Transcription, tagging and coding of bilingual corpora via LIDES

L'objectiu d'aquest informe és presentar l'aplicació d'una sèrie de propostes sobre transcripció, etiquetatge i codificació a dos corpus: el corpus bilingüe LC (La Canonja (Català-Espanyol)) i el corpus trilingüe CSCD (Code-switching as Communicative Design (Català-Espanyol-Anglès)). Aquestes propostes, que constitueixen l'aportació de l'equip IULA-LIPPS (Language Interaction in Plurilingual and Plurilectal Speakers) al manual de codificació del sistema LIDES (Language Interaction Database Exchange System), adoptat pel grup europeu LIPPS, poden ser útils per transcriure, etiquetar i codificar dades provinents de llengües tipològicament properes i distants.

Late bloomer or language impaired? Screening the speech of a Spanish-English bilingual toddler for early signs of language impairment

This case study presents corpus data gathered from a Spanish-English bilingual child with expressive language delay. Longitudinal data on the child’s linguistic development was collected from the onset of productive speech at age 1;1 until age 4 over the course of 28 video-taped sessions with the child’s principal caregivers. A literature review focused on the relationship between language delay and persisting disorders—including a discussion of the frequent difficulty in distinguishing between the two at early stages of bilingual development—is followed by an analysis of the child’s productive development in 2 distinct phases. An attempt is made to assess the child’s speech at age 4 for preliminary signs of SLI and to consider techniques for identifying ‘at risk’ bilingual children (that is, those with productive language delay, poor oral fluency, and family history of language problems) based on samples of recorded and transcribed speech.

TOPSpro Data Dictionary, July 1, 2005–June 30, 2006

The passage of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 [Public Law 105-220] by the 105th Congress has ushered in a new era of collaboration, coordination, cooperation and accountability. The overall goal of the Act is “to increase the employability, retention, and earnings of participants, and increase occupational skill attainment by participants, and, as a result improve the quality of the workforce, reduce welfare dependency, and enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the Nation.” The key principles inculcated in the Act are: • Streamlining services; • Empowering individuals; • Universal access; • Increased accountability; • New roles for local boards; • State and local flexibility; • Improved youth programs. The purpose of Title II, The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 is to create a partnership among the federal government, states, and localities to provide, on a voluntary basis, adult education and literacy services in order to: • Assist adults become literate and obtain the knowledge and skills necessary for employment and self-sufficiency; • Assist adults who are parents obtain the educational skills necessary to become full partners in the educational development of their children; • Assist adults in the completion of a secondary school education. Adult education is an important part of the workforce investment system. Title II restructures and improves programs previously authorized by the Adult Education Act. AEFLA focuses on strengthening program quality by requiring States to give priority in awarding funds to local programs that are based on a solid foundation of research, address the diverse needs of adult learners, and utilize other effective practices and strategies. To promote continuous program involvement and to ensure optimal return on the Federal investment, AEFLA also establishes a State performance accountability system. Under this system, the Secretary and each State must reach agreement on annual levels of performance for a number of “core indicators” specified in the law: • Demonstrated improvements in literacy skill levels in reading, writing, and speaking the English language, numeracy, problem solving, English language acquisition, and other literacy skills. • Placement in, retention in, or completion of postsecondary education, training, unsubsidized employment or career advancement. • Receipt of a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent. Iowa’s community college based adult basic education program has implemented a series of proactive strategies in order to effectively and systematically meet the challenges posed by WIA. The Iowa TOPSpro Data Dictionary is a direct result of Iowa’s pro-active efforts in this educational arena.

Iowa TOPSpro Data Dictionary, 2007

The purpose of the Iowa TOPSpro Data Dictionary is to provide a statewide-standardized set of instructions and definitions for coding Tracking Of Programs And Students (TOPSpro) forms and effectively utilizing the TOPSpro software. This document is designed to serve as a companion document to the TOPS Technical Manual produced by the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS). The data dictionary integrates information from various data systems to provide uniform data sets and definitions that meet local, state and federal reporting mandates. The sources for the data dictionary are: (1) the National Reporting System (NRS) Guidelines, (2) standard practices utilized in Iowa’s adult literacy program, (3) selected definitions from the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, (4) input from the state level Management Information System (MIS) personnel, and (5) selected definitions from other Iowa state agencies.

Transferencia en la adquisición de segundas lenguas. Un estudio con alumnado rumano en un contexto bilingüe = Transfer in second language acquisition. A study with Romanian schoolchildren in a bilingual context

Situados en el contexto catalán, el artículo estudia la influencia de la L1 (rumano) en algunos aspectos morfosintácticos de la adquisición de las L2s. Para ello se analizan las competencias lingüísticas en catalán y castellano de un grupo de escolares cuya L1 es el rumano y que cursan 2.º y 4.º de ESO. Los datos muestran que los alumnos cuya L1 es el rumano, a pesar de dominar una lengua románica cercana a las lenguas de aprendizaje (L2/L3), presentan dificultades comparables a otros colectivos con otras lenguasde origen. Por otra parte, nuestra investigación confirma que la L1 de este alumnado juega un importante papel en la adquisición de ambas lenguas, concluyendo que parte de los errores hallados son aquellos que se basan en estructuras de la lengua propia

Dyslexia in a French-Spanish bilingual girl: behavioural and neural modulations following a visual attention span intervention.

We report the case study of a French-Spanish bilingual dyslexic girl, MP, who exhibited a severe visual attention (VA) span deficit but preserved phonological skills. Behavioural investigation showed a severe reduction of reading speed for both single items (words and pseudo-words) and texts in the two languages. However, performance was more affected in French than in Spanish. MP was administered an intensive VA span intervention programme. Pre-post intervention comparison revealed a positive effect of intervention on her VA span abilities. The intervention further transferred to reading. It primarily resulted in faster identification of the regular and irregular words in French. The effect of intervention was rather modest in Spanish that only showed a tendency for faster word reading. Text reading improved in the two languages with a stronger effect in French but pseudo-word reading did not improve in either French or Spanish. The overall results suggest that VA span intervention may primarily enhance the fast global reading procedure, with stronger effects in French than in Spanish. MP underwent two fMRI sessions to explore her brain activations before and after VA span training. Prior to the intervention, fMRI assessment showed that the striate and extrastriate visual cortices alone were activated but none of the regions typically involved in VA span. Post-training fMRI revealed increased activation of the superior and inferior parietal cortices. Comparison of pre- and post-training activations revealed significant activation increase of the superior parietal lobes (BA 7) bilaterally. Thus, we show that a specific VA span intervention not only modulates reading performance but further results in increased brain activity within the superior parietal lobes known to housing VA span abilities. Furthermore, positive effects of VA span intervention on reading suggest that the ability to process multiple visual elements simultaneously is one cause of successful reading acquisition.

ClInt: A bilingual Spanish-Catalan spoken corpus of clinical interviews

In this paper we present ClInt (Clinical Interview), a bilingual Spanish-Catalan spoken corpus that contains 15 hours of clinical interviews. It consists of audio files aligned with multiple-level transcriptions comprising orthographic, phonetic and morphological information, as well as linguistic and extralinguistic encoding. This is a previously non-existent resource for these languages and it offers a wide-ranging exploitation potential in a broad variety of disciplines such as Linguistics, Natural Language Processing and related fields.