title: Diacritic Restoration and the Development of a Part-of-Speech Tagset for the Māori Language

authors: Cocks, John

subjects: Māori

abstract: This thesis investigates two fundamental problems in natural language processing: diacritic restoration and part-of-speech tagging. Over the past three decades, statistical approaches to diacritic restoration and part-of-speech tagging have grown in interest as a consequence of the increasing availability of manually annotated training data in major languages such as English and French. However, these approaches are not practical for most minority languages, where appropriate training data is either non-existent or not publically available. Furthermore, before developing a part-of-speech tagging system, a suitable tagset is required for that language. In this thesis, we make the following contributions to bridge this gap:

Firstly, we propose a method for diacritic restoration based on naive Bayes classifiers that act at word-level. Classifications are based on a rich set of features, extracted automatically from training data in the form of diacritically marked text. This method requires no additional resources, which makes it language independent. The algorithm was evaluated on one language, namely Māori, and an accuracy exceeding 99% was observed.

Secondly, we present our work on creating one of the necessary resources for the development of a part-of-speech tagging system in Māori, that of a suitable tagset. The tagset described was developed in accordance with the EAGLES guidelines for morphosyntactic annotation of corpora, and was the result of in-depth analysis of the Māori grammar.

text: Diacritic Restoration and the Development of a Part-of-Speech Tagset for the Māori Language This thesis investigates two fundamental problems in natural language processing: diacritic restoration and part-of-speech tagging. Over the past three decades, statistical approaches to diacritic restoration and part-of-speech tagging have grown in interest as a consequence of the increasing availability of manually annotated training data in major languages such as English and French. However, these approaches are not practical for most minority languages, where appropriate training data is either non-existent or not publically available. Furthermore, before developing a part-of-speech tagging system, a suitable tagset is required for that language. In this thesis, we make the following contributions to bridge this gap:

Firstly, we propose a method for diacritic restoration based on naive Bayes classifiers that act at word-level. Classifications are based on a rich set of features, extracted automatically from training data in the form of diacritically marked text. This method requires no additional resources, which makes it language independent. The algorithm was evaluated on one language, namely Māori, and an accuracy exceeding 99% was observed.

Secondly, we present our work on creating one of the necessary resources for the development of a part-of-speech tagging system in Māori, that of a suitable tagset. The tagset described was developed in accordance with the EAGLES guidelines for morphosyntactic annotation of corpora, and was the result of in-depth analysis of the Māori grammar.

year: 2012

title: Manaaki whenua. Manaaki tangata: Care for the land, care for the people: Leading critical school reform with mana whenua and whānau Māori

authors: Ford, Therese

subjects: Critical school reform

abstract: Education disparities between Māori and Pākehā students in Aotearoa, have their origins in colonial education policies and practices which considerably advantaged Pākehā students and compromised the ability of Māori students to engage with learning and succeed.  Despite the promises of equality inherent in the Treaty of Waitangi,  this historical foundation has, for over 150 years, perpetuated intergenerational cycles of education failure for Māori resulting in high levels of endemic social and economic disadvantage in many Māori communities.
This thesis examines the leadership praxis of two Pākehā principals, to understand how, with more respectful connections with Māori communities, they were able to address education disparities and facilitate success for Māori students as Māori. Culturally responsive research methodologies guided two, in-depth case studies which employed mixed methods.
Two collaborative stories, with the voices of mana whenua and whānau Māori, identified the importance of school leaders developing critical levels of consciousness, through authentic, bidirectional relationships with Māori communities.  These relationships enabled the principals to understand the authentic local, pre-colonial iwi histories of the land. This in turn fostered connections between the schools and local Māori communities that enabled them to collaboratively respond to the implications of colonisation.  
The thesis challenges the monocultural, monolingual, unidirectional policies and practices that characterise the current model of colonial education.  It presents instead a decolonising model of critical school reform and a framework for implementation and evaluation.  It contends that honouring the Treaty of Waitangi requires an equity focused response with power sharing relationships, critically led by principals alongside Māori communities.

text: Manaaki whenua. Manaaki tangata: Care for the land, care for the people: Leading critical school reform with mana whenua and whānau Māori Education disparities between Māori and Pākehā students in Aotearoa, have their origins in colonial education policies and practices which considerably advantaged Pākehā students and compromised the ability of Māori students to engage with learning and succeed.  Despite the promises of equality inherent in the Treaty of Waitangi,  this historical foundation has, for over 150 years, perpetuated intergenerational cycles of education failure for Māori resulting in high levels of endemic social and economic disadvantage in many Māori communities.
This thesis examines the leadership praxis of two Pākehā principals, to understand how, with more respectful connections with Māori communities, they were able to address education disparities and facilitate success for Māori students as Māori. Culturally responsive research methodologies guided two, in-depth case studies which employed mixed methods.
Two collaborative stories, with the voices of mana whenua and whānau Māori, identified the importance of school leaders developing critical levels of consciousness, through authentic, bidirectional relationships with Māori communities.  These relationships enabled the principals to understand the authentic local, pre-colonial iwi histories of the land. This in turn fostered connections between the schools and local Māori communities that enabled them to collaboratively respond to the implications of colonisation.  
The thesis challenges the monocultural, monolingual, unidirectional policies and practices that characterise the current model of colonial education.  It presents instead a decolonising model of critical school reform and a framework for implementation and evaluation.  It contends that honouring the Treaty of Waitangi requires an equity focused response with power sharing relationships, critically led by principals alongside Māori communities.

year: 2020

title: Managing application-level QoS for IoT stream queries in hazardous outdoor environments

authors: Ziekow, Holger

subjects: computer science

abstract: While most IoT projects focus on well-controlled environments, this paper focuses on IoT applications in the wild, i.e., rugged outdoor environments. Hazard warnings in outdoor monitoring solutions require reliable pattern detection mechanisms, while data may be streamed from a variety of sensors with intermittent communication. This paper introduces the Morepork system for managing application-level Quality of Service in stream queries for rugged IoT environments. It conceptually treats errors as first class citizens and quantifies the impact on application level. We present a proof of concept implementation, which uses real-world data from New Zealand forestry workers.

text: Managing application-level QoS for IoT stream queries in hazardous outdoor environments While most IoT projects focus on well-controlled environments, this paper focuses on IoT applications in the wild, i.e., rugged outdoor environments. Hazard warnings in outdoor monitoring solutions require reliable pattern detection mechanisms, while data may be streamed from a variety of sensors with intermittent communication. This paper introduces the Morepork system for managing application-level Quality of Service in stream queries for rugged IoT environments. It conceptually treats errors as first class citizens and quantifies the impact on application level. We present a proof of concept implementation, which uses real-world data from New Zealand forestry workers.

year: 2019