Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.37).

Thesis (M.Ed.) --University of Limpopo, 2009. / Some dictionaries are presented in such a way that their target users could not easily retrieve the required semantic information with special reference to Xitsonga/English Dikixinari/Dictionary (2005). Semantic information in the dictionary is presented unsystematically. In some cases extra-linguistic information in the form of contextual guidance is presented, which is regarded as secondary information in the place of semantic information (which is primary). The study evaluates this dictionary in terms of the primary of semantic comments in Xitsonga/English Dictionary. The study finds that translation equivalents are not arranged systematically in the microstructure. The research concludes that extra-linguistic information in a form of contextual guidance must be systematical used in the microstructure of Xitsonga/English Dikixinary/Dictionary (2005) so that dictionary users could be able to retrieve systematic information that could help them to speak the target language in a communicative functional way. This as a result will lead to communicative success. / Not listed

Con el objetivo de contribuir al desarrollo de las estrategias de búsqueda lexicográfica de los estudiantes de español LE/L2, se realizó un estudio empírico para averiguar el uso concreto de recursos lexicográficos por parte tanto de profesores como de estudiantes. Con tal finalidad se observaron y anotaron los recursos usados, el orden de consulta y también las estrategias aplicadas por ambos grupos al realizar una traducción técnica del alemán al español. El análisis de los datos revela que existen pocas diferencias entre las estrategias de ambos grupos de usuarios: si bien los estudiantes realizan un mayor número de consultas y usan más recursos, no necesitan más tiempo que los profesores y además llegan a resultados similares respecto a la corrección de las traducciones. Todo ello apunta a que, antes de entrenar a los estudiantes de ELE en el manejo de recursos lexicográficos, es necesario capacitar al profesorado en su uso.

Thesis (DLitt (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The compilation of dictionaries is a laborious activity and it takes time, money and staff to achieve the objectives of any dictionary project. Many dictionaries have been compiled using the lexicographers’ personal intuition and guessing rather than being corpus based. That resulted in some dictionaries often being criticised by users because of the lack of representation of some important lexical items. This can probably be explained by the fact that most of these dictionaries were compiled in an era when theoretical lexicography was lacking or not well established. The last decades have witnessed the emergence of metalexicography as a theory directed also at dictionary planning in order to enhance the quality of lexicographic practice and the way in which the management and the compilation of dictionaries are dealt with. The planning of dictionaries takes into account not only the gathering of language material to be used but also the way in which this material will be treated and presented on both the macrostructural and the microstructural level as well as in the front matter texts and the back matter texts. In order to enhance the quality of the presentation in dictionaries, this dissertation pleads in favour of the formulation of a data collection policy that takes into consideration all the different sources of material, written and spoken, used in the different phases of the compilation of a dictionary. The three phases that form the main focus of this study are the material acquisition phase, the material preparation phase and the material processing phase. The involvement of the speech community in the compilation of a lexicographic corpus ensures the collection of representative and balanced data, and the different needs of that community are central to the dictionary project. The different language materials can be organised into different corpus types. The efficiency of a corpus resides in its capacity to provide different data types that can be included in the comment on semantics and the comment on form of each article in the central list of each dictionary. Some dictionaries lack a good representation of data in both these comments in the different articles. However, languages such as the Gabonese languages are in a privileged situation because they can still avoid the mistakes of other dictionary compilers by investing in corpus-based dictionaries at this early stage. Therefore, the establishment of lexicographic units with multifunctional tasks can play an important role. In a multilingual environment such as Gabon the issue of language status needs to be dealt with carefully because it is realistic to choose a certain number of languages to function as official languages. Different alphabets are presented in this study and realistic choices are made. The way in which the language material is organised will impact on the quality of the macrostructure and microstructure; this is essential because dictionaries are consulted most of the time for the spelling of a given lexical item, for a translation equivalent or for the explanation of the meaning of a lemma sign. The computerisation of a corpus is a focal point and needs to be done in a satisfactory manner that presents a clean and helpful corpus in order to provide the lexicographer with useful statistics, frequency word lists and the different concordance lines that are very important for the wording of definitions and the extraction of example sentences. This is why a corpus is seen as an indispensable tool in the improvement of the macro- and the microstructure of any type of dictionary. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die saamstel van woordeboeke is ’n moeisame aktiwiteit, en dit verg tyd, geld en personeel om die doelstellings van ’n woordeboekprojek te bereik. Talle woordeboeke is op grond van die navorsers se persoonlike intuïsie en raaiwerk saamgestel, in stede daarvan dat dit korpusgebaseerd is. Die gevolg is dat baie woordeboeke dikwels deur gebruikers gekritiseer word weens die gebrek aan verteenwoordiging van enkele belangrike leksikale items. Dít kan moontlik verklaar word deur die feit dat die meeste van hierdie woordeboeke saamgestel is in ’n era waartydens teoretiese leksikografie gebrekkig en nie goed gevestig was nie. In die afgelope dekades het metaleksikografie na vore getree as a teorie wat op woordeboekbeplanning gerig is ten einde die gehalte van die leksikografie-praktyk en die manier waarop die bestuur en samestelling van woordeboeke hanteer word, te verbeter. By die beplanning van woordeboeke word nie net die versameling taalmateriaal wat gebruik kan word in berekening gebring nie, maar ook die manier waarop hierdie materiaal op sowel makro- as mikrostrukturele vlakke, asook in die voorwerk en die agterwerk, hanteer en aangebied gaan word. Ten einde die gehalte van die aanbieding in woordeboeke te verbeter, lewer hierdie proefskrif ’n pleidooi vir die formulering van ’n dataversamelingsbeleid wat al die verskillende materiaalbronne, hetsy skriftelik of mondelings, wat in die verskillende stadia van die samestelling van ’n woordeboek gebruik word, in ag neem. Die drie stadia wat die hooffokus van hierdie studie is, is die stadia waarin die materiaal aangeskaf, voorberei en verwerk word. Die spraakgemeenskap se betrokkenheid by die saamstel van ’n leksikografiese korpus verseker die versameling van verteenwoordigende en gebalanseerde data, en die verskillende behoeftes van sodanige gemeenskap is die kern van die woordeboekprojek. Die verskillende taalmateriale kan in verskillende korpussoorte georden word. Die doeltreffendheid van ’n korpus berus op die vermoë daarvan om verskillende datasoorte te verskaf wat in die kommentaar op semantiek en die kommentaar op vorm van elke item in die sentrale lys van elke woordeboek ingesluit kan word. Sommige woordeboeke toon ’n gebrek aan goeie verteenwoordiging van data in albei hierdie soorte kommentaar in die verskillende items. Tale soos die Gaboenese tale is egter in ’n bevoorregte posisie, aangesien hulle nog die foute van ander woordeboeksamestellers kan vermy deur op hierdie vroeë stadium in korpusgebaseerde woordeboeke te belê. Die stigting van leksikografiese eenhede met multifunksionele take kan dus ’n belangrike rol speel. In ’n veeltalige omgewing soos Gaboen moet die kwessie van taalstatus versigtig hanteer word, aangesien dit realisties is om ’n sekere hoeveelheid tale as amptelike tale te kies. Verskillende alfabette word in hierdie studie aangebied en realistiese keuses word gemaak. Die manier waarop die taalmateriaal georden is, sal ’n uitwerking op die makro- en mikrostruktuur hê; dit is van belang omdat woordeboeke meestal vir die spelling van ’n gegewe leksikale item, vir ’n vertaalekwivalent of vir die verklaring van die betekenis van ’n lemmateken geraadpleeg word. Die rekenarisering van ’n korpus is ’n belangrike aspek en moet op ’n bevredigende wyse uitgevoer word wat ’n skoon en nuttige korpus lewer ten einde die leksikograaf van goeie statistieke, frekwensiewoordlyste en die verskillende konkordansielyne te voorsien, wat baie belangrik is vir die skryf van definisies en die onttrekking van voorbeeldsinne. Om hierdie rede word ’n korpus as ’n onmisbare instrument in die verbetering van die makro- en mikrostruktuur van enige soort woordeboek beskou.

La description lexicographique de l'ancien occitan d'une région de taille restreinte - le Mauriacois et le Sanflorain en Haute Auvergne palatalisante - et d'une période limitée - 1340-1540 - a été réalisée à partir de l'analyse et du traitement exhaustif de la documentation manuscrite originale disponible pour cette région et cette période. Le matériel lexical recueilli est présenté sous forme d'un dictionnaire sémasiologique alphabétique dont la nomenclature comporte 7.000 entrées et 12.000 définitions environ. Les principes actuels de la lexicographie sont appliqués à ce matériel : description du sens sous forme de définitions, hiérarchisation arborescente des acceptions, attention soutenue aux lexies complexes et à la syntagmatique, citation de très larges contextes. Les champs lexicaux du droit, du commerce, de la guerre et des métiers - maçonnerie, menuiserie-charpenterie, horlogerie - sont particulièrement bien représentés. Cette étude fournit de nombreuses données inconnues des ouvrages de référence, une importante masse de textes édités de façon rigoureuse et une méthodologie applicable aux autres régions d'oc. / This thesis consists of a lexicographical description of Old Occitan as attested in the region of Haute Auvergne characterised by consonantal palatalisation. This region is of restricted size - the area around Saint-Flour and Mauriac. The period covered is closely circumscribed - 1340-1540. The description is based on an analysis of the original handwritten documents available for this region and period. The lexical material is presented in the form of a semasiological alphabetical dictionary with a nomenclature of about 7,000 entries and 12,000 definitions. The most up-to-date principles of lexicography are applied : descriptions of meaning occur as definitions and as hierarchical trees of senses; particular attention is paid to complex lexical items and to syntagmatic relations, with the citation of large sections of the contexts surrounding each words. The lexical fields of law, commerce, warfare and trades - masonry, carpentry, clock-making - are particularly well represented. This study provides a good deal of data not figuring in current reference works, it includes a large quantity of carefully edited texts and follows a lexicographical methodology applicable to other Occitan regions.

There are four prominent product graphs in graph theory: Cartesian, strong, direct, and lexicographic. Of these four product graphs, the lexicographic product graph is the least studied. Lexicographic products are not commutative but still have some interesting properties. This paper begins with basic definitions of graph theory, including the definition of a graph, that are needed to understand theorems and proofs that come later. The paper then discusses the lexicographic product of digraphs, denoted $G \circ H$, for some digraphs $G$ and $H$. The paper concludes by proving a cancellation property for the lexicographic product of digraphs $G$, $H$, $A$, and $B$: if $G \circ H \cong A \circ B$ and $|V(G)| = |V(A)|$, then $G \cong A$. It also proves additional cancellation properties for lexicographic product digraphs and the author hopes the final result will provide further insight into tournaments.

De nombreuses méthodes existent pour résoudre des problèmes d'optimisation multicritère, et il n'est pas aisé de choisir une méthode suffisamment adaptée à un problème multicritère donné. En effet, après le choix d'une méthode multicritère, différents paramètres (e.g. poids, fonctions d'utilité, etc.) doivent être déterminés, soit pour trouver la solution optimale (meilleur compromis) ou pour classer l'ensemble des solutions faisables (alternatives). Justement, vue cette difficulté pour fixer les paramètres, les méthodes d'élicitation sont utilisées pour aider le décideur dans cette tâche de fixation des paramètres. Par ailleurs, nous supposons que nous disposons d'un ensemble de solutions plausibles, et nous faisons aussi l'hypothèse de la disponibilité au préalable, des informations préférentielles obtenues après une interaction avec le décideur. Dans la première contribution de ce travail, nous tirons profit d'une mesure statistique simple et rapidement calculable, à savoir, le coefficient de corrélation $rho$ de Spearman, afin de développer une approche gloutonne (approchée), et deux approches exactes basées sur la programmation par contraintes (PPC) et la programmation linéaire en nombres entiers (PLNE). Ces méthodes sont ensuite utilisées pour éliciter automatiquement les paramètres appropriés de la méthode multicritère basée sur l'ordre lexicographique. Nous proposons aussi des modèles d'élicitation des paramètres d'autres méthodes multicritère, telles que la méthode MinLeximax issue de la théorie du choix social et du partage équitable, la méthode de la somme pondérée et les opérateurs OWA. / Many methods exist for solving multicriteria optimization problems, and it is not easy to choose the right method well adapted to a given multicriteria problem. Even after choosing a multicriteria method, various parameters (e.g. weight, utility functions, etc.) must be carefully determined either to find the optimal solution (best compromise) or to classify all feasible solutions (the set of alternatives). To overcome this potential difficulty, elicitation methods are used in order to help the decision maker to fix safely the parameters. Additionally, we assume that we have a set of feasible solutions, and we also make the assumption that we have prior information about the preferences of the decision maker, and we focus on how to use this information, rather than how to get them. In the first contribution of this work, we take advantage of a simple and quickly computable statistical measure, namely, the Spearman $rho$ correlation coefficient, to develop an gready approche, and two exact approaches based on constraint programming (CP) and linear integer programming (MIP). These methods are then used to automatically elicit the appropriate parameter of the lexicographic ordering method. We also propose some elicitation models for most commonly used multicriteria methods, such as MinLeximax method used to ensure fairness and efficiency requirements, the weighted sum method, and OWA operators. These elicitation models are based either on solving mixed integer linear programming, or constraints networks with an objective function.

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This study is a comparative analysis of two English monolingual dictionaries and two Northern Sotho – English bilingual dictionaries, namely Concise Oxford English Dictionary(2006), Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2006), Pharos Popular Northern Sotho Dictionary (1995) and Sesotho Sa Leboa – English Pukuntšu Dictionary (2006). The above four dictionaries are compared in terms of cross – referencing, pronunciation and parts of speech. The microstructure of certain dictionaries does not address most problems that dictionary users have. It is in the microstructure, where dictionary users learn that certain lemmata are synonymous, polysemous in sense, antonyms or that a lemma has two alternative spellings, and that both spelling are acceptable. This is done through cross –referencing. Dictionary users need to be guided on how lemmata are pronounced, otherwise the meaning of lemmata become distorted. The other problem which the microstructure has to deal with, is to indicate the type of parts of speech lemmata are. This research is an attempt to make lexicographers aware of the importance of including the above aspects in the microstructure of their dictionaries.

Involutions and fixed-point-free involutions arise naturally as representatives for certain Borel orbits in invertible matrices. Similarly, partial involutions and partial fixed-point-free involutions represent certain Borel orbits in matrices which are not necessarily invertible. Inclusion relations among Borel orbit closures induce a partial order on these discrete parameterizing sets. In this dissertation we investigate the associated order complex of these posets. In particular, we prove that the order complex of the Bruhat poset of Borel orbit closures is shellable in symmetric as well as skew-symmetric matrices. / acase@tulane.edu

As economies develop, novel products are created and markets for these products arise. Genetically modified food (GMF) is an example of such a novel product and provides economists with the opportunity to investigate an infant market. Of particular interest with GMF is the impact of consumer reactions on the market. The response of consumers to GMF and their willingness to pay for it has emerged as an important factor in the development of this technology. This research investigates these consumer responses. Prior research suggests that two aspects of consumer behaviour may be relevant for the GMF market. First, consumers may react differently to different types of GMF, so that some products are potentially more economically viable. Secondly, some consumers appear to prefer not having GMF at all. Consumer behaviour is often framed according to neoclassical economic theory. Consumer preferences over goods and the attributes of those goods are generally held to have certain properties. The aspects of consumers’ reactions to GMF noted above, however, may be in conflict with two properties of preferences in neoclassical theory. First, preferences over food attributes are not separable, but may interact with each other. Secondly, some consumers may have preferences regarding GMF that are not continuous. As a result, aggregate impacts of introducing GMF may be difficult to measure, which raises a third issue for investigation, aggregation. Finally, an alternative model of consumer behaviour is bounded rationality, which theorises that choices may be discontinuous as a result of specific protocols. It also suggests that consumers seek to make good-enough choices, rather than attempting to maximise their satisfaction. Thus, optimisation or maximisation is the fourth issue considered in this thesis. In order to investigate these properties of consumers’ preferences, a choice experiment survey was developed. The strength of a choice experiment for examining these issues is its focus on the impact of each product attribute on a respondent’s choices. Thus, it may be possible to identify potentially discontinuous choice patterns and to identify choices affected by interactions between GM technology and other food attributes. Results from a neoclassical analysis of the survey data suggest that some consumers consider the type of benefit created with GM technology in making their choices. In addition, one-quarter to one-half of respondents may have had discontinuous preferences with respect to GMF. Reactions to GMF appear related to respondents’ attitudes, but not to socio-economic or demographic descriptors. As a result, aggregate measures of the impact of GMF may not fully account for consumers’ responses. A boundedly rational model also has reasonable goodness of fit, and may provide a different perspective on consumer behaviour. It is hoped that the results of this research provide a better understanding of consumer behaviour regarding GMF and, by extension, of the process of consumer adoption of novel products. It is further hoped that this attempt to incorporate choice protocols into discrete choice analysis will provide a useful example for further research.