• Title/Summary/Keyword: informational focus

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Focus Realization of English Noun Phrases in the Classroom Situation (교실 상황에서 영어 명사구의 초점 실현 양상)

  • Jun, Ji-Hyun;Song, Jae-Yung;Lee, Dong-Hwa;Kim, Kee-Ho
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.9 no.2
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    • pp.109-132
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    • 2002
  • The purpose of this study is to examine the focus realization of [Adjective+Noun] phrases which are used in English classroom situations. In order to examine this, two production and one perception experiments were designed. The noun phrases in the first two production experiments are divided into three patterns according to the location of focus. The difference between the two production experiments is that in the first experiment the focused words are contextually given in the classroom situation, but in the second experiment they are presented in written form. We compare the native English teachers' focus realization of noun phrases with that of Korean teachers from the point of view of intonational phonology. In the perception test, we examine how the uttered sentences are perceived by English native speakers and Korean native speakers. The results from the three experiments show that native English teachers' focus realization is quite consistent with informational structure. Also, there is a significant difference in pitch range of adjectives and nouns when the native speakers give pitch accents on the two content words, and the uttered sentences are mostly perceived as well as the speakers' intentions. As for Korean speakers, however, they usually focus only on the adjective or they focus on both the adjective and the noun, regardless of the relative informativeness of these words. From these findings, we can conclude that focus realization of Korean teachers is rather inconsistent with respect to informational structure when compared to that of native English teachers.

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A Study on the Intonational Patterns in English Information Structures (영어 정보구조의 억양양상에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hwa-Young;Oh, Mi-Ra
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.119-128
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    • 2009
  • Many researchers have argued about the relationship between information structure and intonation. Their results can be summarized in three main points: the intonation of topic and focus in English information structures is implemented as i) a pitch accent, ii) a tune (a pitch accent + (an) edge tone(s)), or iii) a boundary tone. The purpose of this paper is to study various intonational patterns of topic and focus in English information structures, using natural conversations. In this paper, the types of topics and foci are divided, based on contrastiveness. The topics are classified as five non-contrastive and four contrastive topics. The foci are classified as neutral focus, informational focus, and contrastive focus. The results show that the intonation of the topic in English information structures is mainly implemented as a pitch accent, except for the type of the pronoun topic (Lp) which is not implemented as a pitch accent or a tune. However, the intonation of the focus is implemented as a tune in the neutral focus (Fn) and as a pitch accent or a tune in the informational focus (Fi) and the contrastive focus (Fe). In our discussion and conclusion, we suggest that it is not always true that for the meaning of contrast, the topic or the focus is represented as a $L+H^{\ast}$ pitch accent, which has been the main contrastive intonation from earlier studies.

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TRANSNATIONAL WELFARE ADVOCACY AGAINST ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION? SOCIAL CONTOURS OF INFORMATIONAL SOCIETY

  • Lai, On-Kwok
    • 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2002.10a
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    • pp.205-224
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    • 2002
  • This paper addresses to the emerging issues for regional/global welfare issues, with special focus on the potentials and influences of the transnational advocacy activism for human and welfare rights. Part One of the paper outlines the emergence of transnational (cyber-)activism for global welfare. It is followed by a discussion of the incompatibility between economic globalization and regional/local deprivation, as well as the potentials for welfare promotion and empowerment. Part Four critically examines the contours and complexity of informational society. The last two parts delineate, respectively, the barriers against and prospects of global welfare activism.

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Topicality and Focality of Contrastive Topic (대조주제의 주제성과 초점성)

  • Wee, Hae-Kyung
    • Language and Information
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.47-70
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    • 2010
  • This study investigates the semantic and prosodic properties of the so-called contrastive topic. We posit two informational primitives, namely, topical feature [+-T] and focal feature [+-F], from which four different informational categories, i.e., [+T, +F], [+T, -F], [-T, +F], and [-T, -F], are yielded. It is proposed that the informational category of contrastive topic has focal property [+F] as well as topical property [+T]. Based on the semantic approach that regards the function of [+F] as identificational predication and that of [+T] as forming a semantic conditional clause, it is shown that the semantic function of contrastive topic, which is specified as [+T, +F], is the combination of these two functions, i.e., identificational predication in a semantic conditional clause. This is supported by a scrutinized exploration of the prosodic pattern of English contrastive topic.

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Focus Types and Gradients in Korean Case Ellipsis

  • Lee, Han-Jung
    • Language and Information
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.1-20
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    • 2008
  • This paper examines the effects of focus types on case ellipsis in Korean. A number of previous studies have suggested that accusative case markers in Korean and Japanese cannot be dropped when the object they mark is contrastively focused (Masunaga, 1988; Yatabe, 1999; Ko, 2000; Lee, 2002). Using experimental evidence, we argue against the view that case ellipsis in Korean is sensitive to the distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus. An alternative analysis is proposed which accounts for the phenomenon of variable case marking in terms of the interaction between the contrastive strength and the discourse accessibility of focused object NPs. By viewing patterns of case ellipsis as the result of balancing between these two forces, such an analysis can correctly predict the gradient pattern of case ellipsis shown by the three types of focused objects tested in the experiment (contrastive replacing focus, contrastive selecting focus and non-contrastive, informational focus), while at the same time offering an explanation for why subtypes of focus exert distinct influences on case ellipsis.

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The Effect of Patient's Psychological Distress on Social Support in Physical Therapists : Focused on patient's regulatory focus (물리치료사의 사회적 지지가 환자의 심리적 디스트레스에 미치는 영향 : 환자의 조절초점을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Cheol-Yong
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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    • v.6 no.3
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    • pp.331-339
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    • 2011
  • Purpose : The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of patient's psycological distress on social support in the view of patient's regulatory focus. Methods : For this study 300 questionnaires were distributed to medical institution, Busan from July 19 through August 4, 2010. The contents item divided the general characteristics, social support, psychological distress, and regulatory focus. The collected data were analyzed by t-test and multi-regression analysis. Results : The results show that patient's psychological distress is significantly influenced by physical therapist's emotional support and informational support. Also, there were difference with the effect of psychological distress on social supports in the physical therapists according to patient's regulatory focus. Conclusion : The instrumental support is more important to patient with promotion-focus than patient with prevention-focus. The implication of this research confirmed that physical therapist's social support plays important role in decreasing patient's psychological distress.

Focus, Topic and Their Phonetic Relevance. (초점과 주제의 음성학적 관련성)

  • 김용범
    • Language and Information
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.27-52
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    • 2004
  • This paper attempts to define various notions involving focus and topic found in Korean and also employs phonetic measures to verify the plausibility of those notions that are theoretically argued for. This paper crucially relies on Prince (1981) for the notion of familiarity and its pragmatic significance, and adopts Rooth's (1985) notion of alternative set and utilizes it in the light of pragmatic interpretation. The basic idea of this paper is to decompose the notion alternative set into finer-grained components and to assign various levels of familiarity to those finer components, thereby helping define different kinds of focus and topic according to the properties of those sub-components.

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A Clustering Algorithm Considering Structural Relationships of Web Contents

  • Kang Hyuncheol;Han Sang-Tae;Sun Young-Su
    • Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.191-197
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    • 2005
  • Application of data mining techniques to the world wide web, referred to as web mining, has been the focus of several recent researches. With the explosive growth of information sources available on the world wide web, it has become increasingly necessary to track and analyze their usage patterns. In this study, we introduce a process of pre-processing and cluster analysis on web log data and suggest a distance measure considering the structural relationships between web contents. Also, we illustrate some real examples of cluster analysis for web log data and look into practical application of web usage mining for eCRM.

Distancing the Constraints on Syntactic Variations

  • Choi, Hye-Won
    • Language and Information
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.77-96
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    • 2007
  • This paper investigates syntactic variations in English such as Dative Alternation, Particle Inversion, and Object Postposition (Heavy NP Shift) within the framework of Optimality Theory, and shows that the same set of morphological, informational, and processing constraints affect all these variations. In particular, it shows that the variants that used to be regarded as ungrammatical are in fact used fairly often in reality, especially when processing or informational conditions are met, and therefore, grammatical judgment may not be always categorical but sometimes gradient. It is argued that the notion of distance in constraint ranking in stochastic OT can effectively explain the gradience and variability of grammaticality in the variation phenomena.

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A Study on the Social and Cultural Characteristics of Web Queries (웹 검색질의어 분석을 통한 사회·문화적 특성에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Seong-Hee
    • Journal of Information Management
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    • v.42 no.4
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    • pp.155-174
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    • 2011
  • This study aims to focus on classifying the search engine queries according to web query topic and the different user intents behind web queries. First, we classified 10,000 web query data set by topic. The results showed that there was significant differences in interesting topics across time. Also, we categorized 500 popular queries in web search engine as informational, navigational, or transactional. As a result, 82 percent of web queries are informational in nature, with about 10.8 percent for navigational and 7.2 percent for transactional. This results will help establish the policy to provide internet contents based on user's intent and also find out the social and cultural characteristics.