In this thesis I explore Bayesian models for word alignment, how they can be improved through joint annotation transfer, and how they can be extended to parallel texts in more than two languages. In addition to these general methodological developments, I apply the algorithms to problems from sign language research and linguistic typology. In the first part of the thesis, I show how Bayesian alignment models estimated with Gibbs sampling are more accurate than previous methods for a range of different languages, particularly for languages with few digital resources available—which is unfortunately the state of the vast majority of languages today. Furthermore, I explore how different variations to the models and learning algorithms affect alignment accuracy. Then, I show how part-of-speech annotation transfer can be performed jointly with word alignment to improve word alignment accuracy. I apply these models to help annotate the Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) with part-of-speech tags, and to investigate patterns of polysemy across the languages of the world. Finally, I present a model for multilingual word alignment which learns an intermediate representation of the text. This model is then used with a massively parallel corpus containing translations of the New Testament, to explore word order features in 1001 languages.

There are four chapters in my dissertation. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of the three essays. Chapter two empirically analyzes the interaction among conventional monetary policy, foreign exchange intervention and the exchange rate in a unifying model for Japan. I have several findings. First, the results lend support to the leaning-against-the-wind hypothesis. Second, conventional monetary policy has as great influence on the exchange rate as foreign exchange intervention in Japan. Third, intervention in Japan is ineffective or may be counter-effective, so escaping liquidity trap by intervention alone may not be a feasible way. Chapter three empirically identifies the sources of exchange rate movements of Japan vis--vis the US, and investigates the role of the exchange rate in the macro economy adjustment. It finds that real shocks dominate nominal shocks in explaining the exchange rate movements, with relative real demand shocks as the major contributor. And the exchange rate market does not create many shocks. The overall result supports that the bilateral exchange rate in Japan is a shock-absorber rather than a source of shock. Chapter four provides cross-country and time-series evidence on the extent of exchange rate pass-through at different stages of distribution - import prices, producer prices and consumer prices - for eight major industrial countries: United States, Japan, Canada, Italy, UK, Finland, Sweden and Spain. I find exchange rate pass-through incomplete in many horizons, though complete pass-through is observed occasionally. The degree of pass-through declines and time needed for complete pass-through lengthens along the distribution chain. Furthermore, I find that a greater pass-through coefficient is associated with an economy that is smaller in size with higher import shares, more persistent and less volatile exchange rate shocks, more volatile monetary shocks, higher inflation rate, and less volatile GDP.

There has been little published research literature that has focused on using siblings to teach their non-verbal siblings a manual sign to communicate using the mandmodel procedure. The mand- model procedure is a naturalistic teaching strategy which has been demonstrated to improve communication and social outcomes for children with disabilities. This study investigated sibling tutors teaching their sibling tutees to use the manual sign “more” to request a want or need. The four sibling tutees were between the ages of 25 and 26 months and their sibling tutors were between the ages of 9 and 14 years. A multiple probe design across subjects was used for this study. The mand-model procedure, the independent variable, was used by the sibling tutors to teach the sibling tutees the manual sign “more.” The effectiveness of the use of the manual sign “more” was the independent variable. All four of the sibling tutees were able to successfully learn the manual sign and used the sign across maintenance and generalization phases.

No description available.

This study investigated the conceptual blending processes that occurred during American Sign Language (ASL) interpretations. Using the framework of conceptual blending (Fauconnier &Turner, 1996), this study analyzed six ASL interpretations and found two new mental spaces, Narrator Space and Interpreter Space, which are activated during interpretations. Conceptual blending has been used analyzing ASL (Liddell, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003; Dudis, 2004a, 2004b, 2007) but had not been applied to ASL interpretations until this study. The conceptual blending process of ASL has found several mental spaces that are activated in blends. Real Space (Liddell, 1995) and Event Space (Dudis, 2007) are two mental spaces that blend in ASL; these two spaces were also found in the data of this study. The data also revealed that all six interpreters created Event Space much like Deaf signers. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of English

Historically, American Sign Language (an aspect of Deaf culture) has been rendered invisible in mainstream hearing society. Today, ASL’s popularity is evidenced in an ethnolinguistic renaissance; more second language learners pursue an interest in ASL than ever before. Nonetheless, Deaf and hearing people alike express concern about ASL’s place in hearing culture. This qualitative study engages ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviewing as well as popular media analysis to understand language ideologies (ideas and objectives concerning roles of language in society) hearing and Deaf Signers hold about motivations and practices of other hearing Signers. Although most hearing ASLers identify as apolitical students genuinely seeking to build bridges between disparate communities, I argue that ASLers are most concerned with hearing Signers’ colonization of the language through commoditization and cultural appropriation.

An n × n sign pattern A is potentially stable (PS) if there exists a real matrix A having the sign pattern A and with all its eigenvalues having negative real parts. The identification of non-trivial necessary and sufficient conditions for potential stability remains a long standing open problem. Here we review some of the previous results and give simplified proofs for some of these results. Three techniques are given for the construction of larger order PS sign patterns from given PS sign patterns. These techniques are: construction of a sign pattern that allows a nested sequence of properly signed principal minors (a nest), bordering of a PS sign pattern with additional rows and columns, and use of a similarity transformation of a matrix that is reducible with two diagonal blocks (one of which is a stable matrix and the other a negative scalar). The minimum number of nonzero entries in an irreducible minimally PS sign pattern is determined for n = 2, . . . , 6 and for an arbitrary sign pattern that allows a nest. We also determine lower bounds for the number of nonzero entries in irreducible minimally PS sign patterns having certain sign patterns for their diagonal entries. For irreducible PS sign patterns of order at least four, a bordering construction leads to a new upper bound for the minimum number of nonzero entries.

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) support the reconfigurable computing paradigm by providing an integrated circuit hardware platform that facilitates software like reconfigurability. The addition of an embedded microprocessor and peripherals to traditional FPGA Combinational Logic Blocks (CLBs) interleaved with interconnections has effectively resulted in a programmable system on-chip. FPGAs are used to support flexible implementations of Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) functions. Because FPGAs are reconfigurable, they often are used in place of ASICs during the cicuit design process. FPGAs are also used when only a small number of ICs are required: ASICs necessitate large manufacturing runs to be economically viable; for smaller runs the use of FPGAs is an economic alternative. Application domains of interest, such as intelligent guidance systems, medical devices, and sensors, often require low power, inexpensive calculation of trance- dental functions. COordinate Rotation DIgital Computer (CORDIC) is an iterative algorithm used to emmulate hardware expensive multipliers, such as Multiply/ACculmulate (MAC) units, with only shift and add operations. However, because CORDIC is a sequential algorithm, characterized as having the latency of a serial multiplier, techniques that speed up computational performance have many applications.To this end, three implementations of standard CORDIC, (i) unrolled hardwired, (ii) unrolled programmable, and (iii) rolled programmable, were implemented on four Xilinx FPGA families: Virtex-4, -5, and -6, and Spartan-6. Although hardwired unrolled was found to have the greatest speed at the expense of no runtime flexibility, and rolled programmable was found to have the greatest flexibility and lowest silicon area consumption at the expense of the longest propagation delay, improvements to CORDIC implementations were still sought. Three parallelized CORDIC techniques, P-CORDIC, Flat-CORDIC, and Para-CORDIC, were implemented on the same four FPGA families. P-CORDIC and Flat-CORDIC, were shown to have the lowest latency under various conditions; Para-CORDIC was found to perform well in deeply pipelined, high throughput circuits. Design rules for when to use standard versus precomputation CORDIC techniques are presented. To address the low power requirements of many applications of interest, the Unfolded Multiplexor-LRB (UMUX-LRB), patent held by Sima, et al, was analyzed in weak inversion across four transistor technology nodes (180nm, 130nm, 90nm, and 65nm). Previous was also expanded from strong inversion across 180nm, 130nm, and 90nm technology nodes to also include 65nm. The UMUX-LRB interconnection network is based upon the Xilinx commercial interconnection network. Therefore, this network (MUX-LRB), and another static circuit technique, CMOS-Transmission Gates (CMOS-TG), were profiled across all four technology nodes to provide a baseline of comparision. This analysis found the UMUX-LRB to have the smallest and most balanced rising and falling edge propagation delay, in addition to having the greatest reliability for temperature and process variation. / Graduate

This study investigates the understanding of emoticons and emojis used in text messages. Theaim of this study is to determine whether there is a universal understanding of emoticons andemojis, which is important considering the number of people using them every day whensending text messages. Many studies have been made of communication via text messagesand the usage of emoticons and emojis, but no study has focused on the interpretation of thesymbols and the importance of the context.For the purposes of this study, a questionnaire was completed in an uppersecondary school (Swedish gymnasium) in Stockholm, during normal school hours inNovember 2014, by 90 16-19 year old students. The result was then analysed through a‘Relevance Theory’ perspective, and in the light of the works of, amongst others, Saussure,Peirce and Thomas.The result revealed that, for the interpreter of a text message, it is important thata textual context is established, in order for the interpreter to be able to understand what theemoticons or emojis used in text messages mean. The result also showed that the emoticonsand emojis do not have a meaning in themselves and that they can have different meaningsdepending on the situation, and the mood or the person for whom the message is intended.

Teorinėje darbo dalyje aptariama XX a. pabaigoje atsiradusi fraktalaus meno šaka, pagrindiniai virtualios kompozicijos principai. Abstrakcijos – tarsi sapno detalė, gyvenimo motyvai, troškimai, tragedijos. Minima hermeneutinė filosofijos kyptis, kuri siejasi su kūrybinės kolekcijos estetikos koncepsija. Nagrinėjama ženklo ir simbolio samprata. Simbolikos naudojimas meninėje raiškoje – vienas metodų patraukti stebėtojo pasąmonės galias reikiama kryptimi. Kitoje darbo skiltyje analizuojami kompiuterine grafika užsiimančių menininkų vizualūs projektai. Atveriama vizualioji kūryba interpretacijoje. Stebint ją galima identifikuoti save, užuominos ir jų tarpusavio priklausomybė padeda atrasti objekto tapatybę. Siekiniai, idėjos, autoriui tampa svarbūs, kai jie atitinka egzistencines nuostatas, tapatumo paieškas nefiguratyviuose vaizdiniuose. Apbendrinama su „Egle žalčių karaliene“ susijusi literatūra. Pasakoje apie žalčio žmoną pastebimas sakmiškas pradas, kuris siejasi su archaiškų padavimų vystimu. Atskleidžiamas šeimos, genties – svečio santykis, gyvybės paslaptis, jos galia, „kitataučio“ netolerancija, dorovinis pasaulėžiūrų konfliktas, ištikimybės ir aukos ryšys (dvasinis ir moralinis žmogaus išbandymas). Paskutinėje darbo dalyje aprašoma asmeninė kūrybinė kolekcija. Aiškinama darbų prasmė, pasitelkiant spalvas, geometrines ar nefiguratyvias formas, dėmes, ritmiką. / In the theoretical part of the work, the branch of fractal art, which emerged at the end of the 20th century, and the main principles of composition are discussed. Abstractions are like elements of dreams, motifs of life, desires, and tragedies. The philosophical trend of hermeneutics is mentioned, which is related to the esthetic concept of the creative collection. The concept of sign and symbol is examined. The use of symbolism in artistic expression is one method of pulling the unconscious powers of the observer in a desired direction. In the next section of the work, visual projects of artists who use computer graphics are analyzed. The visual creation is opened in the interpretation. When observing it, one can identify oneself; hints and their interdependence helps to find the identity of the object. Objectives and ideas become important to the author when they correspond to existential attitudes and the search for identity in abstract images. Literature related to “Egle - The Queen of Serpents Man” is summarized. In the tale about the wife of serpent, a rudiment of sagas is found, which is related to an archaic development of stories. The following concepts are revealed: the relation of family, tribe and guest, the secret of life and its power, intolerance of the “foreigner”, moral conflict of different worldviews, and the relation between loyalty and sacrifice (the spiritual and moral challenge). In the last part of this work, the creative collection is described... [to full text]