Children of Italian immigrants in Montreal are in contact with many languages and kinds of speech. French and English are used publicly, formal Italian is studied in heritage classes, a dialect of the family's region of origin is used at home, and a kind of koine is frequently used in interactions with other Italian immigrants. The contact of these languages produces various kinds of interferences. These lead a child to make errors when he tries to use the Standard Italian code. In this research, children's compositions are examined for errors which in turn are analysed and classified. The causes of these errors are investigated and statistics are presented to indicate the frequency of errors or the power of various causes. / An effort is made to show all the different errors and interferences that occur, and to discover a pattern of their causes. The data put forth might eventually serve as a base for further studies on the pedagogical prevention or correction of errors in the teaching of Standard Italian as adapted to the specific situation in Montreal.

In the 1950s, countless letters were sent from family members in Italy to their sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, and husbands or wives who had emigrated earlier to Canada. / This research is a study of nineteen letters written in Italy between 1954 and 1955. These letters, written in the language known as "l'italiano popolare," are the primary source from which stems a linguistic analysis. As well, a brief overview of "l'italiano popolare" follows in addition to a synopsis on popular letters and on the sociohistorical circumstances surrounding Italy at the time in which the letters were written.

No description available.

Multi-task learning refers to learning multiple tasks simultaneously, in order to avoid tabula rasa learning and to share information between similar tasks during learning. We consider a multi-task Gaussian process regression model that learns related functions by inducing correlations between tasks directly. Using this model as a reference for three other multi-task models, we provide a broad unifying view of multi-task learning. This is possible because, unlike the other models, the multi-task Gaussian process model encodes task relatedness explicitly. Each multi-task learning model generally assumes that learning multiple tasks together is beneficial. We analyze how and the extent to which multi-task learning helps improve the generalization of supervised learning. Our analysis is conducted for the average-case on the multi-task Gaussian process model, and we concentrate mainly on the case of two tasks, called the primary task and the secondary task. The main parameters are the degree of relatedness ρ between the two tasks, and πS, the fraction of the total training observations from the secondary task. Among other results, we show that asymmetric multitask learning, where the secondary task is to help the learning of the primary task, can decrease a lower bound on the average generalization error by a factor of up to ρ2πS. When there are no observations for the primary task, there is also an intrinsic limit to which observations for the secondary task can help the primary task. For symmetric multi-task learning, where the two tasks are to help each other to learn, we find the learning to be characterized by the term πS(1 − πS)(1 − ρ2). As far as we are aware, our analysis contributes to an understanding of multi-task learning that is orthogonal to the existing PAC-based results on multi-task learning. For more than two tasks, we provide an understanding of the multi-task Gaussian process model through structures in the predictive means and variances given certain configurations of training observations. These results generalize existing ones in the geostatistics literature, and may have practical applications in that domain. We evaluate the multi-task Gaussian process model on the inverse dynamics problem for a robot manipulator. The inverse dynamics problem is to compute the torques needed at the joints to drive the manipulator along a given trajectory, and there are advantages to learning this function for adaptive control. A robot manipulator will often need to be controlled while holding different loads in its end effector, giving rise to a multi-context or multi-load learning problem, and we treat predicting the inverse dynamics for a context/load as a task. We view the learning of the inverse dynamics as a function approximation problem and place Gaussian process priors over the space of functions. We first show that this is effective for learning the inverse dynamics for a single context. Then, by placing independent Gaussian process priors over the latent functions of the inverse dynamics, we obtain a multi-task Gaussian process prior for handling multiple loads, where the inter-context similarity depends on the underlying inertial parameters of the manipulator. Experiments demonstrate that this multi-task formulation is effective in sharing information among the various loads, and generally improves performance over either learning only on single contexts or pooling the data over all contexts. In addition to the experimental results, one of the contributions of this study is showing that the multi-task Gaussian process model follows naturally from the physics of the inverse dynamics.

Dell (1986) presented a spreading activation model which accounted for a number of early speech error results, including the relative proportions of anticipations, perseverations and exchanges found in speech error corpora, the lexical bias effect, the phonological similarity effect, and the effect of speech rate on error rate. This model has had an immense influence on the past 20 years of research into word production, with the original paper being cited over 1,000 times. Many studies have questioned how activation should flow between words and phonemes in this model. This thesis aimed to clarify what current speech error evidence tells us about how activation flows between phonemes and subphonemic representations, like features. Does activation cascade from phonemes to features, and does it feed back? The work presented here extends previous modelling investigations in two ways. Firstly, whereas previous modelling research has tended to evaluate model behaviour using arbitrarily chosen parameter settings, we illuminate the influence of the parameters on model behaviour and propose methods to draw general conclusions about model behaviour from large numbers of simulations at orthogonally varied parameter settings. Secondly, we extend the scope of the simulations to consider output at a subphonemic level, modelling recent data acquired via acoustic and articulatory measurements, such as voicing onset time (VOT), electropalatography (EPG) and ultrasound, alongside older transcribed speech error data. Throughout the thesis, we consider whether parameter settings which lead the model to capture individual results also permit other results to be accounted for and do not cause otherwise implausible behaviour. Through manipulating parameter settings in Dell's (1986) original model, we find that increasing the number of steps before selection generally does not decrease the error rate, but rather increases it, contrary to results reported by Dell (1986). This calls into question the claim that an increase in steps before selection provides a good model of a slower speech rate. We also demonstrate that the model captures the negative correlation reported by Dell, Burger, and Svec (1997) between error rate and the ratio of anticipations to perseverations, and further predicts that there should be a negative correlation between this ratio and the proportion of errors which are non-contextual. However, our results show that no parameter setting allows the model to generate enough exchanges to match even minimum estimates from a reanalysis of multiple speech error corpus reports, without falling foul of other constraints; in particular, limits on the overall number of errors generated. We suggest that the exchange completion triggering mechanism proposed by Dell (1986) is not strong enough, and that current corpus evidence provides little support for his account of word sequencing. Focusing on single word production therefore, the second part of the thesis investigates behaviour of models with output at a subphonemic level. We find that, provided sufficient contextual errors occur at the featural level, a model in which only the identity of the selected phoneme is conveyed to the featural level can account for: (i) the phonological similarity effect found in transcribed records of speech errors (whereas in models with output at the phoneme level, feedback from features to phonemes is required); (ii) detectable influences of intended phonemes in VOT measurements of unintended phonemes, as well as the effect of error outcome lexicality on these results ( findings presented in support of cascading from phonemes by Goldrick & Blumstein, 2006); and (iii) increased similarity of EPG measurements of articulations to reference measurements of competing articulations when production of the competing onset would result in a word (McMillan, Corley, & Lickley, 2009). Initial results appear to con firm however that, in contrast, phonological similarity effects on the relationship of articulatory and acoustic measurements of productions to reference measurements (McMillan, 2008) can only be accounted for in an architecture with feedback from features to phonemes. To strengthen conclusions about articulatory evidence of lexical bias and phonological similarity effects, future work needs to consider the extremely strong effects of frequency observed in these simulations. The results presented in this thesis contribute to a greater comprehension of the behaviour of Dell's (1986) influential model, and further demonstrate that the model can be extended to account for new instrumental evidence, whilst clarifying the constraints on activation flow between phonemes and features which this new evidence imposes.

Undervisning om multiplikationstabellen består främst av lärande genom repetition eller strategi. Syftet med litteraturstudien är att utifrån forskning undersöka och jämföra inlärning av multiplikationstabellen genom strategi- och repetitionsbaserad undervisning. Studien avgränsas till elever i årskurs 1 till 6. Materialet samlades in genom en iterativ sökning på åtta databaser för vetenskapliga publikationer. Det insamlade materialet bestod av sjutton vetenskapliga publikationer. Resultatet visade att både lärande genom repetition och lärande genom strategi möjliggör för elever att automatisera multiplikationstabellen. Resultatet visade också att lärande genom strategi gör att elever kan använda sina kunskaper i nya matematiska sammanhang. En nackdel med lärande genom repetition är att det är svårt att lära sig multiplikationstabellen utan att använda mönster och samband. Strategi- och repetitionsbaserad undervisning leder till olika felsvar. Felsvaren förklaras bland annat med att eleven övat för lite eller att de har en bristande taluppfattning. Forskningen presenterar en stadieteori som beskriver lärandet av multiplikationstabellen och två olika teorier som beskriver hur multiplikationskombinationer memoreras. Kombinationerna memoreras som enskilda enheter eller som system av sammankopplade erfarenheter. / Teaching of the multiplication table mainly consists of learning through drill or learning through strategy. The aim of this literature study is to investigate and compare the learning of the multiplication table through strategy and drill. The study is an analysis of previous research and limited to research on pupils in grade 1 to 6. The material was collected through an iterative search in eight databases of scientific literature. The retrieved material contained seventeen scientific publications. The analysis showed that both learning through drill as well as learning through strategy make pupils develop automaticity of the multiplication table. It also showed that learning based on strategies enable pupils to use acquired knowledge in new mathematical areas. A disadvantage of learning through drill is that it is difficult to learn multiplication facts without utilizing patterns and connections. Pupils make different errors depending on whether they have been taught through strategies or through drill. Errors are explained with a variety of factors, for instance a lack of practice or a lack of number sense. Previous research present three phases that pupils go through in order to master the multiplication table and two different theo-ries of how the multiplication facts are memorized. The multiplication facts are memorized either as separate entities or as a system of interrelated experiences.

No description available.

Studies show that software developers spend about 19% of their development time in web surfing. While collecting necessary information using traditional web search, they face several practical challenges. First, it does not consider context (i.e., surroundings, circumstances) of the programming problems during search unless the developers do so in search query formulation, and forces the developers to frequently switch between their working environment (e.g., IDE) and the web browser. Second, technical details (e.g., stack trace) of an encountered exception often contain a lot of information, and they cannot be directly used as a search query given that the traditional search engines do not support long queries. Third, traditional search generally returns hundreds of search results, and the developers need to manually analyze the result pages one by one in order to extract a working solution. Both manual analysis of a page for content relevant to the encountered exception (and its context) and working an appropriate solution out are non-trivial tasks. Traditional code search engines share the same set of limitations of the web search ones, and they also do not help much in collecting the code examples that can be used for handling the encountered exceptions. In this thesis, we present a context-aware and IDE-based approach that helps one overcome those four challenges above. In our first study, we propose and evaluate a context-aware meta search engine for programming errors and exceptions. The meta search collects results for any encountered exception in the IDE from three popular search engines- Google, Bing and Yahoo and one programming Q & A site- StackOverflow, refines and ranks the results against the detailed context of the encountered exception, and then recommends them within the IDE. From this study, we not only explore the potential of the context-aware and meta search based approach but also realize the significance of appropriate search queries in searching for programming solutions. In the second study, we propose and evaluate an automated query recommendation approach that exploits the technical details of an encountered exception, and recommends a ranked list of search queries. We found the recommended queries quite promising and comparable to the queries suggested by experts. We also note that the support for the developers can be further complemented by post-search content analysis. In the third study, we propose and evaluate an IDE-based context-aware content recommendation approach that identifies and recommends sections of a web page that are relevant to the encountered exception in the IDE. The idea is to reduce the cognitive effort of the developers in searching for content of interest (i.e., relevance) in the page, and we found the approach quite effective through extensive experiments and a limited user study. In our fourth study, we propose and evaluate a context-aware code search engine that collects code examples from a number of code repositories of GitHub, and the examples contain high quality handlers for the exception of interest. We validate the performance of each of our proposed approaches against existing relevant literature and also through several mini user studies. Finally, in order to further validate the applicability of our approaches, we integrate them into an Eclipse plug in prototype--ExcClipse. We then conduct a task-oriented user study with six participants, and report the findings which are significantly promising.

This dissertation has two main purposes: (a) to provide an analysis of the past tenses in Nepali and compare them with those of English from a discourse pragmatic perspective; and (b) to investigate how Nepali learners of English use the English past tenses in terms of forms, meanings, and functions.A major claim of the dissertation is that tenses and aspects play various discourse functions in Nepali. Although Nepali has various past tenses as in English, their actual use is different from those of English. A significant difference between the use of the past tenses in English and Nepali is revealed in the use of the past perfect tense. In Nepali, unlike in English, the past perfect does not always require the existence of the past reference point between the event time and the speech time. Although used in similar as well as different contexts, the past perfect in both languages is found to express background information. In the analysis of the Nepali past tenses, one of the major arguments is that the traditionally termed `unknown past' does not have `past' as part of its basic meaning. The main function of this verb form is to express the speaker's unawareness of a situation at the time of its happening, whether in the past or the future.After the discussion of the Nepali past tenses in comparison with the English past tenses and aspects, an error analysis of Nepali EFL learners' use of the English past tenses in written essays is carried out. It was hypothesized that Nepali learners would make a wide variety of errors in the use of the English past tenses. Because of differences in the use of the past perfect and the past tense in the habitual sense between Nepali and English, it was expected that Nepali ESL learners would make errors in those areas. However, overgeneralization due to difference in the use was found only in a very few cases. Most of these errors cannot be traced to Nepali influence. One area, however, where Nepali has a clear effect on the students' use of English is in indirect speech. I argue that Nepali speakers do not change tenses in English indirect speech appropriately because verb tenses in Nepali are not changed from direct speech to indirect speech as in English.It is hoped that this dissertation will enhance the understanding of grammatical categories such as tense and aspect in general and of Nepali tense and aspect systems in particular. In general, this dissertation showed contribute to several areas of study in discourse analysis, second language acquisition, language transfer and contrastive analysis. A major significance of this dissertation is its demonstration of the role of tense and aspect in Nepali in the expression of various discourse functions. / Department of English

Patienter med ögonsjukdomar är en stor patientgrupp som förväntas öka, då många av sjukdomarna är åldersrelaterade och befolkningen i världen blir allt äldre. Ett stort antal av patienterna kommer att förekomma på olika vårdavdelningar där de vårdas av annan orsak. Omvårdnad är sjuksköterskans huvudansvar och hennes profession medför att riktlinjer och lagar ska följas i samband med yrkesutövning. Syftet med pilotstudien var att undersöka sjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att ge omvårdnad till inneliggande patienter med olika ögonsjukdomar i anamnesen. Pilotstudien genomfördes med en kvalitativ metod och datainsamlingen skedde genom intervjuer. Data analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet sammanställdes i tre kategorier: Att erfara bristfälligt ansvarstagande, Att erfara behov av prioriteringar och Att erfara okunskap om ögonsjukvård. Sjuksköterskorna erfor bristfälligt ansvarstagande och de ansåg omvårdnadsarbetet med patienter med olika ögonsjukdomar i anamnesen som svårt. De ansåg sig sakna tillräckligt med kunskap och arbetsbelastningen ledde till att de var tvungna att prioritera på ett sätt som inte gynnade patientgruppen. Sjuksköterskorna uttryckte ett behov av mer utbildning inom detta område. Mer kunskap skulle kunna bidra till att de upplevde en ökad trygghet i sin yrkesroll och leda till en högre patientsäkerhet. Pilotstudien visar att det finns förbättringspotential för att höja patientsäkerheten och som bör följas upp i en fullskalig studie. / Patients with ocular diseases are a large group which is expected to increase since many of the ocular diseases are age-related and world population is aging. These patients are found in various wards where they are inpatients because of other causes than ocular diseases. Nursing care is the nurse´s major responsibility and they are obliged to follow guidelines and laws regularizing their profession. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate nurses´ experience of providing care for inpatients with any ocular disease, in their anamnesis. The pilot study was conducted using a qualitative content analysis using interviews. The results were compiled into three categories; Experiencing inadequate accountability, Experiencing the need for priorities, and Experiencing the ignorance of ophthalmology. The nurses in the pilot study experienced nursing care to patients with various eye diseases in history difficult. They thought they lacked sufficient knowledge and because of the workload which made them prioritize in a way which did not benefit the patients. The nurses expressed a need of more education in ophthalmic care. More knowledge would support them in experiencing an increased security in their profession and lead to improved patient safety. The pilot study shows that there is potential for improvement to enhance patient safety and should be followed up in a full scale study.