This thesis investigates the application of structured sequence classification models to multilingual natural language processing (NLP). Many tasks tackled by NLP can be framed as classification, where we seek to assign a label to a particular piece of text, be it a word, sentence or document. Yet often the labels which we’d like to assign exhibit complex internal structure, such as labelling a sentence with its parse tree, and there may be an exponential number of them to choose from. Structured classification seeks to exploit the structure of the labels in order to allow both generalisation across labels which differ by only a small amount, and tractable searches over all possible labels. In this thesis we focus on the application of conditional random field (CRF) models (Lafferty et al., 2001). These models assign an undirected graphical structure to the labels of the classification task and leverage dynamic programming algorithms to efficiently identify the optimal label for a given input. We develop a range of models for two multilingual NLP applications: word-alignment for statistical machine translation (SMT), and multilingual super tagging for highly lexicalised grammars.

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) often present with difficulties in learning new words compared to age-matched children with typical language development. These difficulties may affect the acquisition, storage, or retrieval of new words. Word-learning deficits impact on children’s vocabulary development and impede their language and literacy development. Findings from a wide range of studies investigating word-learning in children with SLI demonstrated that semantic and phonological knowledge are crucial to the word-learning process. However, intervention studies designed to improve the word-learning abilities in children with SLI are sparse. The experiments described in this thesis addressed this need to understand the effects of interventions on word-learning abilities. Further, the thesis describes the first investigation of word-learning abilities of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI. Specifically, the following three broad questions are asked: 1. What are the word-learning skills of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI compared to children with typical language development and which underlying language skills influence word-learning? 2. What are the immediate and longer term effects of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning and language skills in children with SLI? 3. What are the error patterns of children with SLI compared to children with typical language development when learning to produce new words and do these patterns change following phonological awareness and semantic intervention? The first experiment compared the word-learning abilities of 19 school-aged children with SLI (aged 6;2 to 8;3) to age-matched children with typical language development and revealed that children with SLI presented with significant difficulties to produce and to comprehend new words. After repeated exposure, children with SLI caught up to the performances of children with typical language development in learning to comprehend new words, but not on production of new words. Correlation analyses demonstrated that there were no correlations between the word-learning skills and other language measures for children with SLI, whereas the word-learning abilities of children with typical language development were correlated to their phonological awareness, semantic, and general language skills. In the second experiment, it was investigated whether there were also qualitative differences during word-learning between children with and without SLI additionally to the quantitative differences as revealed in the first experiment. Children’s erroneous responses during the word-learning tasks were categorised into phonological, semantic, substitution or random errors. A comparison of the children’s error patterns revealed that children with SLI presented with a different error pattern and made significantly more random errors than children with typical language development. However, after repeated exposure, children with SLI demonstrated a similar error pattern as children without SLI. Furthermore, it was examined whether a specific combination of phonological and semantic cues facilitated children’s learning of new words or whether there were word-specific features that facilitated children’s word-learning. No facilitative word-specific features could be identified. Analysis revealed that there were no significant effects of cueing on learning new words, but specific patterns could be derived for children with SLI. Children with SLI learned to comprehend more words that were presented with two semantic cues or one phonological and one semantic cue and learned to produce more words that were presented with two phonological cues. In the third experiment, the effectiveness of a combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention to advance children’s word-learning abilities was examined. Nineteen children with SLI (same participants as in experiment 1) participated in this intervention study that implemented an alternating treatment group design with random assignment of the participants. Children in group A received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention, whereas children in group B received the same interventions in the reverse order. Children’s word-learning abilities were assessed at pre-test, prior to the intervention, at mid-test after intervention phase 1, and at post-test, immediately following the completion of the second intervention phase. Each intervention itself was effective in significantly improving children’s fast mapping skills, however, gains in children’s word-learning abilities were only found for children in group A for production of new words. Extending the findings of the intervention effectiveness of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning as reported in experiment 3, it was investigated in experiment 4, whether the implemented intervention additionally influenced the error patterns of children with SLI. The erroneous responses of children with SLI on all word-learning probes at pre-, mid-, and post-test were categorised into the same error groups as described in the second experiment (semantic, phonological, substitution, and random errors). The error analyses revealed that children’s error profiles changed during the course of intervention and treatment specific effects on children’s erroneous responses were found. Post-intervention, children who received phonological awareness followed by semantic intervention displayed the same error patterns as children with typical language development, whereas children who received the same interventions in the reverse order maintained the same error pattern as displayed at pre-test. The final experiment examined the longer-term effects of the combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention reported in experiment 3 on the language and literacy development of children with SLI. Eighteen of the 19 children with SLI, who received the intervention reported in experiment 3, were available for re-assessment 6 months after the completion of the intervention. The children (aged 7;1 to 9;2 years) were re-assessed on a range of standardised and experimental measures. Data analysis revealed that 6 months post-intervention, all children were able to maintain their gains in phonological awareness, semantic, and decoding skills as displayed immediately after the intervention. Children’s general language and reading skills significantly improved following the intervention; however, children who received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention displayed significantly better reading outcomes than the children who received the same interventions in the reverse order. This thesis revealed that a combination of phonological awareness and semantic intervention can enhance the word-learning abilities of children with SLI. The combined intervention approach was also effective in additionally improving children’s general language skills and the reading of single non-words and real words, as well as connected text. The immediate and longer-term intervention effects provide evidence that advancing the semantic and phonological awareness skills is an effective intervention approach to support children with SLI in their word-learning and to furthermore promote their language and literacy development. However, the order of the implemented interventions played a significant role: Children in the current study profited most when they received phonological awareness intervention first, followed by semantic intervention.

ABSTRACT Professor Peter Steele S.J. cuts a fascinating figure both in contemporary scholarship and poetic achievement. His work extends over a vast range of genre from poetry to criticism, public address and intellectual journalism. Some of his huge literary output is published, some of it awaits publication, and much of it is either uncollected or held in archival situations. Steele is a writer who matters today not only by virtue of his leading a distinguished academic career, and being a widely published poet, but also because for some two decades he has been a focal figure in the Society of Jesus in Australia and New Zealand and has had extensive experience as he would say 'plying his priesthood' in various British and American Jesuit institutions. This has resulted in a large volume of mostly unpublished writings ranging from prayers, liturgies and reflections to homilies for private and public occasions. The challenge of addressing Steele�'s literary achievement lies in the fact that his spiritual insights form the basis of his poetic, academic, and ethical imagination. This thesis has attempted to identify the core nature of these insights and to trace the way in which they ramify into the world of people, events, and art, especially literature. The basic issue concerns the principle of radiance, how it finds expression through Steele�s major motifs or figures of Jester, Pilgrim Expatriate, Celebrant and Word or Witness, and how this principal operates as the unifying basis of his thought. The thesis tries to investigate this unifying vision within the subtle diversity of the many ways Steele encounters the modern world. In identifying Steele�s structure of thought as a radiant entity focused on the theocentre of God and emanating to the Incarnate God, to the writers of the gospels and epistles, to St. Ignatius, to St. Edmund Campion and to all people especially artists, it has been necessary to shape each chapter in a roughly parallel manner and to organise it according to these stratafications. Each chapter places the individual motif within Steele�'s individual and Ignatian milieux, and examines the function of the particular figure or motif under investigation. Each chapter will then trace the figure (Fool, Pilgrim / Expatriate, Celebrant or Word Witness), as Steele sees it manifest in God, in Christ, in the scriptures, and as he understands it imparted to Campion, to Ignatius as he writes the Spiritual Exercises and to writers (and readers) of literature. Each chapter also has variations appropriate to its subject matter and medium so that for instance the chapter treating Steele�s Pilgrim figure will consider his treatment of it in both p oetics and homiletics and that treating the Word or Witness will predominantly relate to that figure to his critical appraisal of Peter Porter�s p oetry and the organisation of the latter will break from the established pattern of organisation in several major ways. This thesis offers a study of a rich Australian talent operating intellectually, academically, imaginatively and spiritually. If one were to seek to place Steele amongst similarly minded writers one would have to locate him in the community of writers recognised for their classical and contemporary sophistication, writers such as Peter Porter, Seamus Heaney, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott and Anthony Hecht. In this sense Steele is international rather than Australian in his emphasis; but being a true international he also includes Australia in his thinking.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1988. / Abstract lacking from microfiche. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-155).

Thesis (M.A.)--St. John's College, 1966. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-63).

Thesis (M.A.B.S.)--Denver Seminary, 2005. / [Gōren] appears in Hebrew letters on t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-160).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-144).

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration : New Testament and Christian ministries)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-99).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2002. / Advisor: Betty Ann Levy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-123). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2002. / Advisor: Betty Ann Levy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-123). Also available via World Wide Web.