Spreading Activation Lexical Priming And The Semantic Web

This book explores the interconnections between linguistics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, their mutually influential theories and developments, and the areas where these two groups can still learn from each other. It begins with a brief history of artificial intelligence theories focusing on figures including Alan Turing and M. Ross Quillian and the key concepts of priming, spread-activation and the semantic web. The author details the origins of the theory of lexical priming in early AI research and how it can be used to explain structures of language that corpus linguists have uncovered. He explores how the idea of mirroring the mind’s language processing has been adopted to create machines that can be taught to listen and understand human speech in a way that goes beyond a fixed set of commands. In doing so, he reveals how the latest research into the semantic web and Natural Language Processing has developed from its early roots. The book moves on to describe how the technology has evolved with the adoption of inference concepts, probabilistic grammar models, and deep neural networks in order to fine-tune the latest language-processing and translation tools. This engaging book offers thought-provoking insights to corpus linguists, computational linguists and those working in AI and NLP.

Semantic priming has been a focus of research in the cognitive sciences for more than thirty years and is commonly used as a tool for investigating other aspects of perception and cognition, such as word recognition, language comprehension, and knowledge representations. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition examines empirical and theoretical advancements in the understanding of semantic priming, providing a succinct, in-depth review of this important phenomenon, framed in terms of models of memory and models of word recognition. The first section examines models of semantic priming, including spreading activation models, the verification model, compound-cue models, distributed network models, and multistage activation models (e.g. interactive-activation model). The second section examines issues and findings that have played an especially important role in testing models of priming and includes chapters on the following topics: methodological issues (e.g. counterbalancing of materials, choice of priming baselines); automatic vs. strategic priming; associative vs. “pure” semantic priming; mediated priming; long-term semantic priming; backward priming; unconscious priming; the prime-task effect; list context effects; effects of word frequency, stimulus quality, and stimulus repetition; and the cognitive neuroscience of semantic priming. The book closes with a summary and a discussion of promising new research directions. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 8th Joint International Semantic Technology Conference, JIST 2018, held in Awaji, Japan, in November 2018. The 23 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. They present applications of semantic technologies, theoretical results, new algorithms and tools to facilitate the adoption of semantic technologies and are organized in topical sections on knowledge graphs; data management; question answering and NLP; ontology and reasoning; government open data; and semantic web for life sciences.

Offers a wide-ranging overview of the issues and research approaches in the diverse field of applied linguistics Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that identifies, examines, and seeks solutions to real-life language-related issues. Such issues often occur in situations of language contact and technological innovation, where language problems can range from explaining misunderstandings in face-to-face oral conversation to designing automated speech recognition systems for business. The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics includes entries on the fundamentals of the discipline, introducing readers to the concepts, research, and methods used by applied linguists working in the field. This succinct, reader-friendly volume offers a collection of entries on a range of language problems and the analytic approaches used to address them. This abridged reference work has been compiled from the most-accessed entries from The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (www.encyclopediaofappliedlinguistics.com), the more extensive volume which is available in print and digital format in 1000 libraries spanning 50 countries worldwide. Alphabetically-organized and updated entries help readers gain an understanding of the essentials of the field with entries on topics such as multilingualism, language policy and planning, language assessment and testing, translation and interpreting, and many others. Accessible for readers who are new to applied linguistics, The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics: Includes entries written by experts in a broad range of areas within applied linguistics Explains the theory and research approaches used in the field for analysis of language, language use, and contexts of language use Demonstrates the connections among theory, research, and practice in the study of language issues Provides a perfect starting point for pursuing essential topics in applied linguistics Designed to offer readers an introduction to the range of topics and approaches within the field, The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics is ideal for new students of applied linguistics and for researchers in the field.

This collection highlights multidisciplinary approaches toward better understanding the discourses of extremism, exploring the ways in which insights from linguistics and other disciplines might inform each other in enacting meaningful reforms in policy, social media, and education. The volume is divided into three sections, bridging different disciplinary perspectives in examining different dimensions of the language of extremism in case studies from around the world. The first section features contributions on extremist language from a political lens, such as in election campaigns and media discourse. The second section looks at religious extremism and language used for the purposes of jihadist radicalisation and recruitment. A final section reflects on policy development, peace education, and conflict resolution, toward discussing ways to subvert radicalised discourses and future research building on these efforts. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in discourse analysis, language and communication, and language education, as well as related fields such as psychology, political science, and sociology.

This volume links corpus research to classroom practice and critically assesses how the integration of a corpus-informed methodology affects pedagogical choices, teaching materials and classroom activities. Focusing on the language classroom, and drawing on examples from English, French, German and Hungarian, this book demonstrates that such methodology is applicable to languages with very different properties. Drawing on both larger, general and smaller, more specialised corpora, including both spoken and written data, this volume: presents the key features of natural language according to corpus linguistics, establishing principles and methods to observe and practice natural-sounding language use suggests the characteristics of a coherent, corpus-informed methodology and contrasts this with existing methodologies explores ways in which this methodology can enhance language learning and discusses the types of activities that are most effective explains how this methodology be integrated into teacher training Bridging the long-persisting gap between corpus-informed language teaching research and applied classroom reform, this book is key reading for researchers in applied linguistics and language pedagogy, as well as teacher trainers and practitioners.

This book examines recent developments in semantic systems that can respond to situations and environments and events. The contributors to this book cover how to design, implement and utilize disruptive technologies. The editor discusses the two fundamental sets of disruptive technologies: the development of semantic technologies including description logics, ontologies and agent frameworks; and the development of semantic information rendering and graphical forms of displays of high-density time-sensitive data to improve situational awareness. Beyond practical illustrations of emerging technologies, the editor proposes to utilize an incremental development method called knowledge scaffolding –a proven educational psychology technique for learning a subject matter thoroughly. The goal of this book is to help readers learn about managing information resources, from the ground up and reinforcing the learning as they read on.

This book is about the mental lexicon and opens an understanding of this aspect of human cognition. The mental lexicon is still a central topic in psycholinguistics and, more generally speaking, in cognitive science. Is it possible to define what is intended by the expression "mental lexicon", a concept coined by Oldfield as early as 1966? Are the terms that the authors have at their disposal still sufficient to discuss this hypothesised mental entity -- the mental lexicon -- which is intended to cover many different aspects of words? The authors propose as a working definition that the mental lexicon corresponds to the mental repository of all representations that are intrinsically related to words. This book extends its research in psycholinguistics and focuses on the word.