An analysis of authorship attribution: Identifying linguistic variables in oral and written discourse

This dissertation goes into the new field from applied linguistics called forensic linguistics, which studies the language as an evidence for criminal cases. There are many subfields within forensic linguistics, however, this study belongs to authorship attribution analysis, where the authorship of a text is attributed to an author through an exhaustive linguistic analysis. Within this field, this study analyzes the morphosyntactic and discursive-pragmatic variables that remain constant in the intra-variation or personal style of a speaker in the oral and written discourse, and at the same time have a high difference rate in the interspeaker variation, or from one speaker to another. The theoretical base of this study is the term used by professor Maria Teresa Turell called “idiolectal style”. This term establishes that the idiosyncratic choices that the speaker makes from the language build a style for each speaker that is constant in the intravariation of the speaker’s discourse. This study comes as a consequence of the problem appeared in authorship attribution analysis, where the absence of some known texts impedes the analysis for the attribution of the authorship of an uknown text. Thus, through a methodology based on qualitative analysis, where the variables are studied exhaustively, and on quantitative analysis, where the findings from qualitative analysis are statistically studied, some conclusions on the evidence of such variables in both oral and written discourses will be drawn. The results of this analysis will lead to further implications on deeper analyses where larger amount of data can be used.

Pat Moore poses with her book

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-auditory Influences on the Auditory Periphery

Once thought to be predominantly the domain of cortex, multisensory integration has now been found at numerous sub-cortical locations in the auditory pathway. Prominent ascending and descending connection within the pathway suggest that the system may utilize non-auditory activity to help filter incoming sounds as they first enter the ear. Active mechanisms in the periphery, particularly the outer hair cells (OHCs) of the cochlea and middle ear muscles (MEMs), are capable of modulating the sensitivity of other peripheral mechanisms involved in the transduction of sound into the system. Through indirect mechanical coupling of the OHCs and MEMs to the eardrum, motion of these mechanisms can be recorded as acoustic signals in the ear canal. Here, we utilize this recording technique to describe three different experiments that demonstrate novel multisensory interactions occurring at the level of the eardrum. 1) In the first experiment, measurements in humans and monkeys performing a saccadic eye movement task to visual targets indicate that the eardrum oscillates in conjunction with eye movements. The amplitude and phase of the eardrum movement, which we dub the Oscillatory Saccadic Eardrum Associated Response or OSEAR, depended on the direction and horizontal amplitude of the saccade and occurred in the absence of any externally delivered sounds. 2) For the second experiment, we use an audiovisual cueing task to demonstrate a dynamic change to pressure levels in the ear when a sound is expected versus when one is not. Specifically, we observe a drop in frequency power and variability from 0.1 to 4kHz around the time when the sound is expected to occur in contract to a slight increase in power at both lower and higher frequencies. 3) For the third experiment, we show that seeing a speaker say a syllable that is incongruent with the accompanying audio can alter the response patterns of the auditory periphery, particularly during the most relevant moments in the speech stream. These visually influenced changes may contribute to the altered percept of the speech sound. Collectively, we presume that these findings represent the combined effect of OHCs and MEMs acting in tandem in response to various non-auditory signals in order to manipulate the receptive properties of the auditory system. These influences may have a profound, and previously unrecognized, impact on how the auditory system processes sounds from initial sensory transduction all the way to perception and behavior. Moreover, we demonstrate that the entire auditory system is, fundamentally, a multisensory system.

La Interpretación de Enunciados y sus Consecuencias de Interfaz

En el presente trabajo, se analizan los factores que intervienen en la interpretación de enunciados asumiendo que, en tanto proceso, la interpretación supone la interacción de distintos sistemas modulares de la mente: La Facultad del Lenguaje (FdeL), y los sistemas sensorio-motriz (SM) y conceptual-intencional (CI). Este último incluye mecanismos para la elaboración de representaciones conceptuales (C) y mecanismos inferenciales involucrados más globalmente en la fijación de estados intencionales (I). Estos sistemas externos a la Facultad del Lenguaje imponen restricciones de manera tal que los núcleos de información que llegan a las interfaces sean legibles por los sistemas SM y CI (Chomsky, 1995-2008). En este sentido, entender la interpretación como proceso conlleva atender a la relación entre los aspectos puramente lingüísticos (sintaxis, semántica), los prosódicos, y los inferenciales (pragmática). En este trabajo, se busca comprender el funcionamiento de aquellos elementos del sistema lingüístico que propician la obtención de los supuestos necesarios para llevar a cabo ese proceso. ;Adoptando un paralelismo entre las categorías sintácticas y las semánticas postuladas en el relevantismo, se intenta dilucidar cómo actúa la variada evidencia lingüística que provee un H en la comunicación, de modo que un O puede arribar a alguna hipótesis del 'significado de H'. A partir del análisis de distintos enunciados, se explora el alcance de ese paralelismo y se llega a una caracterización tentativa del proceso de interpretación. Finalmente, siguiendo ideas de distintos autores, se propone concebir la interfaz FdeL-CI a partir de pares primitivos de información, que son relevantes a todos los sistemas cognitivos involucrados en la comunicación

La Interpretación de Enunciados y sus Consecuencias de Interfaz

En el presente trabajo, se analizan los factores que intervienen en la interpretación de enunciados asumiendo que, en tanto proceso, la interpretación supone la interacción de distintos sistemas modulares de la mente: La Facultad del Lenguaje (FdeL), y los sistemas sensorio-motriz (SM) y conceptual-intencional (CI). Este último incluye mecanismos para la elaboración de representaciones conceptuales (C) y mecanismos inferenciales involucrados más globalmente en la fijación de estados intencionales (I). Estos sistemas externos a la Facultad del Lenguaje imponen restricciones de manera tal que los núcleos de información que llegan a las interfaces sean legibles por los sistemas SM y CI (Chomsky, 1995-2008). En este sentido, entender la interpretación como proceso conlleva atender a la relación entre los aspectos puramente lingüísticos (sintaxis, semántica), los prosódicos, y los inferenciales (pragmática). En este trabajo, se busca comprender el funcionamiento de aquellos elementos del sistema lingüístico que propician la obtención de los supuestos necesarios para llevar a cabo ese proceso. ;Adoptando un paralelismo entre las categorías sintácticas y las semánticas postuladas en el relevantismo, se intenta dilucidar cómo actúa la variada evidencia lingüística que provee un H en la comunicación, de modo que un O puede arribar a alguna hipótesis del 'significado de H'. A partir del análisis de distintos enunciados, se explora el alcance de ese paralelismo y se llega a una caracterización tentativa del proceso de interpretación. Finalmente, siguiendo ideas de distintos autores, se propone concebir la interfaz FdeL-CI a partir de pares primitivos de información, que son relevantes a todos los sistemas cognitivos involucrados en la comunicación

La Interpretación de Enunciados y sus Consecuencias de Interfaz

En el presente trabajo, se analizan los factores que intervienen en la interpretación de enunciados asumiendo que, en tanto proceso, la interpretación supone la interacción de distintos sistemas modulares de la mente: La Facultad del Lenguaje (FdeL), y los sistemas sensorio-motriz (SM) y conceptual-intencional (CI). Este último incluye mecanismos para la elaboración de representaciones conceptuales (C) y mecanismos inferenciales involucrados más globalmente en la fijación de estados intencionales (I). Estos sistemas externos a la Facultad del Lenguaje imponen restricciones de manera tal que los núcleos de información que llegan a las interfaces sean legibles por los sistemas SM y CI (Chomsky, 1995-2008). En este sentido, entender la interpretación como proceso conlleva atender a la relación entre los aspectos puramente lingüísticos (sintaxis, semántica), los prosódicos, y los inferenciales (pragmática). En este trabajo, se busca comprender el funcionamiento de aquellos elementos del sistema lingüístico que propician la obtención de los supuestos necesarios para llevar a cabo ese proceso. ;Adoptando un paralelismo entre las categorías sintácticas y las semánticas postuladas en el relevantismo, se intenta dilucidar cómo actúa la variada evidencia lingüística que provee un H en la comunicación, de modo que un O puede arribar a alguna hipótesis del 'significado de H'. A partir del análisis de distintos enunciados, se explora el alcance de ese paralelismo y se llega a una caracterización tentativa del proceso de interpretación. Finalmente, siguiendo ideas de distintos autores, se propone concebir la interfaz FdeL-CI a partir de pares primitivos de información, que son relevantes a todos los sistemas cognitivos involucrados en la comunicación

Bipartite Assertion: A New Account of Assertion, Defined in Terms of Responsibility and Explicit Presentation

Assertion is a speech act that stands at the intersection of the philosophy of language and social epistemology. It is a phenomenon that bears on such wide-ranging topics as testimony, truth, meaning, knowledge and trust. It is thus no surprise that analytic philosophers have devoted innumerable pages to assertion, trying to give the norms that govern it, its role in the transmission of knowledge, and most importantly, what assertion is, or how assertion is to be defined. In this thesis I attempt to show that all previous answers to the question “What is assertion?” are flawed. There are four major traditions in the literature: constitutive norm theories of assertion, accounts that treat assertion as the expression of speaker attitudes, accounts that treat assertion as a proposal to add some proposition to the common ground, and accounts that treat assertion as the taking of responsibility for some claim. Each tradition is explored here, the leading theories within the tradition developed, and then placed under scrutiny to demonstrate flaws within the positions surveyed. I follow the work of G.E. Moore and William P. Alston, whilst drawing on the work of Robert Brandom in order to give a new bipartite theory of assertion. I argue that assertion consists in the explicit presentation of a proposition, along with a taking of responsibility for that proposition. Taking Alston's explicit presentation condition and repairing it in order to deal with problems it faces, whilst combining it with Brandom's responsibility condition, provides, I believe, the best account of assertion.

Investigating Multiple Roles of Vocal Confidence in Persuasion

Although persuasion often occurs via oral communication, it remains a comparatively understudied area. This research tested the hypothesis that changes in three properties of voice influence perceptions of speaker confidence, which in turn differentially affects attitudes according to different underlying psychological processes that the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1984), suggests should emerge under different levels of thought. Experiment 1 was a 2 (Elaboration: high vs. low) x 2 (Vocal speed: increased speed vs. decreased speed) x 2 (Vocal intonation: falling intonation vs. rising intonation) between participants factorial design. Vocal speed and vocal intonation influenced perceptions of speaker confidence as predicted. In line with the ELM, under high elaboration, confidence biased thought favorability, which in turn influenced attitudes. Under low elaboration, confidence did not bias thoughts but rather directly influenced attitudes as a peripheral cue. Experiment 2 used a similar design as Experiment 1 but focused on vocal pitch. Results confirmed pitch influenced perceptions of confidence as predicted. Importantly, we also replicated the bias and cue processes found in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 investigated the process by which a broader spectrum of speech rate influenced persuasion under moderate elaboration. In a 2 (Argument quality: strong vs. weak) x 4 (Vocal speed: extremely slow vs. moderately slow vs. moderately fast vs. extremely fast) between participants factorial design, results confirmed the hypothesized non-linear relationship between speech rate and perceptions of confidence. In line with the ELM, speech rate influenced persuasion based on the amount of processing. Experiment 4 investigated the effects of a broader spectrum of vocal intonation on persuasion under moderate elaboration and used a similar design as Experiment 3. Results indicated a partial success of our vocal intonation manipulation. No evidence was found to support the hypothesized mechanism. These studies show that changes in several different properties of voice can influence the extent to which others perceive them as confident. Importantly, evidence suggests different vocal properties influence persuasion by the same bias and cue processes under high and low thought. Evidence also suggests that under moderate thought, speech rate influences persuasion based on the amount of processing.

Enseñar fraseología: consideraciones sobre la fraseodidáctica del español

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la presencia de la fraseología en los niveles de enseñanza obligatoria y proponer una serie de actividades cuyo objetivo sea desarrollar la competencia fraseológica de hablantes nativos de español. Tras mostrar la importancia de la fraseología como parte fundamental del caudal lingüístico de un hablante nativo y defender la existencia de la competencia fraseológica también en lengua materna, se examina la presencia de la fraseología en las diferentes vertientes de la competencia en comunicación lingüística del actual currículo: pragmática, lingüística, sociolingüística y literaria. Se indica, además, el importante papel que puede jugar al abordar determinados contenidos desde una perspectiva transversal (fraseología y cultura). Para finalizar, se hacen algunas propuestas sobre cómo debe presentarse la fraseología en lengua materna y se presentan diferentes actividades según el nivel de enseñanza.

Temor, silencio y deliberación: la inhibición de la opinión en Tucídides

Tucídides es una de nuestras mejores fuentes de información para conocer la práctica argumentativa de la deliberación democrática. En este trabajo se analiza uno de los vicios que, según el historiador, haría su aparición en la escena política ateniense a la muerte de Pericles: la instrumentalización del miedo para obtener la victoria momentánea en la asamblea. El temor prudente, que fuera una arma periclea para conducir la deliberación racional en aras del bien común, habría desaparecido siendo sustituido por el amedrentamiento del rival, la calumnia, el obstruccionismo y la parálisis de la confrontación dialéctica. Instauradas en la ciudad la desconfianza y la sospecha de ocultación, los golpistas del 411 hallaron el terreno abonado para callar las voces contrarias y, gracias al silencio, instaurar el terror.

Interpretation and typology Spanish indefinite pronoun uno in three discoursive genres

This study investigates the Spanish indefinite pronoun uno (“one”). After a detailed analysis of its occurrences in authentic language, we find that its interpretation varies depending on the linguistic context. Therefore, we examine which elements of the context - we focus on the broader context, beyond the sentence – have an impact on its interpretation and develop a typology of the indefinite pronoun as to its interpretation. The pronoun may be interpreted as completely generic or specific (referring to the speaker, the listener or a third person). Its interpretation can also be located in an intermediate position between these interpretive extremes.In addition, we compare its use in various discursive genres - spontaneous conversations, academic essays and web forum - which are distinguished by the presence or absence of interactivity and of more or less subjectivity / intersubjectivity. The comparison shows that pronoun use depends on these characteristics.

Commentary on Publication of Lectures Act 1835

Legislation conferring the exclusive right of printing and publishing certain lectures for the same term of protection provided by the existing copyright legislation (see: Statute of Anne, uk_1710; Copyright Act, uk_1814). This was the first occasion on which the legislature extended copyright protection to works in the oral form. The legislation is of interest in terms of the distinction it draws between lectures delivered within the 'public' and the 'private' spheres (lectures delivered at a University, for example, are not protected), in terms of articulating the nature of the relationship between a speaker and his audience, and in specifically clarifying that newspapers are similarly prohibited from reporting protected lectures. The commentary explores the background to the passing of the Act, and in particular the role which Henry Brougham played in proposing and securing the same.

Building autonomous sensitive artificial listeners (Extended abstract)

This paper describes a substantial effort to build a real-time interactive multimodal dialogue system with a focus on emotional and non-verbal interaction capabilities. The work is motivated by the aim to provide technology with competences in perceiving and producing the emotional and non-verbal behaviours required to sustain a conversational dialogue. We present the Sensitive Artificial Listener (SAL) scenario as a setting which seems particularly suited for the study of emotional and non-verbal behaviour, since it requires only very limited verbal understanding on the part of the machine. This scenario allows us to concentrate on non-verbal capabilities without having to address at the same time the challenges of spoken language understanding, task modeling etc. We first summarise three prototype versions of the SAL scenario, in which the behaviour of the Sensitive Artificial Listener characters was determined by a human operator. These prototypes served the purpose of verifying the effectiveness of the SAL scenario and allowed us to collect data required for building system components for analysing and synthesising the respective behaviours. We then describe the fully autonomous integrated real-time system we created, which combines incremental analysis of user behaviour, dialogue management, and synthesis of speaker and listener behaviour of a SAL character displayed as a virtual agent. We discuss principles that should underlie the evaluation of SAL-type systems. Since the system is designed for modularity and reuse, and since it is publicly available, the SAL system has potential as a joint research tool in the affective computing research community.

Multimodal Education for Very Young Learners

Invited Plenary Speaker