Este trabalho descreve EXTIO (Extraction of Temporal Information Using Ontologies), uma abordagem que permite a normalização de expressões temporais e a organização em ontologia de fatos temporais extraídos de texto em linguagem natural. Isto permite que motores de busca possam aproveitar melhor a informação temporal de páginas daWeb, realizando inferências sobre fatos temporais. EXTIO propõe: a normalização de expressões temporais relativas através de uma gramática formal para a língua inglesa; e a organização de fatos temporais extraídos do texto normalizado em uma ontologia. Expressões temporais relativas são construções textuais de tempo que se referem a uma data absoluta cujo valor é relativo a outra data. Por exemplo, a expressão “three months ago” (três meses atrás) é uma expressão temporal relativa, pois seu surgimento no texto se refere a uma data três meses antes da data de publicação do documento. Experimentos demonstram que a gramática formal proposta para a normalização de expressões temporais relativas supera o baseline na eficácia da normalização e no tempo de processamento de documentos em linguagem natural. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é a gramática formal para normalização de expressões temporais relativas de texto na língua inglesa. Também é contribuição deste trabalho o processamento semântico da informação temporal disponível em formato texto em documentos, para que possa ser melhor aproveitada por motores de busca. / This work describes EXTIO, an approach for the normalization of temporal expressions and the semantic organization of temporal facts extracted from natural language text. This approach allows search engines to benefit from temporal information in Web pages, performing inferences on temporal facts. EXTIO proposes: the normalization of relative temporal expressions through a formal grammar for the English language; and the organization of temporal facts extracted from normalized text in an ontology. Relative temporal expressions are textual time structures that refer to an absolute date whose value is relative to another date. For instance, “three months ago” is a relative temporal expression because its appearance in the text refers to a date three months before the document publication date. Experiments show that the proposed formal grammar for the normalization of relative temporal expressions has a better performance than the baseline in effectiveness and processing time. The main contribution of this work is the formal grammar for the normalization of temporal expressions in natural language text in English. Another contribution of this work is the semantic processing of temporal information available in documents, so that search engines may benefit from this information.

Esta dissertação teve como principal meta analisar a metalinguagem utilizada por gramáticos portugueses do século XIX para descrever a fonética e a fonologia da língua. As obras oitocentistas que compõem nosso corpus são: Couto e Melo (1818), Soares Barbosa (1822), Constâncio (1831), Caldas Aulete (1864), Coelho (1868) e Coelho (1891). Partimos da metodologia de Swiggers (2010), que propõe sete parâmetros classêmicos que organizam as relações possíveis tanto entre metatermos, quanto deles com aspectos contextuais em que as obras estejam inseridas. Nossos estudos nos levaram a sete metatermos fundamentais para a compreensão do estudo de fonética e fonologia em obras descritoras do português naquele período: som, letra, voz, vogal, consoante, nasal e oral. Fez parte, também, de nossa pesquisa, um estudo comparativo entre estas obras do século XIX e três obras do século XVI, momento inicial dos estudo gramaticais em Portugal: Oliveira (1536), Barros (1540) e Leão (1576). Como resultados, acreditamos ter demonstrado que, ainda que haja certa persistência e manutenção de aspectos da tradição gramaticográfica portuguesa, é possível observar mudanças significativas no modo de descrição dos gramáticos oitocentistas, quando comparados com os do século XVI. Pudemos comprovar, ainda, a nossa hipótese de que a permanência e a mudança são mais bem observadas se analisadas a partir de redes terminológicas do que pelo exame isolado dos metatermos. / This dissertation has as its main aim to analyze the metalanguage employed to describe phonetic and phonological properties by Portuguese grammarians. In order to do so, we selected the following 18th century texts: Couto e Melo (1818), Soares Barbosa (1822), Constâncio (1831), Caldas Aulete (1864), Coelho (1868) e Coelho (1891). We built on Swiggers (2010), who proposed seven parameters that rule both possible relations between metaterms as well as contextual aspects. Our case studies have led us to seven metaterms, which we take to be fundamental to the comprehension of phonetics and phonology in the aforementioned texts: sound, letter, voice, vowel, consonant, nasal and oral. In our study, we compared those 18th century grammars to three 16th century texts: Oliveira (1536), Barros (1540) and Leão (1576), these being representative of the initial moments of the Portuguese grammar tradition. From a theoretical point of view, we demonstrated that it is possible to find substantial changes in the way phonetics and phonology are described in the 18th century texts when compared to 16th century texts, even considering the persistence and stability of the Portuguese grammar tradition. In addition, we affirm that permanence and change are better observed if they are analyzed in terminological webs rather than isolated metaterms.

This PhD thesis provides a morpho-syntactic description of Northern Sotho from a computational perspective. While a number of publications describe morphological and syntactical aspects of this language, may it be in the form of prescriptive study books (inter alia Lombard (1985); Van Wyk et al. (1992); Poulos and Louwrens (1994)) or of descriptive articles in linguistic journals or conference proceedings (inter alia Anderson and Kotz´e (2006); Kosch (2006); De Schryver and Taljard (2006)), so far no comprehensive description is available that would provide a basis for developing a rule-based parser to analyse Northern Sotho on sentence level. This study attempts to fill the gap by describing a substantial grammar fragment. Therefore, Northern Sotho morpho-syntactic phenomena are explored which results in the following descriptions: <ul> <li> language units of Northern Sotho are identified, i.e. the tokens and words that form the language. These are sorted into word class categories (parts of speech), using the descriptions of Taljard et al. (2008) as a basis; </li> <li> the formal relationships between these units, wherever possible on the level of parts of speech, are described in the form of productive morpho-syntactic phrase grammar rules. These rules are defined within the framework of generative grammar. <br></li> </ul> Additionally, an attempt is made to find generalisations on the contextual distribution of the many items contained in verbs which are polysemous in terms of their parts of speech. The grammar rules described in the preceding chapter are now explored in order to find patterns in the co-occurrence of parts of speech leading towards a future, more general linguistic modelling of Northern Sotho verbs. It is also shown how a parser could work his way step-by-step doing an analysis of a complete sentence making use of a lexicon and the rules developed here. We have also implemented some relevant phrase grammar rules as a constraint-based grammar fragment, in line with the theory of Lexical-Functional Grammar (Kaplan and Bresnan, 1982). Here, we utilized the Xerox Linguistic Environment (XLE) with the friendly permission of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). Lastly, the study contains some basic definitions for a proposed machine translation (MT) into English attempting to support the development of MT-rules. An introduction to MT and a first contrastive description of phenomena of both languages is provided. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / African Languages / unrestricted

Cette thèse explore l'usage des Grammaires Categorielles Abstraites (CGA) pour la Génération Automatique de Texte (GAT) dans un contexte industriel. Les systèmes GAT basés sur des théories linguistiques ont un long historique, cependant ils sont relativement peu utilisés en industrie, qui préfère les approches plus "pragmatiques", le plus souvent pour des raisons de simplicité et de performance. Cette étude montre que les avancées récentes en linguistique computationnelle permettent de concilier le besoin de rigueur théorique avec le besoin de performance, en utilisant CGA pour construire les principaux modules d'un système GAT de qualité industrielle ayant des performances comparables aux méthodes habituellement utilisées en industrie. / This thesis explores the usage of Abstract Categorial Grammars (ACG) for Natural Language Generation (NLG) in an industrial context. While NLG system based on linguistic theories have a long history, they are not prominent in industry, which, for the sake of simplicity and efficiency, usually prefer more ``pragmatic" methods. This study shows that recent advances in computational linguistics allow to conciliate the requirements of soundness and efficiency, by using ACG to build the main elements of a production grade NLG framework (document planner and microplanner), with performance comparable to existing, less advanced methods used in industry

This thesis deals with the design and implementation of tools for creating a computer network simulation model. Network analysis is based on configuration files from connected network devices. According to the requirements of the simulation it is necessary in the configuration file to focus on data relating to the monitored elements and their properties, or which may be of some influence. The output is then passed on simulation environment to form the desired network model by the observed data, which is already possible to perform simulations.

Procedural generation algorithms can infer rules based on a dataset of examples when each example is made up of labeled components. Unfortunately, musical sequences resist potential inclusion in these kinds of datasets because they lack explicit structural semantics. In order to algorithmically transform a musical sequence into a sequence of labeled components, a segmentation process is needed. We outline a solution to the challenge of musical phrase segmentation that uses grammatical induction algorithms, a class of algorithms which infer a context-free grammar from an input sequence. We study five different grammatical induction algorithms on three different datasets, one of which is introduced in this work. Additionally, we test how the performance of each algorithm varies when transforming musical sequences using viewpoint combinations. Our experiments show that the algorithm longestFirst achieves the best F1 scores across all three datasets, and that viewpoint combinations which include the duration viewpoint result in the best performance.

Att skapa digitala spel och anställa utvecklare är en kostsam process. Genom att använda procedurell generering av spelinnehåll kan spelföretag skära ner på produktionstid och kostnad. Denna uppsats utvärderar och jämför de olika styrkor och svagheter som finns när man genererar spelbanor för ett 2D pussel- och plattformsspel med en evolutionär generator och en regelbaserad generator. Den evolutionära generatorn använder sig av grammatisk evolution, medan den regelbaserade generatorn är ett strikt kontrollerat system som använder sig av generativ grammatik. Banorna som skapas av de båda metoderna utvärderas genom användarstudier, kombinerat med en analys av tiden och komplexiteten för att utveckla generatorerna. Datan från utvärderingarna visar att den regelbaserade metoden var marginellt mer uppskattad av användare, samtidigt som den var mindre komplex att implementera. Den evolutionära generatorn är dock bättre lämpad för att expandera tillsammans med spelet, och har potentialen att prestera bättre på lång sikt. / Creating digital games and hiring developers is a costlyprocess. By utilizing procedural content generation, game companiescan reduce the time and cost of production. This thesis evaluates andcompares the different strengths and weaknesses of generating levelsfor a 2D puzzle platformer game using an evolutionary and a rule-basedgenerator. The evolutionary approach adopts the use of grammaticalevolution, whereas the rule-based generator is a strictly controlledsystem using generative grammars. The levels produced by eachmethod are evaluated by user studies and combined with an analysis ofthe time and complexity of developing each generator. The datapresented by the evaluations shows that the rule-based approach wasslightly more appreciated by users, and was also less complex toimplement. However, the evolutionary generator would scale better ifthe game would expand, and has the potential of performing better inthe long term

Att skapa digitala spel och anställa utvecklare är en kostsam process. Genom att använda procedurell generering av spelinnehåll kan spelföretag skära ner på produktionstid och kostnad. Denna uppsats utvärderar och jämför de olika styrkor och svagheter som finns när man genererar spelbanor för ett 2D pussel- och plattformsspel med en evolutionär generator och en regelbaserad generator. Den evolutionära generatorn använder sig av grammatisk evolution, medan den regelbaserade generatorn är ett strikt kontrollerat system som använder sig av generativ grammatik. Banorna som skapas av de båda metoderna utvärderas genom användarstudier, kombinerat med en analys av tiden och komplexiteten för att utveckla generatorerna. Datan från utvärderingarna visar att den regelbaserade metoden var något mer uppskattad av användare, samtidigt som den var mindre komplex att implementera. Den evolutionära generatorn är dock bättre lämpad för att expandera tillsammans med spelet, och har potentialen att prestera bättre på lång sikt. / Creating digital games and hiring developers is a costlyprocess. By utilizing procedural content generation, game companiescan reduce the time and cost of production. This thesis evaluates andcompares the different strengths and weaknesses of generating levelsfor a 2D puzzle platformer game using an evolutionary and a rule-basedgenerator. The evolutionary approach adopts the use of grammaticalevolution, whereas the rule-based generator is a strictly controlledsystem using generative grammars. The levels produced by eachmethod are evaluated by user studies and combined with an analysis ofthe time and complexity of developing each generator. The datapresented by the evaluations shows that the rule-based approach wasslightly more appreciated by users, and was also less complex toimplement. However, the evolutionary generator would scale better ifthe game would expand, and has the potential of performing better inthe long term

Yes / The complex formation of Islamic Geometric Patterns (IGP) is one of the distinctive features in Islamic art and architecture. Many have attempted to reproduce these patterns in digital form, using various pattern generation techniques, in 2D. Shape grammars are an e ective pattern generation method, providing good aesthetic results. In this pa- per we describe a novel approach in generating 3D IGP using the shape grammar method. The particular emphasis here is to generate the motifs (repeated units with the pattern) in 3D using parameterization. These can then be manipulated within the 3D space to construct architec- tural structures. In this work we have developed two distinctive Shape Grammars in 3D namely Parameterized Shape Grammar (PSG) and Auto-Parameterized Shape Grammar (APSG). Here the PSG generates the motifs and the APSG enables construction of the structures using the generated motifs. Both grammars are practically implemented as a 3D modelling tool within Autodesk Maya. The parameterization within each grammar is the key to generate both Islamic geometric motifs and Islamic geometric motif-based structures.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nelci Vieira de Lima.pdf: 470632 bytes, checksum: c7a4825deb9b3e7083f390bfa303005e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-10 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / This dissertation is inserted into the Portuguese Language Post Graduate Studies Programme from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC SP) in the History and Description of Portuguese language research thread , delimited to Linguistic Historiography, discipline in which the methods, established by their precursors Koerner (1996) and Swiggers (2009), allowed us to outline our object of study, namely, the sixteenthcentury and nineteenth-century thoughts about the use of foreign words in Portuguese. Thus, we aim to analyze and compare the first two grammars of Portuguese Language in the century. XVI, namely: João de Barros Grammar and Fernão de Oliveira one, as well as the law project 1676/1999, written by Congressman Aldo Rebelo approved in 2008. Thus, we intend to demonstrate in a comparative chart, the authors concern with borrowed words, relating their views to their contextual aspects. Besides that, Schilienben-Langue (1993, p.138) perspective, to whom what matters, is to portray the history of argumentative communities, in which it is discussed questions related to languages, endorses our course of study into such historiography thread. Taking into account the results obtained, we can say that, although our corpus of documents is composed of different genres, they are both from argumentative communities that face the same issue. Such documents represent an open room for language institutionalization, therefore being classified as linguistic policies, since they bring up human participation into the language. We can further affirm that, to both the grammarians of the sixteenth century, and to Congressman Aldo Rebelo, the twentieth century shows the same concern with borrowed words from the English language into Portuguese, both being against their use, seen t as unnecessary foreign words, as well expressing a strong nationalist feeling. This upholding in dealing with such issues sets our work within a historiography of continuity (SCHILIEBEN-LANGE, 1993, p.137). Finally, we detected that the contact between different peoples has always been a great reason for cultural exchange, including linguistic one. We also observed that, before the human kind bravely crossed the seas to establish such contacts, today, just by a simple connection with worldwide computer network, such contacts are easily established / Esta dissertação se insere no Programa de Estudos Pós-Graduados em Língua Portuguesa, da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, na linha de pesquisa História e Descrição da Língua Portuguesa, delimitando-se à Historiografia Linguística, disciplina cujos métodos, instituídos por seus precursores Koerner (1996) e Swiggers (2009), permitiram-nos delinear nosso objeto de estudo, qual seja: o pensamento seiscentista e novecentista sobre o uso de estrangeirismos na língua portuguesa. Dessa forma, visamos analisar e comparar as duas primeiras Gramáticas da Língua Portuguesa, do séc. XVI, a saber: a de João de Barros e a de Fernão de Oliveira e o Projeto de Lei 1676/1999, de autoria do deputado federal Aldo Rebelo, aprovado no ano de 2008. Pretendemos, assim, construir um quadro comparativo da preocupação dos autores com os empréstimos linguísticos, relacionando seus pontos de vistas a seus aspectos contextuais. Corrobora com justificativa para a realização de nosso percurso historiográfico a perspectiva de Schilieben-Langue (1993, p.138), para quem importa fazer a descrição da história das comunidades argumentativas, nas quais se discutem questões que dizem respeito às línguas. Levando em consideração os resultados obtidos, podemos afirmar que, embora seja o nosso corpus composto por documentos de gêneros diferentes, são ambos oriundos de comunidades argumentativas que se colocaram diante da mesma problemática. Tais documentos se fazem, sobretudo, como um espaço de institucionalização da língua, podendo ser, então, classificados como políticas linguísticas, uma vez que encerram ações humanas sobre a língua. Afirmamos ainda que, tanto os gramáticos do século XVI, quanto o deputado federal Aldo Rebelo, do século XX, denotam a mesma preocupação com os empréstimos linguísticos na língua portuguesa, se posicionando contra o uso, tido como desnecessário, de palavras estrangeiras e manifestando um forte sentimento nacionalista. Essa continuidade no tratamento de tal problemática situa nosso trabalho no âmbito de uma historiografia da continuidade (SCHILIEBEN-LANGUE, 1993, p.137). Por fim, observamos que o contato entre diferentes povos sempre foi motivo de trocas culturais, inclusive linguísticas, e que se antes os homens enfrentaram os mares para o estabelecimento desses contatos, hoje por meio de uma simples conexão com a rede mundial de computadores, tais contatos são estabelecidos