Program slice metrics and their potential role in DSL design, position paper

The advantages a DSL and the benefits its use potentially brings imply that informed decisions on the design of a domain specific language are of paramount importance for its use. We believe that the foundations of such decisions should be informed by analysis of data empirically collected from systems to highlight salient features that should then form the basis of a DSL. To support this theory, we describe an empirical study of a large OSS called Barcode, written in C, and from which we collected two well-known 'slice' based metrics. We analyzed multiple versions of the system and sliced its functions in three separate ways (i.e., input, output and global variables). The purpose of the study was to try and identify sensitivities and traits in those metrics that might inform features of a potential slice-based DSL. Results indicated that cohesion was adversely affected through the use of global variables and that appreciation of the role of function inputs and outputs can be revealed through slicing. The study presented is motivated primarily by the problems with current tools and interfaces experienced directly by the authors in extracting slicing data and the need to promote the benefits that analysis of slice data and slicing in general can offer.

Entangled semantics

In the context of monolingual and bilingual retrieval, Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) datasets can play a dual role as knowledge bases for semantic annotations and as language-independent resources for translation. With no existing track of formal evaluations of these aspects for datasets in SKOS format, we describe a case study on the usage of the Thesaurus for the Social Sciences in SKOS format for a retrieval setup based on the CLEF 2004-2006 Domain-Specific Track topics, documents and relevance assessments. Results showed a mixed picture with significant system-level improvements in terms of mean average precision in the bilingual runs. Our experiments set a new and improved baseline for using SKOS-based datasets with the GIRT collection and are an example of component-based evaluation.

A model for information retrieval driven by conceptual spaces

A retrieval model describes the transformation of a query into a set of documents. The question is: what drives this transformation? For semantic information retrieval type of models this transformation is driven by the content and structure of the semantic models. In this case, Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) are the semantic models that encode the meaning employed for monolingual and cross-language retrieval. The focus of this research is the relationship between these meanings’ representations and their role and potential in augmenting existing retrieval models effectiveness. The proposed approach is unique in explicitly interpreting a semantic reference as a pointer to a concept in the semantic model that activates all its linked neighboring concepts. It is in fact the formalization of the information retrieval model and the integration of knowledge resources from the Linguistic Linked Open Data cloud that is distinctive from other approaches. The preprocessing of the semantic model using Formal Concept Analysis enables the extraction of conceptual spaces (formal contexts)that are based on sub-graphs from the original structure of the semantic model. The types of conceptual spaces built in this case are limited by the KOSs structural relations relevant to retrieval: exact match, broader, narrower, and related. They capture the definitional and relational aspects of the concepts in the semantic model. Also, each formal context is assigned an operational role in the flow of processes of the retrieval system enabling a clear path towards the implementations of monolingual and cross-lingual systems. By following this model’s theoretical description in constructing a retrieval system, evaluation results have shown statistically significant results in both monolingual and bilingual settings when no methods for query expansion were used. The test suite was run on the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum Domain Specific 2004-2006 collection with additional extensions to match the specifics of this model.

A Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England: Some Issues at the Interface of Semantics and Lexicography

This paper reports on issues at the interface between semantics and lexicography that arose out of the data collection and classification of vocabulary in Anglo-Norman and Middle English in order to create a bilingual thesaurus of everyday life in medieval England. The Bilingual Thesaurus project is based at Birmingham City University and the University of Westminster. Issues to be resolved included the definition of an occupational domain; the creation of a methodology of data collection; the delimitation of domain-specific vocabulary; making distinctions between sense and usage; and the categorisation of the lexical items. Some of these issues are general to thesaurus-making, some are specific to the making of historical thesauruses, while some are unique to the production of a thesaurus of two languages whose use overlapped for several centuries in the late medieval period in England.

What is universal and what differs in language development?

Goldin-Meadow (2015) presents an exceptional synthesis of work from studies of children acquiring language under variable circumstances of input or processing abilities. Deaf children who acquire homesign without any well- formed model from which to learn language represent a powerful example. Goldin-Meadow argues that the resilient properties of language that nevertheless emerge include simple syntactic structures, hierarchical organisa- tion, markers modulating the meaning of sentences, and social-communicative functions. Among the fragile or input-dependent properties are the orders that the language follows, the parts into which words are decomposed, and the features that distinguish nominals from predicates. Separation of these two types of properties poses questions concerning the innate constraints on language acquisition (perhaps these equate to the resilient properties) and con‐ cerning the specificity of processes to language (e.g., whether properties such as hierarchical organisation are specific to language or originate in the structure of thought). The study of the resilient properties of human language in the face of adversity and the relation of these properties to the information that is encoded in the human genome represent a research strategy that draws inferences about species universals (properties that all humans share) from data about individual differences (IDs; factors that make humans different from one another). In the following, we suggest three reasons to be cautious about this approach.