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Stormwater investigations are an important part of the detail plan that is necessary for companies and industries to write. The detail plan is used to show that an area is well suited for among other things, construction. Writing these detail plans is a costly and time consuming process and it is not uncommon they get rejected. This is because it is difficult to find information about the criteria you need to meet and what you need to address within the investigation. This thesis aims to make this problem less ambiguous by applying the topic modeling algorithm LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation) in order to identify the structure of stormwater investigations. Moreover, sentences that contain words from the topic modeling will be extracted to give each word a perspective of how it can be used in the context of writing a stormwater investigation. Finally a knowledge graph will be created with the extracted topics and sentences. The result of this study indicates that topic modeling and NLP (natural language processing) can be used to identify the structure of stormwater investigations. Furthermore it can also be used to extract useful information that can be used as a guidance when learning and writing stormwater investigations.

Probabilistic topic models are a versatile class of models for discovering latent themes in document collections through unsupervised learning. Conventional inferential methods lack the scaling capabilities necessary for extensions to large-scale applications. In recent years Stochastic Expectation Maximization has proven scalable for the simplest topic model: Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Performing analytical maximization is unfortunately not possible for many more complex topic models. With the rise of probabilistic programming languages, the ability to infer flexibly specified probabilistic models using sophisticated numerical optimization procedures has become widely available. These frameworks have however mainly been developed for optimization of continuous parameters, often prohibiting direct optimization of discrete parameters. This thesis explores the potential of utilizing probabilistic programming for generic topic modeling using Stochastic Expectation Maximization with numerical maximization of discrete parameters reparameterized to unconstrained space. The method achieves results of similar quality as other methods for Latent Dirichlet Allocation in simulated experiments. Further application is made to infer a Dirichlet-multinomial Regression model with metadata covariates. A real dataset is used and the method produces interpretable topics.

When conducting research, it is valuable to find high-ranked papers closely related to the specific research area, without spending too much time reading insignificant papers. To make this process more effective an automated process to extract topics from documents would be useful, and this is possible using topic modeling. Topic modeling can also be used to provide topic trends, where a topic is first mentioned, and who the original author was. In this paper, over 5000 articles are scraped from four different top-ranked internet security conferences, using a web scraper built in Python. From the articles, fourteen topics are extracted, using the topic modeling library Gensim and LDA Mallet, and the topics are visualized in graphs to find trends about which topics are emerging and fading away over twenty years. The result found in this research is that topic modeling is a powerful tool to extract topics, and when put into a time perspective, it is possible to identify topic trends, which can be explained when put into a bigger context.

This dissertation analyses the novelette Marara, written by D.P. Semakaleng Monyaise. This work has been previously investigated by critics such as Mogajane, Malope and Mogapi, who focused on its content and style and compared it to other literary works. This dissertation differs from these earlier studies in that it aims to analyse the structure of the text of Marara in depth, focussing on the two levels of structure, namely content and plot. This investigation uses two methods of analysis, namely definition and interpretation, because these approaches will adequately explore the many concepts and ideas related to the analysis of text structure. These methods are applied within the framework of an adapted narratological model. This model suggests that when the content of a text is studied, the concept of the topic should be strongly emphasised; when the plot is investigated the theme should be focussed on; and lastly when the style is examined, then atmosphere is most important. In examining the text of Marara three important concepts related to the novelette are identified, which describe three sub-genres of narratives, namely picaresque, didactic and moral. Picaresque means concerned with a character called picaro, who often embarks on long journeys consisting of sequences of different events and meetings with various characters. This picaro is an ordinary person, not of high social status. His/her weaknesses belittle him/her but he/she is changed by them and so is forgiven. In Marara the protagonist, Rremogolo, is on a journey from his home in Matile, where there is righteousness, to Makgoeng, a place of wickedness. After encountering many problems on the way he realises that he was mistaken to leave his home. He returns to Matile, convinced that it is the best place for him to live. This mistaken journey of temptation can be described as the Makgoeng Motif. Didactic means related to a work designed for institutions of education. Such a work can use as an example the story of a character, either an ordinary person or a person of high social status, who falls because of his/her weaknesses, but then changes and is forgiven. Rremogolo also fits into the didactic frame. Though he is a poor man of low social station, he successfully illustrates the point of the Makgoeng Motif through his fall, which is his failure to achieve financial success in Makgoeng. The moral means concerned with the power of distinguishing right from wrong. The emphasis of moral texts is on good behaviour, on people working and living together co-operatively. This concept can also be related to the plot structure described above, of a person either of high or ordinary social status, who through his/her weaknesses falls, but then changes and is forgiven. When the morality of this story is examined, emphasis is put on the changing of the character, on how the character first does bad things but in the passing of time, and because of the problems he/she encounters, in the end learns his/her mistake, and changes to become a good person. Rremogolo illustrates this exactly, because he begins by abandoning his uncle’s cattle in order to pursue his dream of travelling to Makgoeng, then suffers the results of many problems, realises his mistake, and in the end returns to home and duty. Therefore, careful examination of the text of Marara reveals that in writing this novelette Monyaise mixes three sub-generic categories, namely the picaresque, the didactic and the moral narrative. This makes the novelette difficult to classify, because it is difficult for readers to keep track of generic characteristics in this mix of genres. / Dissertation (MA (African Languages))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / African Languages / unrestricted

A representative example of Monyaise’s work is his novel Go ša Baori, published in 1970. A survey of the literature reveals that this novel has already been investigated, by Malope R.M and (1986), Shole J. S.S (1988) who analysed only the dream found in this novel. The chief aim of this investigation is thus to critically analyse the structure of the novel Go ša Baori at the level of content and plot, using two research methods, namely definition and interpretation, within the context of an adapted narratological model. This model conceives of a text according to three levels, namely content, plot and style, and focuses on the topic of the content, the theme of the plot and the atmosphere of the style. Thus this research study differs from the two previous investigations of Go ša Baori because it focuses on the content level of the text by examining the topic, and the plot level by analysing the theme. The content of a text is coordinated by the topic to form a unified entity. The topic of the novel we are investigating is reflected in its title, namely Go ša Baori. The topic is thus of vital importance, and determines the arrangement and presentation of four important elements of content, namely character, time, place and events. These four elements are examined in more detail. The characters of the novel can be grouped into two categories, namely kind-hearted person (Olebile) and quarrelsome person (Wapeipi). These two content characters are investigated using the concepts of intention, patronage, resistance, assistance and success. Time and place together fall under setting. Setting can be defined as the natural and artificial environment in which characters in literature live and move (Roberts 1982:1).Time is then the period in which the events of the plot happen, and the order in which they happen. This can be expressed in various units, for example a day, month or year. Place denotes the geographical and topological position in which the characters in the story are situated and the events of the plot take place. Bal (1985: 8) regards the place within which the characters find themselves as the ‘frame’. The last of the four elements, the events, together make up the plot of the drama, which Strachan (1988: 20) and Magapa (1997: 11) describe as the second level of the text. Here theme is the key. The theme of the novel Go ša Baori centres on jealousy and competitive spirit. The plot is examined by focusing on the special functions in the plot of the protagonist Olebile and the antagonist Wapeipi, and the events related to them are classified as representing either good or evil. This study of Go ša Baori not only reveals how Monyaise creates his characters but also how he selects and shapes them for the purpose of dramatizing human life with all its varied manifestations. The actions that take place reveal essential character traits of the various characters, as do the words of the author as he describes Wapeipi as someone who makes up his mind at once and he is prepared to be hurt emotionally. While on the other hand, Olebile is a soft spoken man and very loving who shows his love to his fiancée by buying her a big diamond ring. The plot is then examined according to the conflicts that occur in its various stages, namely the exposition, the development, the climax and the denouement. There are twelve distinct conflicts that can be identified occurring between characters in the events of the plot. Monyaise using three techniques, namely repetition, elision and motif, presents the events of the exposition, which form the first conflict that sets the plot going. In the development, several other techniques are used to show the conflicting forces of character and events and to emphasize the message of the novel. The other conflicts, which are between other characters like the helpers, can be described as medium, and are not examined in great detail, though they are vital for creating suspense. In the climax phase the techniques of focus, idioms and motif are examined, particularly in the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist, which leads to the death of the protagonist caused by emotions and complications. The conflict in the denouement phase is characterised by a very important technique, shadow to strengthen the theme of Go ša Baori. Here Monyaise uses this important technique, to strengthen the presentation of the theme of Go ša Baori. Overall, the most frequently used techniques are repetition, motif, idioms, elision, focus, rhetorical questions and foreshadowing. This novel can be classified as a tragic novel, because at the end, the antagonist dies. Using this tragic ending, Monyaise tries to caution his audience against jealousy and a competitive spirit. Thus it is the theme that holds the audience to the end of the novel. / Dissertation (MA (African Languages))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / African Languages / MA (African Languages) / unrestricted

1 Kateřina Rysová Annotation The presented thesis is focused on the Czech word order of contextually non-bound verbal modifications. It monitors whether there is a basic order in the contextually non-bound part of the sentence (significantly predominant in frequency) in the surface word order (cf. narodit se v Brně v roce 1950 vs. narodit se v roce 1950 v Brně; literally to be born in Brno in 1950 vs. to be born in 1950 in Brno). At the same time, we try to find out the factors influencing the word order (such as the form of modifications, their lexical expression or the effect of verbal valency). Finally, we briefly compare the word order tendencies in Czech and German. For the verification of the objectives, mainly the data from the Prague Dependency Treebank are used. The work is based on the theoretical principles of Functional Generative Description. Research results demonstrate that, at least in some cases, it is possible to detect certain general tendencies to use preferably one of two possible surface word order sequences in Czech. Abstract The aim of the doctoral thesis is to describe particular aspects of the Czech (and partly also German) word order in the sentences coming mainly from journalistic texts. The first part examines the role of different types of verbal modifications in sentence...

Topic models are useful tools for exploring large data sets of textual content by exposing a generative process from which the text was produced. Anchor-based topic models utilize the anchor word assumption to define a set of algorithms with provable guarantees which recover the underlying topics with a run time practically independent of corpus size. A number of extensions to the initial anchor word-based algorithms, and enhancements made to tangential models, have been proposed which improve the intrinsic characteristics of the model making them more interpretable by humans. This thesis evaluates improvements to human interpretability due to: low-dimensional word embeddings in combination with a regularized objective function, automatic topic merging using tandem anchors, and utilizing word embeddings to synthetically increase corpus density. Results show that tandem anchors are viable vehicles for automatic topic merging, and that using word embeddings significantly improves the original anchor method across all measured metrics. Combining low-dimensional embeddings and a regularized objective results in computational downsides with small or no improvements to the metrics measured.

Detecting topics by extracting keywords from written text using TF-IDF has been studied and successfully used in many applications. Adding a semantic layer to TF-IDF-based topic detection using WordNet synonyms and hypernyms has been explored in document clustering by assigning concepts that describe texts or by adding all synonyms and hypernyms that occurring words have to a list of keywords. A new method where TF-IDF scores are calculated and WordNet synset members’ TF-IDFscores are added together to all occurring synonyms and/or hypernyms is explored in this paper. Here, such an approach is evaluated by comparing extracted keywords using TF-IDF and the new proposed method, SynPlusTF-IDF, against manually assigned keywords in a database of scientific abstracts. As topic detection is widely used in many contexts and applications, improving current methods is of great value as the methods can become more accurate at extracting correct and relevant keywords from written text. An experiment was conducted comparing the two methods and their accuracy measured using precision and recall and by calculating F1-scores.The F1-scores ranged from 0.11131 to 0.14264 for different variables and the results show that SynPlusTF-IDF is not better at topic detection compared to TF-IDF and both methods performed poorly at topic detection with the chosen dataset.

The aim of this study was to quantitatively measure refutation text's power for conceptual change while qualitatively discovering students' preference of refutation or expository text structures. This study also sought to examine if religious interest levels predict conceptual change. Participants for this study were 9th, 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade seminary students from the private religious educational system of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The study was conducted in two sessions. Session 1 involved pretesting, interventions, and posttesting. Session 2 involved delayed posttesting and participant interviews. Results were predominately measured quantitatively with some qualitative interview analysis added to enrich the study. This research study provides insight into the refutation text effects in LDS religious education. Results of the study showed significant differences in conceptual change between participants reading refutation texts and those reading expository texts. In every case, the refutation text group performed higher on posttests than did the expository group. Results also showed participant preference toward refutation text structures. Furthermore, the study found significant correlations that verify topic interest as a possible predictor of conceptual change. Insights are valuable in aiding curriculum developers in implementing effective ways to teach doctrinal principles by utilizing refutation text interventions. The advantages of this research study add to educational research and identify areas for improvement and exploration in further research. This study of refutation text effects in religious education also broadens researchers' understanding of refutation text's power for conceptual change in subjects outside of K-12 science. Results of this study are of interest to researchers, teachers, curriculum writers, and LDS seminary teachers and administrators.