Articulation rate : effects of age, fluency, and syntactic structure

Resumen en inglés

The Syntactic Information in the 'Diccionario Crítico Etimológico Castellano e Hispánico' by J. Corominas and J.A. Pascual as Expressed in the Database 'Syntax.Dbf'

L'objectiu d'aquest article és presentar l'estructura de la base de dades relacional que inclou tota la informació sintictica continguda en el Diccionario Critico Etimológico Castellano e Hispánico de J. Corominas i J. A. Pascual. Tot i que aquest diccionari conté un ampli ventall d'informacions històriques de cadascun dels temes, aquestes no es mostren de forma estructurada, per la qual cosa ha estat necessari estudiar i classificar tots aquells elements relacionats amb aspectes sintàctics. És a partir d'aquest estudi previ que s'han elaborat els diferents camps de la base de dades, els quals s'agrupen en cinc blocs temàtics: informació lemàtica; gramatical; sintàctica; altres aspectes relacionats; i observacions o comentaris rellevants fets per l'investigador. Aquesta base de dades no només reprodueix els continguts del diccionari, sinó que inclou diferents camps interpretatius. Per aquesta raó, Syntax. dbf representa una eina de treball fonamental per a tots aquells investigadors interessats en la sintaxi diacrònica de l'espanyol

Catadioptric stereo based on structured light projection

La percepció per visió es millorada quan es pot gaudir d'un camp de visió ampli. Aquesta tesi es concentra en la percepció visual de la profunditat amb l'ajuda de càmeres omnidireccionals. La percepció 3D s'obté generalment en la visió per computadora utilitzant configuracions estèreo amb el desavantatge del cost computacional elevat a l'hora de buscar els elements visuals comuns entre les imatges. La solució que ofereix aquesta tesi és l'ús de la llum estructurada per resoldre el problema de relacionar les correspondències. S'ha realitzat un estudi sobre els sistemes de visió omnidireccional. S'han avaluat vàries configuracions estèreo i s'ha escollit la millor. Els paràmetres del model són difícils de mesurar directament i, en conseqüència, s'ha desenvolupat una sèrie de mètodes de calibració. Els resultats obtinguts són prometedors i demostren que el sensor pot ésser utilitzat en aplicacions per a la percepció de la profunditat com serien el modelatge de l'escena, la inspecció de canonades, navegació de robots, etc.

Intonation contours vs. syntactic structure as predictors of apparent segmentation

This paper is a review of a study on perception and comprehension of speech using syntactic, visual and acoustic information.

Syntactic development in the oral and written language of profoundly deaf adolescents

This paper reviews a study to investigate oral and written syntactic development of profoundly deaf adolescents.

Immersive Projection for biochemical pattern matching

In all biological processes, protein molecules and other small molecules interact to function and form transient macromolecular complexes. This interaction of two or more molecules can be described by a docking event. Docking is an important phase for structure-based drug design strategies, as it can be used as a method to simulate protein-ligand interactions. Various docking programs exist that allow automated docking, but most of them have limited visualization and user interaction. It would be advantageous if scientists could visualize the molecules participating in the docking process, manipulate their structures and manually dock them before submitting the new conformations to an automated docking process in an immersive environment, which can help stimulate the design/docking process. This also could greatly reduce docking time and resources. To achieve this, we propose a new virtual modelling/docking program, whereby the advantages of virtual modelling programs and the efficiency of the algorithms in existing docking programs will be merged.

The human thalamus processes syntactic and semantic language violations

Numerous linguistic operations have been assigned to cortical brain areas, but the contributions of subcortical structures to human language processing are still being discussed. Using simultaneous EEG recordings directly from deep brain structures and the scalp, we show that the human thalamus systematically reacts to syntactic and semantic parameters of auditorily presented language in a temporally interleaved manner in coordination with cortical regions. In contrast, two key structures of the basal ganglia, the globus pallidus internus and the subthalamic nucleus, were not found to be engaged in these processes. We therefore propose that syntactic and semantic language analysis is primarily realized within cortico-thalamic networks, whereas a cohesive basal ganglia network is not involved in these essential operations of language analysis.

Tests of syntactic comprehension in aphasia: an investigation of task effects

Background: Consistency of performance across tasks that assess syntactic comprehension in aphasia has clinical and theoretical relevance. In this paper we add to the relatively sparse previous work on how sentence comprehension abilities are influenced by the nature of the assessment task. Aims: Our aims are: (1) to compare linguistic performance across sentence-picture matching, enactment, and truth-value judgement tasks; (2) to investigate the impact of pictorial stimuli on syntactic comprehension. Methods Procedures: We tested a group of 10 aphasic speakers (3 with fluent and 7 with non-fluent aphasia) in three tasks (Experiment 1): (i) sentence-picture matching with four pictures, (ii) sentence-picture matching with two pictures, and (iii) enactment. A further task of truth-value judgement was given to a subgroup of those speakers (n=5, Experiment 2). Similar sentence types across all tasks were used and included canonical (actives, subject clefts) and non-canonical (passives, object clefts) sentences. We undertook two types of analyses: (a) we compared canonical and non-canonical sentences in each task; (b) we compared performance between (i) actives and passives, (ii) subject and object clefts in each task. We examined the results of all participants as a group and as case-series. Outcomes Results: Several task effects emerged. Overall, the two-picture sentence-picture matching and enactment tasks were more discriminating than the four-picture condition. Group performance in the truth-value judgement task was similar to two-picture sentence-picture matching and enactment. At the individual level performance across tasks contrasted to some group results. Conclusions: Our findings revealed task effects across participants. We discuss reasons that could explain the diverse profiles of performance and the implications for clinical practice.

Unifying syntactic theory and sentence processing difficulty through a connectionist minimalist parser

Syntactic theory provides a rich array of representational assumptions about linguistic knowledge and processes. Such detailed and independently motivated constraints on grammatical knowledge ought to play a role in sentence comprehension. However most grammar-based explanations of processing difficulty in the literature have attempted to use grammatical representations and processes per se to explain processing difficulty. They did not take into account that the description of higher cognition in mind and brain encompasses two levels: on the one hand, at the macrolevel, symbolic computation is performed, and on the other hand, at the microlevel, computation is achieved through processes within a dynamical system. One critical question is therefore how linguistic theory and dynamical systems can be unified to provide an explanation for processing effects. Here, we present such a unification for a particular account to syntactic theory: namely a parser for Stabler's Minimalist Grammars, in the framework of Smolensky's Integrated Connectionist/Symbolic architectures. In simulations we demonstrate that the connectionist minimalist parser produces predictions which mirror global empirical findings from psycholinguistic research.

The application of affine projection to the development of a siren noise cancellation system

Emergency vehicles use high-amplitude sirens to warn pedestrians and other road users of their presence. Unfortunately, the siren noise enters the vehicle and corrupts the intelligibility of two-way radio voice com-munications from the emergency vehicle to a control room. Often the siren has to be turned off to enable the control room to hear what is being said which subsequently endangers people's lives. A digital signal processing (DSP) based system for the cancellation of siren noise embedded within speech is presented. The system has been tested with the least mean square (LMS), normalised least mean square (NLMS) and affine projection algorithm (APA) using recordings from three common types of sirens (two-tone, wail and yelp) from actual test vehicles. It was found that the APA with a projection order of 2 gives comparably improved cancellation over the LMS and NLMS with only a moderate increase in algorithm complexity and code size. Therefore, this siren noise cancellation system using the APA offers an improvement in cancellation achieved by previous systems. The removal of the siren noise improves the response time for the emergency vehicle and thus the system can contribute to saving lives. The system also allows voice communication to take place even when the siren is on and as such the vehicle offers less risk of danger when moving at high speeds in heavy traffic.

Some uniform stability and convergence results for integral equations on the real line and projection methods for their solution

The paper considers second kind equations of the form (abbreviated x=y + K2x) in which and the factor z is bounded but otherwise arbitrary so that equations of Wiener-Hopf type are included as a special case. Conditions on a set are obtained such that a generalized Fredholm alternative is valid: if W satisfies these conditions and I − Kz, is injective for each z ε W then I − Kz is invertible for each z ε W and the operators (I − Kz)−1 are uniformly bounded. As a special case some classical results relating to Wiener-Hopf operators are reproduced. A finite section version of the above equation (with the range of integration reduced to [−a, a]) is considered, as are projection and iterated projection methods for its solution. The operators (where denotes the finite section version of Kz) are shown uniformly bounded (in z and a) for all a sufficiently large. Uniform stability and convergence results, for the projection and iterated projection methods, are obtained. The argument generalizes an idea in collectively compact operator theory. Some new results in this theory are obtained and applied to the analysis of projection methods for the above equation when z is compactly supported and k(s − t) replaced by the general kernel k(s,t). A boundary integral equation of the above type, which models outdoor sound propagation over inhomogeneous level terrain, illustrates the application of the theoretical results developed.

Projection of global wave climate change towards the end of the 21st century

Wind generated waves at the sea surface are of outstanding importance for both their practical relevance in many aspects, such as coastal erosion, protection, or safety of navigation, and for their scientific relevance in modifying fluxes at the air-sea interface. So far long-term changes in ocean wave climate have been studied mostly from a regional perspective with global dynamical studies emerging only recently. Here a global wave climate study is presented, in which a global wave model (WAM) is driven by atmospheric forcing from a global climate model (ECHAM5) for present day and potential future climate conditions represented by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) A1B emission scenario. It is found that changes in mean and extreme wave climate towards the end of the twenty-first century are small to moderate, with the largest signals being a poleward shift in the annual mean and extreme significant wave heights in the mid-latitudes of both hemispheres, more pronounced in the Southern Hemisphere, and most likely associated with a corresponding shift in mid-latitude storm tracks. These changes are broadly consistent with results from the few studies available so far. The projected changes in the mean wave periods, associated with the changes in the wave climate in the mid to high latitudes, are also shown, revealing a moderate increase in the equatorial eastern side of the ocean basins. This study presents a step forward towards a larger ensemble of global wave climate projections required to better assess robustness and uncertainty of potential future wave climate change.