Attempts have been made in Sweden to increase readability for texts addressed to the public, and ongoing projects are still being conducted by disability associations, private companies and Swedish authorities. In this thesis project, we explore automatic approaches to increase readability trough text simplification and keyphrase extraction, with the goal of facilitating text comprehension and readability for people with reading difficulties. A combination of handwritten rules and monolingual machine translation was used to simplify the syntactic and lexical content of Swedish texts, and noun phrases were extracted to provide the reader with a short summary of the textual content. A user evaluation was conducted to compare the original and the simplified version of the same text. Several texts and their simplified versions were also evaluated using established readability metrics. Although a manual evaluation of the result showed that the implemented rules generally worked as intended on the sentences that were targeted, the results from the user evaluation and readability metrics did not show improvements. We believe that further additions to the rule set, targeting a wider range of linguistic structures, have the potential to improve the results.

This thesis deals with methods of information retrieval. Firstly, it describes models of information retrieval and methods of retrieval evaluation. Then it brings closer the principles of the input text processing for IR with use of stopword list and stemmer. Furthermore, it shows the way of the query expansion with synonyms using the thesaurus, methods of handling phrases appearance in queries and introduces the idea of ranking documents by the degree of phrase occurrence similarity in documents. In the second part of this thesis is described the design of whole IR system with using vector model, query expansion with synonyms and phrases handling. This system has been implemented in C# as the application for retrieving and administration of the documents in digital libraries. The effectiveness of this system has been evaluated at the end of this thesis by several tests.

字彙的誤用，是台灣英語學習者易犯的毛病之一。由於中文與英文字詞並非呈現一對一的語意對應，加上國中英語教師多年來習慣要求學生以記誦中文意思的方式學習英文單字，導致學生常有用錯字的狀況發生，並造成語意上的誤解。有鑑於此，本文作者盼能以語料庫英語教學來改善這些現象，並以see, watch ,look三個意義相近字彙的區辨為例，呈現出完整的教學過程，供英語教師教學或學習者自修參考。 在教學前，教師應根據學生英文程度與教學需求，先行篩選並編輯語料，以利學生學習。在課堂上，藉由這些語料的呈現，讓學生觀察其中的規律性；透過問題的解決，用認知的手段讓學生觀察該字彙出現的語境及其易連結的字串；並以測驗的方式檢測學生的理解程度。此外，本文亦詳細歸納這三個單字的使用時機，並提出實用的區辨方式。 作者盼能藉由語料庫英語教學的實施，增強英語學習者的學習意願。透過類似活動的投入及參與，學習者將不再只是訊息接收者，而能藉由觀察來創造自己的知識、增進對英文的掌握度。 / In Taiwan, many EFL students have difficulty using the proper vocabulary at the right time. Due to the fact that Mandarin and English vocabulary are in a one-to-many semantically-corresponding relationship, and that Taiwanese EFL students are often taught to learn English vocabulary by memorizing its Mandarin equivalent, students often have difficulties choosing proper English equivalents in different contexts. Besides, the arrangement of junior high school English curriculum has made it even more difficult for students to learn vocabulary accurately. Because the improper use of vocabulary often brings about confusion or misunderstanding, a practical method is needed to cope with the concerned problems. Nowadays, Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) has been a trend. In this study, the researcher will take “see, watch, and look at” as examples to show a corpora-based teaching procedure. Subjects are 8th graders in junior high school. The scope of the research is confined to the prototypical meanings of these verbs; it is believed that students should possess the basic knowledge about these verbs before they continue to learn other extended meanings. Before the class, the conordance lines are selected and carefully edited by the teacher to meet the needs of the course. In class, consciousness-raising tasks, combined with quizzes and complementary materials, provide students with comprehensive knowledge about the three verbs. After the activities, crucial information of the verbs is clearly exhibited, and useful methods are also presented to help distinguish the verbs. With the “context providers”, namely, the corpora, both teachers and students are provided with authentic and plentiful examples, which are often insufficient for Taiwanese EFL learners. Through the participation of these activities, students become participants and create their own knowledge. It is hoped that with the assistance of data-driven learning (DDL), EFL teachers will then be able to provide their students with not only more reliable information, but more constructive and systematic instruction.

本論文旨在探討近義詞的相關議題，特別是要檢視其背後的概念結構與表層的語法功能。透過「方便」與「便利」的研究，本文就這對近義詞在語意上的差異做深入並有系統地分析，並期以此解釋他們在語法層次上不同的表現。 　　以框架語意學(Frame Semantics)為理論架構，本研究發現近義詞「方便」與「便利」會引導出「方便框架」(CONVENIENCE frame)與「不方便框架」 (INCONVENIENCE frame)，而這兩個語意框架雖有相對應的框架成分(frame element)，實質上卻是引發出不同的概念型態。近一步說明這對近義詞在語意上的差別，「方便」與「便利」對於他們所涉入的複雜事件(complex event)持不同的觀點：「方便」主要是專注在結果次事件(result-subevent)並採受恩者(BENEFICIARY)的觀點；而「便利」則較專注在原因次事件(cause-subevent)並採動作者/施恩者(AGENT/BENEFACTOR)的觀點。此外，由於「方便」與「便利」具備了正面、值得嚮往的特質，這也解釋了何以「方便框架」比「不方便框架」有更高程度的目的性(intentionality)。 　　為檢視近義詞在概念上的差異是否會反映於在他們的語法表現上，本研究闡明了「方便」與「便利」的語法功能及其使用分布的情況、以及參與角色(participant role)的凸顯類型(profiling pattern)。結果顯示「方便」與「便利」主要有五種語法功能，即名詞化、修飾名詞、修飾動詞、不及物動詞謂語、及物動詞謂語，最常使用的語法功能為名詞化與動詞謂語(包含及物與不及物)。此五種語法功能皆會突顯某些參與角色，但主要都是突顯了「目的」(PURPOSE)與「手段」(MEANS)；而其他參與角色也會在不同語法功能的使用中被突顯，並且這些突顯類型皆可由「方便」與「便利」在概念上的差異來做解釋。 　　總結來說，本論文闡釋了近義詞「方便」與「便利」在概念上不同的偏好會導致他們在語法上有不同的表現；此外，「方便」與「便利」在參與角色的凸顯類型上亦不相同，這說明了，「方便」與「便利」是屬於不同的構式(construction)。最後，本論文也再次確認了詞彙背後的語意概念會決定其語法的表現。 / The purpose of this thesis is to approach the issue of near-synonyms via the examination of their respective underlying conceptual structures and surface syntactic functions. Specifically, the present study aims to furnish a fine-grained and systematic analysis of the semantic differences between the near-synonymous pair fangbian and bianli that shall better explain their differential syntactic behaviors. 　　Based on the theoretical framework of Frame Semantics, this study found that the conceptual structures of fangbian and bianli are associated with the frames of CONVENIENCE and INCONVENIENCE. While pertaining to a corresponding set of frame elements, the two frames actually prompt distinct conceptualizations. Precisely, fangbian and bianli differ in their perspectivization of the complex event involved: fangbian focuses on the result-subevent and takes the BENEFICIARY’s perspective whereas bianli on the cause-subevent and takes the AGENT/BENEFACTOR’s perspective. In addition, the fact that convenience is desirable and thus typically intended also explains the stronger intentionality involved in the CONVENIENCE frame than in the INCONVENIENCE frame. 　　To investigate whether conceptual differences between the near-synonyms would be manifested in their syntactic behaviors, this thesis further elucidated the syntactic functions and their distribution of fangbian and bianli as well as the profiling of the participant roles in each syntactic function. In particular, five main syntactic functions of fangbian and bianli were identified: nominalization, nominal modifier, verbal modifier, intransitive verbal predicate and transitive verbal predicate; each serves to profile distinct participant roles, mostly PURPOSE or MEANS. Moreover, the profiling of other participant roles can be accounted for by the perspectival distinction between the near-synonymous pair. Finally, the distribution of syntactic functions of fangbian and bianli demonstrated that the usage of the near-synonyms as verbal predicate and nominalization is the most dominant categories. 　　To conclude, this thesis has shown that the conceptual preferences of fangbian and bianli in terms of their perspectivization lead to their different syntactic behaviors. Moreover, the near-synonymous pair also differs in their profiling of the participant roles; in other words, they display distinct profiling patterns and therefore pertain to different constructions. Finally, it still holds for the present study that the semantics of a word drives its syntactic behaviors.