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New publication in Argumentation: Assessing Classification Reliability...

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Different types and argumentative uses of conditionals (if-then) have been distinguished in the literature, but their applicability to actual language use is rarely evaluated.

As 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating', my new paper in Argumentation (Springer) entitled 'Assessing Classification Reliability of Conditionals in Discourse' addresses this issue by means of an experiment in which the inter-rater reliability of classifications applied to natural-language corpora was assessed.

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New publication in Argumentation: 'Assessing Classification Reliability of Conditionals in Discourse'

You can find the paper (open access) in Argumentation here: https://rdcu.be/c9nO4.

Annotation reliability as a preliminary for corpus research

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On Friday 17 February, 2023 I gave a talk in the Sociolinguistics Series at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), entitled Annotation reliability as a preliminary for corpus research. Thanks Marina Terkourafi, Janet Connor, and Arie Elsenaar for organizing this series!

I presented an experiment on the reliabiliy of annotating conditionals in corpus data. I got some great questions and suggestions for further research. Much appreciated! Below you can find the abstract.

Annotation reliability as a preliminary for corpus research

In corpus research, language data are frequently annotated by analysts, but measures of reliability are rarely reported. When annotations concern interpretative features such as implicatures, this poses problems for subsequent steps in the analysis. In this talk, three connected issues are discussed in light of an experiment on classification of coherence relations in conditionals. First, different classifications produce incompatible results when applied to language data. Second, discourse studies observe a discrepancy between theory and data, i.e., existing classifications are “too detached” from actual discourse. Third, while language users construct various cognitive relations between clauses, they do so without relying on overt linguistic features, which poses problems for composing annotation schemes. Based on the results of the experiment, I discuss the implications for corpus research of implicatures.

See this LUCL page for the other talks in this series.

AVT/Anéla-dissertatieprijs 2022

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Het was een enorme eer om een van de drie genomineerde taalwetenschappers te zijn voor de AVT/Anéla-dissertatieprijs 2022. Op vrijdag 3 februari 2023 vond aan het einde van de Grote Taaldag in Utrecht de feestelijke uitreiking plaats en mocht ik de prijs in ontvangst nemen voor mijn proefschrift Connecting Conditionals. Ik ben heel erg blij met deze geweldige prijs en met de mooie woorden van de jury!

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Prijsuitreiking aan het einde van de Grote Taaldag 2023

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Samen met de andere genomineerden, Sybren Spit en Daan Hovens

Veel dank aan mijn promotoren Arie Verhagen en Ronny Boogaart Boogaart en aan mijn collega's bij LUCL, aan de andere genomineerden, Sybren Spit en Daan Hovens, aan de Algemene Vereniging voor Taalwetenschap (AVT) en natuurlijk aan de jury, bestaande uit Beyza Sümer, Ad Backus, Mike Huiskes, Maarten Kossmann en Nicoline van der Sijs, voor het lezen en beoordelen van de genomineerde proefschriften.

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Het was erg mooi om deze prijs samen met copromotor Ronny Boogaart en promotor Arie Verhagen in ontvangst te mogen nemen.

Meer informatie over de prijs, de vorige winnaars en het juryrapport vind je op https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/avt/dissertatieprijs, https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/avt/dissertatieprijs/overzicht-winnaars en op https://neerlandistiek.nl/2023/02/alex-reuneker-winnaar-taalkundedissertatieprijs-2023.

Custom reference corpora in keyword analysis

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Today I added the option to directly compare two texts on the keyword analysis page.

Before today, only one general Dutch and one general English reference corpus could be loaded, but much of the time, a custom corpus is needed to get more informative results. For example, say you'd like to see a list of keywords in a certain novel. It makes sense to compare this novel to another novel, as in the screenshot below, or perhaps to a collection of other novels.

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Well, now you can. Simply copy-paste the reference corpus to the webpage, and you're good to go.

Embed fonts in a PDF for free on a Mac

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This is a quick note for anyone struggling to generate PDF's which have their fonts included.

I had to supply plots to a publishing house, and when I opened one of the plots in my browser instead of in Adobe Reader, I saw the fonts changed. It turned out the font I used to generate text in R and GGPlot was not included in the PDF. As this happened only one day before the deadline, naturally, I freaked out a little – no need to, though, because on a Mac it is actually easy to embed fonts afterwards and you don't even need additional software.

Below, you'll find the steps needed.

  1. Open the PDF in Preview (the default app) on a Mac.
  2. Click on File, and then on Export.
  3. Choose the Quartz-filter 'Generate generic PDFX-3 document'.
  4. Save the file.

That's it! The fonts are now embedded. It is always wise to test it, so open the PDF in your browser, or on another computer, your phone et cetera.

I used some (outdated) information available at http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060203175741232

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