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The Network Activation Modeler
by Sanjeev Verma

Instructions

These instructions are only for the end-user.  Full documentation can be found here.

The user interface consists of three parts (from top to bottom): the output display, the network diagram, and the control bar.

The output display shows the text generated by the network. For example, if the network is constructing the word “went”, the output bar will display ‘w’, ‘we’, ‘wen’, and ‘went’ as each part is activated.

The network diagram shows the network segment in graphical form.  The nodes that are represented are ordered and, unordered and, ordered or, unordered or, empty, text, and phoneme.  The and, or, and empty nodes are colored black, and function exactly as in the text.  Text nodes are colored blue and represent the top level of the diagram.  Phonemes are colored green and represent the bottom level.  Note that phoneme nodes do not always have to represent phonemes—they are simply the lowest level of the network segment.  The contents of the output window is drawn from these low-level nodes.  All nodes turn red when activated.

Nodes are connected by edges, which are simply black lines.  Edges may have labels (if they represent a nection that can be named); this name is drawn to the side as in the text.  Edges also turn red when activated.

The control bar contains several buttons and check boxes that allow the user to interact with the modeler.  The “Pass Activation” and “Clear Activation” buttons are fairly self-explanatory—they pass activation one step and clear all active nodes, respectively.  The “Print” button outputs a textual representation to the Java Console.

The two check boxes allow the user to choose how they want the diagram to respond to mouse actions.  By default, no mode is chosen—the diagram does nothing when clicked.  “Edit Mode” allows the user to drag nodes around the display window to rearrange the graph.  When in “Activate Mode”, the user can click on a node to activate it.  The user can only activate top-level or bottom-level nodes—ands and ors can only be activated by clicking the “Pass Activation” button.  Note that “Activate Mode” and “Edit Mode” can both be selected, which causes both actions to happen when a node is clicked.

 

Examples

Figure 4-12: The morpheme go

Figure 5-2: Portmanteau realization

Figure 6-8: Noun stems, plurals

Figure 10-2: Pathways for interpreting a complex lexeme

Irregular past tense in complex lexeme

 

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This page was last modified on 22 August 2000.

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