Strategic knowledge for the identification and construction of goal states

There is widespread recognition that goal recognition strategies, in the context of structural analysis and cognitive (user) models, represent a major field of contemporary research into discourse understanding. This thesis reports a goal interpretation paradigm that embraces both a novel goal structure formalism and strategic knowledge. The goal interpretation processes involve the identification of goal primitives and the construction of goal states. The mechanisms developed for goal interpretation rely on explicit goal recognition (selection) and confirmation of feasibility. A goal state contains all the information required by the planner. By constructing a goal state, the chance of failure in planning is greatly reduced and the efficiency of the planning system is vastly improved. These mechanisms are not limited to inference. Other mechanisms are reported include goal structure processing, goal primitives identification and searching strategies, extended heuristic classification method and a new conceptual graph operation (i.e. SPLIT).

The effects of controlled language processing on listening comprehension and recall

This study seeks to determine the possible interactions between listening proficiency and the state of strategic self-awareness; second, and more importantly, to investigate the effects of learned strategies on listening comprehension and recall; and finally to describe the most common real-time listening comprehension problems faced by EFL learners and to compare the differences between learners with different listening abilities. After ten training sessions, an assessment was made to see whether or not well-learned strategies could provide students with ample opportunity to practice the comprehension and recall processes. The analyses of the data revealed the causes of ineffective low-level processing and provided insights to solve the problems of parsing. Moreover, the study reveals that explicit instruction of cognitive and metacognitive strategies is needed if a syllabus wishes to help learners improve their listening comprehension and become more-proficient at directing their own learning and development as L2 listeners.

Language processing and acquisition in languages of Semitic, root-based, morphology / Joseph Shimron

This book addresses a fundamental question in the morphological analysis and representation of Semitic languages—namely, whether Semitic word morphology is root based or word based. As Shimron suggests, “there are reasons to view the templates, not the roots, as the more influential factor in determining Semitic morphology” (p. 5). Yet, as others would argue, there are reasons not to disregard the root-based hypothesis altogether. In the case of Arabic morphology, for example, verbal forms inherently contain three nonlinear levels: the consonantal root, the vowel pattern, and the templatic prosody. This nonlinear feature provided a perfect illustration of what has become termed in the literature as root-and-patterns morphology (McCarthy & Prince, 1986, 1990).

Identifying emerging hotel preferences using emerging pattern mining technique

Hotel managers continue to find ways to understand traveler preferences, with the aim of improving their strategic planning, marketing, and product development. Traveler preference is unpredictable for example, hotel guests used to prefer having a telephone in the room, but now favor fast Internet connection. Changes in preference influence the performance of hotel businesses, thus creating the need to identify and address the demands of their guests. Most existing studies focus on current demand attributes and not on emerging ones. Thus, hotel managers may find it difficult to make appropriate decisions in response to changes in travelers' concerns. To address these challenges, this paper adopts Emerging Pattern Mining technique to identify emergent hotel features of interest to international travelers. Data are derived from 118,000 records of online reviews. The methods and findings can help hotel managers gain insights into travelers' interests, enabling the former to gain a better understanding of the rapid changes in tourist preferences.