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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University

Statistical learning refers to the ability to track regular patterns in sensory input from ambient environments. This learning mechanism can exploit a wide range of statistical structures (e.g., frequency, distribution, and co-occurrence probability). Given its regularities and hierarchical structures, language is essentially a pattern-based system and therefore researchers have argued that statistical learning is fundamental to language acquisition (e.g., Saffran, 2003). Indeed, young infants and adults can find words in artificial languages by tracking syllable co-occurrence probabilities and extracting words on that basis (e.g., Saffran. Aslin & Newport, 1996a). However, prior studies have mainly focused on whether learners can statistically segment words from a single language; whether learners can segment words from two artificial languages remains largely unknown. Given that the majority of the global population is bilingual (Grosjean, 2010), it is necessary to study whether learners can make use of the statistical learning mechanism to segment words from two language inputs, which is the focus of this thesis. I examined adult and infant learners to answer three questions: (i) Can learners make use of French and English phonetic cues within a single individual’s speech to segment words successfully from two languages?; 2) Do bilinguals outperform monolinguals?; and 3) Do specific factors, such as cognitive ability or bilingual experience, underlie any potential bilingual advantage in word segmentation across two languages? In Study 1, adult learners generally could make use of French and English phonetic cues to segment words from two overlapping artificial languages. Importantly, simultaneous bilinguals who learned French and English since birth segmented more correct words in comparison to monolinguals, multilinguals, and sequential French-English bilinguals. Early bilingual experience may lead learners to be more flexible when processing information in new environments and/or they are more sensitive to subtle cues that mark the changes of language inputs. Further, individuals’ cognitive abilities were not related to learners’ segmentation performance, suggesting that the observed simultaneous bilingual segmentation advantage is not related any bilingual cognitive advantages (Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012). In Study 2, I tested 9.5-month-olds, who are currently discovering words in their natural environment, in an infant version of the adult task. Surprisingly, monolingual, but not bilingual, infants successfully used French and English phonetic cues to segment words from two languages. The observed difference in segmentation may be related to how infant process native and non-native phonetic cues, as the French phonetic cues are non-native to monolingual infants but are native to bilingual infants. Finally, the observed difference in segmentation ability was again not driven by cognitive skills. In sum, current thesis provides evidence that both adults and infants can make use of phonetic cues to statistically segment words from two languages. The implications of why early bilingualism plays a role in determining learners’ segmentation ability are discussed.

Saurssure argues that the relationship between form and meaning in language is arbitrary, but sound symbolism theory argues that there are forms in language that can develop non-arbitrary association with meanings. This thesis proposes that there is a sound symbolic association between consonants and action words. To be more specific, a stop sound is likely to be associated with the action of percussion and a continuant sound with continuing movements. Evidence for such an association was found through three empirical studies. The findings of two experiments revealed that such an association is motivated by the gestures when pronouncing the consonants and by their phonetic features. A study of the verbs in Teochew dialect also revealed a similar sound symbolic association existing in the colloquial language. This thesis was conducted to direct attention to the use of empirical methods to investigate sound symbolism in real language. / 2015-10-03

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-03T11:52:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-02-28Bitstream added on 2015-03-03T12:06:42Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000806326.pdf: 3400776 bytes, checksum: 5668be8516775369e3330e4de697039b (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Essa dissertação apresenta um estudo do léxico sobre os nomes para as aves em Juruna (família Juruna, tronco tupi), a partir da coleta de dados em campo e pesquisa participativa de base etnográfica, com vistas à aplicação em um estudo lexicográfico, que prevê a elaboração de um dicionário juruna-português. Apresentamos uma discussão sobre os nomes em Juruna, com destaque para os nomes para partes do corpo das aves e os vocativos de criação. Discutimos também o processo de formação de palavras relacionadas às aves em Juruna, analisando a formação de nomes compostos e o marcador de posse maka, que mais do que um constituinte dos compostos genitivos indica uma relação de significado amplo entre os Juruna e os animais. Por fim, discutimos o sistema de classificação etnobiológica e os processos de categorização dos Juruna em relação à avifauna, destacando a importância da cosmologia e das relações cotidianas entre as pessoas e as aves para a compreensão do seu sistema classificatório / This work presents a study of the lexicon of bird names in Juruna (Juruna family, Tupi branch) aiming a lexicographic application, the production of a Juruna-Portuguese dictionary. The data presented here were collected from fieldwork and participative ethnographic work. We present a discussion about the nouns in Juruna, mainly the names of parts of the body of birds and pet vocatives. We also discuss the process of word formation in the lexicon of words concerning birds in Juruna, analyzing the formation of compound nouns and the marker of possession maka, which rather indicates a relation of broad significance between human beings and animals than just constitutes genitive compounds. Finally, we discuss the Juruna ethnobiological system of classification and the Juruna’s processes of categorization concerning the avifauna, highlighting the significance of cosmology and daily relations between people and birds in order to understand that classificatory system / FAPESP: 10/13623-8

Marknadsföring idag ser inte ut som den har gjort tidigare, digitaliseringen har medfört en stor förändring och många nya möjligheter för företag och privatpersoner att marknadsföra sig. Word-of-mouth har gått från att vara mellan två eller flera personer i en konversation där exempelvis en produkt eller tjänst diskuterats. Detta har också förändrats och flera olika typer av online word-of-mouth (eWOM) har tillkommit, denna studie kommer behandla två typer av eWOM som finns, mer exakt influencers och recensioner online. Undersökningen kommer gå in på det förtroende som konsumenter har för just influencers och recensioner online och även undersöka om detta förändras om konsumenten står inför ett hög- eller lågengagemangsköp. Forskningsfrågor ställs även för att få reda på vilka faktorer som spelar in för att förtroendet för influencers och recensioner skall påverkas och om förtroendet förändras om konsumenten ställs inför ett köp av en produkt istället för en tjänst. Undersökningen sker genom en kvalitativ metod där intervjuer hålls med sex respondenter och frågor anknutna till syftet och forskningsfrågorna ställs till dem. Resultatet från dessa intervjuer visar att förtroendet för influencers inte är lika starkt som det förtroende konsumenterna har för recensioner online, däremot förklarar respondenterna att det finns faktorer som kan både öka och minska förtroendet både för recensioner och influencers. Det kan exempelvis vara så att en influencer mer många följare kan kännas mer trovärdig och att en okänd hemsida med recensioner kan tappa trovärdighet. Respondenterna har varit överens om att influencers fungerar bättre som inspiration till produkter och tjänster, däremot är det recensioner som får dem att ta beslutet när det gäller ett köp. / Marketing today doesn’t look like it has done before, the digitization has resulted in a big change and lots of new opportunities for companies and individuals to advertise. Word-of-mouth has changed from something being said about a product or service in a conversation between two or more people to also be available online. There are a lot of different types of online word-of-mouth (eWOM), and we’re going to target influencers and online reviews. The study will look into the trust for influencers and online reviews perceived by the consumers and also examine how or if the amount of trust will alter depending on if the consumer approaches a high- or low involvement purchase. The study will be of a qualitative method where interviews will be held with six respondents. The questions will be cohere to the purpose of the study and the research questions. The result from this study shows that the consumer trust for influencers isn’t as significant as the trust for online reviews, despite that several of the consumers points out that there is factors that can change the amount of trust for both influencers and online reviews. For example an influencer with a lot of followers can appear to be more trustworthy than one with less, and a not that well known website with online reviews can appear less trustworthy. The respondents have agreed that influencers work better as inspiration for products and services, although they all thought that reviews are the deciding factor to making a purchase.

All languages have words that are considered taboo – words that are not supposed to be said or used. Taboo words, or swearwords, can be used in many different ways and they can have different meanings depending on what context they appear in. Another aspect of taboo words is the euphemisms that are used in order to avoid obscene speech. This paper will focus on x-words, words like the f-word or the c-word, which replace the words fuck or cunt, but as the study will show they also have other meanings and usages. The purpose of this paper is also to investigate the significance of taboo words and their usage in English, as well as research on how they are used, or not used, in media. The aim is to examine how x-words are used in the British newspapers the Guardian and the Observer by using corpus searches. The results show that there are several ways of using x-words, and that using them in order to show that a word either is taboo, or has become taboo in a certain context, is the most common way. It is also clear that x-words can represent many different words, and not only words that are generally considered taboo.

The large amount of data accumulated by applications is stored in a database. Because of the large amount, name conflicts or missing values sometimes occur. This prevents certain types of analysis. In this work, we solve the name conflict problem by comparing the similarity of the data, and changing the test data into the form of a given template dataset. Studies on data use many methods to discover knowledge from a given dataset. One popular method is association rules mining, which can find associations between items. This study unifies the incomplete data based on association rules. However, most rules based on traditional association rules mining are item-to-item rules, which is a less than perfect solution to the problem. The data recovery system is based on complex association rules able to find two more types of association rules, prefix pattern-to-item, and suffix pattern-to-item rules. Using complex association rules, several missing values are filled in. In order to find the frequent prefixes and frequent suffixes, this system used FP-tree to reduce the time, cost and redundancy. The segment phrases method can also be used for this system, which is a method based on the viscosity of two words to split a sentence into several phrases. Additionally, methods like data compression and hash map were used to speed up the search.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Old Testament Studies / unrestricted

Word prediction has been offered as support for children with spelling difficulties. The literature however has shown wide-ranging results, as the use of word prediction is at the cost of time and fatigue due to increased visual-cognitive demands. Spelling support with word prediction is through word completion, keystroke reduction and the interactive process between spelling and reading. The research project was a cross-over within-subject design using 80 Grade 4 – 6 children with spelling difficulties in a school for special needs. The research task took the form of entering 30 words through an on-screen keyboard, with and without the use of word prediction software. The subjects were divided into four groups, who completed the research task in combinations of one of two equivalent wordlists and the presentation order of the typing method used. The Graded Word Spelling Test, administered before the study began, served to investigate whether there was a relationship between the children’s current spelling knowledge and word prediction efficacy. The results indicated an increase in spelling accuracy with the use of word prediction, but at the cost of time and the tendency to use word approximations, which decreased as grade and age increased. Children’s current spelling knowledge could not serve as an indicator of who would be most likely to benefit from word prediction use. The cross-over design counter-balanced the effects of the inequalities in the two wordlists and the effects of practice and fatigue noted in the presentation order. Further research into the impact that more extensive training and practice would have on word prediction efficacy and the usefulness of word prediction in more functional writing is necessary. / Dissertation (M (Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / unrestricted