This study examines the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on Chinese numeral classifiers (CNCs). NCs are ideally suited to exploring the link between language and semantic categorization, as classifier selection depends on the physical attributes of the associated noun (e.g., Mandarin zhi is used for long and rigid objects and tiao for long and flexible objects). Previous studies on numeral classifiers have addressed the language-cognition link by comparing the cognitive performance of monolingual as well as bilingual speakers of different languages (Lucy, 1992; Saalbach & Imai, 2005; Gao & Malt, 2009). In contrast, the present study sought to address the cognitive effects of numeral classifiers via a training study that investigated whether exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers’ object categorization preferences, inhibitory control and memory retrieval. The participants of this study were 99 Native-English speaking College students. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group, which received training on four commonly used CNCs during the initial phase of the experiment, or a control group, which did not receive similar treatment during the initial phase. After the initial phase, the experimental group and the control group were assessed on a Forced Choice Task, a Go/No-Go Task and a Memory Task. A Mixed-design ANOVA indicated that the experimental group displayed a preference for objects sharing the same classifier in the Forced Choice Task and the Go/ No-Go Task (i.e. Go trials) when compared to the controls. The effect of exposure to numeral classifiers on inhibitory control was supported with a significantly lower false alarm rate (in the No-Go trials) for the experimental group. However, no group differences were observed in the results of the analysis of the participants’ median reaction times in the Go/No-Go tasks. Similarly, the differences between the two groups’ scores on the Memory Task was not found to be significant. The results of the study indicated that exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers’ categorization. The results also revealed partial support for the influence of exposure to CNCs on inhibitory processing, but not in the case of object clustering.

El consum de la música ha canviat dràsticament en els últims anys. Amb l’arribada de la música digital, el cost de producció s’ha reduït considerablement. L’expansió de la Web ha ajudat a promoure l’exploració de molt més contingut musical. Algunes botigues musicals on-line, com iTunes o Amazon, posseeixen milions de cançons a les seves col.leccions. No obstant, accedir a aquestes col.leccions d’una manera eficient és encara un gran repte. En aquesta tesis ens centrem en el problema d’anotar col.leccions musicals amb paraules semàntiques, també conegudes com tags. Els mètodes utilitzats en aquesta tesi estan fonamentats sobre els camps de recuperació de la informació, l’inteligència artificial, i el procesament del senyal. Proposem un algorisme per anotar música automàticament, utilitzant similitud d’audio a nivell de contingut per propagar tags entre cançons. L’algorisme s’avalua extensament utilitzant múltiples col.leccions musicals de diferent mida i qualitat de les dades, incloent una col.lecció de més de mig milió de cançons, anotades amb tags socials derivats d’una comunitat musical. Avaluem la qualitat del nostre algorisme mitjançant una comparació amb algorismes de l’estat de l’art. Addicionalment, discutim la importància d’utilitzar mesures de avaluació que cobreixen diferents dimensions, és a dir, avaluacions a nivell de cançó i a nivell de tag. El nostre algorisme ha estat avaluat i s’ha classificat en altes posicions en el concurs d’avaluació internacional MIREX 2011. Els resultats obtinguts també demostren algunes limitacions de l’anotació automàtica, relacionades amb les inconsistències en les dades, la correlació de conceptes i la dificultat de capturar alguns tags personals amb informació del contingut. Això és més evident en les comunitats musicals, on els usuaris poden anotar cançons amb qualsevol paraula, sigui aquesta contextual o no. Per tal d’abordar aquestes limitacions, presentem un ampli estudi sobre la naturalesa de les folksonomies musicals. Concretament, estudiem si les anotacions fetes per una gran comunitat d’usuaris coincideixen amb un vocabulari més controlat i estructurat per part d’experts en el camp. Els resultats revelen que alguns tags estan clarament definits i compresos tant des del punt de vista dels experts com el de la saviesa popular, mentre que n’hi ha d’altres sobre els quals és difícil trobar un consens. Finalment, estenem el nostre previ treball a un ampli ventall de conceptes semàntics. Presentem un nou métode per a descobrir conceptes semàntics implícits en els tags socials, i classificar aquests tags pel que fa als conceptes semàntics. Les darreres troballes poden ajudar a entendre la naturalesa dels tags socials, i per tant ser beneficials per a una addicional millora de la anotació automàtica de la música. / Music consumption has changed drastically in the last few years. With the arrival of digital music, the cost of production has substantially dropped. The expansion of the World Wide Web has helped to promote the exploration of many more music content. Online stores, such as iTunes or Amazon, own music collections in the order of millions of songs. Accessing these large collections in an effective manner is still a big challenge. In this dissertation we focus on the problem of annotating music collections with semantic words, also called tags. The foundations of all the methods used in this dissertation are based on techniques from the fields of information retrieval, machine learning, and signal processing. We propose an automatic music annotation algorithm that uses content-based audio similarity to propagate tags among songs. The algorithm is evaluated extensively using multiple music collections of varying size and quality of the data, including a large music collection of more than a half million songs, annotated with social tags derived from a music community. We assess the quality of our proposed algorithm by comparing it with several state of the art approaches. We also discuss the importance of using evaluation measures that cover different dimensions; per– song and per–tag evaluation. Our proposal achieves state of the art results, and has ranked high in the MIREX 2011 evaluation campaign. The obtained results also show some limitations of automatic tagging, related to data inconsistencies, correlation of concepts and the difficulty to capture some personal tags with content information. This is more evident in music communites, where users can annotate songs with any free text word. In order to tackle these issues, we present an in-depth study of the nature of music folksonomies. We concretely study whether tag annotations made by a large community (i.e. a folksonomy) correspond with a more controlled, structured vocabulary by experts in the music and the psychology fields. Results reveal that some tags are clearly defined and understood both by the experts and the wisdom of crowds, while it is difficult to achieve a common consensus on the meaning of other tags. Finally, we extend our previous work to a wide range of semantic concepts. We present a novel way to uncover facets implicit in social tagging, and classify the tags with respect to these semantic facets. The latter findings can help to understand the nature of social tags, and thus be beneficial for further improvement of semantic tagging of music. Our findings have significant implications for music information retrieval systems that assist users to explore large music collections, digging for content they might like. / El consumo de la música ha cambiado drásticamente en los últimos años. Con la llegada de la música digital, el coste de producción se ha reducido considerablemente. La expansión de la Web ha ayudado a promover la exploración de mucho más contenido musical. Algunas tiendas musicales on-line, como iTunes o Amazon, poseen millones de canciones en sus colecciones. Sin embargo, acceder a estas colecciones de una manera eficiente es todavía un gran reto. En esta tesis nos centramos en el problema de anotar colecciones musicales con palabras semánticas, también conocidas como tags. Los métodos utilizados en esta tesis están cimentados sobre los campos de recuperación de la información, la inteligencia artifical, y el procesamiento del señal. Proponemos un algoritmo para anotar música automáticamente, usando similitud de audio a nivel de contenido para propagar tags entre canciones. El algoritmo se evalúa extensamente usando múltiples colecciones musicales de distinto tamaño y calidad de los datos, incluyendo una colección de más de medio millón de canciones, anotadas con tags sociales derivados de una comunidad musical. Evaluamos la calidad de nuestro algoritmo mediante una comparación con algoritmos del estado del arte. Adicionalmente, discutimos la importancia de usar medidas de evaluación que cubren diferentes dimensiones; es decir, evaluaciones a nivel de canción y a nivel de tag. Nuestro algoritmo ha sido evaluado y se clasificado en altas posiciones en el concurso de evaluación internacional MIREX 2011. Los resultados obtenidos también demuestran algunas limitaciones de la anotación automática, relacionadas con las inconsistencias en los datos, la correlación de conceptos y la dificultad de capturar algunos tags personales con información del contenido. Esto es más evidente en las comunidades musicales, donde los usuarios pueden anotar canciones con cualquier palabra, sea esta contextual o no. Con el fin de abordar estas limitaciones, presentamos un amplio estudio sobre la naturaleza de las folksonomías musicales. Concretamente, estudiamos si las anotaciones hechas por una gran comunidad de usuarios concuerdan con un vocabulario más controlado y estructurado por parte de expertos en el campo. Los resultados revelan que algunos tags están claramente definidos y comprendidos tanto desde el punto de vista de los expertos como el de la sabiduría popular, mientras que hay otros tags sobre los cuales es difícil encontrar un consenso. Por último, extendemos nuestro previo trabajo a un amplio abanico de conceptos semánticos. Presentamos un método novedoso para descubrir conceptos semánticos implícitos en los tags sociales, y clasificar dichos tags con respecto a los conceptos semánticos. Los últimos hallazgos pueden ayudar a entender la naturaleza de los tags sociales, y por consiguiente ser beneficiales para una adicional mejora para la anotación automática de la música.

This project investigates the cognitive linguistic categories that structure the Old Irish landscape lexicon. The semantics of basic landscape vocabulary are differentiated based on collocate analysis and close reading of relevant text passages. Terms are compared across subdomains in order to identify linguistic categories that apply to the overall landscape lexicon. The analysis shows distinctions of (a) domesticated vs. wild landscape features, and (b) landmarks vs. non-landmarks. These distinctions are motivated by a combination of the interactional properties (a, b) and the independent salience (b) of the landscape features. Understanding the cognitive linguistic categories of Old Irish landscape vocabulary provides insight into how medieval Irish society conceptualized the natural world.

La tesi de Crous (2009) descriu les característiques de les estructures gramaticals del català i del mandinga que expressen malalties, signes i símptomes, trets físics i psíquics, etc. (com ser diabètic, estar refredat, tenir febre, tenir un bony (a la cama), tenir mal de panxa o tenir mal a la panxa, venir un atac de tos, agafar febre o fer mal el cap). La tesi demostra que la conceptualització i la categorització dels estats patològics, la manera com els parlants perceben alguns aspectes dels estats (com la temporalitat, l'abast corporal, la causalitat o el grau d'afectació) i les relacions entre aquests estats i els altres dos participants de la situació d'afectació (una persona i les seves parts del cos), no només es posa de manifest en els mots d'una llengua sinó que també intervé en la construcció i en la distribució dels diferents participants dins d'una oració. / Crous' doctoral dissertation (2009) describes the characteristics of Catalan and Mandinga grammatical structures expressing illnesses, signs and symptoms, physical and psychic traits, etc. (like ser diabètic 'to be diabetic', estar refredat 'to have a cold', tenir febre 'to have a fever', tenir un bony (a la cama) 'to have a lump (in one's leg)', tenir mal de panxa 'to have a bellyache' or tenir mal a la panxa 'to have an ache/a wound in one's belly', venir un atac de tos 'to have/suffer a cough attack', agafar febre 'to catch a fever' or fer mal el cap '(someone's head) to hurt'). This dissertation shows that the conceptualization and the categorization of the pathological states, the way speakers perceive some aspects of the states (such as their temporality, the corporal extend, the causality or the degree of affectedness), and the relations between these states and the other two participants in the situation (a person and his/her body parts) are not only manifested in the vocabulary of the language, but also in the construction and distribution of the participants in a sentence.

Semantic typology and categorization are important fields of research in linguistics. The aim of our work is to inspect these fields in regard to bilingualism. In this thesis we examine semantic categorization of body parts among four different groups of people: monolingual English speakers, monolingual Russian speakers, bilingual Russian speakers answering in English and bilingual Russian speakers answering in Russian. The hierarchies, ambiguities in naming patterns and homology were in the center of this study. The groups were also compared to each other in order to observe the effects of the first language learned (L1) and the second language learned (L2) on bilinguals. The results showed that Russian L1 bilinguals answering the Russian questionnaire displayed the same results as the Russian monolinguals, indicating a lack of influence from the L2. The Russian L1 bilinguals answering the English questionnaire used a semantic categorization most similar to their L1 and also demonstrated a broadening of the semantic categories related to neither the L1 nor the L2.

Para verificar como a noção de categoria é utilizada historicamente nas linguagens documentárias, partimos de uma breve sistematização das propostas de categorização na filosofia, tal como ela se apresenta em Aristóteles, Kant e Wittgenstein, na semântica cognitiva, segundo Lakoff, com base em Rosch, e na sociologia do conhecimento, com Mauss. Analisamos, em seguida, reflexões feitas sobre a categorização nas linguagens documentárias realizadas por autores clássicos da Biblioteconomia - Shera, Dahlberg, Piedade, Fonseca, Grolier - e pelos autores contemporâneos - Blair e Iyer. O levantamento permitiu verificar que as noções de categoria e de categorização, embora nem sempre trabalhadas de modo explícito na literatura da Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação, permeiam os princípios de elaboração das linguagens documentárias refletindo, de certo modo, as várias formas de conceber os conceitos. Os sistemas enciclopédicos de classificação tendem a utilizar o conceito a partir de Aristóteles, aplicando-o prioritariamente como noção de classe que se divide, de modo apriorístico e sucessivo, em gêneros e espécies etc., procedimento que se altera gradativamente por influência de Kant, quando a noção passa a privilegiar as propriedades dos objetos e fenômenos. Atualmente existe uma tendência fugaz de categorização nas linguagens documentárias de acordo com as variações socioculturais, enfatizando as funções e locais onde estas variações ocorrem. Este procedimento confere maior flexibilidade à linguagem documentária. / In order to find out how the concept of category is historically used in documentary language we start from a limited systematization of philosophy categorization as proposed by Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein, the cognitive semantic categorization according to Lakoff who based his proposal on Rosch, and in knowledge sociology as per Mauss. We then proceed to analyze categorization of documentary language as presented by Librarianship classic authors such as Shera, Dahlberg, Piedade, Fonseca, and Grolier. We also looked into the contemporary authors Blair and Iyer. The investigation allowed us to see that although not always apparent in the literature of Librarianship and Information Science, the notion of category and categorization is implicit in the principles of documentary language elaboration which influences the several ways of elaborating concepts. The encyclopedic classification systems have a tendency of utilizing concepts according to Aristotle, applying it as a notion of class which breaks down according to priority, successiveness, genre, type, etc. This classification style was gradually altered by Kant, where the concept of category and categorization first emphasizes the properties of objects and phenomena. Today we see a brief tendency to categorizing documentary language according to social and cultural variations, observing the functions and sites where the processes occur. This tendency allows more flexibility to documentary language.

Para verificar como a noção de categoria é utilizada historicamente nas linguagens documentárias, partimos de uma breve sistematização das propostas de categorização na filosofia, tal como ela se apresenta em Aristóteles, Kant e Wittgenstein, na semântica cognitiva, segundo Lakoff, com base em Rosch, e na sociologia do conhecimento, com Mauss. Analisamos, em seguida, reflexões feitas sobre a categorização nas linguagens documentárias realizadas por autores clássicos da Biblioteconomia - Shera, Dahlberg, Piedade, Fonseca, Grolier - e pelos autores contemporâneos - Blair e Iyer. O levantamento permitiu verificar que as noções de categoria e de categorização, embora nem sempre trabalhadas de modo explícito na literatura da Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação, permeiam os princípios de elaboração das linguagens documentárias refletindo, de certo modo, as várias formas de conceber os conceitos. Os sistemas enciclopédicos de classificação tendem a utilizar o conceito a partir de Aristóteles, aplicando-o prioritariamente como noção de classe que se divide, de modo apriorístico e sucessivo, em gêneros e espécies etc., procedimento que se altera gradativamente por influência de Kant, quando a noção passa a privilegiar as propriedades dos objetos e fenômenos. Atualmente existe uma tendência fugaz de categorização nas linguagens documentárias de acordo com as variações socioculturais, enfatizando as funções e locais onde estas variações ocorrem. Este procedimento confere maior flexibilidade à linguagem documentária. / In order to find out how the concept of category is historically used in documentary language we start from a limited systematization of philosophy categorization as proposed by Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein, the cognitive semantic categorization according to Lakoff who based his proposal on Rosch, and in knowledge sociology as per Mauss. We then proceed to analyze categorization of documentary language as presented by Librarianship classic authors such as Shera, Dahlberg, Piedade, Fonseca, and Grolier. We also looked into the contemporary authors Blair and Iyer. The investigation allowed us to see that although not always apparent in the literature of Librarianship and Information Science, the notion of category and categorization is implicit in the principles of documentary language elaboration which influences the several ways of elaborating concepts. The encyclopedic classification systems have a tendency of utilizing concepts according to Aristotle, applying it as a notion of class which breaks down according to priority, successiveness, genre, type, etc. This classification style was gradually altered by Kant, where the concept of category and categorization first emphasizes the properties of objects and phenomena. Today we see a brief tendency to categorizing documentary language according to social and cultural variations, observing the functions and sites where the processes occur. This tendency allows more flexibility to documentary language.