The present thesis studies two types of performance phenomena, namely filled pauses and repeats. Both naturally occur in spoken discourse and do not hinder communication, their main function is to decrease the effects of online planning pressure. Since a speaker has to plan and produce language at the same time, non-native speakers are expected to experience greater difficulties when speaking a foreign language. The main aim of the present paper is to analyze English native speakers and Czech advanced speakers of English in terms of how their usage of these two phenomena differ. Attention is paid to overall frequencies as well as to their distribution, alternatively variation, and further performance phenomena in their proximity. The analysis comprises 3 non-native and 3 native speakers which were selected from the multilingual learner corpus LINDSEI and the monolingual corpus LOCNEC respectively.

[EN] In this thesis, the problem of multilingual spoken language understanding is addressed using graphs to model and combine the different knowledge sources that take part in the understanding process. As a result of this work, a full multilingual spoken language understanding system has been developed, in which statistical models and graphs of linguistic units are used. One key feature of this system is its ability to combine and process multiple inputs provided by one or more sources such as speech recognizers or machine translators. A graph-based monolingual spoken language understanding system was developed as a starting point. The input to this system is a set of sentences that is provided by one or more speech recognition systems. First, these sentences are combined by means of a grammatical inference algorithm in order to build a graph of words. Next, the graph of words is processed to construct a graph of concepts by using a dynamic programming algorithm that identifies the lexical structures that represent the different concepts of the task. Finally, the graph of concepts is used to build the best sequence of concepts. The multilingual case happens when the user speaks a language different to the one natively supported by the system. In this thesis, a test-on-source approach was followed. This means that the input sentences are translated into the system's language, and then they are processed by the monolingual system. For this purpose, two speech translation systems were developed. The output of these speech translation systems are graphs of words that are then processed by the monolingual graph-based spoken language understanding system. Both in the monolingual case and in the multilingual case, the experimental results show that a combination of several inputs allows to improve the results obtained with a single input. In fact, this approach outperforms the current state of the art in many cases when several inputs are combined. / [ES] En esta tesis se aborda el problema de la comprensión multilingüe del habla utilizando grafos para modelizar y combinar las diversas fuentes de conocimiento que intervienen en el proceso. Como resultado se ha desarrollado un sistema completo de comprensión multilingüe que utiliza modelos estadísticos y grafos de unidades lingüísticas. El punto fuerte de este sistema es su capacidad para combinar y procesar múltiples entradas proporcionadas por una o varias fuentes, como reconocedores de habla o traductores automáticos. Como punto de partida se desarrolló un sistema de comprensión multilingüe basado en grafos. La entrada a este sistema es un conjunto de frases obtenido a partir de uno o varios reconocedores de habla. En primer lugar, se aplica un algoritmo de inferencia gramatical que combina estas frases y obtiene un grafo de palabras. A continuación, se analiza el grafo de palabras mediante un algoritmo de programación dinámica que identifica las estructuras léxicas correspondientes a los distintos conceptos de la tarea, de forma que se construye un grafo de conceptos. Finalmente, se procesa el grafo de conceptos para encontrar la mejo secuencia de conceptos. El caso multilingüe ocurre cuando el usuario habla una lengua distinta a la original del sistema. En este trabajo se ha utilizado una estrategia test-on-source, en la cual las frases de entrada se traducen al lenguaje del sistema y éste las trata de forma monolingüe. Para ello se han propuesto dos sistemas de traducción del habla cuya salida son grafos de palabras, los cuales son procesados por el algoritmo de comprensión basado en grafos. Tanto en la configuración monolingüe como en la multilingüe los resultados muestran que la combinación de varias entradas permite mejorar los resultados obtenidos con una sola entrada. De hecho, esta aproximación consigue en muchos casos mejores resultados que el actual estado del arte cuando se utiliza una combinación de varias entradas. / [CAT] Aquesta tesi tracta el problema de la comprensió multilingüe de la parla utilitzant grafs per a modelitzar i combinar les diverses fonts de coneixement que intervenen en el procés. Com a resultat s'ha desenvolupat un sistema complet de comprensió multilingüe de la parla que utilitza models estadístics i grafs d'unitats lingüístiques. El punt fort d'aquest sistema és la seua capacitat per combinar i processar múltiples entrades proporcionades per una o diverses fonts, com reconeixedors de la parla o traductors automàtics. Com a punt de partida, es va desenvolupar un sistema de comprensió monolingüe basat en grafs. L'entrada d'aquest sistema és un conjunt de frases obtingut a partir d'un o més reconeixedors de la parla. En primer lloc, s'aplica un algorisme d'inferència gramatical que combina aquestes frases i obté un graf de paraules. A continuació, s'analitza el graf de paraules mitjançant un algorisme de programació dinàmica que identifica les estructures lèxiques corresponents als distints conceptes de la tasca, de forma que es construeix un graf de conceptes. Finalment, es processa aquest graf de conceptes per trobar la millor seqüència de conceptes. El cas multilingüe ocorre quan l'usuari parla una llengua diferent a l'original del sistema. En aquest treball s'ha utilitzat una estratègia test-on-source, en la qual les frases d'entrada es tradueixen a la llengua del sistema, i aquest les tracta de forma monolingüe. Per a fer-ho es proposen dos sistemes de traducció de la parla l'eixida dels quals són grafs de paraules. Aquests grafs són posteriorment processats per l'algorisme de comprensió basat en grafs. Tant per la configuració monolingüe com per la multilingüe els resultats mostren que la combinació de diverses entrades és capaç de millorar el resultats obtinguts utilitzant una sola entrada. De fet, aquesta aproximació aconsegueix en molts casos millors resultats que l'actual estat de l'art quan s'utilitza una combinació de diverses entrades. / Calvo Lance, M. (2016). A Strategy for Multilingual Spoken Language Understanding Based on Graphs of Linguistic Units [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62407 / TESIS

The aim of the thesis is to propose a tagging system for a learner corpus of spoken English which would, apart from tagging errors, focus also on the features specific for spoken language. Theoretical part, therefore, introduces basic concepts including learner language, the development of learner corpora in the last 20 years and both classical and computer-aided error analysis. Features typical of spoken language are described in the theoretical part as well since these are the focus of the research part of the thesis. The Louvain tagging system used for error-tagging of a leaner corpus of written language is used as the basis for the tagging system proposed in this thesis. Based on the analysis of 20 transcriptions taken from the Czech part of spoken learner corpus LINDSEI, modifications of the categories taken from the Louvain error-tagging system are proposed and new categories necessary for a better description of spoken language are introduced. The tagging system proposed in this thesis should make further analysis of the tagged corpus easier.

The thesis analyses syntactic complexity of monologic tasks of 10 B2 and 10 C1 speakers of English with Czech as their L1. The data derives from LINDSEI_CZ (Gráf 2017). The transcripts of the recordings were segmented into AS-units (Foster et al. 2000) and adapted for the purposes of the analysis. Syntactic complexity was calculated using following measures: mean length of AS-unit, mean length of clause, clauses / AS-unit. These were complemented by fine-grained indices of structural complexity, comprised of ratios of subordinate clause types and coordinate verb phrases per total number of clauses (Vercellotti & Packer 2016) and a weighted complexity scale designed by Vercellotti (2018). The results of the quantitative analysis showed no significant effect of proficiency on syntactic complexity of the speakers. In fact, all speakers irrespective of language proficiency level produced very similar complex structures as opposed to lower-proficiency structures. This indicates that more fine-grained indices should be incorporated into spoken complexity research. At the same time, scores of each measure varied considerably within groups, pointing at the importance of inter-speaker variability in this research. The thesis thus produced outcomes that are largely methodological, in that it has identified...

The subject of this thesis is orality in informal dialogic computer-mediated communication (henceforth CMC). This type of communication is represented by internet discussions, discussion fora, and Facebook posts. All these three genres are compared with informal spoken face-to-face dialogues. The data are covered by the Koditex corpus, which contains the CMC genres, and the Ortofon corpus of spoken language. The term orality can refer both to the realized communication form - spoken or written (so- called media orality) and to the summary of linguistic characteristics associated with the prototypical informal spoken dialogue (so-called conceptual orality). This thesis focuses only on conceptual orality, which is based on nine language features divided into the three following areas: dialogicity, spontaneity, and fulfilment of pragmatic needs of communication participants. The analyses show significant similarity between the functional use of features in both spoken and written communication. This applies primarily to the features associated with spontaneity (repetition of the same words, the presence of word fragments, typos and misspellings) and the fulfilment of pragmatic needs (discourse markers, pronoun non-dropping, iteration of graphemes). It follows that the selected CMC genres appropriately...

A rubric specifically for speaking skills was recently implemented and practiced in an English classroom for grade 6, in a school in the south of Sweden. The predetermined effected results of how the rubric works is debated among many schools and researchers, but no research have been done on the actually effects specifically in this area recently. Therefore, the overall aim for this study is to analyse how this specific tool for the spoken language learning works in practice. The study includes theory and previous research, which will be presented and moreover discussed in relation to the findings. Semi-structured interviews will be used and the participants are two teachers who teached year 6 at the same school in a city in the south of Sweden; both used the rubric in the English classroom. I investigated why and how it was implemented and used in the English classroom. Moreover, I answered the questions of what kind of rubric was used; and by comparing the rubric to the knowledge requirement in the syllabus, I determined how it outlined the knowledge requirements. In addition, by analysing the teachers’ answers, I investigated how the rubric affected the students’ learning and how it facilitated the learners’ self-awareness of their language development. The conclusion demonstrates that the rubric for speaking skills is beneficial for the majority of the students, but it has a negative effect on the students who are on a lower knowledge level than the rubric includes.

La deficiencia de lenguaje hablado, es uno de los problemas que ha existido desde siempre en niños de edad preescolar, y a raíz de la pandemia los porcentajes han aumentado, es por ende que se desarrolló una investigación, cuyo objetivo fue, aplicar juegos orales a infantes de cinco años después de la pandemia, además, medir el nivel de lenguaje oral y determinar la eficacia de aplicar un programa de actividades denominado “Club de juegos orales” para mejorar el lenguaje oral en niños de cinco años. La metodología empleada corresponde al enfoquecuantitativo, aplicada con un nivel preexp erimental; a 26 estudiantes de cinco años; para el pre y post test se utilizó el instrumento PLON R adaptado al contexto de los niños. Con respecto a los resultados que se obtuvieron en el pre test, no fueron los esperados, dado que, más del 50% de los estudiantes se encontraban en niveles de retraso y necesita mejorar; por otro lado, es importante mencionar que luego de haber aplicado el programa los resultados de post test fueron satisfactorios. En definitiva, los hallazgos demuestran que los juegos orales influyen mucho en el desarrollo de lenguaje hablado de los niños de preescolar, es por ello, que se recomienda trabajar actividades similares a las que se desarrollaron, ya que es de gran importancia porque permite ampliar el vocabulario y mejorar la habilidad para que haya una interacción social, es decir comunicarse con mayor fluidez, claridad y coherencia. / Spoken language deficiency is one of the problems that has always existed in preschool children, and as a result of the pandemic the percentages have increased, which is why research was developed, the objective of which was to measure the level of language oral and determine the effectiveness of applying an activity program called “Oral Games Club” to improve oral language in five-year-old children. The methodology used corresponds to the quantitative approach, applied at a pre-experimental level; 26 five-year-old students; For the pre- and posttest, the PLON R instrument adapted to the children's context was used. Regarding the results obtained in the pre-test, they were not as expected, given that more than 50% of the students were behind and needed to improve; On the other hand, it is important to mention that afterhaving applied the program, the post-test results were satisfactory. In short, the findings show that oral games greatly influence the development of spoken language in preschool children, which is why it is recommended to work on activities similar to those developed, since it is of great importance because it allows expanding the vocabulary and improve the ability to have social interaction, that is, to communicate with greater fluency, clarity and coherence.

Thesis (PhD (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We propose a new methodology, based on proper scoring rules, for the evaluation of the goodness of pattern recognizers with probabilistic outputs. The recognizers of interest take an input, known to belong to one of a discrete set of classes, and output a calibrated likelihood for each class. This is a generalization of the traditional use of proper scoring rules to evaluate the goodness of probability distributions. A recognizer with outputs in well-calibrated probability distribution form can be applied to make cost-effective Bayes decisions over a range of applications, having di fferent cost functions. A recognizer with likelihood output can additionally be employed for a wide range of prior distributions for the to-be-recognized classes. We use automatic speaker recognition and automatic spoken language recognition as prototypes of this type of pattern recognizer. The traditional evaluation methods in these fields, as represented by the series of NIST Speaker and Language Recognition Evaluations, evaluate hard decisions made by the recognizers. This makes these recognizers cost-and-prior-dependent. The proposed methodology generalizes that of the NIST evaluations, allowing for the evaluation of recognizers which are intended to be usefully applied over a wide range of applications, having variable priors and costs. The proposal includes a family of evaluation criteria, where each member of the family is formed by a proper scoring rule. We emphasize two members of this family: (i) A non-strict scoring rule, directly representing error-rate at a given prior. (ii) The strict logarithmic scoring rule which represents information content, or which equivalently represents summarized error-rate, or expected cost, over a wide range of applications. We further show how to form a family of secondary evaluation criteria, which by contrasting with the primary criteria, form an analysis of the goodness of calibration of the recognizers likelihoods. Finally, we show how to use the logarithmic scoring rule as an objective function for the discriminative training of fusion and calibration of speaker and language recognizers. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ons wys hoe om die onsekerheid in die uittree van outomatiese sprekerherkenning- en taalherkenningstelsels voor te stel, te meet, te kalibreer en te optimeer. Dit maak die bestaande tegnologie akkurater, doeltre ender en meer algemeen toepasbaar.

Increasingly, government and educational institutions are turning to study abroad programs as one of the primary means of providing students with important cross-cultural and linguistic skills. However, because of constraints on time and financial resources most students participate in short term programs lasting approximately two months. Additionally, research regarding students’ linguistic and cultural growth in study abroad shows that some students gain far more from their participation than others. The purpose of this study was to examine the cultural and linguistic learning that takes place in short-term programs and discover some of the factors that predict students’ growth while abroad. This study examined the relationship between important factors such as students’ level of cultural sensitivity, students’ relationship with their host family, motivation to learn the language, the amount of time students’ spent interacting with native speakers, as well as students’ oral language skills during a seven-week study abroad program. Surveys were used to measure each of the variables except for students’ oral language skills. To measure changes in oral skills, the researcher created an innovative instrument in which native speakers rated clips of student speech in the target language from before and after their time abroad. As found in previous research, students varied greatly in the amount of progress made in oral language skills and cultural sensitivity while abroad. However, students generally demonstrated small, but significant improvements in their oral language skills, despite the brief nature of their program. Further, the instrument created to measure growth in oral language skills showed high reliability. Interestingly, students’ level of cultural sensitivity prior to going abroad predicted changes in oral language skills. These results provide support for students’ participation in short-term study abroad programs since students generally experience noticeable improvements in language skills. They also suggest that students who are more culturally sensitive may have an advantage in language learning during study abroad programs. These results could be helpful for administrators in determining who may benefit most from such programs and may suggest that helping students gain cultural sensitivity could also aid students’ language learning. / text

L’objectif de la présente étude est de cerner les difficultés rencontrées en lecture et en orthographe par les enfants issus de l’immigration de 2ème et 3ème génération qui on été comparés à leurs pairs autochtones inscrits dans les même classes. L’échantillon comprend 357 élèves scolarisés dans des écoles communales en discrimination positive de la région de Bruxelles Capitale. Un suivi longitudinal de la 3ème à la 5ème année primaire a également été mené. Les résultats nous ont permis d’évaluer les performances en langue orale et en langue écrite de ces élèves, et de mettre en évidence d’une part les mécanismes de lecture et d’écriture et d’autre part les facteurs susceptibles d’expliquer les retards sur le plan psycholinguistique. Deux programmes d’entraînements, au niveau phonologique et syntaxique ont été élaborés en vue de mesurer leur effet sur les différences de compétences. / The objective of this study is to determine the difficulties encountered in reading and spelling by children from emigrant families (2nd and 3rd generation) compared with their pars autochthons registered in the same classes. The sample includes 357 pupils in positive discrimination elementary schools from the area of Brussels City. A longitudinal follow-up from 3rd to 5th primary grade was also carried out. The results enabled us to evaluate the performances in spoken and written language of these pupils and to highlight the mechanisms of reading and writing and the factors which explain psycholinguistics delays. Two training programs, one phonologic, the other syntactic were elaborate in order to measure their effect on the differential of skills.