Cerstin Mahlow

Linguistic support for revising and editing

Revising and editing are important parts of the writing process. In fact, multiple revision and editing cycles are crucial for the production of highquality texts. However, revising and editing are also tedious and error-prone, since changes may introduce new errors. Grammar checkers, as offered by some word processors, are not a solution. Besides the fact that they are only available for few languages, and regardless of the questionable quality, their conceptual approach is not suitable for experienced writers,who actively create their texts.Word processors offer few, if any, functions for handling text on the same cognitive level as the author: While the author is thinking in high-level linguistic terms, editors and word processors mostly provide low-level character oriented functions. Mapping the intended outcome to these low-level operations is distracting for the author, who now has to focus for a long time on small parts of the text. This results in a loss of global overview of the text and in typical revision errors (duplicate verbs, extraneous conjunctions, etc.). We therefore propose functions for text processors that work on the conceptual level of writers. These functions operate on linguistic elements, not on lines and characters. We describe how these functions can be implemented by making use of NLP methods and linguistic resources.

A framework for retrieval and annotation in digital humanities using XQuery full text and update in BaseX

A key difference between traditional humanities research and the emerging field of digital humanities is that the latter aims to complement qualitative methods with quantitative data. In linguistics, this means the use of large corpora of text, which are usually annotated automatically using natural language processing tools. However, these tools do not exist for historical texts, so scholars have to work with unannotated data. We have developed a system for systematic, iterative exploration and annotation of historical text corpora, which relies on an XML database (BaseX) and in particular on the Full Text and Update facilities of XQuery.

Sentence completion tests for training and assessment in a computational linguistics curriculum

This paper presents a novel type of test, halfway between multiple-choice and free-form text, used for training and assessment in several courses in a Computational Linguistics curriculum. We will describe the principles of the test, the different ways in which it can be used by learners, and the tools developed for authoring. Use of this type of test is not limited to the field of Computational Linguistics. Wherever text heavy or even picture based topics are taught use of this type of test is possible.

Linguistic editing support

Unlike programmers, authors only get very little support from their writing tools, i.e., their word processors and editors. Current editors are unaware of the objects and structures of natural languages and only offer character-based operations for manipulating text. Writers thus have to execute complex sequences of low-level functions to achieve their rhetoric or stylistic goals while composing. Software requiring long and complex sequences of operations causes users to make slips. In the case of editing and revising, these slips result in typical revision errors, such as sentences without a verb, agreement errors, or incorrect word order. In the LingURed project, we are developing language-aware editing functions to prevent errors. These functions operate on linguistic elements, not characters, thus shortening the command sequences writers have to execute. This paper describes the motivation and background of the LingURed project and shows some prototypical language-aware functions.

SMM: Detailed, Structured Morphological Analysis for Spanish

We present a morphological analyzer for Spanish called SMM. SMM is implemented in the grammar development framework Malaga, which is based on the formalism of Left- Associative Grammar. We briefly present the Malaga framework, describe the implementation decisions for some interesting mor- phological phenomena of Spanish, and report on the evaluation results from the analysis of corpora. SMM was originally only designed for analyzing word forms; in this article we outline two approaches for using SMM and the facilities provided by Malaga to also generate verbal paradigms. SMM can also be embedded into applications by making use of the Malaga programming interface; we briefly discuss some application scenarios.

Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology: Second International Workshop, SFCM 2011, Zurich, Switzerland, August 26, 2011, Proceedings

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology, SFCM 2011, held in Zurich, Switzerland in August 2011. The eight revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 13 submissions. The papers address various topics in computational morphology and the relevance of morphology to computational linguistics more broadly.