Hasil untuk "Ural-Altaic languages"

Maria Vjatšina

Albert Razin’s protest self-immolation in Russophone media coverage On 10 September 2019, Albert Razin, an Udmurt humanities scholar and activist, set himself on fire in protest against the Russification of educational policies. Russian federal media and experts framed his act in highly peculiar ways. First, Razin’s actions were extensively medicalized, with fabricated claims about his age, private life, and alleged physical and mental health conditions. Second, public commentators invoked the so-called custom of tipshar, a purported tradition of ritual suicide, to explain his actions. According to this narrative, drawn from the colonial discourse, ethnically non-Russian peoples of the Volga-Ural region are said to be predisposed to suicide as a means of inducing guilt in their adversaries. This article seeks to unpack the colonial undertones inherent in the ritual suicide narrative, which, rooted in imperial ethnography, is utilized by both pro-Kremlin and ostensibly independent Russophone media to deny the significance of Razin’s act of resistance. Through discourse analysis, this paper reveals the mechanisms of epistemic violence exercised over colonized Others. Specifically, it examines how the media’s portrayal reduced Razin’s political agency to a “traditional ritual” of a Neopagan, thereby undermining his act of resistance. By applying the concept of epistemic injustice, the study exposes the persistent colonial tropes employed by various public actors when discussing Indigenous peoples – tropes that ultimately prevent them from speaking for themselves.

Gumru

The “Forty Batyrs” epic cycle began to attract more attention with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The epics it includes, like its name, have not yet been properly learned in the scientific world. Although these epics have been the subject of research, it remains unclear whether the cycle contains forty or fewer epics. The number of epics included in the “Kırk Batır” epic cycle, which is part of the repertoire of Jırav-narrators, sometimes varies between 26 and sometimes 35. There are three series (or four, according to some legends) within the “Forty Batyrs” epic cycle. All of the epics in this series cover the period from the formation of the Golden Horde and the Nogay Horde to their collapse, that is, from the 14th century to the 17th century.

Brian DeRenzi, Anna Dixon, Mohamed Aymane Farhi et al.

Speech technology remains out of reach for most of the over 2300 languages in Africa. We present the first systematic assessment of large-scale synthetic voice corpora for African ASR. We apply a three-step process: LLM-driven text creation, TTS voice synthesis, and ASR fine-tuning. Eight out of ten languages for which we create synthetic text achieved readability scores above 5 out of 7. We evaluated ASR improvement for three (Hausa, Dholuo, Chichewa) and created more than 2,500 hours of synthetic voice data at below 1% of the cost of real data. Fine-tuned Wav2Vec-BERT-2.0 models trained on 250h real and 250h synthetic Hausa matched a 500h real-data-only baseline, while 579h real and 450h to 993h synthetic data created the best performance. We also present gender-disaggregated ASR performance evaluation. For very low-resource languages, gains varied: Chichewa WER improved about 6.5% relative with a 1:2 real-to-synthetic ratio; a 1:1 ratio for Dholuo showed similar improvements on some evaluation data, but not on others. Investigating intercoder reliability, ASR errors and evaluation datasets revealed the need for more robust reviewer protocols and more accurate evaluation data. All data and models are publicly released to invite further work to improve synthetic data for African languages.

Boqi Chen, Ou Wei, Bingzhou Zheng et al.

Graph model generation from natural language description is an important task with many applications in software engineering. With the rise of large language models (LLMs), there is a growing interest in using LLMs for graph model generation. Nevertheless, LLM-based graph model generation typically produces partially correct models that suffer from three main issues: (1) syntax violations: the generated model may not adhere to the syntax defined by its metamodel, (2) constraint inconsistencies: the structure of the model might not conform to some domain-specific constraints, and (3) inaccuracy: due to the inherent uncertainty in LLMs, the models can include inaccurate, hallucinated elements. While the first issue is often addressed through techniques such as constraint decoding or filtering, the latter two remain largely unaddressed. Motivated by recent self-consistency approaches in LLMs, we propose a novel abstraction-concretization framework that enhances the consistency and quality of generated graph models by considering multiple outputs from an LLM. Our approach first constructs a probabilistic partial model that aggregates all candidate outputs and then refines this partial model into the most appropriate concrete model that satisfies all constraints. We evaluate our framework on several popular open-source and closed-source LLMs using diverse datasets for model generation tasks. The results demonstrate that our approach significantly improves both the consistency and quality of the generated graph models.

William J. Bowman

We present the design and implementation of a macro-embedding of a family of compiler intermediate languages, from a Scheme-like language to x86-64, into Racket. This embedding is used as part of a testing framework for a compilers course to derive interpreters for all the intermediate languages. The embedding implements features including safe, functional abstractions as well as unsafe assembly features, and the interactions between the two at various intermediate stages. This paper aims to demonstrate language-oriented techniques and abstractions for implementing (1) a large family of languages and (2) interoperability between low- and high-level languages. The primary strength of this approach is the high degree of code reuse and interoperability compared to implementing each interpreter separately. The design emphasizes modularity and compositionality of an open set of language features by local macro expansion into a single host language, rather than implementing a language pre-defined by a closed set of features. This enables reuse from both the host language (Racket) and between intermediate languages, and enables interoperability between high- and low-level features, simplifying development of the intermediate language semantics. It also facilitates extending or redefining individual language features in intermediate languages, and exposing multiple interfaces to the embedded languages.

Ruben Becker, Giuseppa Castiglione, Giovanna D'Agostino et al.

The notion of Wheeler languages is rooted in the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT), one of the most central concepts in data compression and indexing. The BWT has been generalized to finite automata, the so-called Wheeler automata, by Gagie et al. [Theor. Comput. Sci. 2017]. Wheeler languages have subsequently been defined as the class of regular languages for which there exists a Wheeler automaton accepting them. Besides their advantages in data indexing, these Wheelerlanguages also satisfy many interesting properties from a language theoretic point of view [Alanko et al., Inf. Comput. 2021]. A characteristic yet unsatisfying feature of Wheeler languages however is that their definition depends on a fixed order of the alphabet. In this paper we introduce the Universally Wheeler languages UW, i.e., the regular languages that are Wheeler with respect to all orders of a given alphabet. Our first main contribution is to relate UW to some very well known regular language classes. We first show that the Striclty Locally Testable languages are strictly included in UW. After noticing that UW is not closed under taking the complement, we prove that the class of languages for which both the language and its complement are in UW exactly coincides with those languages that are Definite or Reverse Definite. Secondly, we prove that deciding if a regular language given by a DFA is in UW can be done in quadratic time. We also show that this is optimal unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) fails.

Sam Stites, John M. Li, Steven Holtzen

There are many different probabilistic programming languages that are specialized to specific kinds of probabilistic programs. From a usability and scalability perspective, this is undesirable: today, probabilistic programmers are forced up-front to decide which language they want to use and cannot mix-and-match different languages for handling heterogeneous programs. To rectify this, we seek a foundation for sound interoperability for probabilistic programming languages: just as today's Python programmers can resort to low-level C programming for performance, we argue that probabilistic programmers should be able to freely mix different languages for meeting the demands of heterogeneous probabilistic programming environments. As a first step towards this goal, we introduce \textsc{MultiPPL}, a probabilistic multi-language that enables programmers to interoperate between two different probabilistic programming languages: one that leverages a high-performance exact discrete inference strategy, and one that uses approximate importance sampling. We give a syntax and semantics for \textsc{MultiPPL}, prove soundness of its inference algorithm, and provide empirical evidence that it enables programmers to perform inference on complex heterogeneous probabilistic programs and flexibly exploits the strengths and weaknesses of two languages simultaneously.%

Ave Taavet, Johanna Rannik

This article provides an overview of Estonian literary criticism during 2022–2023. The archetype that emerges from the articles of this period is that of a critic who exhibits varying degrees of doubt, a yearning for connection and engagement, as well as sharpness, acumen, and empathy. While criticism remains constructive and thought-provoking, there is a pertinent question about the necessity to redefine its core. In the realm of online publications, traditional literary criticism may require re-evaluation, with a potential need for a heightened attention to visuals and user experience. Moreover, there is a discernible trend towards favouritism in literary criticism, which warrants a counterbalance through bolder and more analytical reviews. Newspapers appear to be grappling with diminishing quality standards, often presenting overly commercial and superficial book reviews. Naturally, social media has an increasing influence on literature and poetry, offering avenues for amplifying authorial identity while posing challenges in translating so-called “Instagram poetry” into more conventional book formats. The authors also underscore the importance of supporting young critics and providing them with a safe space for experimentation.

Leif Andersen, Cameron Moy, Stephen Chang et al.

The dominant programming languages support only linear text to express ideas. Visual languages offer graphical representations for entire programs, when viewed with special tools. Hybrid languages, with support from existing tools, allow developers to express their ideas with a mix of textual and graphical syntax tailored to an application domain. This mix puts both kinds of syntax on equal footing and, importantly, the enriched language does not disrupt a programmer's typical workflow. This paper presents a recipe for equipping existing textual programming languages as well as accompanying IDEs with a mechanism for creating and using graphical interactive syntax. It also presents the first hybrid language and IDE created using the recipe.

Cihan ÇAKMAK

The group of intellectuals, who advocate innovation in every aspect of life and are called “reformists”, set out to adapt the schools, which were of no use to children, to the requirements of the age. Of course, every innovation brought with it a reaction from the groups with a traditionalist understanding that has been going on for centuries. As seen in the entire Turkic world, these innovation movements were rapidly responding in the Idil Ural geography in the north of Europe. Group of intellectuals encouraged by the activities of Ismail Gaspirali and the modern schools he opened put these activities into practice in their own geographies under his leadership. In this understanding of education, girls were forbidden to read, co-education was not suitable for the social structure, and learning a foreign language which was especially Russian, was seen as a sign of infidelity, a religious education was given. However, in this understanding of education, in which the Qur’an was centered, children could not go beyond reading and writing, since they received an education in Arabic, Persian and religion for 10-15 years, and they were not aware of the exact sciences at all. As a natural consequence of all these approaches, the intelligentsia who tried to find a way out against this method, in which an extremely dysfunctional, aimless and unhelpful understanding of education prevailed, found the remedy by adopting the new teaching method that Gaspirali had opened and successfully put into practice. In this study, it will be tried to give place to the views of the journalist, educator, writer and politician Fatih Kerimi, who was son of the Gılman Kerimî and considered as the founder of Modern Tatar Literature, on education, based on Hâl Tercümesi, which was written after his father’s death.

Ene Vainik, Geda Paulsen, Ahti Lohk et al.

The transition zones between traditional word classes cause problems in lexicography. This research addresses the issue of estimating the level of adjectivization in Estonian by proposing a set of close-context indicators (“test patterns”) based on the existing literature and detectable in annotated corpus text. The profile of prototypical adjectives (the “reference profile”) is established by analyzing the normalized frequencies of the test patterns in a random sample of validated adjectives (N = 100). A scale of similarity to the reference profile is established by using the method of calculating Euclidean distances, which is considered a heuristic of the cumulative similarity vs. the difference. As a result, the scalar nature of the similarity to the reference profile is revealed, among both validated adjectives and the control group of yet underspecified lexicographic headword candidates (N = 100). The results are discussed in respect to improving the toolbox of the test patterns as well as in respect to future studies on some intriguing features of the actual corpus behavior of adjectives as compared to what would be expected by their morphosyntactic potential described in the literature. *** Eesti keele prototüüpse adjektiivi morfosüntaktilise korpusprofiili jälil Sõnavara kategoriseerimisel sõnaliikidesse valmistavad leksikograafias probleeme ennekõike üleminuekualad. Üks peamisi murekohti on raskus määratleda seejuures verbi ja adjektiivi vahelist piiri (Paulsen jt 2019, Paulsen jt 2020). Siinses uurimuses vaatleme partitsiipide adjektiviseerumisprotsesse korpusstatistika andmetele tuginedes. Lähenemine põhineb teoreetilisel eeldusel, et mistahes nähtusi kategoriseerivad inimesed alateadlikult liikmete sarnasust n-ö prototüüpsele esindajale ehk kategooria keskmele hinnates. See toob kaasa, et kategooria liikmed võivad olla selle prototüübiga kas rohkem või vähem sarnased; kategooria perifeerses osas võivad liikmed kuuluda juba ka mingisse naaberkategooriasse. Adjektiividele omaste joonte väljaselgitamiseks korpuses kasutame testmustrite sarja, millest igaüks haarab potentsiaalse adjektiivi lähikonteksti. Kuus testmustrit põhinevad adjektiivide omadustel, mis on kirjanduses esile toodud ning ka eelmärgendatud korpusetekstides tuvastatavad. Kolm mustrit mõõdavad testsõna esinemist atribuudi rollis – eestäiendina üldiselt ning kahes kitsendatud positsioonis: ühilduvana põhisõnaga käändes ja arvus ning teiseks paiknevana lause alguses. Veel kätkesid mustrid esinemist keskvõrde vormis, laiendatavust vahetult eelneva adverbiga ning esinemist öeldistäitena st olema verbi jätkuna. Prototüüpse adjektiivi korpuskäitumise profiil selgitati välja sajast sõnast koosneva juhuvalimi põhjal „Eesti keele põhisõnavara sõnastiku” adjektiividest. Kontrollrühm (N = 100) moodustati Eesti Keele Instituudi sõnastikubaasis Ekilex (Hein jt 2020) leiduvast sõnaliigimärgendita partitsiibist samuti juhuvalimina, silmas pidades erinevate partitsiibivormide võrdset esindatust. Adjektiivi morfosüntaktilise käitumise prototüüpi valiti esindama katsetes kasutatud testmustrite suhteliste sageduste mediaanväärtused adjektiivide rühmas. Sarnasusmõõdikuna kasutasime eukleidilise kauguse meetodit, mis lubab analüüsida kõrvutatavate nähtuste mitmeid parameetreid korraga. Analüüsi tulemuseks on skaala, mis eristab määra, kuivõrd uuritav sõna sarnaneb oma korpuskäitumiselt tavalisele tüüpilisele adjektiivile. Analüüsi tulemusi lahkame testmustrite sarja tõhususe, aga ka testitud adjektiivide korpuskäitumise iseärasuste vaatenurgast.

Joan Giner-Miguelez, Abel Gómez, Jordi Cabot

Datasets play a central role in the training and evaluation of machine learning (ML) models. But they are also the root cause of many undesired model behaviors, such as biased predictions. To overcome this situation, the ML community is proposing a data-centric cultural shift where data issues are given the attention they deserve, and more standard practices around the gathering and processing of datasets start to be discussed and established. So far, these proposals are mostly high-level guidelines described in natural language and, as such, they are difficult to formalize and apply to particular datasets. In this sense, and inspired by these proposals, we define a new domain-specific language (DSL) to precisely describe machine learning datasets in terms of their structure, data provenance, and social concerns. We believe this DSL will facilitate any ML initiative to leverage and benefit from this data-centric shift in ML (e.g., selecting the most appropriate dataset for a new project or better replicating other ML results). The DSL is implemented as a Visual Studio Code plugin, and it has been published under an open source license.

Matthew Earnshaw, Paweł Sobociński

We introduce regular languages of morphisms in free monoidal categories, with their associated grammars and automata. These subsume the classical theory of regular languages of words and trees, but also open up a much wider class of languages over string diagrams. We use the algebra of monoidal and cartesian restriction categories to investigate the properties of regular monoidal languages, and provide sufficient conditions for their recognizability by deterministic monoidal automata.

Ineta Dabašinskienė, Skirmantė Kubiliūtė

This study was inspired by long-lasting debates in the Baltic states, Lithuania in particular, on the assessment results of study subjects in minority (Russian and Polish) schools, including proficiency in Lithuanian. The article presents solid evidence to the effect that national and international school examination results differ significantly with respect to disciplines (Lithuanian language vs. other subjects), ethnicity (titular vs. minority), and municipality (large cities vs. rural areas). The case study of Visaginas shows that the sociolinguistic environment and proficiency in an official language are significant defining factors of this town. *** 'Keelepädevus hariduses: Leedu vähemusküsimuste ümberhindamine' Uurimuse ajendiks on pikaaegne debatt rahvusvähemuste hariduse üle Leedus, aga ka Balti riikides üldiselt. Artiklis vaadeldakse riigieksamite hindamistulemusi Leedu vene ja poola õppekeelega koolides. Uurimistulemused kinnitavad, et riigikeelsete ja muukeelsete koolide eksamitulemuste erinevus sõltub oluliselt nii õppeainest (leedu keel vs. teised õppeained), etnilisusest (enamus vs. vähemus) kui ka omavalitsusest (suurlinnad vs. maapiirkonnad). Geograafiliselt, etniliselt ja kultuuriliselt eripärase Visaginase juhtumiuuring näitab, et sotsiolingvistiline keskkond ja riigikeele pädevus on olulised määratlevad tegurid.

Caleb Helbling, Fırat Aksoy

The difficulty associated with storing closures in a stack-based environment is known as the funarg problem. The funarg problem was first identified with the development of Lisp in the 1970s and hasn't received much attention since then. The modern solution taken by most languages is to allocate closures on the heap, or to apply static analysis to determine when closures can be stack allocated. This is not a problem for most computing systems as there is an abundance of memory. However, embedded systems often have limited memory resources where heap allocation may cause memory fragmentation. We present a simple extension to the prenex fragment of System F that allows closures to be stack-allocated. We demonstrate a concrete implementation of this system in the Juniper functional reactive programming language, which is designed to run on extremely resource limited Arduino devices. We also discuss other solutions present in other programming languages that solve the funarg problem but haven't been formally discussed in the literature.

Adél Furu

This article is concerned with comparative approaches to second language instruction and second language choices in Finland and describes the challenge of preserving Finland’s language and culture while facing the globalization process. The article discusses the success of Finnish second language learning and aims to investigate how Finnish and English as second languages are taught and learnt in Finland compared to other countries as well. The goal of this study is to discuss issues related to teacher training and its role in second- or even third language acquisition. We articulate the following research questions: How does the English-language teaching line serve the international families? How does Finland develop successful teaching practices and what problems of implementation does it face? What are the challenges of teaching the pupils’ mother tongue and a second language (L2) (Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian etc.) at different levels of education? What are the differences between acquiring a Finnish or an international degree concerning adult education? The methodology chosen for this article is a comparative study and it is used to showcase the differences between the Finnish and English second language instruction in Finland. In regard to the theoretical framework to second or foreign language acquisition, learning and teaching, I embrace linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural frameworks and approaches.

Silviu Miloiu

The second issue of volume 12 of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies continues to reflect the academic discussions occasioned by the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies of May 2020. Prof. Radu Carp was one of the keynote speakers of the conference and his address on Combining soft power with the geopolitical approach - how difficult is it for the EU to change its attitude? elicited a great interest among the presenters and attenders of the scientific event. As in any such scholarly event, especially an international gathering with a critical focus on the construction/reconstruction of Europe in vital moments of its past and recent past aspirations, the viewpoints of the participants, including the analysis of Prof. Carp on the current challenges of the EU are passed on to the wider community of fellow researchers, the public and decision-makers. The call for stepping up to a new level of integration and geopolitical power projection is dissected both in its soft and hard power dimension without eschewing the focus on democracy, climate change mitigation measures or cybersecurity. Dorijan Hajdu and Sabira Ståhlberg explore conceptually and empirically active citizen diplomacy and meld it with cultural bonds. The relations between Finland and Bulgaria, on the one hand, and Sweden and Serbia, on the other hand, are investigated in order to call for a refreshed research agenda mapping the multifarious implications of citizen diplomacy. Ioana-Andreea Mureșan tackles in her article the rise of modernity in Norway as a result of mass Norwegian migration to the United States and concentrates on Knut Hamsun and Sigbjørn Obstfelder’s American experiences as evoked in their writings and recollections, while also scrutinizing their modernizing impact on their native country. Although their reminiscences of the American society were overtly derogatory, Mureșan ascertains that paradoxically their New World experiences released the handbrake of Modernism in Norway. Enikő Molnár Bodrogi instead takes a more lukewarm perspective on modernization when concentrating on some of its side effects such as the assimilation policy directed against minority languages i.e. Meänkieli spoken by the Tornedalian Meänkieli community in Northern Sweden. The beauty of the Arctic landscape as depicted in Krane’s Café: An Interior with Figures by Norwegian writer Cora Sandel and the complex relations between human being and topography is closely followed in Raluca-Daniela Răduț’s article. Răduț blends two research methods, the close reading technique and the spatial approach, to reflect on a multifaceted literary work which resembles an animated painting, as the author concludes. Ioana-Andreea Mureșan and Raluca Pop tackle a byproduct of globalization, the diffusion of anglicisms in the Norwegian language. Again two research methods are employed in order to discern the infusion of western culture in the Norwegian teen drama web series “Skam”: code-switching (“inter-sentential and intra-sentential code-switching”) and the study of neologisms. Adél Furu investigates the second language instruction and teaching in Finland in a globalization setting by using a mixed comparative, linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural methodology. The research is introduced by four interrelated questions and hypotheses and concludes that “learning English and Finnish as a second language is considered essential to succeed in the Finnish society.” Rūta Šermukšnytė approaches the museum narratives in Lithuania following the renewal of independence in 1990 and clusters “the tensions between ethnocentric and polycentric, civic, civilizational models of identity in historical culture” as manifesting in the museal and exhibition representations of Jewish history. Anchored on a fertile theoretic approach on historical culture, the author concludes that a wider display of Jewish culture and history, including the Holocaust, derived from both changes in political environment and institutional and individual initiatives.

Ryoma Sin'ya

This paper investigates a new property of formal languages called REG-measurability where REG is the class of regular languages. Intuitively, a language \(L\) is REG-measurable if there exists an infinite sequence of regular languages that "converges" to \(L\). A language without REG-measurability has a complex shape in some sense so that it can not be (asymptotically) approximated by regular languages. We show that several context-free languages are REG-measurable (including languages with transcendental generating function and transcendental density, in particular), while a certain simple deterministic context-free language and the set of primitive words are REG-immeasurable in a strong sense.

Jarno Alanko, Giovanna D'Agostino, Alberto Policriti et al.

The recently introduced class of Wheeler graphs, inspired by the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) of a given string, admits an efficient index data structure for searching for subpaths with a given path label, and lifts the applicability of the Burrows-Wheeler transform from strings to languages. In this paper we study the regular languages accepted by automata having a Wheeler graph as transition function, and prove results on determination, Myhill_Nerode characterization, decidability, and closure properties for this class of languages.

David A. Holland, Jingmei Hu, Ming Kawaguchi et al.

This technical report describes two of the domain specific languages used in the Aquarium kernel code synthesis project. It presents the language cores in terms of abstract syntax. Cassiopea is a machine description language for describing the semantics of processor instruction sets. Alewife is a specification language that can be used to write machine-independent specifications for assembly-level instruction blocks. An Alewife specification can be used to verify and synthesize code for any machine described in Cassiopea, given a machine-specific translation for abstractions used in the specification. This article does not include an introduction to either the Aquarium system or the use of the languages. In addition to this version of the article being a draft, the Aquarium project and the languages are works in progress. This article cannot currently be considered either final or complete.