Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Mathematical linguistics'
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Wolska, Magdalena, and Ivana Kruijff-Korbayová. "Modeling anaphora in informal mathematical dialogue." Universität Potsdam, 2006. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/1045/.
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We analyze anaphoric phenomena in
the context of building an input understanding
component for a conversational
system for tutoring mathematics.In this paper, we report the results of data analysis of two sets of corpora of dialogs on mathematical theorem proving. We exemplify anaphoric phenomena, identify factors relevant to anaphora resolution in our domain and extensions to the input interpretation component to support it.
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Bold, Christine Elizabeth. "Making sense of mathematical language in a primary classroom." Thesis, n.p, 2001. http://oro.open.ac.uk/18838.
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Womack, Catherine A. "The crucial role of proof--a classical defense against mathematical empiricism." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12678.
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Nefdt, Ryan Mark. "The foundations of linguistics : mathematics, models, and structures." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9584.
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The philosophy of linguistics is a rich philosophical domain which encompasses various disciplines. One of the aims of this thesis is to unite theoretical linguistics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science (particularly mathematics and modelling) and the ontology of language. Each part of the research presented here targets separate but related goals with the unified aim of bringing greater clarity to the foundations of linguistics from a philosophical perspective. Part I is devoted to the methodology of linguistics in terms of scientific modelling. I argue against both the Conceptualist and Platonist (as well as Pluralist) interpretations of linguistic theory by means of three grades of mathematical involvement for linguistic grammars. Part II explores the specific models of syntactic and semantics by an analogy with the harder sciences. In Part III, I develop a novel account of linguistic ontology and in the process comment on the type-token distinction, the role and connection with mathematics and the nature of linguistic objects. In this research, I offer a structural realist interpretation of linguistic methodology with a nuanced structuralist picture for its ontology. This proposal is informed by historical and current work in theoretical linguistics as well as philosophical views on ontology, scientific modelling and mathematics.
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Miller, Barbara L. "Grammar Efficiency of Parts-of-Speech Systems." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1300373267.
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Rodriguez, Paul Fabian. "Mathematical foundations of simple recurrent networks /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9935464.
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Farsani, Danyal. "Making multi-modal mathematical meaning in multilingual classrooms." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5752/.
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This thesis investigates communication (verbal and nonverbal) in a bilingual (Farsi-English) complementary school mathematics’ classroom. The study examines gestures were used as a resource for teaching mathematics in a bilingual setting, enabling intercolutors to construct meaning and mediate understanding. That is, the ways in which language and gesture can be seen as resources in supporting and conveying mathematical ideas is described. I investigated a number of verbal and nonverbal resources and show how these are culturally and socially shaped. I also explored how modes of communication are employed in creating mathematical meaning in a bilingual classroom context. A multimodality framework was adopted to analyse data which included audio and video recordings, observations and interviews with teachers and pupils. I found that gestures were employed to convey aspects of the mathematical register and how these were used to amplify what interlocutors were expressing verbally. Furthermore, I identified that different languages activated a different conceptual understanding of the same mathematical concept which was reflected through the students’ and teachers’ gestures.
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Lopez, Jaramillo Maria Gabriela. "Mathematical literacy: A case study of pre-service teachers." OpenSIUC, 2020. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1798.
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This study addresses the question of whether or not pre-service teachers are ready and prepared to use and teach the highly-specialized language of each discipline. The disciplinary languages present teaching and learning challenges due to their lack of parallels in the daily language (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Additionally, the languages of the disciplines are rarely taught and are commonly acquired through an isolated representation of words without a situated meaning within the theory (Gee, 2002). The knowledge of the particular ways of reading, writing, listening to, and talking in the content areas provides opportunities for students’ apprenticeship within the disciplines required for success in higher education contexts (Dobbs, Ippolito, and Charner, 2017). Moreover, this study addresses the question of how future teachers develop disciplinary knowledge and skills. The purpose of this case study was to investigate how mathematical literacy is shaped and defined by the experiences, language, and disciplinary practices of pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics. This overall aim was unfolded by three guiding research questions: 1) What do the Experiences of Pre-Service Teachers and Experts in Mathematics Reveal about their Understanding of Mathematical Literacy? 2) RQ 2. How do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics use language when solving mathematical problems? and 3) What literacy practices do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics utilize when presented with modules that require mathematics problem-solving? To structure the elements of analysis for the participants’ responses, I adopted the theoretical support from the emerging disciplinary literacy framework, the novice-expert paradigm, and the tenets of M. K. Halliday’s functional linguistic theory (i.e., Systemic Functional Linguistics; [SFL]). Four faculty in the Department of Mathematics and four pre-service teachers in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at a large Midwest university agreed to participate in this case study. For the data collection, I asked the participants to participate in two sessions. In the first sessions, the participants responded to a semi-structured interview. Afterward, in a second session, the participants solved modules of mathematical problems following three protocols: a think-aloud, a silent-solving, and an oral-explanatory. The results of the participants’ responses to the semi-structured interview and the three protocols indicated that their experiences as learners and teachers of mathematics are tied to their definitions of literacy and disciplinary literacy. The SFL analysis showed that for the experts of mathematics, mathematical problem-solving is a more abstract and cognitive practice. The pre-service teachers’ registers indicated that mathematical problem-solving is experienced as more concrete and real practice. The unique literacy practices that these participants displayed showed the strong connection between language, literacy, and mathematical thought.The implications of this study are discussed in terms of the importance of language and disciplinary literacy in preparation for future teachers as they progress in their course of study within their teaching education programs.
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Jewett, Bethany. "Investigation of optimal dosing strategies for Ertapenem for varying BMI using mathematical modeling." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2019. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/500.
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Previous research suggests that the efficacy of Ertapenem, a carbapenem antibiotic administered intravenously, is related to a patient’s body mass index. Using an existing physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for Ertapenem, we constructed a least squares inverse problem to determine an optimal dose for males with varying body weights and heights. The criteria for an optimal dose was based upon pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) parameters calculated for a male with a body height of 175 cm and a weight of 72 kg. We also adjusted dosing intervals to ensure that effective concentration of drug between doses was the same for all males regardless of BMI.
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Caldwell, David E. "Production grammars for romance kinship terminology." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66069.
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Yee, Sean P. "Students' Metaphors for Mathematical Problem Solving." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1340197978.
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Bartl, Eduard. "Mathematical foundations of graded knowledge spaces." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2009.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2009.Includes bibliographical references.
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Baskova, Irina Mikhailovna. "Preparing Non-Native English Speakers for the Mathematical Vocabulary in the GRE and GMAT." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2017. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6684.
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The purpose of this study was to develop vocabulary materials to aid non-native English speakers, specifically Russian speaking test-takers, in their preparation for the mathematical sections of the General Record Examination (GRE) and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) in terms of English mathematical vocabulary. GRE and GMAT preparation materials and practice tests published by the Educational Testing Service, Kaplan, and Barron's were analyzed with the help of computer software. This data was then used to determine which key words to include in the vocabulary tool, which is now available on Quizlet (www.quizlet.com). The developed materials were further proofread by competent mathematics and English language professionals and assessed with the help of a questionnaire administered to them. The rationale of the materials development and the procedures used for the process are described in detail in this thesis project.
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Wallace, Michelle L. Ellerton Nerida F. "Characterization of high school mathematics and physics language genres." Normal, Ill. : Illinois State University, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3127139.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2004.Title from title page screen, viewed Jan. 21, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Nerida F. Ellerton (chair), Sherry L. Meier, Sharon Soucy McCrone, Tami S. Martin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-163) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Chan, Oscar. "Prosodic features for a maximum entropy language model." University of Western Australia. School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0244.
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A statistical language model attempts to characterise the patterns present in a natural language as a probability distribution defined over word sequences. Typically, they are trained using word co-occurrence statistics from a large sample of text. In some language modelling applications, such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), the availability of acoustic data provides an additional source of knowledge. This contains, amongst other things, the melodic and rhythmic aspects of speech referred to as prosody. Although prosody has been found to be an important factor in human speech recognition, its use in ASR has been limited. The goal of this research is to investigate how prosodic information can be employed to improve the language modelling component of a continuous speech recognition system. Because prosodic features are largely suprasegmental, operating over units larger than the phonetic segment, the language model is an appropriate place to incorporate such information. The prosodic features and standard language model features are combined under the maximum entropy framework, which provides an elegant solution to modelling information obtained from multiple, differing knowledge sources. We derive features for the model based on perceptually transcribed Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) labels, and analyse their contribution to the word recognition task. While ToBI has a solid foundation in linguistic theory, the need for human transcribers conflicts with the statistical model's requirement for a large quantity of training data. We therefore also examine the applicability of features which can be automatically extracted from the speech signal. We develop representations of an utterance's prosodic context using fundamental frequency, energy and duration features, which can be directly incorporated into the model without the need for manual labelling. Dimensionality reduction techniques are also explored with the aim of reducing the computational costs associated with training a maximum entropy model. Experiments on a prosodically transcribed corpus show that small but statistically significant reductions to perplexity and word error rates can be obtained by using both manually transcribed and automatically extracted features.
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Peterson, Justin. "Making novelty normal : a theory of sentence processing." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/8241.
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Esterhuizen, H. L. "Linguistics + Mathematics = twins." Interim : Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 7, Issue 1 :Central University of Technology Free State Bloemfontein, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/11462/379.
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Published ArticleLanguage and Mathematics are both so-called "tools" that are used by other disciplines to explain / describe phenomena in those disciplines, but they are scientific disciplines in their own right. Language is a system of symbols, but so is Mathematics. These symbols carry meaning or value. Both originate in the human mind and are then translated into messages of logic. What is important are the relationships between units that are inherent to both disciplines. In practicing the two disciplines, there are elements that correspond. These are a vocabulary, grammar, a community and meaning. Psycholinguists and psychologists are interested in the role that language might have in enabling other functions in the human cognitive repertoire. Some argue that language is a prerequisite for a whole range of intellectual activities, including mathematics. They claim that mathematical structures are, in a way, parasitic on the human linguistic faculty. Some evidence for the language: maths connection comes from neurology. Functional imaging studies of the brain show increased activation of the language areas as certain mathematical tasks / challenges are performed. Lesions to a certain part of the brain impair both the linguistic as well as the mathematical ability. We are looking at a fundamentally shared enterprise, a deeply interwoven development of numerical and linguistic aspects. This co-evolution of number concepts and number words suggests that it is no accident that the same species that possesses the language faculty as a unique trait, should also be the one that developed a systematic concept of number.
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Bergvall, Ida. "Bokstavligt, bildligt och symboliskt i skolans matematik : – en studie om ämnesspråk i TIMSS." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för pedagogik, didaktik och utbildningsstudier, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-284096.
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The overall aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of mathematical subject language regarding three semiotic resources, written language, images and mathematical symbols. The theses also investigates high- and low-performingstudents encounter with mathematical subject language. Based on previous research on language and from a theoretical foundation based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and social semiotics, four meaning dimensions – packing, precision, personification and presentation – were identified as central in academic language in general and in mathematical subject language. A didactically based reception theoretical perspective has been used for an analysis of high and low achieving students' encounter with the mathematical subject language. The thesis comprises three studies each examining the mathematical subject language in TIMSS 2011 from various angles. The analyzes were conducted on four content areas algebra, statistics, geometry and arithmetic in the Swedish version of the international study Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 (TIMSS). In a summary, the results showed that the mathematical subject language was used in different ways in the four content areas in TIMSS where colloquial and subject-specific forms of languages had different roles and were expressed in varying degrees by the written language, images and mathematical symbols. Thus each content area was expressed by its own register which means that is not sufficient to talk about mathematical subject language as one single language. The result shows that two forms of language, subject specific and everyday language were used parallel in the TIMSS material. The subject specific forms were most salient in algebra and geometry and the more everyday forms of language were more common in statistics and arithmetic. The results from the correlation analyses indicated that fewer students managed the encounter with tasks in algebra and geometry when they were expressed by subject specific language. In contrast, the results indicated that students were able handle the encounter with the more colloquial expressions of the content areas statistics and arithmetic.
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Hulse, I. "Linguistic realism in mathematical epistemology." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2008. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1444275/.
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One project in the epistemology of mathematics is to find a defensible account of what passes for mathematical knowledge. This study contributes to this project by examining philosophical theories of mathematics governed by certain basic assumptions. Foremost amongst these is the "linguistic realism" of the title. Roughly put, this is the view that the semantics of mathematical sentences should be taken at face value. Two approaches to mathematics are considered, realist and fictionalist. Mathematical realism affirms the existence of mathematical objects, taking much of what passes for mathematical knowledge as knowledge of such things. It faces the challenge of explaining how such knowledge is possible. The main strategies here are to appeal to the faculty of reason, to a faculty of intuition or to the faculty of sense perception. Recent examples of each strategy are considered and it is argued that the prospects for a satisfactory mathematical realism are limited. Mathematical fictionalism does not affirm the existence of mathematical objects, claiming that mathematics is, or should be considered to be, a form of pretence. It faces the challenge of explaining how a form of pretence can discharge the roles mathematics has in empirical applications. Strategies here are to argue that mathematics is an eliminable convenience or, acknowledging that this may not be the case, that the roles played by mathematics in empirical applications are played in similar contexts by acknowledged forms of pretence. It is argued that the first strategy is not promising but that there is a version of the second that can be defended against objections. In closing, consequences of the conclusions reached are explored and directions for future research indicated.
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陸穎剛 and Wing-kong Luk. "Concept space approach for cross-lingual information retrieval." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B30147724.
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Norgaard, Holly Luttrell. "Assessing Linguistic, Mathematical, and Visual Factors Related to Student Performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, Eighth Grade Mathematics Test." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2005. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4849/.
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The No Child Left Behind Act and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Principles and Standards both had a significant impact on the format and content of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) math test. Content analysis of the 2004 TAKS eighth grade math test identified the prevalence of linguistic complexity, mathematical rigor, and visual presentation factors and explored their relationship to student success on individual test items. Variables to be studied were identified through a review of literature in the area of reading comprehension of math word problems. Sixteen variables of linguistic complexity that have been significantly correlated with student math test performance were selected. Four variables of visual presentation were identified and ten variables of mathematical rigor. An additional five variables of mathematical rigor emerged from preliminary study of the 2003 TAKS math test. Of the 35 individual variables, only four reached a significant level of correlation with the percent of students correctly answering a given test item. The number of digits presented in the problem statement and number of known quantities both exhibited a significant positive correlation with the dependent variable. The number of times a student had to perform a multiplication operation had a significant negative correlation with the percent of correct responses, as did the total number of operations required. Stepwise regression of these four variables revealed total number of operations and known quantities to be the best combination of predictors of correct responses. When grouped in categories by problem type and compared, items involving mathematical reasoning but no mathematical operations had a significantly higher percentage of correct responses than those requiring at least one operation. Further categorization revealed problems involving applications only (without computation) associated with the highest levels of correct responses, followed by those involving only computation. Items requiring both applications and computations had a significantly lower percent of correct responses.
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Jung, Darryl 1962. "The Logic of Principia Mathematica." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/11766.
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Bernabini, Luca <1989>. "Mathematical skills: intergenerational features and relationships with cognitive and linguistic abilities." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2020. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/9479/1/Luca%20Bernabini_PhD_Tesi.pdf.
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This thesis aimed to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of math skills, with particular reference to cognitive, and linguistic markers, core mechanisms of number processing and environmental variables. In particular, the issue of intergenerational transmission of math skills has been deepened, comparing parents’ and children’s basic and formal math abilities. This pattern of relationships amongst these has been considered in two different age ranges, preschool and primary school children.
In the first chapter, a general introduction on mathematical skills is offered, with a description of some seminal works up to recent studies and latest findings. The first chapter concludes with a review of studies about the influence of environmental variables. In particular, a review of studies about home numeracy and intergenerational transmission is examined.
The first study analyzed the relationship between mathematical skills of children attending primary school and those of their mothers. The objective of this study was to understand the influence of mothers' math abilities on those of their children.
In the second study, the relationship between parents’ and children numerical processing has been examined in a sample of preschool children. The goal was to understand how mathematical skills of parents were relevant for the development of the numerical skills of children, taking into account children’s cognitive and linguistic skills as well as the role of home numeracy.
The third study had the objective of investigating whether the verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills presumed to underlie arithmetic are also related to reading. Primary school children were administered measures of reading and arithmetic to understand the relationships between these two abilities and testing for possible shared cognitive markers.
Finally, in the general discussion a summary of main findings across the study is presented, together with clinical and theoretical implications.
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Prost, Jean-Philippe. "Modelling Syntactic Gradience with Loose Constraint-based Parsing." Phd thesis, Université de Provence - Aix-Marseille I, 2008. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00352828.
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La grammaticalité d'une phrase est habituellement conçue comme une notion binaire : une phrase est soit grammaticale, soit agrammaticale. Cependant, bon nombre de travaux se penchent de plus en plus sur l'étude de degrés d'acceptabilité intermédiaires, auxquels le terme de gradience fait parfois référence. À ce jour, la majorité de ces travaux s'est concentrée sur l'étude de l'évaluation humaine de la gradience syntaxique. Cette étude explore la possibilité de construire un modèle robuste qui s'accorde avec ces jugements humains.Nous suggérons d'élargir au langage mal formé les concepts de Gradience Intersective et de Gradience Subsective, proposés par Aarts pour la modélisation de jugements graduels. Selon ce nouveau modèle, le problème que soulève la gradience concerne la classification d'un énoncé dans une catégorie particulière, selon des critères basés sur les caractéristiques syntaxiques de l'énoncé. Nous nous attachons à étendre la notion de Gradience Intersective (GI) afin qu'elle concerne le choix de la meilleure solution parmi un ensemble de candidats, et celle de Gradience Subsective (GS) pour qu'elle concerne le calcul du degré de typicité de cette structure au sein de sa catégorie. La GI est alors modélisée à l'aide d'un critère d'optimalité, tandis que la GS est modélisée par le calcul d'un degré d'acceptabilité grammaticale. Quant aux caractéristiques syntaxiques requises pour permettre de classer un énoncé, notre étude de différents cadres de représentation pour la syntaxe du langage naturel montre qu'elles peuvent aisément être représentées dans un cadre de syntaxe modèle-théorique (Model-Theoretic Syntax). Nous optons pour l'utilisation des Grammaires de Propriétés (GP), qui offrent, précisément, la possibilité de modéliser la caractérisation d'un énoncé. Nous présentons ici une solution entièrement automatisée pour la modélisation de la gradience syntaxique, qui procède de la caractérisation d'une phrase bien ou mal formée, de la génération d'un arbre syntaxique optimal, et du calcul d'un degré d'acceptabilité grammaticale pour l'énoncé.
À travers le développement de ce nouveau modèle, la contribution de ce travail comporte trois volets.
Premièrement, nous spécifions un système logique pour les GP qui permet la révision de sa formalisation sous l'angle de la théorie des modèles. Il s'attache notamment à formaliser les mécanismes de satisfaction et de relâche de contraintes mis en oeuvre dans les GP, ainsi que la façon dont ils permettent la projection d'une catégorie lors du processus d'analyse. Ce nouveau système introduit la notion de satisfaction relâchée, et une formulation en logique du premier ordre permettant de raisonner au sujet d'un énoncé.
Deuxièmement, nous présentons notre implantation du processus d'analyse syntaxique relâchée à base de contraintes (Loose Satisfaction Chart Parsing, ou LSCP), dont nous prouvons qu'elle génère toujours une analyse syntaxique complète et optimale. Cette approche est basée sur une technique de programmation dynamique (dynamic programming), ainsi que sur les mécanismes décrits ci-dessus. Bien que d'une complexité élevée, cette solution algorithmique présente des performances suffisantes pour nous permettre d'expérimenter notre modèle de gradience.
Et troisièmement, après avoir postulé que la prédiction de jugements humains d'acceptabilité peut se baser sur des facteurs dérivés de la LSCP, nous présentons un modèle numérique pour l'estimation du degré d'acceptabilité grammaticale d'un énoncé. Nous mesurons une bonne corrélation de ces scores avec des jugements humains d'acceptabilité grammaticale. Qui plus est, notre modèle s'avère obtenir de meilleures performances que celles obtenues par un modèle préexistant que nous utilisons comme référence, et qui, quant à lui, a été expérimenté à l'aide d'analyses syntaxiques générées manuellement.
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Meyer, Ulrich 1968. "Mathematics, time, and confirmation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8194.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-128).
This dissertation discusses two issues about abstract objects: their role in scientific theories, and their relation to time. Chapter 1, "Why Apply Mathematics?" argues that scientific theories are not about the mathematics that is applied in them, and defends this thesis against the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument. Chapter 2, "Scientific Ontology," is a critical study of W. V. Quine's claim that metaphysics and mathematics are epistemologically on a par with natural science. It is argued that Quine's view relies on a unacceptable account of empirical confirmation. Chapter 3, "Prior and the Platonist," demonstrates the incompatibility of two popular views about time: the "Platonist" thesis that some objects exist "outside" time, and A. N. Prior's proposal for treating tense on the model of modality. Chapter 4, "What has Eternity Ever Done for You?" argues against the widely held view that abstract objects exist eternally ("outside" time), and presents a defense of the rival view that they exist sempiternally (at all times)
Ulrich Meyer.
Ph.D.
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Stroinska, Maria Magdalena. "Indirect reference in German mathematical discourse." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/24351.
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Lai, Mun-yee, and 黎敏兒. "Teacher's linguistic features in mathematics classroom: an exploratory study." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31962270.
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Lai, Mun-yee. "Teacher's linguistic features in mathematics classroom : an exploratory study /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk:8888/cgi-bin/hkuto%5Ftoc%5Fpdf?B23451415.
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Uzquiano, Gabriel 1968. "Ontology and the foundations of mathematics." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9370.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1999.Includes bibliographical references.
"Ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics" consists of three papers concerned with ontological issues in the foundations of mathematics. Chapter 1, "Numbers and Persons," confronts the problem of the inscrutability of numerical reference and argues that, even if inscrutable, the reference of the numerals, as we ordinarily use them, is determined much more, precisely than up to isomorphism. We argue that the truth conditions of a variety of numerical modal and counterfactual sentences (whose acceptance plays a crucial role in applications) place serious constraints on the sorts of items to which numerals, as we ordinarily use them, can be taken to refer: Numerals cannot be taken to refer to objects that exist contingently such as people, mountains, or rivers, but rather must be taken to refer to objects that exist necessarily such as abstracta. Chapter 2, "Modern Set Theory and Replacement," takes up a challenge to explain the reasons one should accept the axiom of replacement of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, when its applications within ordinary mathematics and the rest of science are often described as rare and recondite. We argue that this is not a question one should be interested in; replacement is required to ensure that the element-set relation is well-founded as well as to ensure that the cumulation of sets described by set theory reaches and proceeds beyond the level w of the cumulative hierarchy. A more interesting question is whether we should accept instances of replacement on uncountable sets, for these are indeed rarely used outside higher set theory. We argue that the best case for (uncountable) replacement comes not from direct, intuitive considerations, but from the role replacement plays in the formulation of transfinite recursion and the theory of ordinals, and from the fact that it permits us to express and assert the (first-order) content of the modern cumulative view of the set theoretic universe as arrayed in a cumulative hierarchy of levels. Chapter 3, "A No-Class Theory of Classes," makes use of the apparatus of plural quantification to construe talk of classes as plural talk about sets, and thus provide an interpretation of both one- and two-sorted versions of first-order Morse-Kelley set theory, an impredicative theory of classes. We argue that the plural interpretation of impredicative theories of classes has a number of advantages over more traditional interpretations of the language of classes as involving singular reference to gigantic set-like entities, only too encompassing to be sets, the most important of these being perhaps that it makes the machinery of classes available for the formalization of much recent and very interesting work in set theory without threatening the universality of the theory as the most comprehensive theory of collections, when these are understood as objects.
by Gabriel Uzquiano.
Ph.D.
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Breet, Felicity Grace. "Verbal interaction in mathematics lessons in Anglophone Cameroon." Thesis, Durham University, 1993. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1216/.
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The verbal interaction between students during mathematics lessons Cameroon is the primary focus of Strategies for facilitating language Service Training activities to meet needs of such teachers form a secondary teachers and in Anglophone this study. oriented Inthe training focus. Specifically three research questions are asked. Firstly, how do teachers and students interact in English whilst teaching and learning mathematics? Secondly can a model of these patterns be created and thirdly can such a model be used with teachers to enable them to increase the amount and range of student language in mathematics lessons. Following a review of relevant research-, -the need for a study which will provide answers to these questions is clear. The methodology of such research is also reviewed, 'and thus the present study is rooted in existing practice both in terms of its content and its research design. The data, audio recorded lessons, are transcribed and the patterns of verbal interaction observed classified via a grounded theory. These patterns are described collectively and then individually so that changes made during the phase of intensive INSET can be observed. The study shows that the participating teachers were able to use their new awareness of their own patterns of verbal interaction to experiment with innovative ways of interacting with their learners some of which led to an increase in the amount and range of student language use. The implications of this study for. INSET programmes are many. Enabling teachers to be more aware of their own language use is advantageous and provides the basis for long term changes in classroom procedures. The study also offers a research process which can be used to illuminate verbal interaction in other contexts such as discussions between doctors and their patients or during formalised conflict resolution.
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Landry, Elaine. "Category-theoretic realism, a linguistic approach to the philosophy of mathematics." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0007/NQ32318.pdf.
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Shiers, N. L. "Gaussian latent tree model constraints for linguistics and other applications." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2016. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/80590/.
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The relationships between languages are often modelled as phylogenetic trees whereby there is a single shared ancestral language at the root and contemporary languages appear as leaves. These can be thought of as directed acyclic graphs with hidden variables, specifically Bayesian networks. However, from a statistical perspective there is often no formal assessment of the suitability of these latent tree models. A lot of the work that seeks to address this has focused on discrete variable models. However, when observations are instead considered as functional data, the high dimensional approximations are often better considered in a Gaussian context. The high dimensional data is often inefficiently stored and so the first challenge is to project this data to a low dimension while retaining the information of interest. One approach is to use the newly developed tool named separable-canonical variate analysis to form a basis. Extending the techniques for assessing latent tree model compatibility to beyond discrete variables, the complete set of Gaussian tree constraints are derived for the first time. This set comprises equations and inequality statements in terms of correlations of observed variables. These statements must in theory be adhered to for a Gaussian latent tree model to be appropriate for a given data set. Using the separable-canonical variate analysis basis to obtain a truncated representation, the suitability of a phylogenetic tree can then be plainly assessed. However, in practice it is desirable to allow for some sampling error and as such probabilistic tools are developed alongside the theoretical derivation of Gaussian tree constraints. The proposed methodology is implemented in an in-depth study of a real linguistic data set to assess the phylogenies of five Romance languages. This application is distinctive as the data set consists of acoustic recordings, these are treated as functional data, and moreover these are then being used to compare languages in a phylogenetic context. As a consequence a wide range of theory and tools are called upon from the multivariate and functional domains, and the powerful new separable-canonical function analysis and separable-canonical variate analysis are used. Utilising the newly derived Gaussian tree constraints for hidden variable models provides a first insight into features of spoken languages that appear to be tree-compatible.
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Buys, Jan Moolman. "Probabilistic tree transducers for grammatical error correction." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85592.
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Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We investigate the application of weighted tree transducers to correcting grammatical errors in natural language. Weighted finite-state transducers (FST) have been used successfully in a wide range of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, even though the expressiveness of the linguistic transformations they perform is limited. Recently, there has been an increase in the use of weighted tree transducers and related formalisms that can express syntax-based natural language transformations in a probabilistic setting. The NLP task that we investigate is the automatic correction of grammar errors made by English language learners. In contrast to spelling correction, which can be performed with a very high accuracy, the performance of grammar correction systems is still low for most error types. Commercial grammar correction systems mostly use rule-based methods. The most common approach in recent grammatical error correction research is to use statistical classifiers that make local decisions about the occurrence of specific error types. The approach that we investigate is related to a number of other approaches inspired by statistical machine translation (SMT) or based on language modelling. Corpora of language learner writing annotated with error corrections are used as training data. Our baseline model is a noisy-channel FST model consisting of an n-gram language model and a FST error model, which performs word insertion, deletion and replacement operations. The tree transducer model we use to perform error correction is a weighted top-down tree-to-string transducer, formulated to perform transformations between parse trees of correct sentences and incorrect sentences. Using an algorithm developed for syntax-based SMT, transducer rules are extracted from training data of which the correct version of sentences have been parsed. Rule weights are also estimated from the training data. Hypothesis sentences generated by the tree transducer are reranked using an n-gram language model. We perform experiments to evaluate the performance of different configurations of the proposed models. In our implementation an existing tree transducer toolkit is used. To make decoding time feasible sentences are split into clauses and heuristic pruning is performed during decoding. We consider different modelling choices in the construction of transducer rules. The evaluation of our models is based on precision and recall. Experiments are performed to correct various error types on two learner corpora. The results show that our system is competitive with existing approaches on several error types.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ons ondersoek die toepassing van geweegde boomoutomate om grammatikafoute in natuurlike taal outomaties reg te stel. Geweegde eindigetoestand outomate word suksesvol gebruik in ’n wye omvang van take in natuurlike taalverwerking, alhoewel die uitdrukkingskrag van die taalkundige transformasies wat hulle uitvoer beperk is. Daar is die afgelope tyd ’n toename in die gebruik van geweegde boomoutomate en verwante formalismes wat sintaktiese transformasies in natuurlike taal in ’n probabilistiese raamwerk voorstel. Die natuurlike taalverwerkingstoepassing wat ons ondersoek is die outomatiese regstelling van taalfoute wat gemaak word deur Engelse taalleerders. Terwyl speltoetsing in Engels met ’n baie hoë akkuraatheid gedoen kan word, is die prestasie van taalregstellingstelsels nog relatief swak vir meeste fouttipes. Kommersiële taalregstellingstelsels maak oorwegend gebruik van reël-gebaseerde metodes. Die algemeenste benadering in onlangse navorsing oor grammatikale foutkorreksie is om statistiese klassifiseerders wat plaaslike besluite oor die voorkoms van spesifieke fouttipes maak te gebruik. Die benadering wat ons ondersoek is verwant aan ’n aantal ander benaderings wat geïnspireer is deur statistiese masjienvertaling of op taalmodellering gebaseer is. Korpora van taalleerderskryfwerk wat met foutregstellings geannoteer is, word as afrigdata gebruik. Ons kontrolestelsel is ’n geraaskanaal eindigetoestand outomaatmodel wat bestaan uit ’n n-gram taalmodel en ’n foutmodel wat invoegings-, verwyderings- en vervangingsoperasies op woordvlak uitvoer. Die boomoutomaatmodel wat ons gebruik vir grammatikale foutkorreksie is ’n geweegde bo-na-onder boom-na-string omsetteroutomaat geformuleer om transformasies tussen sintaksbome van korrekte sinne en foutiewe sinne te maak. ’n Algoritme wat ontwikkel is vir sintaksgebaseerde statistiese masjienvertaling word gebruik om reëls te onttrek uit die afrigdata, waarvan sintaksontleding op die korrekte weergawe van die sinne gedoen is. Reëlgewigte word ook vanaf die afrigdata beraam. Hipotese-sinne gegenereer deur die boomoutomaat word herrangskik met behulp van ’n n-gram taalmodel. Ons voer eksperimente uit om die doeltreffendheid van verskillende opstellings van die voorgestelde modelle te evalueer. In ons implementering word ’n bestaande boomoutomaat sagtewarepakket gebruik. Om die dekoderingstyd te verminder word sinne in frases verdeel en die soekruimte heuristies besnoei. Ons oorweeg verskeie modelleringskeuses in die samestelling van outomaatreëls. Die evaluering van ons modelle word gebaseer op presisie en herroepvermoë. Eksperimente word uitgevoer om verskeie fouttipes reg te maak op twee leerderkorpora. Die resultate wys dat ons model kompeterend is met bestaande benaderings op verskeie fouttipes.
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Hunsader, Patricia D. "Lessons learned about boys' and girls' mathematical problem solving : the solution processes, performance, linguistic explanations, self-efficacy, and self-assessment of fifth-grade students of varying reading and mathematics abilities." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0001185.
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Picard, Joseph Romeo William Michael. "Impredicativity and turn of the century foundations of mathematics : presupposition in Poincare and Russell." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12498.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1993.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-158).
by Joseph Romeo William Michael Picard
Ph.D.
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Doran, Yaegan John. "Knowledge in Physics through Mathematics, Image and Language." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/15173.
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This thesis explores the nature of knowledge in physics and the discourse that organises it. In particular, it focuses on the affordances of mathematics, image and language for construing the highly technical meanings that constitute this knowledge. It shows that each of these resources play a crucial role in physics’ ability to generate generalised theory whilst maintaining relevance to the empirical physical world. First, to understand how mathematics contributes to knowledge-building, the thesis presents a detailed descriptive model from the perspective of Systemic Functional Semiotics that considers mathematics on its own terms. The description builds on O’Halloran’s (2005) grammar in order to understand mathematics’ intrinsic functionality and theoretical architecture. In doing so, it takes an axial perspective (Martin 2013) that considers the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes in Systemic Functional theory as the theoretical primitives from which metafunction, strata, rank and all other theoretical categories can be derived. It shows that, when not transposing categories from English but rather deriving them from axial principles, mathematics’ theoretical architecture is considerably different to that of any resource previously seen. Looking metafunctionally, mathematics displays a highly elaborated logical component within the ideational metafunction, but shows no evidence for a discrete interpersonal metafunction. Looking at the levels within the grammar, it displays two interacting hierarchies: a rank scale based on constituency and a nesting scale based on iterative layering. Finally, it shows distinct and predictable texts patterns in its interaction with language. From this, the description is able to use genre as a unifying semiotic that strongly predicts the grammatical patterns that occur throughout physics discourse. By developing these models, the thesis offers an understanding of mathematics’ unique functionality and the reasons it is consistently used in physics. Second, the thesis interprets the images of physics from the perspective of the Systemic Functional dimension of field. It shows that much of the power of images comes from the large number of distinct meanings that can be encapsulated in a single snapshot. In one image, large taxonomies, long sequences of activity, extensive arrays of data and various levels of specificity can all be presented. This allows various components of physics’ knowledge to be related and coordinated, and aids physics in building a coherent and integrated knowledge structure. Following the descriptive component of the thesis, the specific functionalities of mathematics, image and language are interpreted through the Legitimation Code Theory dimension of Semantics. This provides an understanding of the organisation of physics’ knowledge structure as a whole. It shows how the interaction of mathematics, language and image underpins physics’ ability to progressively build ever more elaborated technical meanings, to make empirical predictions from theoretical models and to abstract theoretical generalisations from empirical data. By interpreting the mathematics, image and language used in physics from the complementary perspectives of Systemic Functional Semiotics and Legitimation Code Theory, the thesis offers a detailed model of how physics manages to make sense of and predict the vast physical world.
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Vale, Pamela. "Describing the relationship between the cognitive and linguistic complexity of a mathematical literacy examination and types of student errors." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001774.
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Much prior research has shown that if students have a poor command of the language in which they are taught and assessed, they experience a complex and deep learning disadvantage (Barton & Neville-Barton, 2003). Abedi (2006) mentions, in particular, that unnecessary linguistic complexity can threaten the validity of examination items and thus compromises the fairness of the assessment for English language learners. In Clarkson’s (1991, p. 31) research it was found that for the English language learners in the study “comprehension errors [made] up a high proportion of the errors made when…students attempt[ed] to solve mathematical word problems”. In an attempt to explore whether this was the case for a group of National Certificate (Vocational) [NC(V)] students at an FET college, the research conducted in this study focused on describing the cognitive and linguistic complexity of Level 4 Mathematical Literacy examination items as well as the types of responses from a sample of students. A mixed-methods case study design was selected. Student errors were classified as either due to mathematical literacy-related sources, or language-related sources and the question was asked as to how the cognitive and linguistic complexity of items might be related to the types of errors made. Statistically significant correlations were found between the linguistic complexity of items and language-related errors, and between the cognitive complexity of items and all types of errors. It was also possible to identify which language features, in particular, were statistically significantly correlated with linguistic complexity, namely: prepositional phrases; words of 7 letters or more and complex/compound sentences. As was expected, the majority of errors were categorised as mathematical literacy-related. However, as many as 19.22% of all errors made were identified as language-related. While the scope of the study prevents any generalisations from being made, the results indicate a need for a larger-scale study of this nature to determine if the complex and deep learning disadvantage mentioned by Barton and Neville-Barton (2003) does exist with regard to the assessment of Mathematical Literacy for NC(V) students who are English language learners (Barton & Neville-Barton, 2003).
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Wang, Xiaozhou. "Language shift regarding Canada's French-speaking population: Data comparability and trends from 1971 to 2001." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/27304.
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The importance of establishing valid language shift trends regarding Canada's French-speaking populations and the historical comparability of Canadian census language data are considered. Based on an empirical theory, comparability breaks in language data since 1971 are identified and evaluated. The proportions of Canadian-born persons of French mother tongue, and of French home language, to the total population of relevant birth regions are then adjusted separately, to reduce the impact of comparability breaks. The resulting language shift trends regarding the French-speaking populations are portrayed using language vitality indices for reference cohorts. It is found that for the whole of Canada, and for the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, the vitality of French among the Canadian-born rebounded in 2001, after consistently decreasing from 1971 to 1991. It is also observed that for other regions, the vitality of French went down continuously, indicating a sustained and aggravated assimilation over the past 30 years.
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Cardinal, Kumi. "An algebraic study of Japanese grammar /." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=29419.
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I present an algebraic language model for Japanese within the framework of a type grammar. The analysis pays attention to both inflectional morphology and to syntax. The mathematics for checking the sentencehood of strings of words invokes a generalization of the notorious group concept.
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Pechenick, Eitan. "Exploring the Google Books Corpus: An Information-Theoretic Approach to Linguistic Evolution." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2015. http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/525.
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The Google Books corpus contains millions of books in a variety of languages. Due to this incredible volume and its free availability, it is a treasure trove that has inspired a plethora of linguistic research.
It is tempting to treat frequency trends from Google Books data sets as indicators for the true popularity of various words and phrases. Doing so allows us to draw novel conclusions about the evolution of public perception of a given topic. However, sampling published works by availability and ease of digitization leads to several important effects, which have typically been overlooked in previous studies. One of these is the ability of a single prolific author to noticeably insert new phrases into a language. A greater effect arises from scientific texts, which have become increasingly prolific in the last several decades and are heavily sampled in the corpus. The result is a surge of phrases typical to academic articles but less common in general, such as references to time in the form of citations. We highlight these dynamics by examining and comparing major contributions to the statistical divergence of English data sets between decades in the period 1800--2000. We find that only the English Fiction data set from the second version of the corpus is not heavily affected by professional texts, in clear contrast to the first version of the fiction data set and both unfiltered English data sets.
We critique a method used by authors of an earlier work to determine the birth and death rates of words in a given linguistic data set. While intriguing, the method in question appears to produce an artificial surge in the death rate at the end of the observed period of time. In order to avoid boundary effects in our own analysis of asymmetries in language dynamics, we observe the volume of word flux across various relative frequency thresholds (in both directions) for the second English Fiction data set. We then use the contributions of the words crossing these thresholds to the Jensen-Shannon divergence between consecutive decades to resolve major factors driving the flux.
Having established careful information-theoretic techniques to resolve important features in the evolution of the data set, we validate and refine our methods by analyzing the effects of major exogenous factors, specifically wars. This approach leads to a uniquely comprehensive set of methods for harnessing the Google Books corpus and exploring socio-cultural and linguistic evolution.
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Murakami, Yuko. "Modal logic of partitions." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3162977.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2005.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 2, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: A, page: 0620. Chairs: Lawrence Moss; Michael Dunn.
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Gray, Tyler. "Measuring Linguistic and Cultural Evolution Using Books and Tweets." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2019. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/1130.
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Written language provides a snapshot of linguistic, cultural, and current events information for a given time period. Aggregating these snapshots by studying many texts over time reveals trends in the evolution of language, culture, and society. The ever-increasing amount of electronic text, both from the digitization of books and other paper documents to the increasing frequency with which electronic text is used as a means of communication, has given us an unprecedented opportunity to study these trends. In this dissertation, we use hundreds of thousands of books spanning two centuries scanned by Google, and over 100 billion messages, or ‘tweets’, posted to the social media platform, Twitter, over the course of a decade to study the English language, as well as study the evolution of culture and society as inferred from the changes in language.
We begin by studying the current state of verb regularization and how this compares between the more formal writing of books and the more colloquial writing of tweets on Twitter. We find that the extent of verb regularization is greater on Twitter, taken as a whole, than in English Fiction books, and also for tweets geotagged in the United States relative to American English books, but the opposite is true for tweets geotagged in the United Kingdom relative to British English books. We also find interesting regional variations in regularization across counties in the United States. However, once differences in population are accounted for, we do not identify strong correlations with socio-demographic variables.
Next, we study stretchable words, a fundamental aspect of spoken language that, until the advent of social media, was rarely observed within written language. We examine the frequency distributions of stretchable words and introduce two central parameters that capture their main characteristics of balance and stretch. We explore their dynamics by creating visual tools we call ‘balance plots’ and ‘spelling trees’. We also discuss how the tools and methods we develop could be used to study mistypings and misspellings, and may have further applications both within and beyond language.
Finally, we take a closer look at the English Fiction n-gram dataset created by Google. We begin by explaining why using token counts as a proxy of word, or more generally, ‘n-gram’, importance is fundamentally flawed. We then devise a method to rebuild the Google Books corpus so that meaningful linguistic and cultural trends may be reliably discerned. We use book counts as the primary ranking for an n-gram and use subsampling to normalize across time to mitigate the extraneous results created by the underlying exponential increase in data volume over time. We also combine the subsampled data over a number of years as a method of smoothing. We then use these improved methods to study linguistic and cultural evolution across the last two centuries. We examine the dynamics of Zipf distributions for n-grams by measuring the churn of language reflected in the flux of n-grams across rank boundaries. Finally, we examine linguistic change using wordshift plots and a rank divergence measure with a tunable parameter to compare the language of two different time periods. Our results address several methodological shortcomings associated with the raw Google Books data, strengthening the potential for cultural inference by word changes.
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Mahofa, Ernest. "Code switching in the learning of mathematics word problems in Grade 10." Thesis, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11838/1950.
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Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Education
in the Faculty of Education
at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology
2014This study investigates the effects of code switching in the learning of mathematics word problems in Grade 10. The research used Cummins’ language acquisition theory to inform the study. The study employed ethnographic qualitative research design whereby classroom observations and semi-structured interviews were used as data collection techniques. The use of multiple data collection techniques was to ensure validity and credibility of the study. The sample consisted of sixty learners and two mathematics teachers. The sample was drawn from a population of one thousand two hundred and thirty five learners and forty nine teachers.The study has shown that even though code switching could be beneficial in the learning and teaching of mathematics, it was difficult for learners and teachers to use it in a way that enhances the learning of mathematics word problems because of the barriers in the use of mathematical language. It is recommended that teachers should exercise care when using code switching, especially with the topics that involve word problems; as such topics are more aligned to certain mathematical language that could not be translated to IsiXhosa.
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Albuquerque, Rosangela Nieto de. "Alguns fatores lingüísticos que interferem na intelecção dos problemas matemáticos no ensino fundamental I." Universidade Católica de Pernambuco, 2007. http://www.unicap.br/tede//tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=127.
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O presente trabalho é o resultado da análise de alguns problemas matemáticos dos livros didáticos e tem como objetivo identificar as causas da dificuldade de interpretação e intelecção dos problemas matemáticos pelos alunos que estão iniciando a leitura, na 1 série do Ensino Fundamental I. Nossa hipótese é que os fatores lingüísticos relativos aos enunciados dos problemas matemáticos interferem na sua compreensão, conforme a articulação entre os fenômenos da língua e a construção deste tipo textual. Buscamos, então, os estudos dos mecanismos enunciativos e de textualização. A metodologia deste estudo consiste na análise do texto, baseada nos estudos da lingüística textual, relativos ao nível semântico-pragmático-léxico da construção textual, tendo em vista a complexidade dos enunciados dos problemas matemáticos. Acreditamos que as estratégias textuais, as categorias de referenciação (endofórica, anafórica, catafórica e exofórica) e dos dêiticos (tempo, lugar e pessoa), são fatores lingüísticos, que, conforme a articulação na construção do enunciado, dificultam a intelecção e interpretação dos problemas matemáticos, sobretudo, pelos educandos que estão iniciando a leitura e, nesse período, apresentam dificuldades nas relações espaciais e temporais. A pesquisa compreendeu, basicamente, dois momentos fundamentais: a escolha dos problemas matemáticos, e a análise dos dados. Primeiramente buscamos, construir um instrumento metodológico para identificar e selecionar, através do corpus constituído, os problemas matemáticos, cuja construção do enunciado poderá induzir ao erro do educando na resolução do problema. Selecionamos fragmentos textuais, aleatoriamente, conforme a natureza da superfície textual, buscando alguns fatores lingüísticos que interferem na interpretação e intelecção dos problemas matemáticos, sem nos preocuparmos no entanto com a quantidade de problemas analisados. Posteriomente, partimos para a análise dos dados, fundamentada nas relações lingüísticas, e na questão de compreensão textual, considerando os aspectos sócio-culturais em que o educando está inserido. Propomos, pois, ao longo desta pesquisa, embora reconheçamos que não esgotamos o assunto, suscitar uma nova reflexão nos autores dos livros didáticos, na construção dos enunciados dos problemas matemáticos, que no nosso entender, facilitará a intelecção e interpretação dos problemas matemáticos aos alunos de 1 série do Ensino Fundamental I.The present work is the result of the analysis of some mathematical problems of didactic books, and has as objective identify the causes of the interpretation difficulty and intelection of the mathematical problems for the pupils who are initiating the reading, in first years of basic school. Our hypothesis is linguistic factors into the statments of the mathematical problems intervenes in the understanding, as the joint between the phenomon of the language and the construction of this text type. So we study, the enunciative mechanisms and textmake. The methodology of this study consists in the analysis of the text, based in studies of text linguistics, in the level semantic-pragmatic-lexicon in the text construction, in view of complexity of the statements of the mathematical problems. We believe that the text strategies, referencing categories (endofórica, anafórica, catafórica and exofórica) and the dêiticos (time, place and person), they are linguistic factors, in the construction of statement, they make difficult the understanding of the mathematical problems, over all, for the educating that are initiating reading, and show in this period special difficulties with space and secular relations. The research understood, basically, two basic moments: the choice of the mathematical problems, and the analysis of the informations. First, we search a methodological instrument to identify and select, through the corpus, mathematical problems, whose statement construction will be able to induce the educating to the error in resolution of the problem. We select text fragments, randomly, as the nature of the text surface, searching some linguistic factors that interven in the interpretation and understanding of the mathematical problems, without special about the amount of analyzed problems. Lately, we have analysed the research, buy the social-culture aspects whose the educating is inserted. We meant to reflect about the didatical book, that will be easier to the educating understand the statements of the mathematical problems of the first years of basic school
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Raiker, Andrea. "The role of linguistics in the learning, teaching and assessment of mathematics in primary education : a case study of a lower school in the United Kingdom." Thesis, University of Bedfordshire, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10547/134963.
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This doctoral research was concerned with the role of language and its implications for the learning, teaching and assessment of mathematics for children aged 4-9 years. Earlier research by the author had established language and assessment as bridges enabling learning although they had the potential to increase the divide between teacher and learner. Reflection raised the question on how children achieved in mathematics despite potential difficulties with language and assessment. Review of the literature concluded that resources and sociocultural norms were also bridges between learner and teacher. A model was established of the relationships and processes between all perceived variables that provided an external, theoretical structure to be evaluated against structuralist, pragmatic and integrational linguistic approaches and empirical outcomes. The overarching approaches adopted were institutional ethnography and case study. An appropriate methodology was devised whereby sophisticated ICT equipment captured all visual and speech events during classroom interactions. Frequency analysis at word level, content analysis at utterance level and discourse analysis at total speech level triangulated with content analysis of interviews and evaluation of documentation completed the empirical research. Data analysis revealed five registers of children’s talk. Evidence suggested that the peer-peer ‘conditioned talk’ used in focused group work was the most effective for learning as it enabled them to discern the small steps in the inferential leaps in discourse made by their teachers, work out problems together, inform their peers, share findings and reinforce each others’ learning. Learners’ language showed aspects of structural, pragmatic and integrational linguistics, confirming a conclusion of the literature review that the various linguistic approaches discussed should be used to support and not exclude each other. The contribution made to knowledge is the ethnomethodology provided by the model, ICT resource and the five registers of talk revealed by the linguistic approach to discourse analysis. Teachers would be able to understand nuances of language used by their pupils and acquire essential skills and tools to put into effect the personalised learning agenda. Peer-peer observation of teachers would be an appropriate platform for the observation of the different registers used by learners, the resources that generate those registers, and their most effective use to close the gap between natural language and the subject specific language of mathematics.
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Hahn, Christian [Verfasser], Roland [Akademischer Betreuer] Grabner, Roland [Gutachter] Grabner, Sascha [Gutachter] Schroeder, and Hendrik [Gutachter] Saalbach. "Language-Switching Costs in Bilingual Mathematics Learning / Christian Hahn ; Gutachter: Roland Grabner; Sascha Schroeder; Hendrik, Saalbach ; Betreuer: Roland Grabner." Göttingen : Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2019. http://d-nb.info/1189904608/34.
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Hadjipantelis, Pantelis-Zenon. "Functional data analysis in phonetics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2013. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/62527/.
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The study of speech sounds has established itself as a distinct area of research, namely Phonetics. This is because speech production is a complex phenomenon mediated by the interaction of multiple components of a linguistic and non-linguistic nature. To investigate such phenomena, this thesis employs a Functional Data Analysis framework where speech segments are viewed as functions. FDA treats functions as its fundamental unit of analysis; the thesis takes advantage of this, both in conceptual as well as practical terms, achieving theoretical coherence as well as statistical robustness in its insights. The main techniques employed in this work are: Functional principal components analysis, Functional mixed-effects regression models and phylogenetic Gaussian process regression for functional data. As it will be shown, these techniques allow for complementary analyses of linguistic data. The thesis presents a series of novel applications of functional data analysis in Phonetics. Firstly, it investigates the influence linguistic information carries on the speech intonation patterns. It provides these insights through an analysis combining FPCA with a series of mixed effect models, through which meaningful categorical prototypes are built. Secondly, the interplay of phase and amplitude variation in functional phonetic data is investigated. A multivariate mixed effects framework is developed for jointly analysing phase and amplitude information contained in phonetic data. Lastly, the phylogenetic associations between languages within a multi-language phonetic corpus are analysed. Utilizing a small subset of related Romance languages, a phylogenetic investigation of the words' spectrograms (functional objects defined over two continua simultaneously) is conducted to showcase a proof-of-concept experiment allowing the interconnection between FDA and Evolutionary Linguistics.
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Walichinski, Danieli. "Contextualização no ensino de estatística: uma proposta para os anos finais do ensino fundamental." Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, 2012. http://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/handle/1/1252.
Full textAbstract:
Acompanha: Sequência de ensino contemplando a estatística nos anos finais do ensino fundamental segundo pressupostos da contextualizaçãoO presente trabalho teve como objetivo analisar as contribuições que uma sequência de ensino pautada nos pressupostos da contextualização poderá trazer para o ensino e aprendizagem de Estatística nos anos finais do Ensino Fundamental. A revisão de literatura referente ao ensino de Estatística apoia-se em Cazorla (2002), Lopes (2003, 2008, 2010a, 2010b), Silva (2007), Andrade (2008), Cazorla, Kataoka e Silva (2010), Jacobini et al. (2010), Campos, Wodewotzki e Jacobini (2011), dentre outros. Quanto a contextualização, a revisão de literatura apoia-se em Brasil (1998b, 1999), Tufano (2001), Pais (2002, 2010), Ramos (2004), Mello (2005), Sadovsky (2007), Luccas (2011), além de outros. Com a intenção de alcançar o objetivo proposto, foi desenvolvida no ano de 2011 uma pesquisa aplicada, qualitativa com análise interpretativa e, descritiva em uma turma de alunos do 7° ano do Ensino Fundamental de um colégio público estadual do município de Ponta Grossa, Paraná. A revisão de literatura referente às características da pesquisa fundamenta-se em Gil (1991, 2006), Chizzotti (2003, 2008), Silva e Menezes (2005), Moreira e Caleffe (2008), Alves-Mazzotti (2011), Sarmento (2011), Teixeira (2011), dentre outros. Primeiramente foi realizada uma análise do desempenho prévio dos alunos em relação a conteúdos básicos de Estatística, tendo como base um instrumento diagnóstico chamado pré – teste. Depois foi aplicada uma sequência de ensino direcionada a conteúdos básicos de Estatística, por meio da utilização de dados coletados na própria turma, ou seja, por meio da contextualização. Verificou-se durante a aplicação da sequência de ensino, um maior interesse e motivação dos alunos para as aulas, além de um maior envolvimento dos educandos com os conteúdos estudados. Os resultados da análise do desempenho dos alunos após a aplicação da sequência de ensino mostraram que essa contribuiu para que houvesse um ganho significativo quanto à aquisição de conteúdos básicos de Estatística por parte de educandos dos anos finais do Ensino Fundamental. Considera-se que as atividades realizadas com os educandos, contribuíram para o desenvolvimento das competências de raciocínio, pensamento e, letramento estatísticos desses, formando a base necessária para que futuramente esses alunos possam atingir o nível de letramento estatístico que a sociedade contemporânea exige. Como produto final deste trabalho foi elaborado um material didático de apoio ao professor contendo uma sequência de ensino contextualizada sobre conteúdos básicos de Estatística voltada ao Ensino Fundamental, o qual se encontra anexado a esta dissertação.
The present study aimed to examine the contributions that a sequence of teaching based on assumptions of contextualization can bring to the teaching of statistics in the final years of basic school. The literature review concerning the teaching of statistics relies on Cazorla (2002), Lopes (2003, 2008, 2010a, 2010b), Silva (2007), Andrade (2008), Cazorla, Kataoka and Silva (2010), Jacobini et al. (2010), Campos, Wodewotzki and Jacobini (2011), among others. As for context, the literature review supported by Brazil (1998b, 1999), Tufano (2001), Pais (2002, 2010), Ramos (2004), (2005), Sadovsky (2007), Luccas (2011), among others. With the intention of achieving the proposed goal, was developed in the year 2011 a applied research, interpretive analysis and qualitative, descriptive in a batch of students of 7° year of basic school to a State public College of the city of Ponta Grossa, Paraná. The review of literature pertaining to the search features based on Gil (1991, 2006), Chizzotti (2003, 2008), Silva and Menezes (2005), Moreira and Caleffe (2008), Alves-Mazzotti (2011), Sarmento (2011), Teixeira (2011), among others. First was conducted an analysis of previous performance of the students on the basic content of statistics, based on a diagnostic instrument called pre-test. Then it was applied a sequence of teaching directed to basic statistical content, through the use of data collected in their own class, i.e. through contextualization. It emerged during the implementation of education, a greater interest and motivation of students to classes, as well as greater involvement of learners with the contents. The results of the analysis of the performance of the students after teaching sequence showed that this contributed to a significant gain on the acquisition of basic statistical content by students of the final years basic school. It is considered that the activities undertaken with learners, contributed to the development of the skills of reasoning, thinking, and statistical literacy of those forming the necessary basis for that in the future these students can reach the level of statistical literacy that contemporary society requires. As the final product of this work was to elaborate a courseware to support teacher education sequence containing a contextualized on basic statistical content aimed at the basic school, which is attached to this dissertation.
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Sibanda, Lucy. "Investigating the nature of the linguistic challenges of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) 2013 Grade 4 Mathematics ANAs and learners’ and teachers’ experience of them." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021312.
Full textAbstract:
The underperformance of South African learners in literacy and numeracy is a source of grave concern, especially at the transition from Grade 3 to Grade 4. The challenge that complicates this shift is to some extent linguistic, since at Grade 4 in South Africa the majority of learners begin learning in English, which is an additional language for most. The study adopts a sociocultural view of language and learning. Vygotsky’s influential theoretical work on language and learning, in which language is considered central to learning and learning is a social process embedded in sociocultural settings, informs the study. The introduction of the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) across primary and secondary grades in South Africa in mathematics and literacy in 2011 provides the context for this research. It is against this background that the present study aimed, through a case study approach of three Grade 4 classes of English additional language (EAL) learners, to achieve four things, namely: to investigate the linguistic challenges of the 2013 Grade 4 mathematics ANAs; to analyse the learners’ written responses to the 2013 mathematics ANA items; to explore the 2013 Grade 4 learners’ difficulties and experiences of the 2013 mathematics ANAs, and to investigate the Grade 4 mathematics teachers’ perspectives of the language of the ANAs. In order to achieve these aims, the data was collected in four phases. The first phase of the study addressed the nature of the linguistic challenges of the Department of Basic Education Grade 4 mathematics ANAs. Data collection occurred in two parts: 1) Comparing Grade 4 ANAs to exemplars provided and 2) Analysing the language of the 2013 mathematics ANAs. This was done through content analysis and Shaftel et al.’s (2006) linguistic complexity checklist. Findings for part 1 of the study revealed that there were several inconsistencies in the questioning format and language used in the ANAs and in the exemplars. Findings of the content analysis done on the 2013 mathematics ANA test items using Shaftel et al.’s (2006) linguistic complexity checklist and Vale’s (2013) Linguistic Complexity Index formula point to many linguistic complexities in several test items, particularly in relation to recurrent use of: 7 or more letter words, homophones, prepositional phrases and specific mathematics vocabulary across the majority of questions. In phase 2, the analysis of 106 learners’ written responses for the 2013 mathematics ANA questions revealed that for many of the questions the language used was unfamiliar for Grade 4 learners using English as an additional language. This was aggravated by the inclusion in the ANAs of linguistic forms learners would not have encountered in their workbooks or exemplars intended to prepare the learners for the assessments. Therefore, linguistic complexity of items was a key contributing factor to learners’ poor performance in the test. In the third phase, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the 26 learners’ interviews revealed that during the task-based interviews, learners experienced difficulties in the following skills: reading, comprehension, transformation, process and encoding. The greatest difficulties were experienced in comprehension and in reading, especially in the two classes where the learners were less proficient in the English language. The fourth phase, in which two Grade 4 mathematics teachers’ perceptions of the linguistic demands of the Grade 4 mathematics ANAs were presented and analysed, the teachers’ perceptions indicated that the mathematical language was mostly too difficult for the Grade 4 learners. Teachers also were of the opinion that learners’ reading skills were poor and they struggled to comprehend what they read. A dilemma regarding whether teachers should assist learners during the ANAs, satisfying the local needs for mediating the language or whether they should comply with the ANA policy which states that they may not assist learners was expressed by one of the teachers. A range of language challenges that teachers managed with various strategies were raised. These included one teacher’s use of code-switching during the teaching of mathematics. The study concludes with implications and recommendations. These include that test designers should minimise the language complexity of test items, especially in the early transition grades of learning in English. Research should be conducted on possibilities for allowing teachers to provide linguistic mediation to ANA questions in these transition years of learners learning in English.
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Whale, Susan Gaye. "Using language as a resource: strategies to teach mathematics in multilingual classes." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/1669.
Full textAbstract:
South Africa is a complex multilingual country. In the majority of schools in the Eastern Cape, a province in South Africa, the teachers and learners share the same home language, isiXhosa, but teach and learn mathematics in English. The purpose of this study was to encourage teachers to use the home language as a resource to teach mathematics in multilingual classes. The study follows a mixed method design, using both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data were collected from a survey and poetry, which teachers crafted, in which they highlighted their perceptions about language in their lives. They also reflected on their practices and submitted pieces of contemplative writing. Quantitative data were collected from participating teachers who administered a pre-test to their learners as well as a post- test approximately nine months later after conducting an intervention. The results showed that where strategies, such as the implementation of exploratory talk and code switching which used language as a resource, had been introduced mathematical reasoning improved and classroom climate became more positive. The learners’ lack of confidence in being able to express their reasoning in English was prevalent throughout the reflective writing. By enabling learners to use isiXhosa in discussions the teachers felt that the learners gained in both confidence and mathematical understanding. This study has demonstrated that using the learners’ and teachers’ home language unlocks doors to communication and spotlights mathematical reasoning, but there is still an urgency to encourage learners to become fluent in Mathematical English. It is important to note that a positive classroom climate is essential for learners to build confidence and to encourage them to attempt to formulate sentences in English - to start on the journey from informal to formal usage of language as advocated by Setati and Adler (2001:250). My main conclusion is that an intervention that develops exploratory talk by using language as a resource can improve learners’ mathematical reasoning. I wish to emphasise that I am not advocating teaching mathematics in isiXhosa only, but the research has shown the advantages of using the home language as a resource together with English in Eastern Cape multilingual mathematics classes. Learners need to be able to express themselves in English, written and spoken, in order to achieve mathematically. This study therefore shows that teachers can gauge their learners’ improvement in mathematical reasoning after an intervention that develops exploratory talk in class by using the home language as a resource.