Thèse - Faculté des lettres de Paris.

Thèse - Faculté des lettres de Paris.

This work aims at studying the effect of word position in text on understanding and tracking the content of written text. In this thesis we present two uses of word position in text: topic word selectors and topic flow signals. The topic word selectors identify important words, called <i>topic words</i>, by their spread through a text. The underlying assumption here is that words that repeat across the text are likely to be more relevant to the main topic of the text than ones that are concentrated in small segments. Our experiments show that manually selected keywords correspond more closely to topic words extracted using these selectors than to words chosen using more traditional indexing techniques. This correspondence indicates that topic words identify the topical content of the documents more than words selected using the traditional indexing measures that do not utilize word position in text. The second approach to applying word position is through <i>topic flow signals</i>. In this representation, words are replaced by the topics to which they refer. The flow of any one topic can then be traced throughout the document and viewed as a signal that rises when a word relevant to the topic is used and falls when an irrelevant word occurs. To reflect the flow of the topic in larger segments of text we use a simple smoothing technique. The resulting smoothed signals are shown to be correlated to the ideal topic flow signals for the same document. Finally, we characterize documents using the importance of their topic words and the spread of these words in the document. When incorporated into a Support Vector Machine classifier, this representation is shown to drastically reduce the vocabulary size and improve the classifier's performance compared to the traditional word-based, vector space representation.

This work aims at studying the effect of word position in text on understanding and tracking the content of written text. In this thesis we present two uses of word position in text: topic word selectors and topic flow signals. The topic word selectors identify important words, called <i>topic words</i>, by their spread through a text. The underlying assumption here is that words that repeat across the text are likely to be more relevant to the main topic of the text than ones that are concentrated in small segments. Our experiments show that manually selected keywords correspond more closely to topic words extracted using these selectors than to words chosen using more traditional indexing techniques. This correspondence indicates that topic words identify the topical content of the documents more than words selected using the traditional indexing measures that do not utilize word position in text. The second approach to applying word position is through <i>topic flow signals</i>. In this representation, words are replaced by the topics to which they refer. The flow of any one topic can then be traced throughout the document and viewed as a signal that rises when a word relevant to the topic is used and falls when an irrelevant word occurs. To reflect the flow of the topic in larger segments of text we use a simple smoothing technique. The resulting smoothed signals are shown to be correlated to the ideal topic flow signals for the same document. Finally, we characterize documents using the importance of their topic words and the spread of these words in the document. When incorporated into a Support Vector Machine classifier, this representation is shown to drastically reduce the vocabulary size and improve the classifier's performance compared to the traditional word-based, vector space representation.

This thesis deals with topic model evaluation and new topic detection in microblogs. Microblogs are short and thus may not carry any contextual clues. Hence it becomes challenging to apply traditional natural language processing algorithms on such data. Graphical models have been traditionally used for topic discovery and text clustering on sets of text-based documents. Their unsupervised nature allows topic models to be trained easily on datasets meant for specific domains. However the advantage of not requiring annotated data comes with a drawback with respect to evaluation difficulties. The problem aggravates when the data comprises microblogs which are unstructured and noisy. We demonstrate the application of three types of such models to microblogs - the Latent Dirichlet Allocation, the Author-Topic and the Author-Recipient-Topic model. We extensively evaluate these models under different settings, and our results show that the Author-Recipient-Topic model extracts the most coherent topics. We also addressed the problem of topic modeling on short text by using clustering techniques. This technique helps in boosting the performance of our models. Topical alignment is used for large scale assessment of topical relevance by comparing topics to manually generated domain specific concepts. In this thesis we use this idea to evaluate topic models by measuring misalignments between topics. Our study on comparing topic models reveals interesting traits about Twitter messages, users and their interactions and establishes that joint modeling on author-recipient pairs and on the content of tweet leads to qualitatively better topic discovery. This thesis gives a new direction to the well known problem of topic discovery in microblogs. Trend prediction or topic discovery for microblogs is an extensive research area. We propose the idea of using topical alignment to detect new topics by comparing topics from the current week to those of the previous week. We measure correspondence between a set of topics from the current week and a set of topics from the previous week to quantify five types of misalignments: \textit{junk, fused, missing} and \textit{repeated}. Our analysis compares three types of topic models under different settings and demonstrates how our framework can detect new topics from topical misalignments. In particular so-called \textit{junk} topics are more likely to be new topics and the \textit{missing} topics are likely to have died or die out. To get more insights into the nature of microblogs we apply topical alignment to hashtags. Comparing topics to hashtags enables us to make interesting inferences about Twitter messages and their content. Our study revealed that although a very small proportion of Twitter messages explicitly contain hashtags, the proportion of tweets that discuss topics related to hashtags is much higher. / text

This thesis is concerned with the legal shortcomings flowing from Manchester City Council v Pinnock.1 Following Pinnock tenants of local authorities may have the proportionality of a possession order considered by the court in light of art.8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. However, there are questions outstanding from Pinnock. Firstly, there has been a failure within the courts to appreciate the importance of the home to the individual, their family, and society in general. Secondly, domestic courts have not provided adequate reasons for limiting art.8 to proceedings involving a local authority. Thirdly, the nature of proportionality within possession proceedings has been poorly conceived thereby marginalising art.8’s effects. This thesis draws support from philosophical and sociological literature to illustrate the deep connection a person feels towards their home. These connections exist irrespective of ownership yet it is these non-legal interests which are often overlooked by the courts. It is argued here that art.8 may protect these non-legal interests. Further, this thesis questions why art.8’s protection ought to be limited to proceedings involving a public sector landlord. The thesis provides an overview of the competing theories concerning horizontal effect and their related shortcomings. The work of Alexy is used to argue that horizontal effect is a singular phenomenon thereby making art.8 applicable in private proceedings. The public/private divide is then critiqued to demonstrate the theoretical viability of horizontal effect where a person’s home is at risk. The final strand of this thesis is concerned with how the competing interests of landlords and tenants may be adjudged. To this end a structured proportionality model is developed to replace the general proportionality exercise utilised by the courts following Pinnock. This proportionality model is then applied to existing case law to demonstrate its viability and context sensitivity.

This thesis is concerned with the conflict of laws surrounding marriage validity, with a particular focus on essential validity. At present in England, there is a multitude of choice of law rules available to the courts when determining the applicable law, and no way of knowing which will be applied. Consequently, it is difficult for a couple to know whether their marriage is valid, and complications eschew from this. In addition to any emotional impact a finding of invalidity might have, there is the potential for significant legal consequences. With these embryonic legal ramifications in mind, this thesis seeks to create optimal choice of law rules that are both appropriate, and provide certainty. In doing so, support is drawn from various literary sources to promulgate a dépeçage based interest analysis approach. This means that rules are selected for each of the incapacities, taking into account the relevant policy objectives they raise, making the optimal choice of law rules policy sensitive in nature. Furthermore, a new and original choice of law rule; the continued recognised relationship theory is proposed. With much of the literature pre-dating the legal developments surrounding same-sex relationships in England, this thesis goes on to seminally include the determination of the applicable law in same-sex relationships. This is particularly important given the inconsistencies surrounding same-sex relationships; it is an area ripe for conflict disputes, making a set choice of law rule vital if certainty is to be achieved across the marriage validity spectrum. Finally, as a result of increased migration, this thesis extends beyond the borders of England, and encompasses the EU and the US, with the aim of evaluating how certainty might be continued as couples cross state borders. To this end, harmonisation of the choice of law rules proposed herein are propounded across these jurisdictions.

The thesis examines the complex nature of dissent and discontent across three Confederate states during the Civil War —South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. Drawing on a range of sources, including post-war claims for compensation, women’s letters to the Confederate authorities and newspaper accounts of bread riots across the South, it broadens our understanding of the varied and often conservative nature of much Confederate dissent and discontent. Critically, the research distinguishes between southerners, who often asserted their loyalty to the Confederacy, but were profoundly unhappy with the impact of the war on their families, and other southerners implacably opposed to the Confederacy or completely indifferent to its calls on their allegiance. In the Confederate South, dissent was not the same as discontent and discontent did not always indicate disloyalty. The focus of the research is on ordinary white southerners and the meaning that dissent and discontent had for them. Through a re-reading of women’s letters and a detailed analysis of the southern bread riots, the research reappraises the meaning of women’s protest and challenges the current scholarship viewing such protests and petitioning as a political awakening of poor white women seeking new entitlements from the state. Using Southern Claims Commission records, the dissertation also reconsiders the meaning of southern unionism, suggesting that such attachments were often highly subjective and essentially cultural in nature. Many southerners, including both men and women, may have shared a self-proclaimed attachment to the Union but understood the meaning of that loyalty in very different ways. Whilst dissenting southern unionists and women bread rioters may make unfamiliar bedfellows, together they illustrate the complicated but essentially conservative nature of much Confederate dissent and discontent often seeking the restoration of older and more stable arrangements in the face of the disruption of secession and the war.

Despite the general prohibition of using inter-state force imposed by Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, force has been used under the auspices of self-defence, collective security and humanitarian crises. Such use of force has brought challenges to international law regarding its existence and efficacy. Although no state has denied the validity of such prohibition, many attempts have been made to legitimise use of such force on different grounds, namely exception, expansion and explanation. Unlike Public international law, Islamic law of Nations (Siyar) does not provide for a general prohibition of use of force but recognises circumstances in which such force can be legitimately used. The compatibility of these conflicting provisions of legitimate inter-state use of force offered by these two systems are significant for the prevention of aggressive use of force. The assessment of legitimacy of these conflicting provisions shall reveal where the legitimacy lies - is it in Islamic international law or Public international law or both or none of them? The results of the legitimacy assessment demonstrate that these two systems could sit in plural fashion by complementing each other’s legitimacy-deficits. However, the legitimacy and compatibility of Public international law and Islamic international law significantly depend on the development of an underlying pluralistic legal framework of international law with a healthy dose of legitimacy. Therefore, a comparative analysis of these two systems reveals the extent to which a complementary legal framework could be compatible and legitimate. The comparative analysis of the legitimacy of use of force in Public international law and Islamic international law includes examination of classical and contemporary sources to identify the existing legitimacy deficits of the two systems. The analysis follows on an inquiry into the the compatibility of these potentially two conflicting legal systems to complement each other. In this regard, the research expands on another inquiry into how the existing legitimacy deficits of the two systems could be overcome. Generally, this thesis seeks to address three fundamental and interrelated research questions, namely - (1) To what extent use of force in Public international law and Islamic international law is legitimate? (2) How the legitimacy deficits of Public international law and Islamic international law could be overcome? (3) Whether use of force in Public international law and Islamic international law can be compatible in modern world to secure higher degree of legitimacy?

This thesis is an analysis of the initial responses of the British government to the Holocaust focusing on refugee policy. In particular, it seeks to re-examine the role of anti-Semitism as an influencing factor on government decision-making and argues that current historiography underplays that influence. It will argue that the government's fear of anti-Semitism itself betrayed some anti-Jewish assumptions. These fears were used as a means to counter demands for rescue, as the government wanted to ensure that its immigration policies were unchanged and continued to be exclusionary. The thesis also examines how the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community responded to, and engaged with, these policies. This study is based on extensive archival research and makes a detailed analysis of both government and private papers including correspondence from Eleanor Rathbone, William Temple, The Board of Deputies of British Jews and Rabbi Schonfeld. Other resources have included newspapers - The Times, The Jewish Chronicle and the Guardian - contemporary accounts in books and magazines, parliamentary speeches as well as material fron the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees. The thesis is arranged into a series of case studies that exemplify the complexity of responses to Nazi anti-Jewish policy but also draw attention to significant continuities in exclusionary thinking. The first chapter considers the Evian Conference and argues that the government only ever intended that the conference should end with no change to its immigration policies. Chapters Two and Three consider the government response to schemes for the rescue of children in France in 1942 and Bulgaria in 1943 and argue that such rescue schemes were little more than a charitable façade. The thesis ends by looking critically at the Bermuda Conference and its aftermath in 1943 and ultimately concludes that the government remit at Bermuda was similar to the Evian Conference: public expression of noble sentiments with no intention of easing the immigration laws or providing assistance to Jewish refugees trapped in Nazi Europe, the approach which defined British government attitudes throughout.