Although annotation is a widely-researched topic in Corpus Linguistics (CL), its potential role in Data Driven Learning (DDL) has not been addressed in depth by Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) practitioners. Furthermore, most of the research in the use of DDL methods pays little attention to annotation in the design and implementation of corpus-based/driven language teaching.

In this paper, we set out to examine the process of development of SACODEYL Annotator, an application that seeks to assist SACODEYL system users in annotating XML multilingual corpora. First, we discuss the role of annotation in DDL and the dominating paradigm in general corpus applications. In the context of the language classroom, we argue that it is essential that corpora should be pedagogically motivated (Braun, 2005 and 2007a). Then, we move on to deal with the analysis and design stages of our annotation solution by illustrating its main features. Some of these include a user friendly hierarchical and extensible taxonomy tree to facilitate the learner-oriented annotation of the corpora; real-time graphics representation of the annotated corpus matching the XML TEI-compliant (Text Encoding Initiative) standard, as well as an intuitive management of the different data sections and associated metadata.

SACODEYL (System Aided Compilation and Open Distribution of European Youth Language) is an EU funded MINERVA project which aims to develop an ICT-based system for the assisted compilation and open distribution of multimedia European teen talk in the context of language education. This research lays emphasis on the functionalities of the application within the SACODEYL context. However, our paper addresses similarly the needs of potential multimedia language corpus administrators in general on the lookout for powerful annotation assisting software. SACODEYL Annotator is free to use and can be downloaded from our website.

This paper deals with the dynamic model and force control of the redundantly actuated parallel manipulator of a 5-DOF hybrid machine tool. The inverse dynamic model is derived by using the Newton–Euler method. The driving force is optimized by the least-square method. Based on the kinematic and dynamic models, the redundant chain is controlled by force mode and other chains by position mode. The redundantly actuated parallel manipulator is incorporated into a 5-DOF hybrid machine tool which also includes a worktable with a translational DOF and a rotational DOF. The experiments wherein the machine moves along a straight-line trajectory and a circular trajectory show that the machine has a good contouring performance.

A novel 3SPS+SP parallel manipulator (PM) with 4-dof is proposed. Its kinematics and statics are analyzed systematically. The analytic formulae for solving the displacement, velocity, acceleration, workspace, active forces and constrained force are derived. The analytic results are verified by using a simulation mechanism of the 3SPS+SP PM.

This paper presents a continuous wall-following controller for wheeled mobile robots based on odometry and distance information. The reference for this controller is the desired distance from the robot to the wall and allows the robot to follow straight wall contour as well as smoothly varying wall contours by including the curvature of the wall into the controller. The asymptotic stability of the control system is proved using a Lyapunov analysis. The controller is designed so as to avoid saturation of the angular velocity command to the robot. A novel switching scheme is also proposed that allows the robot to follow discontinuous contours allowing the robotic system to deal with typical problems of continuous wall-following controllers such as open corners and possible collisions. This strategy overcomes these instances by switching between dedicated behavior-based controllers. The stability of the switching control system is discussed by considering Lyapunov concepts. The proposed control systems are verified experimentally in laboratory and office environments to show the feasibility and good performance of the control algorithms.

We report work on adding semantic role labels to the Chinese Treebank, a corpus already annotated with phrase structures. The work involves locating all verbs and their nominalizations in the corpus, and semi-automatically adding semantic role labels to their arguments, which are constituents in a parse tree. Although the same procedure is followed, different issues arise in the annotation of verbs and nominalized predicates. For verbs, identifying their arguments is generally straightforward given their syntactic structure in the Chinese Treebank as they tend to occupy well-defined syntactic positions. Our discussion focuses on the syntactic variations in the realization of the arguments as well as our approach to annotating dislocated and discontinuous arguments. In comparison, identifying the arguments for nominalized predicates is more challenging and we discuss criteria and procedures for distinguishing arguments from non-arguments. In particular we focus on the role of support verbs as well as the relevance of event/result distinctions in the annotation of the predicate-argument structure of nominalized predicates. We also present our approach to taking advantage of the syntactic structure in the Chinese Treebank to bootstrap the predicate-argument structure annotation of verbs. Finally, we discuss the creation of a lexical database of frame files and its role in guiding predicate-argument annotation. Procedures for ensuring annotation consistency and inter-annotator agreement evaluation results are also presented.

The paper presents structural synthesis of maximally regular T3R2-type parallel robotic manipulators (PMs) with five degrees of freedom. The moving platform has three independent translations (T3) and two rotations (R2). A method is proposed for structural synthesis of maximally regular T3R2-type PMs based on the theory of linear transformations and evolutionary morphology. A one-to-one correspondence exists between the actuated joint velocity space and the external velocity space of the moving platform. The Jacobian matrix mapping the two vector spaces of maximally regular T3R2-type PMs presented in this paper is the 5×5 identity matrix throughout the entire workspace. The condition number and the determinant of the Jacobian matrix being equal to one, the manipulator performs very well with regard to force and motion transmission capabilities. Kinematic analysis of maximally regular parallel robots is trivial and no computation is required for real-time control. This paper presents in a unified approach the structural synthesis of PMs with five degrees of freedom with decoupled and uncoupled motions, along with the maximally regular solutions.

The potential for corpora in language learning has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years, including in the form of data-driven learning (DDL). Careful not to appear to over-promote the field, enthusiasts have urged caution in its application, in particular with regard to lower-level learners, and have argued that extensive learner-training in corpus techniques is an essential condition for DDL to be successful. Such limits seem eminently reasonable, but there is a notable dearth of empirical studies to support them. This paper describes a simple experiment to see how lower-level learners cope with corpus data with no prior training.

The language focus here is on linking adverbials in English, which are renowned to be difficult to teach using traditional methods. The subjects are 132 first-year students at an engineering college in France of roughly intermediate and lower levels of English. They were divided into random groups to compare their ability to deal with the target items using traditional sources (extracts from a bilingual dictionary or a grammar/usage manual) or corpus data (short contexts or truncated concordances). Performance was tested prior to the experiment, subsequently to check ability to use the different information sources as a reference, and later to test recall.

No evidence was found that traditional sources promote better recall, and corpus data seemed to be more effective for reference purposes. While the results of any single experiment must be treated with caution, these findings suggest the need for more empirical studies to complement the theoretical arguments and qualitative data which currently dominate the discussions of DDL.

Interactive question answering (QA), where a dialogue interface enables follow-up and clarification questions, is a recent although long-advocated field of research. We report on the design and implementation of YourQA, our open-domain, interactive QA system. YourQA relies on a Web search engine to obtain answers to both fact-based and complex questions, such as descriptions and definitions. We describe the dialogue moves and management model making YourQA interactive, and discuss the architecture, implementation and evaluation of its chat-based dialogue interface. Our Wizard-of-Oz study and final evaluation results show how the designed architecture can effectively achieve open-domain, interactive QA.

In this introduction, we present our overview of interactive question answering (IQA). We contextualize IQA in the wider field of question answering, and establish connections to research in Information Retrieval and Dialogue Systems. We highlight the development of QA as a field, and identify challenges in the present research paradigm for which IQA is a potential solution. Finally, we present an overview of papers in this special issue, drawing connections between these and the challenges they address.

We combine ideas from types for continuations, effect systems and monads in a very simple setting by defining a version of classical propositional logic in which double-negation elimination is combined with a modality. The modality corresponds to control effects, and it includes a form of effect masking. Erasing the modality from formulas gives classical logic. On the other hand, the logic is conservative over intuitionistic logic.

In this paper obtaining the optimal configuration of the dual-arm cam-lock (DACL) robot at a specific point is addressed. The objective is to optimize the applicable task-space force in a desired direction. The DACL robot is a reconfigurable manipulator formed by two parallel cooperative arms. The arms normally operate redundantly but when needed, they can lock into each other in certain joints in order to achieve a higher stiffness, while losing some degrees of freedom. Furthermore, the dynamics of the DACL robot is discussed and parametrically formulated. Considering the geometrical constraints at a given point in the robot's workspace, the optimum configuration for maximizing the cooperatively applicable force by dual arms is determined.

Based on the Lie-group-algebraic properties of the displacement set and intrinsic coordinate-free geometry, several novel 4-dof overconstrained hybrid parallel manipulators (HPMs) with uncoupled actuation of three spatial translations and one rotation (3T-1R) are proposed. In these HPMs, three limbs are those of Cartesian translational parallel mechanisms (CTPMs) and the fourth limb includes an Oldham-type constant velocity shaft coupling (CVSC). The Lie subgroup of Schoenflies (X) displacements of the displacement Lie group and its mechanical generators with nine categories of their general architectures are recalled. A comprehensive enumeration of all possible Oldham-type CVSC limbs is derived from X-motion generators. Their constant velocity (CV) transmissions are verified by group-algebraic approach. Then, combining one CTPM and one CVSC, we synthesize a lot of uncoupled 3T-1R overconstrained HPMs, which are classified into nine distinct classes of general architectures. In addition, all possible architectures with at least one hinged parallelogram or with one cylindrical pair are disclosed too. At last, related non-overconstrained HPMs are attained by the addition of one idle pair in each limb of the previous HPMs.

The paper introduces the notion of offline justification for answer set programming (ASP). Justifications provide a graph-based explanation of the truth value of an atom with respect to a given answer set. The paper extends also this notion to provide justification of atoms during the computation of an answer set (on-line justification) and presents an integration of online justifications within the computation model of Smodels. Offline and online justifications provide useful tools to enhance understanding of ASP, and they offer a basic data structure to support methodologies and tools for debugging answer set programs. A preliminary implementation has been developed in – .

We describe an interactive question answering system, HITIQA, which helps users find answers to complex analytical problems. Such problems often necessitate the user to submit not one but an entire series of questions, both simple and complex, and then to negotiate the final content and form of the answer. HITIQA advances research in human–computer dialogue by enabling topical, mixed initiative interaction over unstructured data. HITIQA uses the process of text framing to bring a level of semantic representation to open-domain data in order to facilitate meaningful dialogue with the user. In this paper we give an overview of HITIQA's design and explain the workings of its main components with particular attention given to its dialogue capabilities. We also present results of end-to-end system evaluations that demonstrate the effectiveness of the system as a whole, as well as contributions of the individual components and specifically the benefits of our dialogue-based approach. While our research continues, a number of HITIQA prototypes have recently been deployed at various government agencies where they are being tested under real operational conditions.

This paper deals with the position workspace, orientation workspace, and singularity of a 3-degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar parallel manipulator with actuation redundancy, which is created by introducing a redundant link with active actuator to a 3-DOF nonredundant parallel manipulator. Based on the kinematic analysis, the position workspace and orientation workspace of the redundantly actuated parallel manipulator and its corresponding nonredundant parallel manipulator are analyzed, respectively. In the singularity analysis phase, the relationship between the generalized input velocity and the generalized output velocity is researched on the basis of the theory of singular value decomposition. Then a method to investigate the singularity of parallel manipulators is presented, which is used to determine the singularity of the redundantly actuated parallel manipulator. In contrast to the corresponding nonredundant parallel manipulator, the redundant one has larger orientation workspace and less singular configurations. The redundantly actuated parallel manipulator is incorporated into a 4-DOF hybrid machine tool which also includes a feed worktable to demonstrate its applicability.