A novel concept-level approach for ultra-concise opinion summarization

The Web 2.0 has resulted in a shift as to how users consume and interact with the information, and has introduced a wide range of new textual genres, such as reviews or microblogs, through which users communicate, exchange, and share opinions. The exploitation of all this user-generated content is of great value both for users and companies, in order to assist them in their decision-making processes. Given this context, the analysis and development of automatic methods that can help manage online information in a quicker manner are needed. Therefore, this article proposes and evaluates a novel concept-level approach for ultra-concise opinion abstractive summarization. Our approach is characterized by the integration of syntactic sentence simplification, sentence regeneration and internal concept representation into the summarization process, thus being able to generate abstractive summaries, which is one the most challenging issues for this task. In order to be able to analyze different settings for our approach, the use of the sentence regeneration module was made optional, leading to two different versions of the system (one with sentence regeneration and one without). For testing them, a corpus of 400 English texts, gathered from reviews and tweets belonging to two different domains, was used. Although both versions were shown to be reliable methods for generating this type of summaries, the results obtained indicate that the version without sentence regeneration yielded to better results, improving the results of a number of state-of-the-art systems by 9%, whereas the version with sentence regeneration proved to be more robust to noisy data.

Notas sobre la lengua guaymí en Costa Rica

Como aproximación panorámica al estudio actual del guaymí, una de las lenguas de la familia chibcha, es un análisis introductorio de los rasgos gramaticales y tipológicos generales de esa lengua. Previa información de índole antropológica e histórico-cultural, se exponen en forma analítica aspectos sintácticos, sobre la frase verbal, el morfema de negación, el de reflexivización, los sujetos dativos, los objetos directos. Señala algunas tareas pendientes, que suponen un estudio más pormenorizado y extendido.Providing a panoramic view of the present studies of the Guaymí language, one of the Chibchan languages, this is an introductory analysis of the general grammatical and typological features of that language. First, information is given on anthropological, historical and cultural aspects. Then syntactic features are described for the verb phrase, the morpheme for negation, reflexive forms, dative subjects and direct objects. Mention is made of pending tasks requiring a broader and more detailed study.

Revisiting the origin and development of pleonastic that in English

The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + demonstrative pronoun (i.e. for þy þat, for þæm þe) or a subordinator (i.e. oþ þat). Its diffusion with other subordinators is considered an early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of this item as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with all kinds of conjunctions (i.e. now that, gif that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e. before that, save that, in that). Its use considerably increased in late Middle English, declining throughout the 17th century. The list of subordinating elements includes relativizers (i.e. this that), adverbial relatives (i.e. there that) and a number of subordinators (i.e. after, as, because, before, beside, for, if, since, sith, though, until, when, while, etc.). The present paper pursues the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of pleonastic that in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375-1700); b) to classify the construction in terms of the two different varieties of medical texts, i.e. treatises and recipes; and c) to assess the decline of the construction with the different conjunctive words. The data used as sources of evidence come from The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT for the period 1375-1500) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500-1700).

Edge centrality via the Holevo quantity

In the study of complex networks, vertex centrality measures are used to identify the most important vertices within a graph. A related problem is that of measuring the centrality of an edge. In this paper, we propose a novel edge centrality index rooted in quantum information. More specifically, we measure the importance of an edge in terms of the contribution that it gives to the Von Neumann entropy of the graph. We show that this can be computed in terms of the Holevo quantity, a well known quantum information theoretical measure. While computing the Von Neumann entropy and hence the Holevo quantity requires computing the spectrum of the graph Laplacian, we show how to obtain a simplified measure through a quadratic approximation of the Shannon entropy. This in turns shows that the proposed centrality measure is strongly correlated with the negative degree centrality on the line graph. We evaluate our centrality measure through an extensive set of experiments on real-world as well as synthetic networks, and we compare it against commonly used alternative measures.

The average mixing matrix signature

Laplacian-based descriptors, such as the Heat Kernel Signature and the Wave Kernel Signature, allow one to embed the vertices of a graph onto a vectorial space, and have been successfully used to find the optimal matching between a pair of input graphs. While the HKS uses a heat di↵usion process to probe the local structure of a graph, the WKS attempts to do the same through wave propagation. In this paper, we propose an alternative structural descriptor that is based on continuoustime quantum walks. More specifically, we characterise the structure of a graph using its average mixing matrix. The average mixing matrix is a doubly-stochastic matrix that encodes the time-averaged behaviour of a continuous-time quantum walk on the graph. We propose to use the rows of the average mixing matrix for increasing stopping times to develop a novel signature, the Average Mixing Matrix Signature (AMMS). We perform an extensive range of experiments and we show that the proposed signature is robust under structural perturbations of the original graphs and it outperforms both the HKS and WKS when used as a node descriptor in a graph matching task.

Sintaxis del discurso en Dt 4, 1-40

Dt 4, 1-40 it a Biblical text particularly relevant, both for its location and sense within the Deuteronomy book, as well as for its relation with the overall Deuteronomist literature. However, we do not handle in-depth and extensive studies of this text, with exception of the works published by G. Braulik516, D. Knapp517 and K. Holter518, and other exploratory studies much thoroughly investigated, as well as small monographic ones specified in a particular matter. On the other hand, the investigation of the text has been focused mainly around the historical and theological analysis of it, with the purpose to determine the time in which the text was introduced in the total of the book, as well as to weight the significance of the different stratum of the text, its sources... For this reason, other medium of approach to the text has been left aside, or had been used only as instruments to be served to the main purpose of this study. This has been for instance the study of the literary analysis. Nevertheless, during these last years, the literary investigation of the biblical texts (linguistics, narrative, rhetoric, comparative literature...) has gained boom, and had allowed a great appreciation of these texts, overall its historical or theological relevance. Dt 4, 1-40 has been benefit from all of it. The studies dedicated to the literary analysis of Dt 4, 1-40 show considerable patterns on the ways they had been carried. We have analysed them from the syntax and narrative points of view, fields very little investigated up to now. We believe it is necessary to study the text from these two perspectives to appreciate the wealth of this literary composition beyond the topics covered on it, and to contribute this way to a deep investigation of such a significant text in shape and content for the present Biblical Philology. The final objective of our study it is to arrive to a full comprehension of the thematic and literary unity of the text through its syntactic and narrative analysis, and, at the same time, to determine the mutual and necessary relationship that exist between one to another in this line of investigation...

Construções com SE apassivador/indeterminador

RESUMO No presente trabalho, realizamos um estudo sobre a sintaxe histórica da língua portuguesa, focalizando as construções com se apassivador/indeterminador. Partindo de uma concepção de língua histórica, considerada em sua dimensão sociolinguística (COSERIU, 1979a; LABOV, 1972, 1982), analisamos a situação de variação e mudança linguística por que passam tais construções na gramática do português arcaico. Para tanto, utilizamos quatro corpora, representativos da prosa literária e não-literária do português dos séculos XIII, XIV, XV e XVI. Paralelamente ao estudo linguístico deste sintaticismo no referido período, esboçamos também um estudo historiográfico recuperando as reflexões dedicadas ao tema das construções com se pelas tradições gramaticais portuguesa e brasileira, bem como pelos estudos filológicos e linguístico-históricos. ABSTRACT In this paper, we carry out a study on Portuguese historical syntax, focusing on the se constructions. Based on a conception of historical language, considered in its sociolinguistic dimension (COSERIU, 1979a; LABOV, 1972, 1982), we analyze linguistic variation and change which these constructions undergo in the grammar of Old Portuguese. We used four corpora, representative of literary and non-literary Portuguese prose of the of 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Parallel to the syntactic study, we also outline a study recovering the reflections on the theme of the se constructions by Brazilian and Portuguese grammatical tradition, as well as by the philological and historical linguistic studies.

O falar de Marvão

Nesta dissertação, é estudado o Falar de Marvão, um concelho de raia, do Alto Alentejo, com baixa densidade demográfica, população muito envelhecida e uma taxa de analfabetismo acima da média nacional e regional. O presente estudo é composto por cinco capítulos. Nos dois primeiros, são apresentados os estudos dialectológicos realizados no distrito de Portalegre e é caracterizado o concelho de Marvão. O estudo do falar desenrola-se ao longo dos três capítulos principais, dedicados aos aspectos fonético-fonológicos e morfo-sintácticos, bem como ao léxico relacionado com o Homem. O Falar de Marvão está integrado nos dialectos portugueses centro-meridionais, mais especificamente na variedade da Beira Baixa e Alto Alentejo. Assim, apresenta a maior parte das características identificadas pelos linguistas do século XX sobre esta região dialectal, demarcando-se, contudo, por algumas particularidades que o distinguem dos falares dos concelhos circundantes, essencialmente ao nível de alguns aspectos fonético-fonológicos e do léxico. /ABSTRACT: ln this dissertation is presented a study on The Marvão 's Dialect, a bordering district from Alto Alentejo, with a low demographic density, very old population and a rate of illiteracy above the national and regional average. This study is composed by five chapters. ln the two first chapters, are presented the dialectological studies, which took place in the district of Portalegre, and there is also characterized the district of Marvão. The study of the dialect is developed along the three main chapters, which are dedicated to the phonetic, phonologic, morphologic and syntactic aspects, as well as the lexicon related to the human being. The Marvão 's dialect is integrated in the centre-meridional portuguese dialects, specifically in the Beira Baixa and Alto Alentejo’s diversity, presenting the main characteristics identified in this dialectical region by the linguists of the XX century. However, it distinguishes itself by some particularities, which differentiate it from the dialects spoken in the surrounding districts, mainly on the level of some phonetic and phonologic aspects and the lexicon.