The Academic Word List Reorganized for Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners
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POS Tagging for Improving Code-Switching Identification In
POS Tagging for Improving Code-Switching Identification in Arabic Mohammed Attia1 Younes Samih2 Ali Elkahky1 Hamdy Mubarak2 Ahmed Abdelali2 Kareem Darwish2 1Google LLC, New York City, USA 2Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU Research Complex, Doha, Qatar 1{attia,alielkahky}@google.com 2{ysamih,hmubarak,aabdelali,kdarwish}@hbku.edu.qa Abstract and sociolinguistic reasons. Second, existing the- oretical and computational linguistic models are When speakers code-switch between their na- tive language and a second language or lan- based on monolingual data and cannot adequately guage variant, they follow a syntactic pattern explain or deal with the influx of CS data whether where words and phrases from the embedded spoken or written. language are inserted into the matrix language. CS has been studied for over half a century This paper explores the possibility of utiliz- from different perspectives, including theoretical ing this pattern in improving code-switching linguistics (Muysken, 1995; Parkin, 1974), ap- identification between Modern Standard Ara- plied linguistics (Walsh, 1969; Boztepe, 2003; Se- bic (MSA) and Egyptian Arabic (EA). We try to answer the question of how strong is the tati, 1998), socio-linguistics (Barker, 1972; Heller, POS signal in word-level code-switching iden- 2010), psycho-linguistics (Grosjean, 1989; Prior tification. We build a deep learning model en- and Gollan, 2011; Kecskes, 2006), and more re- riched with linguistic features (including POS cently computational linguistics (Solorio and Liu, tags) that outperforms the state-of-the-art re- 2008a; Çetinoglu˘ et al., 2016; Adel et al., 2013b). sults by 1.9% on the development set and 1.0% In this paper, we investigate the possibility of on the test set. -
Evidence for the Parasitic Model of Vocabulary Development
The automatic cognate form assumption: Evidence for the parasitic model of vocabulary development CHRISTOPHER J. HALL Abstract The Parasitic Hypothesis, formulated to account for early stages of vocabu- lary development in second language learners, claims that on initial exposure to a word, learners automatically exploit existing lexical material in the L1 or L2 in order to establish an initial memory representation. At the level of phonological and orthographic form, it is claimed that significant overlaps with existing forms, i.e. cognates, are automatically detected and new forms are subordinately connected to them in the mental lexicon. In the study re- ported here, English nonwords overlapping with real words in Spanish (pseu- docognates), together with noncognate nonwords, were presented to Spanish- speaking learners of English in a word familiarity task. Participants reported significantly higher levels of familiarity with the pseudocognates and showed greater consistency in providing translations for them. These results, together with measures of the degree of overlap between nonword stimuli and transla- tions, were interpreted as evidence for the automatic use of cognates in early word learning. 1. Introduction1 1.1. The role of cognates in vocabulary development The facilitating role of cognates in the L2 vocabulary learning process has long been recognized (cf. Sweet 1972 [1899]). Cognates are words in two or more languages which share phonological and/or orthographic form, and normally (but not necessarily) are also related semantically. Ringbom (1987: 41) makes the commonsense observation that “[w]hen both phonological and semantic similarity work together, the effect is like that of a magnet attracting a new word to be stored in the learner’s mental lexicon when he meets it for the Þrst time”. -
SELECTING and CREATING a WORD LIST for ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING by Deny A
Teaching English with Technology, 17(1), 60-72, http://www.tewtjournal.org 60 SELECTING AND CREATING A WORD LIST FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING by Deny A. Kwary and Jurianto Universitas Airlangga Dharmawangsa Dalam Selatan, Surabaya 60286, Indonesia d.a.kwary @ unair.ac.id / [email protected] Abstract Since the introduction of the General Service List (GSL) in 1953, a number of studies have confirmed the significant role of a word list, particularly GSL, in helping ESL students learn English. Given the recent development in technology, several researchers have created word lists, each of them claims to provide a better coverage of a text and a significant role in helping students learn English. This article aims at analyzing the claims made by the existing word lists and proposing a method for selecting words and a creating a word list. The result of this study shows that there are differences in the coverage of the word lists due to the difference in the corpora and the source text analysed. This article also suggests that we should create our own word list, which is both personalized and comprehensive. This means that the word list is not just a list of words. The word list needs to be accompanied with the senses and the patterns of the words, in order to really help ESL students learn English. Keywords: English; GSL; NGSL; vocabulary; word list 1. Introduction A word list has been noted as an essential resource for language teaching, especially for second language teaching. The main purpose for the creation of a word list is to determine the words that the learners need to know, in order to provide more focused learning materials. -
Modeling and Encoding Traditional Wordlists for Machine Applications
Modeling and Encoding Traditional Wordlists for Machine Applications Shakthi Poornima Jeff Good Department of Linguistics Department of Linguistics University at Buffalo University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY USA Buffalo, NY USA [email protected] [email protected] Abstract Clearly, descriptive linguistic resources can be This paper describes work being done on of potential value not just to traditional linguis- the modeling and encoding of a legacy re- tics, but also to computational linguistics. The source, the traditional descriptive wordlist, difficulty, however, is that the kinds of resources in ways that make its data accessible to produced in the course of linguistic description NLP applications. We describe an abstract are typically not easily exploitable in NLP appli- model for traditional wordlist entries and cations. Nevertheless, in the last decade or so, then provide an instantiation of the model it has become widely recognized that the devel- in RDF/XML which makes clear the re- opment of new digital methods for encoding lan- lationship between our wordlist database guage data can, in principle, not only help descrip- and interlingua approaches aimed towards tive linguists to work more effectively but also al- machine translation, and which also al- low them, with relatively little extra effort, to pro- lows for straightforward interoperation duce resources which can be straightforwardly re- with data from full lexicons. purposed for, among other things, NLP (Simons et al., 2004; Farrar and Lewis, 2007). 1 Introduction Despite this, it has proven difficult to create When looking at the relationship between NLP significant electronic descriptive resources due to and linguistics, it is typical to focus on the dif- the complex and specific problems inevitably as- ferent approaches taken with respect to issues sociated with the conversion of legacy data. -
THE IMPACT of USING WORDLISTS in the LANGUAGE CLASSROOM on STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACQUISITION Gülçin Coşgun Ozyegin University
International Journal of English Language Teaching Vol.4, No.3, pp.49-66, March 2016 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) THE IMPACT OF USING WORDLISTS IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ON STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACQUISITION Gülçin Coşgun Ozyegin University ABSTRACT: Vocabulary has always been an area of interest for many researchers since words represent “the building block upon which knowledge of the second language can be built” and without them people cannot convey the intended meaning (Abrudan, 2010). Nation (1988) emphasised if teachers want to help their learners to deal with unknown words, it would be better to spend more time on vocabulary learning strategies rather than spending time on individual words. However, Schmitt in Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:200) stated that among vocabulary learning strategies only ‘guessing from context’ and ‘key word method’ have been investigated in depth. Therefore, there is need for more research on vocabulary learning whose pedagogical implications may contribute to the field of second language learning. Considering the above- mentioned issues, vocabulary is a worthwhile field to investigate. Hence, this paper aims at proposing a framework for vocabulary teaching strategy in English as a foreign language context. KEYWORDS: Wordlists, Vocabulary Teaching, Word walls, Vocabulary Learning Strategies INTRODUCTION Vocabulary has always been an area of interest and concern for many researchers and teachers alike since words represent “the building block upon which knowledge of the second language can be built” and without them people cannot convey the intended meaning (Abrudan, 2010). Anderson and Freebody (1981) state that a strong correlation exists between vocabulary and academic achievement. -
A Comparative Study of the Phenomenon of False Friends in SMG and CSG
Universidad de Málaga Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Departamento de traducción, traductología e interpretación A comparative study of the phenomenon of false friends in SMG and CSG PhD thesis submitted by Constantinia Chatzopoulou Supervised by Pedro José Chamizo Domínguez AUTOR: Constantinia Chatzopoulou http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1617-4008 EDITA: Publicaciones y Divulgación Científica. Universidad de Málaga Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial- SinObraDerivada 4.0 Internacional: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cualquier parte de esta obra se puede reproducir sin autorización pero con el reconocimiento y atribución de los autores. No se puede hacer uso comercial de la obra y no se puede alterar, transformar o hacer obras derivadas. Esta Tesis Doctoral está depositada en el Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga (RIUMA): riuma.uma.es Intralinguistic false friends: A comparative study of the phenomenon of false friends in SMG and C(S)G Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................................................ General Introduction -
All-Words Word Sense Disambiguation Using Concept Embeddings
All-words Word Sense Disambiguation Using Concept Embeddings Rui Suzuki, Kanako Komiya, Masayuki Asahara, Minoru Sasaki, Hiroyuki Shinnou Ibaraki University, 4-12-1 Nakanarusawa, Hitachi, Ibaraki JAPAN, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, 10-2 Midoricho, Tachikawa, Tokyo, JAPAN, [email protected], kanako.komiya.nlp, minoru.sasaki.01, hiroyuki.shinnou.0828g @vc.ibaraki.ac.jp, [email protected] Abstract All-words word sense disambiguation (all-words WSD) is the task of identifying the senses of all words in a document. Since the sense of a word depends on the context, such as the surrounding words, similar words are believed to have similar sets of surrounding words. We therefore predict the target word senses by calculating the distances between the surrounding word vectors of the target words and their synonyms using word embeddings. In addition, we introduce the new idea of concept embeddings, constructed from concept tag sequences created from the results of previous prediction steps. We predict the target word senses using the distances between surrounding word vectors constructed from word and concept embeddings, via a bootstrapped iterative process. Experimental results show that these concept embeddings were able to improve the performance of Japanese all-words WSD. Keywords: word sense disambiguation, all-words, unsupervised 1. Introduction many words have the same article numbers. Several words Word sense disambiguation (WSD) involves identifying the can have the same precise article number, even when the senses of words in documents. In particular, the WSD task semantic breaks are considered. where the senses of all the words in a document are disam- biguated is referred to as all-words WSD. -
A Web-Based Vocabulary Profiler for Chinese Language Teaching and Research
DA A web-based vocabulary profiler for Chinese language teaching and research Jun Da, Middle Tennessee State University This paper describes the design and development of a web-based Chinese vocabulary profiler that is intended as a handy tool for Chinese language instruction and research. Given a piece of text, the profiler is capable of generating character and vocabulary profiles with frequency and availability information based on a comparison of the set of characters and words found in the text with a selection of other pre-compiled reference lists such as Da’s Modern Chinese character and N-gram frequency lists, the HSK word list and customized vocabulary list provided by a user. 1. Introduction Vocabulary profiling is a measure of the proportions of low and high frequency vocabulary used in a written text. In addition to frequency information, a profiler designed for lexical analysis of texts often provides other information such as the presence/absence of the set of words from the input text in other specialized word lists and their collocation with other words, etc. While it has been used in stylistic studies of written texts (e.g., Graves’s (2004) profiling of Jane Austen’s novels and letters), vocabulary profiling has also been suggested as a useful instrument in second language acquisition research and pedagogy (Laufer and Nation 1995). For example, Morris and Cobb (2004) examined the potential of using vocabulary profile as a predictor of TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) trainees’ academic performance and reported that vocabulary profile results correlate significantly with their course grades. -
Simple Features for Statistical Word Sense Disambiguation
SENSEVAL-3: Third International Workshop on the Evaluation of Systems for the Semantic Analysis of Text, Barcelona, Spain, July 2004 Association for Computational Linguistics Simple Features for Statistical Word Sense Disambiguation Abolfazl K. Lamjiri, Osama El Demerdash, Leila Kosseim CLaC Laboratory Department of Computer Science Concordia University, Montreal, Canada fa keigho,osama el,[email protected] Abstract more than four words around the target are In this paper, we describe our experiments on considered (Ide and V´eronis, 1998). While re- statistical word sense disambiguation (WSD) searchers such as Masterman (1961), Gougen- using two systems based on different ap- heim and Michea (1961), agree with this ob- proaches: Na¨ıve Bayes on word tokens and Max- servation (Ide and V´eronis, 1998), our results imum Entropy on local syntactic and seman- demonstrate that this does not generally ap- tic features. In the first approach, we consider ply to all words. A large context window pro- a context window and a sub-window within it vides domain information which increases the around the word to disambiguate. Within the accuracy for some target words such as bank.n, outside window, only content words are con- but not others like different.a or use.v (see Sec- sidered, but within the sub-window, all words tion 3). This confirms Mihalcea's observations are taken into account. Both window sizes are (Mihalcea, 2002). In our system we allow a tuned by the system for each word to disam- larger context window size and for most of the biguate and accuracies of 75% and 67% were re- words such context window is selected by the spectively obtained for coarse and fine grained system. -
HSK Word List - Level 3 HSK Word List - Level 3
11/5/11 HSK Word List - Level 3 HSK Word List - Level 3 1 阿姨 āyí maternal aunt; step-mother; childcare worker; nursemaid; woman of similar age to one's parents (term of address used by child); CL:個|个[gè] 2 啊 a modal particle ending sentence, showing affirmation, approval, or consent 3 矮 ǎi low; short (in length) 4 ài to love; affection; to be fond of; to like 5 好 àihào to like; to take pleasure in; keen on; fond of; interest; hobby; appetite for; CL:個|个[gè] 6 安静 ānjìng quiet; peaceful; calm 7 八 bā eight; 8 8 把 bǎ to hold; to contain; to grasp; to take hold of; a handle; particle marking the following noun as a direct object; classifier for objects with handle 9 爸爸 bàba (informal) father; CL:個|个[gè],位[wèi] 10 吧 ba (modal particle indicating polite suggestion); ...right?; ...OK? 11 白 bái white; snowy; pure; bright; empty; blank; plain; clear; to make clear; in vain; gratuitous; free of charge; reactionary; anti-communist; funeral; to stare coldly; to write wrong character; to state; to explain; vernacular; spoken lines in opera; surname Bai 12 百 bǎi hundred; numerous; all kinds of; surname Bai 13 班 bān team; class; squad; work shift; classifier for groups; ranking; surname Ban; CL:個|个[gè] 14 搬 bān to move; to shift; to remove; to transport; to apply indiscriminately; to copy mechanically 15 半 bàn half; semi-; incomplete; (after a number) and a half 16 法 bànfǎ means; method; way (of doing sth); CL:條|条[tiáo], 個|个[gè] hewgill.com/hsk/hsk3.html 1/29 11/5/11 HSK Word List - Level 3 17 公室 bàngōngshì an office; business premises; a bureau; CL:間| -
Pdf List of False Cognates, with Which Persian Chamizo Dominguez, P
English and Persian Cognates/Pseudo Cognates-A Cross-Linguistic Investigation [PP: 21-34] Amin Marzban Department of Foreign Languages, Sepidan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sepidan, Iran Shahrzad Chahardahcherik Department of Foreign Languages, Sepidan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sepidan, Iran ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article History Different world languages have a lot of contact with each other and have had The paper received on: different influences on one another. Cognates, words which are similar across 15/01/2015 two or more languages in some aspects, especially with regard to Accepted after peer- pronunciation, portray an interesting and relevant aspect of foreign/second review on: language translation and research. This study intended to identify a type of 28/02/2015 cognate words called false cognates in Persian and English, words which have Published on: the same form in two languages but represent different meanings, and tried to 07/03/2015 study and determine the historical relations between English and Persian words. It also aimed to trace their route back from Proto Indo-European Keywords: languages to the modern languages. To this end, the related literature was gone Back borrowing, through and a sufficient corpus of information has been revealed. Afterwards, Borrowing, authentic monolingual dictionaries in both Farsi and English languages were Cross-linguistic consulted to provide definitions for the cognates and allow for their cross- investigation linguistic comparison. The findings revealed that most of such problematic False cognates, cognates with different meanings in Farsi and English as found through this True cognates, study are likely to be confusing and deceptive for Farsi-speaking EFL learners. -
Cross-Linguistic Word Frequency Visualization for PT and EN
Cross-Linguistic Word Frequency Visualization for PT and EN Mariana Shimabukuro* Christopher Collins† Ontario Tech University Figure 1: Circular heatmap and zoomed rank exploration view. The heatmap shows the distribution of words between Portuguese (PT) and their English (EN) translations in both language ranks. The side view shows words from a chosen cell and their rank location in the bars on the right (PT) and left (EN) side, e.g., the word “that” appears 4 times, indicating PT speakers tend to overuse “that”. ABSTRACT Ex.: “This a strong/powerful tea.”, “I feel very confusing this In this project, we present a visualization for investigating the re- morning.” or “I ate a medicine pill.” lationship between commonly used words in Portuguese and their Acceptability errors can be a source of embarrassment for non- translations in English. This cross-linguistic analysis can help us to native English speakers, and often come from the differences in word understand English word choices made by Portuguese native speak- frequency across languages. For example, the word “polemic” is ers and the influence of language transfer effects. In this paper, considered formal and rarely used in English, whereas its Portuguese we discuss how word frequency is commonly used as a resource translation, “polemico,”ˆ is a very common word. Thus, a Portuguese for both textual and cross-linguistic analysis. Moreover, we briefly speaker may choose to use the word “polemic” in English conversa- explain the data processing pipeline building on machine translation tion, where “controversial” would be a more natural-sounding choice. and word frequencies from large corpora.