Pseudo-likelihood and contrastive divergence are two well-known examples of contrastive methods. These algorithms trade off the probability of the correct label with the probabilities of other “nearby” instantiations. In this paper we explore more general types of contrastive objectives, which trade off the probability of the correct label against an arbitrary set of other instantiations. We pr...

This paper discusses an experiment concerning the assignment of contrastive accents, i.e., accents used to indicate the presence of contrastive information. The experiment tested which of two existing approaches to the determination of contrastive information gives the most natural results. According to one approach the presence of ‘alternative items’ is the only condition for the assignment of...

MOTIVATION Contrasts are useful conceptual vehicles for learning processes and exploratory research of the unknown. For example, contrastive information between proteins can reveal what similarities, divergences and relations there are of the two proteins, leading to invaluable insights for better understanding about the proteins. Such contrastive information are found to be reported in the bio...

This article explores the contrastive function of demonstratives in two languages, Tiriyó (Cariban, northern Brazil) and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands). The contrastive function has to a large extent been neglected in the theoretical literature on demonstrative functions, although preliminary investigations suggest that there are significant di¤erences in demonstrative use in cont...

One source of asymmetry in phonology derives from the contrastive function of features. I assume that feature specifications are driven by considerations of contrast. In order to distinguish between contrastive and redundant specifications, it is necessary to specify the relative scope, or ordering, of each feature. This ordering determines a contrastive hierarchy. Different contrastive hierarc...

Contrastive summarization is the problem of jointly generating summaries for two entities in order to highlight their differences. In this paper we present an investigation into contrastive summarization through an implementation and evaluation of a contrastive opinion summarizer in the consumer reviews domain.

In this study the local and global prosodic exponents of information structure are examined in the production of six Bulgarian question-answer elicited sentences under different focus conditions (broad focus and non-contrastive and contrastive narrow focus). Local cues are the phonetic properties of the nuclear accented syllables, while global cues reflect broader phonetic patterns in the inter...

We were focusing on the core test. One primary and two contrastive systems were submitted. Primary system was a fusion of all GMM-UBM, SVM-GSV and SVM-GLDS systems described in this paper. The first contrastive system was a fusion of GMM-UBM based systems described in Section 3.1, the next was a fusion of SVM based systems described in Section 3.2. All the submitted scores can be interpreted as...

Previous eye tracking studies [1] demonstrated that a prominent L+H* accent in English instructions evoked a contrastive relationship between discourse referents, immediately guiding listeners’ eye movements to contrastive candidates in the visual scene. However, the visual layout in the previous study conflated looks to contrastive candidates with those to previously fixated object groups, thu...

This study examines phonological and phonetic properties of contrastive referential expressions. An interactive holiday tree decoration task provided sequences of ornaments to prompt production of target noun phrases in spontaneous conversation. This paper presents an analysis of a subset of referential expressions that were uttered in contrastive discourse contexts, focusing on the production ...