The complete title of this book runs ‘Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R’ and as such it very well reflects the purpose and spirit of the book. The author guides the reader in about 350 pages from descriptive and basic statistical methods over classification and clustering to (generalised) linear and mixed models. Each of the methods is introduced in the context of concrete linguistic problems and demonstrated on exciting datasets from current research in the language sciences. In line with its practical orientation, the book focuses primarily on using the methods and interpreting the results. This implies that the mathematical treatment of the techniques is held at a minimum if not absent from the book. In return, the reader is provided with very detailed explanations on how to conduct the analyses using R [1]. The first chapter sets the tone being a 20-page introduction to R. For this and all subsequent chapters, the R code is intertwined with the chapter text and the datasets and functions used are conveniently packaged in the languageR package that is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). With this approach, the author has done an excellent job in enabling researchers and students alike to reproduce the analyses and learn by doing. Another quality as a textbook is the fact that every chapter ends with Workbook sections where the user is invited to exercise his or her analysis skills on supplemental datasets. Full solutions including code, results and comments are given in Appendix A (30 pages). Instructors are therefore very well served by this text, although they might want to balance the book with some more mathematical treatment depending on the target audience. After the introductory chapter on R, the book opens on graphical data exploration. Chapter 3 treats probability distributions and common sampling distributions. Under basic statistical methods (Chapter 4), distribution tests and tests on means and variances are covered. Chapter 5 deals with clustering and classification. Strangely enough, the clustering section has material on PCA, factor analysis, correspondence analysis and includes only one subsection on clustering, devoted notably to hierarchical partitioning methods. The classification part deals with decision trees, discriminant analysis and support vector machines. The regression chapter (Chapter 6) treats linear models, generalised linear models, piecewise linear models and a substantial section on models for lexical richness. The final chapter on mixed models is particularly interesting as it is one of the few text book accounts that introduce the reader to using the (innovative) lme4 package of Douglas Bates which implements linear mixed-effects models. Moreover, the case studies included in this

Analyzing linguistic data: a practical introduction to statistics using R

Rules and Representations

Translation as Text Production Translation as Intercultural Communication Translation, Ethics and Politics Translation as a Profession Issues in Audiovisual Translation

The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a variety of motor symptoms. Particularly, difficulties to start/stop movements have been observed in patients. From a technical/diagnostic point of view, these movement changes can be assessed by modeling the transitions between voiced and unvoiced segments in speech, the movement when the patient starts or stops a new stroke in handwriting, or the movement when the patient starts or stops the walking process. This study proposes a methodology to model such difficulties to start or to stop movements considering information from speech, handwriting, and gait. We used those transitions to train convolutional neural networks to classify patients and healthy subjects. The neurological state of the patients was also evaluated according to different stages of the disease (initial, intermediate, and advanced). In addition, we evaluated the robustness of the proposed approach when considering speech signals in three different languages: Spanish, German, and Czech. According to the results, the fusion of information from the three modalities is highly accurate to classify patients and healthy subjects, and it shows to be suitable to assess the neurological state of the patients in several stages of the disease. We also aimed to interpret the feature maps obtained from the deep learning architectures with respect to the presence or absence of the disease and the neurological state of the patients. As far as we know, this is one of the first works that considers multimodal information to assess Parkinson's disease following a deep learning approach.

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Multimodal Assessment of Parkinson's Disease: A Deep Learning Approach

Reading and writing are complex activities, made up of multiple processes. In Brazil there is no consensus regarding the expected performance for reading and writing for each year of schooling, besides there being a diversity of evaluation forms for these abilities. This study aims to analyze, in a neuropsychological cognitive approach, the precision in the use of routes of oral reading and writing of isolated words in 109 children attending the 2nd grade in state schools. The results showed a greater precision in the use of the phonological reading and writing route, due to the better performance in the use of pseudo-words than in the use of irregular words, high effect of regularity and extension and, the mistakes in neologisms and regularizations. However, there were signs that the lexical route is also used. It can be concluded, that children of the 2nd grade of state schools, use both routes of reading and writing of isolated words, but preferably the phonological route.

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Avaliação da leitura e escrita de palavras em crianças de 2ª série: abordagem neuropsicológica cognitiva

Reading-aloud and spelling tasks using single word and nonword lists are part of a broader set of tests called Cognitive Assessment Procedure. Based on Seymour, Pinheiro developed an experimental test which seemed suitable for reading and writing assessment of first to fourth graders in Minas Gerais. That procedure was retested by Capovilla, Capovilla and Macedo. Based on those results, Pinheiro is presently involved in developing a computerized assessment procedure, which includes reading-aloud and spelling tasks, among others. This article presents the theoretical basis for the construction of single word

/pdf/avaliacao-cognitiva-de-leitura-e-escrita-as-tarefas-de-4ba4c71s50.pdf

Avaliação Cognitiva de Leitura e Escrita: As Tarefas de Leitura em Voz Alta e Ditado

https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01564456/document

A cross-linguistic perspective to the study of dysarthria in Parkinson's disease

Working memory may be conceived in terms of storing systems or by means of models of dynamic processes. We adapted a working memory assessment procedure based on a process model for use in Brazil. The model conceives working memory as three interrelated aspects: processing speed or efficiency, temporary storage and coordinative capacity. Results with 832 participants of several ages and educational levels indicate that the procedure is adequate to be used in our cultural environment, preserving the original characteristics and displaying acceptable reliability and validity characteristics. Working memory performance correlated with measures of executive function and fluid intelligence but not with measures of associative episodic memory. This research program will be pursued further examining the clinical neuropsychological usefulness of the BAMT-UFMG.

/pdf/validacao-da-bateria-de-avaliacao-da-memoria-de-trabalho-zke66oa71a.pdf

Validacao da bateria de avaliacao da memoria de trabalho (BAMT-UFMG)

The first part of the article touches upon metatheoretical constraints to translator’s qualities research represented by the «methodological infancy» of Translation Studies (TS), the role that professional self-esteem of translators plays in TS research, and the lack of importance attributed to a pure science of translation. The main part is devoted to the concept of «translator’s competence» under which the qualities of translators have been typically addressed. I will discuss some problems with the notion of competence as underlying knowledge. Then, I will introduce a point of view adapted from Keen (1988): if understood as aptitude, competence is the result of performance in the translator’s history, not its cause. This could be appropriate to overcome a speculative tradition of translator’s qualities research.

/pdf/notes-on-the-concept-of-translator-s-competence-5e56vvskdl.pdf

Rui Rothe-Neves

Papers

Avaliação Cognitiva de Leitura e Escrita: As Tarefas de Leitura em Voz Alta e Ditado

A cross-linguistic perspective to the study of dysarthria in Parkinson's disease

Validacao da bateria de avaliacao da memoria de trabalho (BAMT-UFMG)

Notes on the concept of «translator’s competence»

The influence of working memory features on some formal aspects of translation performance