Tampilkan postingan dengan label Psycholinguistics. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Psycholinguistics. Tampilkan semua postingan

Jumat, 05 Agustus 2011

Psycholinguistics – What is Dyslexia?


Dyslexia is originally from Greek; “dys” means lack of or difficult and “lexia or lexicon” means pertaining the words (Mississippi Department of Education, 2002: 1). According to Mississippi Law (in Mississippi Department of Education, 2002: 2) “dyslexia means a language processing disorder that may be manifested by difficulty in processing expressive or receptive, oral or written language despite adequate intelligence, educational exposure, and cultural opportunity”. Thus, it argues that dyslexia is not only about language disorder but also learning disability. Hudson, High, and Al Otaiba (2007) argue that, dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading that often affects spelling as well. Specifically, learning disability (LD) is specific learning disability (SLD) (Wilmshurst, 2005: 209).

According to IDEA (Individual with Disability Education Act) (1999) specific learning disability (SLD) means “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological process involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, in which the disorder may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematic calculations” (as cited in Wilmshurst, 2005: 211).

Kamis, 28 Juli 2011

Language in Autistic Children

By age 3, neurotypical children have passed predictable milestones on the path in learning language; one of the earliest is babbling. By the first birthday, a typical toddler says words, turns when he hears his name, points when he wants a toy, and when offered something distasteful they answer ―no‖.

Speech development in autistic children takes a different path developmentally than in neurotypical children. Some autistic children remain mute throughout their lives. Some infants who later show signs of autism coo and babble during the first few months of life, but stop soon afterwards. Others may be delayed, developing language as late as the teenage years.

Inability to speak does not mean that autistic children are unintelligent or unaware (www.autisminfo.com, accessed at 16 May 2007). Carrol (1985: 390) states that autistic children typically show very little interest in social interaction; to the contrary, they usually avoid eye contact with others. Basically, autistic children are more interested in an object than people, and will play for hours a time their mechanical toys.

Language Disorder


More than one million of the students served in the public schools' special education programs in the 1997-98 school years were categorized as having a speech or language impairment. This estimate does not include children who have speech or language problems secondary to other conditions such as deafness. Language disorders may be related to other disabilities such as mental retardation, autism, or cerebral palsy. It is estimated that communication disorders (including speech, language, and hearing disorders) affect one of every 10 people in the United States.

As defined by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: A language disorder is the impairment of deviant development of comprehension and/or use of spoken, written, and/or other symbol system. The disorder may involve (1) the form of language (phonologic, morphologic, and syntactic systems), (2) the content of language (semantic system), and/or (3) the function of language in communication (pragmatic system) in any combination (American Speech and Hearing Association, 1982).

Speech and language disorders refer to problems in communication and related areas such as oral motor function. These delays and disorders range from simple sound substitutions to the inability to understand or use language or use the oral-motor mechanism for functional speech and feeding. Some causes of speech and language disorders include hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse

Language disorders can be developmental (i.e. present from early childhood) or they can be acquired as the result of surgery, a stroke, an accident or old age. In certain cases, this had a marked effect upon their ability to communicate in speech or in writing (field, 2003: 53).

Rabu, 27 Juli 2011

Unretraced and Retraced False Starts in Common Speech Errors

Unretraced False Start
False starts (unretraced) corrections of a word is included. When the speakers have speech errors, they make corrections of a word but they do not repeat of one or more words before the corrected word. They continue saying/speaking the next word without repeating the wrong word (Clark, 1977:264).

For example:
-These/ those dirty cups.

Retraced False Starts
Retraced false start is correction of a word which included the repeating of one or more words before the corrected word. When the speaker realized that they make speech errors, they make correction of their words. They make repetitions of one or more words before the corrected word.

For example:
- Turn on the stove / the heater switch
- Those clean / those dirty cups.

The category called corrections is like false starts, except that they contain an explicit utterance such as I mean, or rather, or that is to mark the phrase as a correction. What was striking, however, was what when contents words were corrected, the speaker usually (77 percent of the time) retraced one or more words before them, as in the silvery/ the shiny tray, where the is repeated along with the replacement word shiny. In the race cases when function words were corrected, the speaker usually(78 percents of the time) did not retraced any of the previous words, as in under / behind the sofa, where under is corrected to behind without any retracing.

The speech errors called corrections prove much the same point. These errors consist of a “correction phrase”, such as I mean, that is, or well, followed by the “corrected words”, the words to replace what was said earlier. Repeats, false starts, and correction, therefore, provide excellent evidence that speaker consider the constituent a basic unit of execution. They attempt, to the best of their ability, to execute constituents as complete wholes. When for some reason they do stop, make a false start, or correct themselves, they tend to return to the beginning of the constituent (Clark, 1977:264).

Selasa, 26 Juli 2011

Another Type of Common Speech Error: Repetition

Repeats
Repeats are repetitions of one or more words in a row. The speakers intended to utter something, yet they make speech error. They make speech error. They make repetitions of one or more word in a row.
For example:
- Turn on the heater/ the heater switch
- Those/ those dirty cups
The most frequent repeats (/) in twelve types of constituents are:
- the / the house
- the / the big house
- the / the manor house
- in / in houses
- in / in big houses
- in / in manor houses
In the / in the house
In the / in the big house
In the / in the manor house
May / may go
May have / may have gone
In / in going home

Fully 89 percent of all words repeated were function words, like articles (the / the neighbor), prepositions (in / in the garden), conjunctions (and/ and the neighbor): and pronouns (he/ he didn’t go). On the other hand, most of the words corrected in the false starts were content words: nouns (the man/ the woman), adjective (the silvery/ the shiny try), verbs (can be seen /can be viewed), or adverbs (the very / rather than nice house).

Senin, 25 Juli 2011

Common Speech Errors


According to many theoretical linguists, the object of linguistic study is unbroken successions of unrelated yet grammatical utterances generated by a system of rules. Actual speech is characterized by a grammatical utterances, fragments, restarts, and errors.

Freud claimed that speech errors are resulted from repressed thoughts which are revealed by the particular errors which a speaker makes. While it possible that Freud is correct in some case, such errors reveal as much if not much more about the structure of language as they do about repressed thoughts.

Definition of Common Speech Errors

Speech errors are errors in linguistic output occur in spoken language, sign language, written language, and typed language. Speech errors are extremely frequent about 1-2/1000 words. They indicate a breakdown between competence and performance; it may tell us something about how linguistic competence is organized (cited from www.unc.edu).

Jumat, 27 Mei 2011

Slip of Tongue, Other Type of Speech Errors

In speaking, people use language as a tool of communication. Field (2003:4) argued that language is very important things to be used by people in the world to communicate each other. On the contrary, people can make errors in using structure of certain language because of some factors. This is because every language has certain roles or structure as component. Even though, actually everybody wants to speak fluently, in the reality, every normal speech contains a fairly large number of such slips, which mostly pass unnoticed as Tom Mc Arthur (1998) argued about that.

A slip of the tongue is one type of speech errors. At the end of the 19th century, the Reverend William A. Spooner, Dean and Warden of New College, Oxford, earned a place in history when a new word based on his name was coined-‘spoonerism’.

Senin, 23 Mei 2011

Global Aphasia


Global aphasia is an extreme impairment or loss of language ability in all input and output modalities. The main cause of global aphasia is an injury on the Broca's and Wernicke's area of the brain which is responsible for language processing. With an impairment of language in all modalities, global aphasia is the most severe type of the aphasias.
Sufferers of global aphasia have very poor language comprehension as well as the inability to speak or write. Unlike other forms of aphasia, which target specific language functions such as the ability to produce fluent speech or comprehend language, a person who develops global aphasia from brain damage is incapable of speaking or understanding spoken language. Since they have no ability to speak or comprehend spoken language, much of the communication done by a sufferer of global aphasia is through facial gestures and signs.
For further comprehension about global aphasia, have a look at its general symptoms below:
1.    Depression
2.    Impairment in word based communication (reading, writing, spellings, speaking, etc)
3.    Speak words that are not recognizable
4.    Unable to comprehend a conversation
5.    Writing words or sentences that don't make proper sense
6.    Formation of short and incomplete words and sentences

Aphasia (Part 1)


“Aphasia (from Greek α, privative, and φασις, speech) is a term which means literally inability to speak, and is used to denote various defects in the comprehension and expression of both spoken and written language which result from injury of brain” (Wikipedia). In other words, aphasia is a communication condition that results from damage to the language areas of the brain; a disorder which limits the comprehension and expression of language. It is an acquired impairment due to brain injury in the left cerebral hemisphere. Aphasia is defined by Webster's Dictionary as a "loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words usually resulting from brain damage." 

 The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke or brain attack which occurs when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted. Other causes are brain tumors, head injury, or other neuralgic illnesses.

Anyone can acquire aphasia, but most people who have aphasia are in their middle to late years. Men and women are equally affected. Primary signs of the disorder include difficulty in expressing oneself when speaking, difficulty with reading and writing and trouble understanding speech. Aphasia is not a disease, but a symptom of brain damage.

Types of Aphasia
There are many symptoms that indicate aphasia. These include: inability to comprehend speech, inability to write (agraphia), inability to read (alexia), inability to form words, inability to name objects (anomia), poor enunciation, excessive creation and use of personal neologisms (jargon  aphasia), inability to repeat a phrase, persistent repetition of phrases, inability to speak -without muscle paralysis- and  other language impairment

There are many different systems for classifying aphasia and many different types of aphasia within each system. Some systems are mainly based on the location of the lesion. Others are based on the person's behavior.

The common types of aphasia are:
1.    Broca's aphasia (expressive aphasia)
People with this type of aphasia have difficulty communicating with others orally and and in written.
2.    Wernicke's aphasia (receptive aphasia)
This type involves difficulty understanding spoken or written language. The aphasic can hear the voice or see the print but is not able to make sense of the words.

Minggu, 15 Mei 2011

Descriptive Research


Descriptive research does not fit neatly into the definition of either quantitative or qualitative research methodologies, but instead it can utilize elements of both, often within the same study. The term descriptive research refers to the type of research question, design, and data analysis that will be applied to a given topic. Descriptive statistics tell what is, while inferential statistics try to determine cause and effect.

Descriptive research can be either quantitative or qualitative. It can involve collections of quantitative information that can be tabulated along a continuum in numerical form, such as scores on a test or the number of times a person chooses to use a-certain feature of a multimedia program, or it can describe categories of information such as gender or patterns of interaction when using technology in a group situation. Descriptive research involves gathering data that describe events and then organizes, tabulates, depicts, and describes the data collection (Glass & Hopkins, 1984). It often uses visual aids such as graphs and charts to aid the reader in understanding the data distribution. Because the human mind cannot extract the full import of a large mass of raw data, descriptive statistics are very important in reducing the data to manageable form. When in-depth, narrative descriptions of small numbers of cases are involved, the research uses description as a tool to organize data into patterns that emerge during analysis. Those patterns aid the mind in comprehending a qualitative study and its implications.

Three main purposes of research are to describe, explain, and validate findings. Description emerges following creative exploration, and serves to organize the findings in order to fit them with explanations, and then test or validate those explanations (Krathwohl, 1993). Many research studies call for the description of natural or man-made phenomena such as their form, structure, activity, change over time, relation to other phenomena, and so on. The description often illuminates knowledge that we might not otherwise notice or even encounter. Several important scientific discoveries as well as anthropological information about events outside of our common experiences have resulted from making such descriptions. For example, astronomers use their telescopes to develop descriptions of different parts of the universe, anthropologists describe life events of socially atypical situations or cultures uniquely different from our own, and educational researchers describe activities within classrooms concerning the implementation of technology. This process sometimes results in the discovery of stars and stellar events, new knowledge about value systems or practices of other cultures, or even the reality of classroom life as new technologies are implemented within schools.


Sabtu, 14 Mei 2011

The Process of Retrieving Words


E.    When we said or written something, the word (sentence) that we need in general just came out automatically  as if without passing through any process. As well when our act as speaker or listener, we will understand easily what our opposite said to us. Indeed, this process seems natural but when we think or try to understand deeply it needs long process because we should know the base of the word first.

There are three processes of retrieve word:
a.       Sound determining intuitively
Intuitive process is the process of understanding word automatically. It means that the word has accomplished the condition of speaker’s or listener’s language. Such as word “pen”, when people address us a thing used to write and the inside of the thing is ink than leave print in the other think which they write, and it’s asked to them what is that?. Without any thinking listener will guesses that it is a pen.

Strategies in understanding an utterance

In            In understanding an utterance, there are three factors that help us, first are the factor deals with the knowledge of the world, syntactic and semantic factor. In the world-knowledge, the natural surroundings are what give us knowledge of life in the world. In the world-knowledge, we decided into three: universal, specific/ local, and accidental. Much of this knowledge is universal, and others are specifics about the environment in which we live. This knowledge is often the one factor which helps us to understand the utterance. Example:

a. He bought a pair of horse shoes
b. He bought a pair of alligator shoes

            We understand that the horse shoes are shoes worn by the horse, and alligator shoes are shoes made from crocodile leather, this understanding is based solely on knowledge of the world where we live, in this world we know that many horses that wear shoes and no crocodile wearing shoes.

Language Comprehension; The nature of understanding

In understanding the language, there are four level of language processing. Those are:
1.    Perceptual  Level
At the perceptual level, we could describe your processing activities as a series of eye movements that are used to encode the constituent letters of words, including speech sound, written symbols, and signs.
2.    Lexical Level
At the lexical level, we use the identified letters to retrieve the lexical representation of a word from permanent memory. This representation will include the meaning of the word, its spelling, its pronunciation, its part of speech, and related characteristic. In short, the representation is what we know about a word.
3.    Sentential Level
We analyze the sentence structure of the ongoing linguistic message. In this case the sentence contains two clauses, and the subordinate clauses come first. We use working memory to store the contents of the first clause while we process the second, then form some unified representation of the entire sentence.
4.    Discourse Level
We identify the context preceding and following a sentence and integrate the sentence representation with that context.

Language Comprehension; An Introduction


Comprehension occurs as the listener builds a mental representation of the information contained within the language that a speaker is using… the listener's general knowledge and level of cognitive development will have a bearing on the comprehension of the message. To generate an accurate mental representation… it means that the listener has to process the language and the concepts.
In particular, lexical knowledge can affect the perception of phonemes. A number of researchers have found evidence for interactivity in the form of lexical effects on the perception of sublexical units. Wurm and Samuel (1997), for example, reported that listeners’ knowledge of words can lead to the inhibition of certain phonemes. Samuel (1997) found additional evidence of interactivity by studying the phenomenon of phonemic restoration. This refers to the fact that listeners continue to “hear” phonemes that have been removed from the speech signal and replaced by noise. Samuel discovered that the restored phonemes produced by lexical activation lead to reliable shifts in how listeners labeled ambiguous phonemes.
If we recognize words, and perceive speech generally, via our stored memory for linguistic forms, it may also be true that we perceive aspects of the world around us, as presented to us through non-linguistic means, via our stored knowledge of the way the world works. So, we are able to address the phenomenon of ambiguity and further issues in interpretation, concentrating on how the listener arrives at a reconstruction of what the speaker wishes to communicate be.

Minggu, 08 Mei 2011

Keadaan Pertanian di Indonesia


Pertanian merupakan fokus utama dari strategi dan prioritas pengembangan orde baru. Meskipun sektor ini tidak begitu menderita kerusakan di zaman Soekarno, dibandingkan dengan komponen ekonomi yang didasarkan perkotaan, kinerja pertanian pada periode sebelum 1966 tidak begitu mengesankan. Indonesia lamban dalam mengolah kesempatan yang muncul dari varietas panen baru yang dikenal dalam revolusi hijau, sebagian disebabkan input perdagangan sektor modern belum siap.

Sejak awal tahun 1970, paradigma pembangunan pertanian di Indonesia berubah drastis seiring perubahan paradigma pembangunan ekonomi kapitalistis yang bertumpu pada modal besar. Dalam kerangka pembangunan ekonomi saat itu, sektor pertanian tidak lagi ditempatkan sebagai fondasi ekonomi nasional, tetapi dijadikan buffer (penyangga) guna menyukseskan industrialisasi yang dijadikan lokomotif pertumbuhan ekonomi.

Sebagai penyangga, yang terpenting bagi pemerintahan Orba adalah bagaimana mendongkrak produksi pangan dalam negeri tanpa harus berbelit-belit, cepat, dan tidak berisiko secara politik. Pilihan ini sebagai antitesis program land reform di masa Orde Lama (Orla) yang dijadikan landasan utama dalam program pembangunan pertanian semesta. Kebetulan pada saat bersamaan arus global politik-ekonomi dunia memperkenalkan revolusi hijau sebagai lawan dan alternatif revolusi merah.

Orba yang sejak kelahirannya menganut ideologi ekonomi kapitalis cenderung melaksanakan pembangunan pertaniannya melalui by-pass approach (jalan pintas), yaitu revolusi hijau tanpa reformasi agraria (pembaruan agraria). Karena itu, pembangunan di Indonesia oleh Rohman Sobhan (1993) disebut sebagai development without social transition (Wiradi, 1999).

Perubahan paradigma ini menciptakan missing link dalam pelaksanaan pembangunan pertanian dari satu periode ke periode lain. Pertanian tidak lagi dipandang dalam aspek menyeluruh, tetapi direduksi sebagai sekadar persoalan produksi, teknologi, dan harga. Tanah sebagai alas pembangunan pertanian tidak dianggap sebagai faktor amat penting. Persoalan keterbatasan lahan petani yang rata-rata hanya memiliki 0,25 hektar, menurut Syaiful Bahari dari Bimas Ketahanan Pangan, dapat diatasi dengan menempuh non-land based development (Kompas, 17/1/2004), bukan dengan merombak dan menata kembali struktur penguasaan tanah yang lebih adil dan merata melalui reformasi agraria. Cara pandang seperti ini merupakan cermin jalan pintas yang mendominasi kebijakan dan strategi pembangunan pertanian sejak masa Orba hingga sekarang.

Jumat, 06 Mei 2011

Machine Translation in the World and Indonesia


A.    Machine Translation In America
USA is the most productive and consumptive country of MT. Since 1950 year, this country had already had thirty-two groups of MT researcher. Moreover, the first using demonstration of MT was also done in this country. As the result, the number of the MT research centre is significantly increasing every year. US has produced many MT programs, those are:
1. SYSTRAN
     It is the oldest MT program that is mostly applied since 1990 year. This direct system is designed by Peter Toma through Gachot Company. SYSTRAN is used by General Motor (Canada), Xerox (Manual Techniques translation), national company of train production (Germany), and the research study centre of nuclear energy.
2. SPANAM and ENGSPAN
    This program is produced by Pan America Health Organization (PAHO) for translating the medical and health documents. ENGSPAN uses the transfer system by primarily rely the syntaxes lexical transfer process and semantics analysis, while SPANAM uses the direct system.
3. Smart Expert Editor (MAX) and Smart Translator (SMART)
MAX and SMART is designed by Smart Communication Inc. MAX uses the ‘rule-based’ system and ‘terminology knowledge based’. Whereas, SMART functions the limited language input (Caterpillar English) and is used to translate the documents into some languages.
Since 1990’s year those programs had been applied by 30 client including Citicorp, Chase, Ford, General Electric, and The Labor Department of Canada (for translating the information of job vacancy from English to France).
4. LOGOS
LOGOS program is designed by Logos Corporation in 1982. At first, this transfer system program is designed for translating Germany to English, but it is also developed fot another language; English-France (in Canada), English-Spain and Germany-France (in Belgian).
LOGOS bilingual dictionary consists of more than 100.000 entries and is completed by the additional entry facility for another word, except verb. Verb is cannot be added because the additional verb needs the complex coding process and it can influence the entire efficiency of the program.
LOGOS has been used by some incorporation such as Ericsson, Osram, Oce Technolog, SAP, Corel etc.
5. METAL
METAL Program is firstly developed in Texas University, but after 1978, it got full sponsor from Siemen Inc. (Germany). METAL uses the transfer system (it is also known as the best adopting program of transfer system in the world) and completed by monolingual and bilingual dictionary. This is a high speed program which can translate until 200 pages per day, by a little post-editing. Post-editing is done by PC workstation. In the output, the user can choose to get the result in two or just one language.
This program is used by some incorporation, such as Boehringer Ingelheim, SAP, Philips and Union Bank of Switzerland.
6. The Products of Carneige Mellon University (CMU)
    CMU has become the central research of MT based on intelligence BUATAN and the biggest Interlingua in USA. One of the products is Knowledge-Based Machine Translation (KBMT), which is based on the assumption that the ideal translating process is not done in linguistics rules only but also including understanding.
B.    Machine Translation in Europe
MT also grows well in the west Europe. Besides the existing of Eurotra project which is handled by European society, some of the countries also do the development of MT separately. Those countries are Germany, Dutch, France, England, Denmark, Ireland, Belgian, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries.

1.    Eurotra
Eurotra is the biggest MT project in Europe and even in the world. This project started in 1978 by two aims; making the prototype of MT program for European languages (England, France, Germany, Italy, Latin, Dutch, Denmark, Spain and Portugal) and developing MT skill and the related area of it.
The project centered in University of Essex and University of Manchester Institute of Science MELIBATKAN more than 100 researcher spread in 16 location; Belgian, Denmark, France, Germany, Dutch, Yunnan, Ireland, Italy and Luxemburg.

2.    Germany
SUSY is a program made by Germany. This program is developed by Saarbrucken University. It is used the syntax orientation system transfer. There are many other programs, such as ASCOF, SAFRAN, MARIS, SUSANNAH, TITRAN, etc.
Germany is also developed MT for translating spoken language. This program is called VERMOBIL and funded by The Reset and Technology Ministry of German.

3.    Dutch
MT with Interlingua system had been developed in Dutch in the 1980. There are two famous programs, DLT (Distributed Language Translation) and Rosseta Project. DLT program uses Esperanto as the interlingua, while Rosseta uses innovative exploration of isoformic principles to build the interlingua representation and integration of Montague semantics principles.
Besides that, there is a specific MT program in Dutch. This program is designed by Volmac Lingware Service Software Inc and mostly uses in the textile factory, insurance agency and the airplane center care. This program is translating Dutch, English, French, and Spain languages.

4.    France
The development of MT in French produces such as ARIANE system. This system uses transfer system which is oriented in syntax by the analysis process and generation which happens in every level (morphologist, syntaxes and semantics), it also uses the pragmatic principle and discourse information. Ariane also has been known as the best system transfer beside METAL.

5.    England
England also becomes the center of another MT system beside becomes the center of EUROTRA. Some of the products are prototype program of translating England-Germany called NTRAN. This program uses the concept of Lexical Functional Grammar for parsing process (bottom-up), transfer, and others.
England also provides AIDTRANS (using the direct system which translates Germany to English), SLUNT (using Interlingua system), TRANSPO, ICL (International Computer Ltd., translates the text messages in English-France and England-Germany), and others.
6.    Denmark
      In the 1988, The Winger software Incorporation developed MT for English, Denmark and Spain translation. The program made by many linguists from Kopenhagen University integrates MT with words manufacturing, database and communication system. This program is published in Europe and America.
C.    Machine Translation in Asia
Japan is the most MAJU in MT development among others Asian countries. Moreover, in the beginning of MT publication, Japan had already had two MT research centers. It the other words, Japan’s progressivity in developing MT is equal and even for some models, it is higher than western countries.
Through the project funded by the government and other SWASTA institutions, Japan has produced many MT programs. Those are:
1.   Mu program (system transfer using) developed by Kyoto University.
2.  PIVOT program produced by NEC. This Interlingua system program translates English, Japan, Korean, French, and Spain.
3. ARGO program developed by CSK Tokyo. This is used for translating economic and finance text in English and Japan.
4.   NHK system is used for translating the report articles from English to Japan.
5.   RMT/EJ program, Duet Qt, STAR, Meltran, ASTRANSAC, HICATS, PENSEE, LUTE and many others.
    Beside Japan, Korean is also the country which actively developing MT. Since 1980’s year, the research in Korea is supported by the government and four universities (Seoul, Inha, Hanyang, and Graduate School of KAIST). Some of Korean MT products are HESS (Hangul-English support system) which is used by Korean military for translating database information, e-mail, and etc. MATES, the program developed by System Engineering Research Institute (SERI), is also provided. This transfer system program translates English language into Korean Language.
    In China, the high MINAT about MP research had already been happened since 1950, but this activity temporally stopped in 1960’s year due to the political reason.
    In Malaysia, MT developing project began in the 1979 by MELIBATKAN the researcher of Grenoble and Science University of Malaysia. They developed England-Malay Mt which can be used for translating technique course for middle school. The test done in 1985 for translating the chemistry text book showed that 70% of the translating results can be understood.
D. Machine Translation in Indonesia
    The efforts for MT development in Indonesia are: (1) holding the Linguistics Symposium and Computer Technology in Jakarta in the 26 and 27 of October 1986, (2) the International Trade Ministry and Japan Industry had MEMPRAKARSAI a research project for developing multilingual translating system which can translate Japan language into some Asian languages, including Indonesia, and SEBALIKNYA, (3) the informatics engineering student of ITB through Graphs Laboratory and Intelligence BUATAN also had developed a natural processing program by machine, (3) developing STAJASIA, the question answer system which is able to process the simple Indonesian sentences; declarative, imperative, and interrogative,  (5) TransTool Research and Development had developed translation computer program named TransTool. This programs translates Indonesian text into English text and SEBALIKNYA.
    Some of Indonesian translating product are:
1. ABP System
    It is used as translation instrument that can retrieve some source and target languages.
2. TransTool
     It was produced by the TransTool Research and Development. The form of this machine physically is put in the CD (Compact Disc) that needs to be installed to activate this application. This application requires a hardware and software instrument to facilitate its use. It was functioned to translate word, phrase, sentence and paragraph conversely. However, TransTool effectiveness is much influenced by the computer processor capacity.
3. Artinya MT 2.1
    It is an one-line machine translation program. It was developed in 1998 by PS & B Software. The user who wants to use it should download this application in the internet. Nowadays, this type of machine is divided into two terms: free version and paid version. It uses an ‘indirect’ system which is compose by some features like spelling checkers, updatable dictionary, translation statistics, and so on.
4. Universal Translation
    It was created by Language Force. It was in CD form and was completed by editing and some other facilities. It is used to translate from English to the other target languages.
5. MuST System
    This MT was produced by Edward Hovy and Friends. It is a kind of instrument that picking out the document from the multilingual source and translating or summarizing the text into the target language.
6. Stajasia
    It is an asking-answering program released by BPPT.



Senin, 02 Mei 2011

The phonological Acquisition Process


The linguistics development is influenced by two points: biological growth and environment. The biological growth is associated to the motorical progression. This step will significantly determine the reason why some children in particular ages have already been able to speak and the other have not been yet. Physically, children ability to produce the words is marked by the development of mouth, tongue and tooth to grow. The language acquisition (capability in word pronouncing and understanding the meaning) is somehow inseparable from the capability of seeing, listening, and interpreting the symbols by the brain maturity.

Besides, environment also takes a prominent role in acquiring language in terms of phonology because the children are surrounded by parents giving a big contribution to stimulate a polite language of the children. An input from the environment is such an essential factor for the human to retrieving a language. In relating to the increasing of the utterance ability, the comprehensive ability of the children also significantly improve, and able to absorb the words spoken by adults. For instance, if the picture of ‘kucing’ (cat) is shown and someone says to the kids that it is ‘ikan’ (fish), they will respond by saying ‘utan’ (bukan).

Phonological Acquisition 2

As we know that phonology is studying of the language sounds, how they are organized to form words. The human is learning how to pronounce the words of their language.  The phonological acquisition refers to the process of the human in acquiring or absorbing the language in terms of phonological aspects like substitution, assimilation, reduction or addition, etc. there are two parts in acquiring a language: to articulate consonants, vowels, syllables, words; and learning to represent words.

Stages in Acquisition
1.    Pre –language stages
The period of this stage is about 3 to 11 months. There are three stages of sound production in infant’s developing repertoires which are characterized in this stage. The first recognizable sound described as cooing with velar [k] and [g] usually present as well as high vowels such as [i] and [u]. By 6 months, the child is usually able to produce a number of different vowels and consonants such as fricatives and nasals. This sound production at this stage is described as babbling. By 9 up to 11 months, there are recognizable intonations to the consonants and vowels combinations being produced. Then they are capable to use their vocalization to express emotion and emphasis. This stage is described as late babbling.
2.      The one-word or holophrastic stage
Between 12 and 18 months, children begin to produce a variety of recognizable single unit utterances. This stage is characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects, such as “milk”, and “cookie”.
3.    The two-word stage
This stage can begin around 18-20 months, depending on what one counts as an occurrence of two separate words. In this stage, a variety of combinations will be appearing, such as, baby chair, mommy eat, etc. The phrase baby chair here may be taken as an expression of possession, or as a request, or even as a stetement.
4.    Telegraphic speech
Between 2 and three years old, the child will begin producing a large number of utterances which could be classified as multiple-word utterances. The child has early developed some sentences-building capacity by this stage and can order the forms correctly.

Phonological Acquisition


BACKGROUND

Students of all ages may find them hard to read, and we know from various research report that, in English at least, the difficulty is largely alingustic one (Halliday and Martin,1996:24). Here, we want to describe about phonology, acquisition, language acquisition, and phonological acquisition.

Phonology is studies the way in which speech sound form system which enable speaker of a given language, to agree on when two strings of sounds ( the production of which can be infinitely varied) are basically the same; when looked at in this way, more sounds become phonemes, the basic building blocks for meaningful language units such as morphemes and word.

Acquisition is the act or process of achieving mastery of a language or a linguistic rule or element: child language acquisition; second language acquisition.

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. Phonological acquisition is theoretical framework is that of gererative phonology, with a focus on autosegmental, feature-geometric, underspecified, and prosodic  representation.
Phonological acquisition is regular; this means that once the correlations between the adult system and the child's performance have been worked out, one can correctly predict the child's output for any arbitrary word of the adult language.

Jumat, 29 April 2011

The Design of Constituent Production


After the design of sentences is made, the speaker should consider the constituent to form the sentence. A word is selected by the speaker because of its proper meaning. For example, a man is as a reference. If someone hates him, she may call him ‘si brengsek’, while if she likes her, the man may be called as ‘si tampan’. In this, we can say that what is selected by the speaker is based on the meaning which wants to be conveyed.
Besides, the sentence context is also essential to be understood. In the case of article uses; a (book) or the (book), we should identify the context and the reference of the word uttered. In English language, there is a special rule in which a unique word should be marked by the such as the sun, the moon, or the earth, even we never talk about those things previously.
In addition, the word selection depends on the distinguishability principles. If there are two references with the distinctive physical appearance, we will use a semantic feature to to differentiate them.
To have a similar reference, the speaker cannot use the same words, he is naturally forced to use different words based on the situation.
For this case, some other languages like Indonesia or French have an additional point of consideration in designing the constituent production. For example, there is a special rule for pronoun uses in French. People there use a word tu (you) to express a close or conventional relationship and use word vous (anda) to honor someone. In Javanese language, it has an honorific system that should be noticed in the way we speak and behave in it. This language requires us to have knowledge about the social status, age, the kinship relationship to produce the proper utterance.