bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The FNV ‘Industribution’ Project
Authors: van Klaveren Maarten
Published: October 2007

Projects initiated or supported by the regional branch of the Dutch FNV trade union confederation have introduced the concept of using “regional policy space”. Moreover, in the early 1990s these projects seemed able to halt the erosion of the confederation’s power. This article describes and analyses the “FNV industribution project”, focusing on the physical part of Value Added Logistics (VAL), aiming to cover this “white spot” with a social infrastructure. After five years of preparation, the project was launched in 1996. As four FNV unions were involved, FNV regional officers logically took the co-ordination role. This role was phased out with the amalgamation of these unions in 1998, while the new, unified union abolished their regional structures: the role of FNV officers as labour market specialists did not supply enough added value. An evaluation conducted in mid-2000 showed that the basis for a social infrastructure was laid, and that the union position was strengthened in two out of the four regions involved. Promising new ways of union working were developed, but the related learning effects were rather limited to individual regional officers. The virtual absence of organisational learning can be partly attributed to factors like the need for project management to concentrate on (external) funding, and partly to the rapid disappearance of FNV regional officers from the project.
The developmental roots of consciousness and emotional experience
Authors: Dalton Thomas C.
Published: October 2007

Charles Darwin is generally credited with having formulated the first systematic attempt to explain the evolutionary origins and function of the expression of emotions in animals and humans. His ingenious theory, however, was burdened with popular misconceptions about human phylogenetic heritage and bore the philosophical and theoretical deficiencies of the brain science of his era that his successors strove to overcome. In their attempts to rectify Darwin’s errors, William James, James Mark Baldwin and John Dewey each made important contributions to a theory of emotion, which attempted to put it on a more secure philosophical and scientific footing. My contention is that Dewey and his collaborator, infant experimentalist Myrtle McGraw, succeeded where their contemporaries failed. They pointed the way out of the morass of recapitulationism, and showed how a developmental theory of consciousness, mind and emotion could be formulated that avoided the epistemological and ontological pitfalls of Darwin’s theory. Drawing on an extensive body of research from contemporary experimental studies of infant development, this essay attempts to put the questions raised by these historical figures about the structure, function and value of emotions in a theoretical framework. A developmental theory is proposed about the complex, interacting neurobiological and neurobehavioral factors that contribute to human emotional development. This theory identifies the possible relationships among emotions, consciousness and mind and how their co-development influences the capacity of young children to form moral judgments.
On the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness
Authors: Natsoulas Thomas
Published: October 2007

How are the states of consciousness intrinsically so that they all qualify as “feelings” in William James’s generic sense? Only a small, propaedeutic part of what is required to address the intrinsic nature of such states can be accomplished here. I restrict my topic mainly to a certain characteristic that belongs to each of those pulses of mentality that successively make up James’s stream of consciousness. Certain statements of James’s are intended to pick out the variable “width” belonging to a stream of consciousness as it flows. Attention to this proposed property brings me to a discussion of (a) the unitary character of each of the states of consciousness however complex they may frequently be and (b) how to conceive of their complexity without recourse to a misleading spatial metaphor.
My amygdala-orbitofrontal-circuit made me do it
Authors: Faw William
Published: October 2007

I have suggested that the prefrontal cortex constitutes an “executive committee” with five streams coming from posterior cortex and subcortical areas to five pre-frontal executive regions, each of which chairs at least one on-going “sub-committee” and vies with the other executives for taking over central control of conscious attention and willed action. It is through the dynamic interaction of this executive committee that unified conscious experiences and a sense of continuous self-identity are created. There is growing evidence that the amygdala-orbitofrontal brain circuit, in particular, is crucial to impulse control, “knowledge of good and evil,” personality, personhood, and even “how X-me made Y-me do something.” There are striking examples of the ways that orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate “committee members” can stage an insurrection against the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex executive chair.
The freudian conscious
Authors: Natsoulas Thomas
Published: October 2007

To reduce the likelihood that psychology will develop in a deeply flawed manner, the present article seeks to provide an introduction to Freud’s conception of consciousness because, for among other reasons, his general theory is highly influential in our science and culture and among the best understood by clinicians and experimentalists. The theory is complex and all of its major parts have a bearing on one another; indeed, consciousness has a central place in the total conceptual structure — as is argued, in effect, throughout the present article. The discussion focuses mainly on how conscious psychical processes differ from processes of the psychical apparatus that do not instantiate the Freudian attribute of consciousness. This intrinsic attribute that belongs to every conscious psychical process is seen as including, along with qualitative content, an unmediated, witting awareness of the psychical process that is directed upon itself.
Naturalism, introspection, and direct realism about pain
Authors: Aydede Murat
Published: October 2007

This paper examines pain states (and other intransitive bodily sensations) from the perspective of the problems they pose for pure informational/representational approaches to naturalizing qualia. I start with a comprehensive critical and quasi-historical discussion of so-called Perceptual Theories of Pain (e.g., Armstrong, Pitcher), as these were the natural predecessors of the more modern direct realist views. I describe the theoretical backdrop (indirect realism, sense-data theories) against which the perceptual theories were developed. The conclusion drawn is that pure representationalism about pain in the tradition of direct realist perceptual theories (e.g., Dretske, Tye) leaves out something crucial about the phenomenology of pain experiences, namely, their affective character. I touch upon the role that introspection plays in such representationalist views, and indicate how it contributes to the source of their trouble vis-à-vis bodily sensations. The paper ends by briefly commenting on the relation between the affective/evaluative component of pain and the hedonic valence of emotions.
Feeling as knowing — Part II
Authors: Järvilehto Timo
Published: October 2007

In the latter part of this two-article sequence, the concept of emotion as reorganization of the organism-environment system is developed further in relation to consciousness, subjective experience and brain activity. It is argued that conscious emotions have their origin in reorganizational changes in primitive co-operative organizations, in which they get a more local character with the advent of personal consciousness and individuality, being expressed in conscious emotions. However, the conscious emotion is not confined to the individual only, but it gets its content and the emotional quale in the social context, and in relation to the norms of the given culture. Emotion is fundamentally the process of ascription of meaning to the parts of the world which are relevant in the achievement of results of behavior. Although emotions may be studied as reorganizational processes in the organism-environment system with the help of physiological recordings and behavioral observations, it is argued — in contrast to the mainstream cognitive science — that emotions cannot be localized in the brain, although the brain is important in their generation as a part of the organism-environment system. It is suggested that the parts of the brain most closely related to emotional expression contain neurons subserving functional systems which are formed in early development, and which are therefore most intimately related to reorganizational processes in the organism-environment system.
Järvilehto’s seductive ideas
Authors: Panksepp Jaak
Published: October 2007

Introductory Note: This commentary developed out of an informal discussion of Part I (2000) of Jarvilehto’s two-part Consciousness & Emotion series with Ralph Ellis at the recent Amsterdam Symposium on Feelings and Emotions (June 13–16, 2001). Part II of Jarvilehto’s series appears in the present issue. Ellis asked me to share my critical concerns with Jarvilehto’s Part I in this commentary, with an advance copy supplied to Jarvilehto, who will reply in the next issue of Consciousness & Emotion. I think most of us recognize the need for pluralism in the study of complex processes such as consciousness and emotions, but to place emotions and feelings so strongly into the environment as does Jarvilehto strikes me simply as a category mistake. I acknowledge that my commentary comes from my own unique (and by some standards radical) perspective on how the field might best move forward empirically. I believe an honest understanding of how natural psychological kinds emerge from specifiable brain functions, which are obviously modulated by environmental events, is presently the most important and most poorly studied aspect of modern mind-science. I felt that Jarvilehto’s holistic approach would only further serve to discourage investigators from pursuing those important issues neuro-empirically.
Basic emotions and their biological substrates
Authors: Zachar Peter , Bartlett Scott
Published: October 2007

The thesis of this article is that an attitude akin to pragmatism is internal to the scientific enterprise itself, and as a result many scientists will make the same types of non-essentialistic interpretations of their subject matter that are made by pragmatists. This is demonstrably true with respect to those scientists who study the biological basis of emotion such as Panksepp, LeDoux, and Damasio. Even though these scientists are also influenced by what cognitive psychologists call the essentialist bias, their research programs are coherent with Peter Zachar’s rejection of natural kinds in favor of practical kinds. When the confrontation with complexity leads a scientist to offer non-essentialist interpretations, two popular options are to go eliminativist or go nominalist. Pragmatists prefer the nominalistic option, and we provide reasons for suggesting that scientists should as well.
The hot fringes of consciousness
Authors: Reber Rolf , Schwarz Norbert
Published: October 2007

High figure-ground contrast usually results in more positive evaluations of visual stimuli. This may either reflect that high figure-ground contrast per se is a desirable attribute or that this attribute facilitates fluent processing. In the latter case, the influence of high figure-ground contrast should be most pronounced under short exposure times, that is, under conditions where the facilitative influence on perceptual fluency is most pronounced. Supporting this hypothesis, ratings of the prettiness of visual stimuli increased with figure-ground contrast under short exposure times (.3, 1, and 3 seconds, respectively). This positive influence of figure-ground contrast was eliminated under an exposure time of 10 seconds. We conclude that stimuli with high figure-ground contrast are more appealing because they are easier to process, not because high figure-ground contrast per se is a desirable attribute. We discuss this finding in the context of William James’ notion that the fringe of consciousness includes vague contextual feelings at the periphery of the focus of attention and suggest that perceptual fluency is one of these feelings.
Touching art
Authors: Esrock Ellen J.
Published: October 2007

Viewers have a way of using their somatosensory system to create temporary boundary changes that bring them into intimate relationships with art objects. Spectators experience this imaginary fusion when simultaneously attending to their own somatosensory sensations, which occur inside the body, and to qualities of the artwork, which exist in the external world. At such moments viewers reinterpret their somatosensory sensations as a quality of the artwork. When inside and outside are reinterpreted, viewers cross the conventional boundary between self and object. This effect can be illustrated in first person reports and supported by current research in the neurosciences and the humanities.
Internalism and the part-time moralist
Authors: Bagaric Mirko
Published: October 2007

This paper contends that internalism with respect moral motivation (the view that we are always moved to act in accordance with our moral judgments) is wrong. While internalism can accommodate amoralists, it cannot explain the phenomenon of ‘part-time moralists’ — the person who is (ostensibly at least) moved by some of his or her moral judgments but not others — and hence should be rejected. This suggests that moral judgments are beliefs (or conscious representations) as opposed to desires. It is contended that morality consists of the set of principles which will maximise happiness and that our moral consciousness is motivated when a desire to maximise happiness is copresent with such a belief. Finally, it is argued that this does not entail that morality is a subjective or relative concept.
The function of the cerebellum in cognition, affect and consciousness
Authors: Schmahmann Jeremy D. , Anderson Carl M. , Newton Natika , Ellis Ralph D.
Published: October 2007

Editors’ note:þThese four interrelated discussions of the role of the cerebellum in coordinating emotional and higher cognitive functions developed out of a workshop presented by the four authors for the 2000 Conference of the Cognitive Science Society at the University of Pennsylvania. The four interrelated discussions explore the implications of the recent explosion of cerebellum research suggesting an expanded cerebellar role in higher cognitive functions as well as in the coordination of emotional functions with learning, logical thinking, perceptual consciousness, and action planning
Treatment of ADHD with methylphenidate may sensitize brain substrates of desire
Authors: Panksepp Jaak , Burgdorf Jeff , Gordon Nakia , Turner Cortney
Published: October 2007

Aims. Currently, methylphenidate (MPH, trade name Ritalin) is the most widely prescribed medication for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We examined the ability of repeated MPH administration to produce a sensitized appetitive eagerness type response in laboratory rats, as indexed by 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (50-kHz USVs). We also examined the ability of MPH to reduce play behavior in rats which may be partially implicated in the clinical efficacy of MPH in ADHD. Design. 56 adolescent rats received injections of either 5.0 mg/kg MPH, or vehicle each day for 8 consecutive days, and a week later received a challenge injection of either MPH or vehicle. Measurements. Both play behavior (pins) and 50-kHz USVs were recorded after each drug or vehicle administration. Results. MPH challenge produced a substantial 73% reduction in play behavior during the initial treatment phase, and during the last test (1 week post drug), 50-kHz USVs were elevated approximately threefold only in animals with previous MPH experience. Conclusions. These data suggest that MPH treatment may lead to psychostimulant sensitization in young animals, perhaps by increasing future drug-seeking tendencies due to an elevated eagerness for positive incentives. Further, we hypothesize that MPH may be reducing ADHD symptoms, in part, by blocking playful tendencies, whose neuro-maturational and psychological functions remain to be adequately characterized.
Are emotions feelings?
Authors: Goldstein Irwin
Published: October 2007

Many philosophers sharply distinguish emotions from feelings. Emotions are not feelings, and having an emotion does not necessitate having some feeling, they think. In this paper I reply to a set of arguments people use sharply to distinguish emotions from feelings. In response to some arguments these “anti-feeling theorists” use I examine and entertain a hedonic theory of emotion that avoids various anti-feeling objections. Proponents of this hedonic theory analyze an emotion by reference to forms of cognition (e.g., thought, belief, judgment) and a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling. Given this theory, emotions are feelings in some important sense of “feelings”, and these feelings are identified as particular emotions by reference to their hedonic character and the cognitive state that causes the hedonic feelings.
Intentionality and the inside/outside distinction in sensitive systems
Authors: De Preester Helena
Published: October 2007

Working from both a phenomenological and a biological background, the conditions under which the emergence of intentionality occurs, are approached. This is done via two particularities of biological systems: the inside/outside distinction they exhibit and the fact that they are sensitive. The phenomenon of boundaries turns out to be a crucial issue in such an account. To start from a biological level is an indispensable preparation for a proper understanding of intentionality, phenomenologically conceived.
The role of self-organisation in the emergence of phonological systems
Authors: Demolin Didier , Soquet Alain
Published: October 2007

The origin of phonological systems is examined from the paradigm of self-organization. We claim that phonological systems could have emerged as the product of self-organizing processes. Self-organization may have facilitated the evolution of structures within the sounds that humans were able to produce. One of the main points of the paper concerns the identification of the processes which could account for the self-organized behavior of sound systems used in languages spoken by humans. In this paradigm, phonological systems or sound patterns of human languages are emergent properties of these systems rather than properties imposed by some external influence. Regulations are defined as the constraints that adjust the rate of production of the elements of a system to the state of the system and of relevant environmental variables. The main operators of these adjustments are feedback loops. Two types of processes can be distinguished in regulatory networks, homeostatic and epigenetic. Since the origin of sound patterns, of human languages, is in the vocal tract constraints, we make the hypothesis that sound change does not reflect any adaptive character but rather is the phonetic modality of differentiation understood as epigenetic regulation.
Neandertal man was not morphologically handicapped for speech
Authors: Boë Louis-Jean , Maeda Shinji , Heim Jean-Louis
Published: October 2007

Since Lieberman and Crelin (1971) postulated a theory that Neandertals were speechless species, the speech capability of Neandertals has been a subject of hot debate for over 30 years and remains as a controversial question. These authors claimed that the acquisition of a low laryngeal position during evolution is a necessary condition for having a vowel space large enough to realize the necessary vocalic contrasts for speech. Moreover, Neandertals didn't posses this anatomical base and therefore could not speak, presumably causing their extinction. In this study, we refute Lieberman and Crelin's theory by showing, first with the analysis of biometric data, that the estimated laryngeal position for two Neandertals is relatively high, but not as high as claimed by the two authors. In fact, the length ratio of the pharyngeal cavity to the oral cavity, i.e., an acoustically important parameter, of the Neandertals corresponds to that of a modern female adult or of a child. Second, using an anthropomorphic articulatory model, the potentially maximum vowel space estimated by varying the model morphology from a newborn, a child, a female adult and to a male adult didn't show any relevant variation. We infer then that a Neandertal could have a vowel space no smaller than that of a modern human. Our study is strictly limited to the morphological aspects of the vocal tract. We, therefore, cannot offer any definitive answer to the question whether Neandertals actually spoke or not. But we feel safe saying that Neandertals were not morphologically handicapped for speech.
Evolution and self-organisation in vowel systems
Authors: de Boer Bart
Published: October 2007

This paper describes computer simulations that investigate the role of self-organisation in explaining the universals of human vowel systems. It has been observed that human vowel systems show remarkable regularities, and that these regularities optimise acoustic distinctiveness and are therefore adaptive for good communication. Traditionally, universals have been explained as the result of innate properties of the human language faculty, and therefore need an evolutionary explanation. In this paper it is argued that the regularities emerge as the result of self-organisation in a population and therefore need not be the result of biological evolution.
The hypothesis is investigated with two different computer simulations that are based on a population of agents that try to imitate each other as well as possible. Each agent can produce and perceive vowels in a human-like way and stores vowels as articulatory and acoustic prototypes. The aim of the agents is to imitate each other as well as possible.
It will be shown that successful repertoires of vowels emerge that show the same regularities as human vowel systems.
The evolution of functionally referential alarm communication
Authors: Blumstein Daniel T.
Published: October 2007

Many species produce specific alarm vocalizations when they encounter predators. There is considerable interest in the degree to which bird, ground-dwelling sciurid rodent, and primate alarm calls denote the species or type of predator that elicited the vocalization. When there is a tight association between the type or species of predator eliciting an alarm call, and when a played-back alarm call elicits antipredator responses qualitatively similar to those seen when individuals personally encounter a predator, the alarm calls are said to be functionally referential. In this essay I aim to make two simple points about the evolution of functionally referential alarm communication. Firstly, functionally referential communication is likely to be present only when a species produces acoustically distinct alarm vocalizations. Thus, to understand its evolution we must study factors that influence the evolution of alarm call repertoire size. Secondly, and potentially decoupled from the ability to produce acoustically distinctive alarm vocalizations, species must have the perceptual and motor abilities to respond differently to acoustically-distinct alarm vocalizations. Thus, to understand the evolution of functionally referential communication we also must study factors that influence the evolution of context-independent perception. While some factors may select for functionally referential alarm communication, constraints on production or perception may prevent its evolution.
AIBO’s first words
Authors: Steels Luc , Kaplan Frédéric
Published: October 2007

This paper explores the hypothesis that language communication in its very first stage is bootstrapped in a social learning process under the strong influence of culture. A concrete framework for social learning has been developed based on the notion of a language game. Autonomous robots have been programmed to behave according to this framework. We show experiments that demonstrate why there has to be a causal role of language on category acquisition; partly by showing that it leads effectively to the bootstrapping of communication and partly by showing that other forms of learning do not generate categories usable in communication or make information assumptions which cannot be satisfied.
Learning visually grounded words and syntax of natural spoken language
Authors: Roy Deb
Published: October 2007

Properties of the physical world have shaped human evolutionary design and given rise to physically grounded mental representations. These grounded representations provide the foundation for higher level cognitive processes including language. Most natural language processing machines to date lack grounding. This paper advocates the creation of physically grounded language learning machines as a path toward scalable systems which can conceptualize and communicate about the world in human-like ways. As steps in this direction, two experimental language acquisition systems are presented.

The first system, CELL, is able to learn acoustic word forms and associated shape and color categories from fluent untranscribed speech paired with video camera images. In evaluations, CELL has successfully learned from spontaneous infant-directed speech. A version of CELL has been implemented in a robotic embodiment which can verbally interact with human partners.

The second system, DESCRIBER, acquires a visually-grounded model of natural language which it uses to generate spoken descriptions of objects in visual scenes. Input to DESCRIBER’s learning algorithm consists of computer generated scenes paired with natural language descriptions produced by a human teacher. DESCRIBER learns a three-level language model which encodes syntactic and semantic properties of phrases, word classes, and words. The system learns from a simple ‘show-and-tell’ procedure, and once trained, is able to generate semantically appropriate, contextualized, and syntactically well-formed descriptions of objects in novel scenes.
Bootstrapping grounded symbols by minimal autonomous robots
Authors: Vogt Paul
Published: October 2007

In this paper an experiment is presented in which two mobile robots develop a shared lexicon of which the meanings are grounded in the real world. The robots start without a lexicon nor shared meanings and play language games in which they generate new meanings and negotiate words for these meanings. The experiment tries to find the minimal conditions under which verbal communication may begin to evolve. The robots are autonomous in terms of computing and cognition, but they are otherwise far simpler than most, if not all animals. It is demonstrated that a lexicon nevertheless can be made to emerge even though there are strong limits on the size and stability of this lexicon.
Rhyming slang world-wide
Authors: Görlach Manfred
Published: October 2007

Rhyming slang (RS) sprang to life in mid-19th century London when it was first recorded by Ducange Anglicus (1857) together with other unusual forms of slang, such as back slang and Polari. In the period of extensive British emigration to the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, this special type of lexis was also carried around the world — though in much less regular distribution than might have been expected on the basis of shared socioeconomic colonial histories. Three types of development were possible:

1. individual RS items might survive (and possibly acquire new meanings);

2. they might die out, leaving a historical record of their extraterritorial existence at best;

3. they might prompt local fashions, imitating the pattern but creating new words.

The phenomenon of RS has found various references in books on national Englishes (such as those by Baker (1970), but significantly
less so in Ramson (1966) and Mencken (1977)); however, it has never been explored on a contrastive level. Such an approach has
become more feasible today now that the set of historical dictionaries of English is complete following the publication of the works
edited by Silva (1996), Ramson (1988) and Orsman (1997) — even though slang is badly documented, since it was not
always considered worthy of inclusion in general dictionaries.
“What bees to be maun be”
Authors: Corrigan Karen P.
Published: October 2007

Irish-English (IrE) as a contact vernacular permits tense, mood and aspect categories to be marked in a manner which
distinguishes this variety from all other world Englishes. Researchers, however, have been preoccupied with its distinctive tense and
aspect markers and much less is known about the manner in which IrE modal relations are expressed. This paper attempts to redress
the imbalance by comparing aspects of modality in IrE and other English varieties and by introducing a morphosyntactic syntagm
termed “modal be+to” which can be used to express both deontic and epistemic modality. The marker is
frequent in Northern Irish Englishes and a detailed account of its use in the South Armagh vernacular is offered here. In addition,
attention will be given to locating the potential sources of be+to as the product of a language contact
situation.
The emergence of systematicity in the English pronunciations of two Cantonese-speaking adults in Hong Kong
Authors: Peng Long , Setter Jane
Published: October 2007

This paper describes and analyses the phenomenon of consonant cluster simplification in the English of two native Cantonese
speakers in Hong Kong. We show that this process is systematic in that it targets the alveolar plosives and removes them when they
are members of a coda consonant cluster in spite of the fact that the details of the simplification may vary from subject to subject.
We compare this process to a seemingly similar cluster simplification in native varieties of English and show that they differ in two
key respects. Our study provides evidence of a systematic morphophonemic alternation in the English of L1 Cantonese speakers,
confirming the observation in a number of sociolinguistic studies that this process is a linguistic feature of the English of L1
Cantonese speakers.
Region and language variation
Authors: Chambers J.K.
Published: October 2007

Traditional dialectology took region as its primary and often its only independent variable. Because of numerous social changes, region is no longer the primary determinant of language variation, and contemporary (sociolinguistic) dialectology has expanded the number of independent variables. In Dialect Topography, we survey a representative population, and that population inevitably includes some subjects born outside the survey region. We want to know how these non-natives affect language use in the community. Admitting them thus requires us to implement some mechanism for identifying them in order to compare their language use to the natives. The mechanism is called the Regionality Index (RI). Subjects are ranked on a scale from 1 to 7, with the best representatives of the region (indigenes) receiving a score of 1, the poorest (interlopers) a score of 7, and subjects of intermediate degrees of representativeness in between. I look at three case studies in which RI is significant: bureau in Quebec City, running shoes in the Golden Horseshoe, and soft drink in Quebec City. These results introduce a new dimension to the study of language variation as a regional phenomenon and provide a framework for the integration of regionality as one independent variable among many in dialect studies. The RI provides, perhaps for the first time, an empirical basis for inferring the sociolinguistic effects of mobility.
Feature diffusion vs. contact effects in the evolution of new Englishes
Authors: Schneider Edgar W.
Published: October 2007

This paper proposes an investigation of New Englishes in a diachronic and typological-comparative perspective. It is suggested that the structural and functional constituents of these varieties can be accounted for by either of two processes, labelled diffusion (the largely unmodified transmission of earlier forms of English (dialectal and standard) through space and time), and selection (the choice of a new, typically indigenous item in a process of feature competition under language contact conditions); some tentative properties of these processes are discussed. Subsequently, the framework is applied to a documentation and interpretation of negation patterns as found in many New Englishes around the world.
Event and story schemas in australian aboriginal English discourse
Authors: Malcolm Ian G. , Rochecouste Judith
Published: October 2007

The Yamatji people of Western Australia, although largely monolingual speakers of English, maintain an Aboriginal English variety for purposes of intra-group communication. A corpus of forty oral narratives by young Yamatji speakers was analysed and interpreted by a cross-cultural research team. Thirty-three of the texts were isolated as informed by four schemas: “travel”, “hunting”, “observing” and “encountering the unknown”. One text of each type is reproduced here, and the discourse strategies and markers involved are discussed. It is argued that the maintenance of these schemas (and associated genres) is related to longstanding cultural survival strategies and represents a skill which should be taken account of in education.
The use of vague language in intercultural conversations in Hong Kong
Authors: Cheng Winnie , Warren Martin
Published: October 2007

This paper presents the findings of a study of vague language use based on a corpus of naturally-occurring conversations between native and non-native speakers of English in Hong Kong. The specific concern of the paper is to describe the use of vague language by the two sets of speakers. The forms of vague language present in our data are defined and exemplified. Both the native English and the non-native speakers use vague language extensively in our data for a similar range of purposes, for example to achieve informal communication, classify objects, fill a lexical or knowledge gap, and accommodate one another. We also investigated whether communication problems are experienced in these intercultural conversations by speakers using vague language differently. We conclude that in our data at least there is no evidence to suggest that such communication problems arise from differences in vague language use. On the contrary, the use of vague language by both native and non-native speakers facilitates rather than hinders successful communication in intercultural conversations.
Non-sexist language reform and generic pronouns in Australian English
Authors: Pauwels Anne
Published: October 2007

This paper explores changes in the use of generic pronouns in Australian English. We examine a database of public non-scripted speech to establish to what extent generic pronouns promoted through non-sexist language reform have become part of public speech. The results show that the use of masculine generic he has decreased substantially mainly in favour of singular they. The pronoun he or she does not appear to have been adopted widely by people speaking in a public context.
Terra incognita in the anglophone world
Authors: Schreier Daniel
Published: October 2007

This paper examines the development of a distinct contact-based variety on the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic Ocean. It outlines the sociohistorical context of the community as well as its linguistic and sociolinguistic implications, speculating on the original input varieties and processes of contact dynamics, new-dialect formation as well as feature selection and retention that occurred since the island was colonised in 1816. It provides a structural profile and discusses selected grammatical variables of this variety, with the aim of investigating feature selection from the relevant donor sources and identifying differential evolution patterns that occurred in this particular setting, even though it is not always possible to keep these two questions apart.
Creolisms in an emerging standard
Authors: Mair Christian
Published: October 2007

After showing that standardisation processes in spoken and written usage in Jamaica must be seen as distinct from each other, the paper focuses on the role of the creole substrate in the formation of the emergent written standard in Jamaica. The approach is corpus-based, using material from the Caribbean component of the International Corpus of English and, occasionally, from other digitised text data-bases. Jamaican Creole lexicon and grammar are shown to exert an influence on written English usage, but, generally speaking, direct borrowing of words and rules is much rarer than various forms of indirect and mediated influence, and the over-all impact of the creole is as yet limited. While probably no longer a typical English-speaking society (cf. Shields-Brodber 1997), Jamaica will continue to be an English-using one.
Changing names for a changing landscape
Authors: Mühlhäusler Peter
Published: October 2007

Desert islands such as Norfolk in the south-west Pacific offer important insights into the genesis and development of languages. The paper addresses the particular issue of the origin of place names. It shows the tension between the different groups that settled on the island since 1788 and pays particular attention to the diverging naming practices of British colonial administrators and Pitcairn Islanders. It also comments on the consequences of globalization such as the growing pressure to select names that enhance the images promoted by the tourist industry.
Uses of English in Southern British Cameroons
Authors: Kouega Jean-Paul
Published: October 2007

This study looks into the use of English in Southern British Cameroons, a territory where English was introduced some 500 years ago by British privateers. The data are a collection of answers to a questionnaire devised to check the respondents’ use of English in various domains such as the home, neighbourhood, place of work and others. The findings reveal that English, a co-official language of the country, is gradually entering the home environment, where the indigenous languages are expected to dominate; it is the language of instruction in primary and secondary schools, and of religion and the court as pastors and lawyers consistently use it in their respective trades; in short it is the means of expression of educated people, the elite of the land.

However, English finds itself in a situation of competition with other languages in this territory. At a lower level, it has to compete with Pidgin English, a contact language which dominates the neighbourhood domain. At a higher level, it competes with French, the other official language, which is dominant in tertiary level education, in the media (where most newspapers as well as most foreign radio and cable television programmes are in it), in public places (where respondents report overhearing talks and reading notices in tongues other than English), and in the civil service (where most official correspondences are initiated in it). In short what seems to have been taking place in the country since Reunification with French Cameroon in 1961 is a one-way bilingualism, with speakers of English being made to fully operate in French.
Applications of isometric projection for visualizing web sites
Authors: Kahn Paul , Lenk Krzysztof , Kaczmarek Piotr
Published: October 2007

This essay describes the application of diagrams that use the form of isometric projections to visualize the contents of a web site. We begin by characterizing the data that makes up a site: documents, computer programs (applications), and the links that connect them. We describe a way of visualizing web sites in diagrammatic form for the teams that plan, build, and maintain the site. We propose that isometric projection has several strengths for presenting this kind of information. The advantages of an isometric over a 2-D (flat) diagram are described. We also note several weaknesses that must be accounted for when using this technique. We then describe the visual language we have developed for this kind of diagram. In conclusion, we present the case for hand-built, rather than automatic, methods for creating these kind of visualizations.
Large scale network visualization with 3D-graphics
Authors: Koutsofios Eleftherios , North Stephen , Truscott Russ
Published: October 2007

Data from large networks, such as a voice telephone network or a residential internet service, must be analysed to see how well the requirements of users are met. Visualization is essential to understand an explain this data. This article describes Swift-3D, a viewer for interactive discovery of patterns and anomalies in large-scale transactional data sets.
Constructing n-space: establishing a conceptual framework for the management and processing of complex and dynamic networked information flow
Authors: Wilson Paul
Published: October 2007

This article outlines aspects of a theoretical model of electronic communication design, specifically for the consumption of news. This model allows access to digital information through a process of intuitive, active exploration in a four-dimensional, dynamic and responsive environment: the n-space. I summarise its conceptual foundations and the metaphors used to describe its sense of geography and landscape, relating initially to Jay David Bolter’s notions of ‘writing spaces’ and ‘hard structures’.

Spatial relationships between information elements within the n-space are explored, the utilisation and application of axial reading – namely chronological and conceptual hierarchies – aims to develop dynamic, flexible and intuitive systems for using the n-space. Notions of boundaries and fragmentation, and of macro and micro readings are considered with certain aspects of the reading experience in the n-space model outlined, in particular the use of thematic nodes as anchoring devices to aid navigation and user-orientation in what could initially seem a disorienting environment.
A Proposal for Improving the Measurement of Parse Accuracy
Authors: Sampson Geoffrey
Published: October 2007

Widespread dissatisfaction has been expressed with the measure of parse accuracy used in the Parseval programme, based on the location of constituent boundaries. Scores on the Parseval metric are perceived as poorly correlated with intuitive judgments of goodness of parse; the metric applies only to a restricted range of grammar formalisms; and it is seen as divorced from applications of NLP technology. The present paper defines an alternative metric, which measures the accuracy with which successive words are fitted into parsetrees. (The original statement of this metric is believed to have been the earliest published proposal about quantifying parse accuracy.) The metric defined here gives overall scores that quantify intuitive concepts of good and bad parsing relatively directly, and it gives scores for individual words which enable the location of parsing errors to be pinpointed. It applies to a wider range of grammar formalisms, and is tunable for specific parsing applications.
Grammatical Tagging of a Persian Corpus
Authors: Assi S. Mostafa
Published: October 2007

The purpose of this article is to briefly introduce an interactive POS tagging system developed as a project at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran, Iran. The system is designed as part of the annotation procedure for a Persian corpus called The Farsi Linguistic Database (FLDB) (a project at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran which comprises a selection of contemporary Modern Persian literature, formal and informal spoken varieties of the language, and a series of dictionary entries and word lists [Assi 1997: 5]) and is the first attempt ever to tag a Persian corpus. In Section 1, the project itself will be introduced; Section 2 presents an evaluation of the project, and Section 3 is allocated to some suggestions for future work.
Lexical Frequencies in a 300 Million Word Corpus of Australian Newspapers. Analysis and Interpretation
Authors: Leitner Gerhard
Published: October 2007

Corpus linguistics, descriptive, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics use corpora and generalise their findings beyond the samples contained in them. That raises the problem of the representativity of the data base and of the application of methods for the presentation of findings. Although this paper originated in the context of the pluricentricity of English in the lexis of mainstream Australian English (mAusE), it was inspired by the current debates about corpus methodology (Kretzschmar et al. 1987). It is based on a large newspaper corpus that extends over a period of six years. It studies the distribution patterns of a small set of lexical items that are derived from Aboriginal languages or relate to Aboriginal concerns. While there appears to be a fairly consistent stable core, these items manifest significant differences in occurrence over the six-year period and in the media outlets and that raises the questions of what a replicate study of these items (or of others) would find and whether a corpus can claim to be representative in the first place.
Learning Lessons from Bilingual Corpora: Benefits for Machine Translation
Authors: Streiter Oliver , Iomdin Leonid L.
Published: October 2007

The research described in this paper is rooted in the endeavors to combine the advantages of corpus-based and rule-based MT approaches in order to improve the performance of MT systems—most importantly, the quality of translation. The authors review the ongoing activities in the field and present a case study, which shows how translation knowledge can be drawn from parallel corpora and compiled into the lexicon of a rule-based MT system. These data are obtained with the help of three procedures: (1) identification of hence unknown one-word translations, (2) statistical rating of the known one-word translations, and (3) extraction of new translations of multiword expressions (MWEs) followed by compilation steps which create new rules for the MT engine. As a result, the lexicon is enriched with translation equivalents attested for different subject domains, which facilitates the tuning of the MT system to a specific subject domain and improves the quality and adequacy of translation.
Policy and Practice in the Anonymisation of Linguistic Data
Authors: Rock Frances
Published: October 2007

What is anonymisation? This paper addresses this question, its relationship to linguistic data and its potential importance to corpus builders and users. It examines attitudes towards anonymisation such as hostility and disinterest and investigates relevant rights, responsibilities, and obligations. The paper then overviews and critiques methods of anonymisation and seeks to assess which items should be anonymised and which maintained. Finally, some troublesome and noteworthy cases are presented as evidence of the need for sensitive, realistic consideration of this issue. The paper was developed through consultation with researchers from the international community of corpus builders and users and, therefore, reflects the diversity of attittude and practice currently at large. It addresses this variability by finally proposing methods for systematic assessment of the need for anonymisation within individual corpora.
Tagging a Corpus of Spoken Swedish
Authors: Nivre Joakim , Grönqvist Leif
Published: October 2007

In this article, we present and evaluate a method for training a statistical part-of-speech tagger on data from written language and then adapting it to the requirements of tagging a corpus of transcribed spoken language, in our case spoken Swedish. This is currently a significant problem for many research groups working with spoken language, since the availability of tagged training data from spoken language is still very limited for most languages. The overall accuracy of the tagger developed for spoken Swedish is quite respectable, varying from 95% to 97% depending on the tagset used. In conclusion, we argue that the method presented here gives good tagging accuracy with relatively little effort.