similar functions, take part in the same processes, or are coregulated. This article discusses the extraction of such semantically related entities (represented by domain terms) from biomedical literature. The method combines various text-based aspects, such as lexical, syntactic, and contextual similarities between terms. Lexical similarities are based on the level of sharing of word constituents. Syntactic similarities rely on expressions (such as term enumerations and conjunctions) in which a sequence of terms appears as a single syntactic unit. Finally, contextual similarities are based on automatic discovery of relevant contexts shared among terms. The approach is evaluated using the Genia resources, and the results of experiments are presented. Lexical and syntactic links have shown high precision and low recall, while contextual similarities have resulted in significantly higher recall with moderate precision. By combining the three metrics, we achieved F measures of 68% for semantically related terms and 37% for highly related entities.

The nature of working memory capacity in sentence comprehension: Evidence against domain-specific working memory resources

This paper reports the results of a dual-task experiment which investigates the nature of working memory resources used in sentence comprehension. Participants read sentences of varying syntactic complexity (containing subject- and object-extracted relative clauses) while remembering one or three nouns (similar to or dissimilar from the sentence-nouns). A significant on-line interaction was found between syntactic complexity and similarity between the memory-nouns and the sentence-nouns in the three memory-nouns conditions, such that the similarity between the memory-nouns and the sentence-nouns affected the more complex object-extracted relative clauses to a greater extent than the less complex subject-extracted relative clauses. These results extend Gordon, Hendrick, and Levine’s (2002) report of a trend of such an interaction. The results argue against the domain-specific view of working memory resources in sentence comprehension ( Caplan & Waters, 1999).

Construction-specific properties of syntactic subjects in Icelandic and German

This paper discusses the syntactic similarities and differences in the behavior of subject-like obliques in the Obl–V–(XP) construction in Icelandic and German. Research on this construction so far has suggested that the subject-like oblique behaves as a syntactic subject in Icelandic, but as an object in German. Data from German are presented which show that the subject-like oblique in fact passes almost all the subject tests, with some restrictions. The differences between Icelandic and German are therefore much smaller, and the similarities much greater, than predicted by analyzing them as subjects in Icelandic and objects in German. A comparison between Icelandic and German further reveals that the subject criteria cannot be applied across two as closely related languages as Icelandic and German, and they cannot be consistently applied even within the same language. Therefore, grammatical relations like “subject” and “object” should be regarded, not as universal, not as language-specific, but as CONSTRUCTIONSPECIFIC relations. It is shown that the difference between Icelandic and German resides in Obl–V–(XP) predicates being reluctant to occur in “elliptic” constructions in German, whereas their occurrences in such constructions in Icelandic are less restricted. This correlates with differences in the frequency of Obl–V–(XP) predicates in the two languages, suggesting that the construction exists at different levels of schematicity in Icelandic and German. This is expected on a usage-based account in which frequency is taken to be an important determinant of the language system.

Domain Restrictions For Distributive Quantification in Mandarin Chinese

The topic of this paper is distributive quantification in Mandarin Chinese and how it is constrained. The starting point is the two adverbial expressions, dou and quan, both of which are often translated as ‘all’. Despite their syntactic and semantic similarities, closer examinations reveal that the occurrence of quan is more restricted than that of dou. While we concur with the view that dou can function as a distributive operator, we argue that quan itself is neither distributive nor quantificational. Its sole semantic function is to restrict the domain of distributive quantification. The incompatibility of quan in various environments is attributed to this single reason: quan is merely a domain regulator for distributivity.

Female serin (Serinus serinus) responses to song do not favour the predominant song syntax

The predominant syntax of the serin song is sequential, whereby nonrepeated syllables follow a well-organised circular structure. This is an evolutionarily derived condition in serins, as most congener species use relatively more syllable repetitions. Repetition of syllables persists as a minor part of serin song, mostly at the beginning of songs. We investigated the possible existence of a female preference selecting for sequential syntax in the serin that could, explain its preponderance. Female preferences were assessed by analysis of their vocal responses and their operant eliciting of playbacks. Contrary to prediction, females tended to respond more to repetitive syntax, when choosing between the two natural serin syntaxes. This result could, however, be due to the syntactical and phonological similarities of the repetitive syntax and the species contact calls. When controlling for this possibility by giving the choice between repeated and sequential songs constructed from the same syllables in a second experiment, females expressed no preference. Taken together these experiments fail to link female preferences to the evolution of the serin sequential syntax. This result is discussed in the context of paucity of the evidence for a role of female choice in the evolution of song syntax in passerines.