Courtroom discourse,a highly conventionalized genre,integrates numerous linguistic affordances and semiotic resources.Courtroom interactions provide a rich environment for displaying power,identity,ideology,and affect...Courtroom discourse,a highly conventionalized genre,integrates numerous linguistic affordances and semiotic resources.Courtroom interactions provide a rich environment for displaying power,identity,ideology,and affect.This study examines six YouTube-mediated courtroom trials of young murderers who committed homicides.The study focuses on two phases of the trial:the“leniency plea”or“the allocution”and the sentencing phase,with the objective of identifying the perpetrators’attitudinal disposition during the allocution,which can vary in length.The study also investigates the attitudinal resources detected in courtroom decisions.Moreover,the study addresses the sentiments and attitudes of the public,as reflected in the comments of YouTube viewers.To this end,sentiment analysis is employed to discern the emotional tenor and engagement of the audience,as well as the sentiments expressed by both judges and perpetrators.To this end,the study synthesizes Martin and White’s(Martin,James R.&Peter R.R.White.2005.The language of evaluation:Appraisal in English.New York:Palgrave Macmillan)Appraisal theory with sentiment analysis.The findings showcase that affectual evaluations are more prevalent in allocutions.The study highlights how high-profile cases are shaped by moral and emotional evaluations.展开更多
With the development and applications of the Smart Court System(SCS)in China,the reliability and accuracy of legal artificial intelligence have become focal points in recent years.Notably,criminal sentencing predictio...With the development and applications of the Smart Court System(SCS)in China,the reliability and accuracy of legal artificial intelligence have become focal points in recent years.Notably,criminal sentencing prediction,a significant component of the SCS,has also garnered widespread attention.According to the Chinese criminal law,actual sentencing data exhibits a saturated property due to statutory penalty ranges,but this mechanism has been ignored by most existing studies.Given this,the authors propose a sentencing prediction model that combines judicial sentencing mechanisms including saturated outputs and floating boundaries with neural networks.Building on the saturated structure of our model,a more effective adaptive prediction algorithm will be constructed based on the fusion of several key ideas and techniques that include the utilization of the L1 loss together with the corresponding gradient update strategy,a data pre-processing method based on large language model to extract semantically complex sentencing elements using prior legal knowledge,the choice of appropriate initial conditions for the learning algorithm and the construction of a double-hidden-layer network structure.An empirical study on the crime of disguising or concealing proceeds of crime demonstrates that our method can achieve superior sentencing prediction accuracy and significantly outperform common baseline methods.展开更多
The standardization of sentencing is an important issue in the Chinese reform of criminal justice and sentencing procedure. This study draws on the material obtained from a sentencing procedure pilot project and emplo...The standardization of sentencing is an important issue in the Chinese reform of criminal justice and sentencing procedure. This study draws on the material obtained from a sentencing procedure pilot project and employs typical experimental methodology to test the effect of implementing the independent sentencing procedure through overall and paired comparisons. The results show that independent sentencing is viable in that it can significantly improve the transparency of the sentencing process and increase the quantity and amount of sentencing information obtained and employed by judges. Although the degree of satisfaction of participants in the procedure is not as high as expected, the resultsin trials of the first instance appear to have greater legitimacy and justifiability. At the same time, the independent sentencing procedure also helps give substance to the function of the collegiate bench, and can thus be taken as an important entry point for deepening court reform. However, the findings of our study show that there was room for improvement in the role of lawyers in this experiment.展开更多
The anchoring effect is a powerful and widespread cognitive phenomenon in the decision-making field.Our quantitative analysis of a sample of 520 sentences indicates that the sentencing recommendation of the public pro...The anchoring effect is a powerful and widespread cognitive phenomenon in the decision-making field.Our quantitative analysis of a sample of 520 sentences indicates that the sentencing recommendation of the public procuratorate has a marked influence upon the court＇s sentencing judgment.That is,whether we are investigating the freedom penalty,the fine penalty or the term of probation imposed by the judge,we find that the anchoring effect does exist.In addition,a change in the court conviction or in the trial sentencing circumstances and the availability of a defense lawyer may weaken the anchoring effect of the procuratorate＇s sentencing recommendations.As a form of cognitive bias,the presence of the anchoring effect in the area of sentencing further highlights the necessity of applying analyses based on legal realism to the field of criminal justice in China;and at the institutional level,it demands that judges adopt corresponding arrangements to ensure the impartial exercise of discretion.展开更多
The maximum punishment for holding large amounts of property with unidentified sources, currently five years’ imprison-ment, is set to double if a draft amendment to the Criminal Law is adopted.
Although criminal law as a positive branch of law has been established at the early stage of founding the first states,scientific analysis of basic terms and institutes of criminal law began only in the 18th and the 1...Although criminal law as a positive branch of law has been established at the early stage of founding the first states,scientific analysis of basic terms and institutes of criminal law began only in the 18th and the 19th century.At the same time more natural and social sciences have been developed looking for the answers to the following questions:(1)what are the causes of crime?(2)what is the baseline of criminal responsibility?and(3)what are the measures that state should implement towards the criminal offences’perpetrators?In answering these questions series of scientific trends and understandings are developed in order to analyse forms of social reactions to crime in different ways,and this paper elaborates that.展开更多
I.What are topic sentences in a passage?A topic sentence is the main idea of a paragraph.It tells readers what the paragraph will talk about.Usually,the topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph,but sometime...I.What are topic sentences in a passage?A topic sentence is the main idea of a paragraph.It tells readers what the paragraph will talk about.Usually,the topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph,but sometimes it can come in the middle or at the end.A good topic sentence helps readers understand the writer's purpose quickly.展开更多
In the published version of our article(Shaji et al.,2024),in the last paragraph of the article,Hong Kong should be corrected to Hong Kong(China)and the repetition of Spain and Ireland in the same sentence need to be ...In the published version of our article(Shaji et al.,2024),in the last paragraph of the article,Hong Kong should be corrected to Hong Kong(China)and the repetition of Spain and Ireland in the same sentence need to be deleted.The correct sentence is as below.展开更多
本文以2026年托福考试新增题型“Build a Sentence”为研究对象,基于官方样题探讨其设计逻辑、测试学依据和语言学理论基础。本文认为,该题型通过词序重构测评考生的句法能力和语用能力,符合交际语言测试的真实性原则。文章结合生成语...本文以2026年托福考试新增题型“Build a Sentence”为研究对象,基于官方样题探讨其设计逻辑、测试学依据和语言学理论基础。本文认为,该题型通过词序重构测评考生的句法能力和语用能力,符合交际语言测试的真实性原则。文章结合生成语法与认知语法视角,分析了题型所涉及的核心语法点及学习者的典型错误来源,并提出分层教学框架与预防性训练策略。研究结果为语言测评效度验证与教学实践提供参考。展开更多
In Kripke’s theory of truth,the largest intrinsic fixed point—like the least fixed point—is of special theoretical interest among all fixed points.However,for intrinsic yet ungrounded sentences(i.e.,those belonging...In Kripke’s theory of truth,the largest intrinsic fixed point—like the least fixed point—is of special theoretical interest among all fixed points.However,for intrinsic yet ungrounded sentences(i.e.,those belonging to the largest intrinsic fixed points but not to the least fixed point),only sporadic examples have been provided so far,and a universal criterion for deciding such sentences remains unknown.This paper aims to establish a general criterion for determining intrinsic truth in Boolean systems of self-referential sentences under Kleene’s strong valuation scheme.To achieve this,we first present a known result about the definability of three-valued functions within Kleene’s strong logic.Then,by reducing the problem of determining the fixed points to a calculation problem in propositional logic,we demonstrate a truth-functional characteristic for the intrinsic truths in Boolean systems.We thus find an effective method for constructing intrinsic truths in a first-order language for Peano arithmetic.We also discuss the applicability of our findings to Kleene’s weak valuation scheme.展开更多
In order to recognize people＇s annoyance emotions in the working environment and evaluate emotional well- being, emotional speech in a work environment is induced to obtain adequate samples of emotional speech, and a...In order to recognize people＇s annoyance emotions in the working environment and evaluate emotional well- being, emotional speech in a work environment is induced to obtain adequate samples of emotional speech, and a Mandarin database with two thousands samples is built. In searching for annoyance-type emotion features, the prosodic feature and the voice quality feature parameters of the emotional statements are extracted first. Then an improved back propagation （BP） neural network based on the shuffled frog leaping algorithm （SFLA） is proposed to recognize the emotion. The recognition capability of the BP, radical basis function （RBF） and the SFLA neural networks are compared experimentally. The results show that the recognition ratio of the SFLA neural network is 4. 7% better than that of the BP neural network and 4. 3% better than that of the RBF neural network. The experimental results demonstrate that the random initial data trained by the SFLA can optimize the connection weights and thresholds of the neural network, speed up the convergence and improve the recognition rate.展开更多
Dealing with issues such as too simple image features and word noise inference in product image sentence anmotation, a product image sentence annotation model focusing on image feature learning and key words summariza...Dealing with issues such as too simple image features and word noise inference in product image sentence anmotation, a product image sentence annotation model focusing on image feature learning and key words summarization is described. Three kernel descriptors such as gradient, shape, and color are extracted, respectively. Feature late-fusion is executed in turn by the multiple kernel learning model to obtain more discriminant image features. Absolute rank and relative rank of the tag-rank model are used to boost the key words＇ weights. A new word integration algorithm named word sequence blocks building （WSBB） is designed to create N-gram word sequences. Sentences are generated according to the N-gram word sequences and predefined templates. Experimental results show that both the BLEU-1 scores and BLEU-2 scores of the sentences are superior to those of the state-of-art baselines.展开更多
文摘Courtroom discourse,a highly conventionalized genre,integrates numerous linguistic affordances and semiotic resources.Courtroom interactions provide a rich environment for displaying power,identity,ideology,and affect.This study examines six YouTube-mediated courtroom trials of young murderers who committed homicides.The study focuses on two phases of the trial:the“leniency plea”or“the allocution”and the sentencing phase,with the objective of identifying the perpetrators’attitudinal disposition during the allocution,which can vary in length.The study also investigates the attitudinal resources detected in courtroom decisions.Moreover,the study addresses the sentiments and attitudes of the public,as reflected in the comments of YouTube viewers.To this end,sentiment analysis is employed to discern the emotional tenor and engagement of the audience,as well as the sentiments expressed by both judges and perpetrators.To this end,the study synthesizes Martin and White’s(Martin,James R.&Peter R.R.White.2005.The language of evaluation:Appraisal in English.New York:Palgrave Macmillan)Appraisal theory with sentiment analysis.The findings showcase that affectual evaluations are more prevalent in allocutions.The study highlights how high-profile cases are shaped by moral and emotional evaluations.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.T2293773,72371145,and 12288201the Special Funds for Taishan Scholars Project of Shandong Province,China under Grant No.tsqn202211004National Key Research and Development Program under Grant No.2022YFC3303000.
文摘With the development and applications of the Smart Court System(SCS)in China,the reliability and accuracy of legal artificial intelligence have become focal points in recent years.Notably,criminal sentencing prediction,a significant component of the SCS,has also garnered widespread attention.According to the Chinese criminal law,actual sentencing data exhibits a saturated property due to statutory penalty ranges,but this mechanism has been ignored by most existing studies.Given this,the authors propose a sentencing prediction model that combines judicial sentencing mechanisms including saturated outputs and floating boundaries with neural networks.Building on the saturated structure of our model,a more effective adaptive prediction algorithm will be constructed based on the fusion of several key ideas and techniques that include the utilization of the L1 loss together with the corresponding gradient update strategy,a data pre-processing method based on large language model to extract semantically complex sentencing elements using prior legal knowledge,the choice of appropriate initial conditions for the learning algorithm and the construction of a double-hidden-layer network structure.An empirical study on the crime of disguising or concealing proceeds of crime demonstrates that our method can achieve superior sentencing prediction accuracy and significantly outperform common baseline methods.
文摘The standardization of sentencing is an important issue in the Chinese reform of criminal justice and sentencing procedure. This study draws on the material obtained from a sentencing procedure pilot project and employs typical experimental methodology to test the effect of implementing the independent sentencing procedure through overall and paired comparisons. The results show that independent sentencing is viable in that it can significantly improve the transparency of the sentencing process and increase the quantity and amount of sentencing information obtained and employed by judges. Although the degree of satisfaction of participants in the procedure is not as high as expected, the resultsin trials of the first instance appear to have greater legitimacy and justifiability. At the same time, the independent sentencing procedure also helps give substance to the function of the collegiate bench, and can thus be taken as an important entry point for deepening court reform. However, the findings of our study show that there was room for improvement in the role of lawyers in this experiment.
基金Supported by the Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation of Shanghai(No.:2017BFX001)Shanghai’s Outstanding Young Talents Projects
文摘The anchoring effect is a powerful and widespread cognitive phenomenon in the decision-making field.Our quantitative analysis of a sample of 520 sentences indicates that the sentencing recommendation of the public procuratorate has a marked influence upon the court＇s sentencing judgment.That is,whether we are investigating the freedom penalty,the fine penalty or the term of probation imposed by the judge,we find that the anchoring effect does exist.In addition,a change in the court conviction or in the trial sentencing circumstances and the availability of a defense lawyer may weaken the anchoring effect of the procuratorate＇s sentencing recommendations.As a form of cognitive bias,the presence of the anchoring effect in the area of sentencing further highlights the necessity of applying analyses based on legal realism to the field of criminal justice in China;and at the institutional level,it demands that judges adopt corresponding arrangements to ensure the impartial exercise of discretion.
文摘The maximum punishment for holding large amounts of property with unidentified sources, currently five years’ imprison-ment, is set to double if a draft amendment to the Criminal Law is adopted.
文摘Although criminal law as a positive branch of law has been established at the early stage of founding the first states,scientific analysis of basic terms and institutes of criminal law began only in the 18th and the 19th century.At the same time more natural and social sciences have been developed looking for the answers to the following questions:(1)what are the causes of crime?(2)what is the baseline of criminal responsibility?and(3)what are the measures that state should implement towards the criminal offences’perpetrators?In answering these questions series of scientific trends and understandings are developed in order to analyse forms of social reactions to crime in different ways,and this paper elaborates that.
文摘I.What are topic sentences in a passage?A topic sentence is the main idea of a paragraph.It tells readers what the paragraph will talk about.Usually,the topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph,but sometimes it can come in the middle or at the end.A good topic sentence helps readers understand the writer's purpose quickly.
文摘In the published version of our article(Shaji et al.,2024),in the last paragraph of the article,Hong Kong should be corrected to Hong Kong(China)and the repetition of Spain and Ireland in the same sentence need to be deleted.The correct sentence is as below.
文摘本文以2026年托福考试新增题型“Build a Sentence”为研究对象,基于官方样题探讨其设计逻辑、测试学依据和语言学理论基础。本文认为,该题型通过词序重构测评考生的句法能力和语用能力,符合交际语言测试的真实性原则。文章结合生成语法与认知语法视角,分析了题型所涉及的核心语法点及学习者的典型错误来源,并提出分层教学框架与预防性训练策略。研究结果为语言测评效度验证与教学实践提供参考。
基金supported by National Social Science Foundation of China,“A Truth-theoretical Study on Limits of Artificial Intelligence”(No.24AZX018)Major Interdisciplinary Cultivation Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences at South China Normal University,“Research on Frontier Issues in Epistemic Logic in Analytic Philosophy.”。
文摘In Kripke’s theory of truth,the largest intrinsic fixed point—like the least fixed point—is of special theoretical interest among all fixed points.However,for intrinsic yet ungrounded sentences(i.e.,those belonging to the largest intrinsic fixed points but not to the least fixed point),only sporadic examples have been provided so far,and a universal criterion for deciding such sentences remains unknown.This paper aims to establish a general criterion for determining intrinsic truth in Boolean systems of self-referential sentences under Kleene’s strong valuation scheme.To achieve this,we first present a known result about the definability of three-valued functions within Kleene’s strong logic.Then,by reducing the problem of determining the fixed points to a calculation problem in propositional logic,we demonstrate a truth-functional characteristic for the intrinsic truths in Boolean systems.We thus find an effective method for constructing intrinsic truths in a first-order language for Peano arithmetic.We also discuss the applicability of our findings to Kleene’s weak valuation scheme.
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61375028,61301219)China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(No.2012M520973)the Scientific Research Funds of Nanjing Institute of Technology(No.ZKJ201202)
文摘In order to recognize people＇s annoyance emotions in the working environment and evaluate emotional well- being, emotional speech in a work environment is induced to obtain adequate samples of emotional speech, and a Mandarin database with two thousands samples is built. In searching for annoyance-type emotion features, the prosodic feature and the voice quality feature parameters of the emotional statements are extracted first. Then an improved back propagation （BP） neural network based on the shuffled frog leaping algorithm （SFLA） is proposed to recognize the emotion. The recognition capability of the BP, radical basis function （RBF） and the SFLA neural networks are compared experimentally. The results show that the recognition ratio of the SFLA neural network is 4. 7% better than that of the BP neural network and 4. 3% better than that of the RBF neural network. The experimental results demonstrate that the random initial data trained by the SFLA can optimize the connection weights and thresholds of the neural network, speed up the convergence and improve the recognition rate.
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61133012)the Humanity and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education(No.12YJCZH274)+1 种基金the Humanity and Social Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province(No.XW1502,TQ1503)the Science and Technology Project of Jiangxi Science and Technology Department(No.20121BBG70050,20142BBG70011)
文摘Dealing with issues such as too simple image features and word noise inference in product image sentence anmotation, a product image sentence annotation model focusing on image feature learning and key words summarization is described. Three kernel descriptors such as gradient, shape, and color are extracted, respectively. Feature late-fusion is executed in turn by the multiple kernel learning model to obtain more discriminant image features. Absolute rank and relative rank of the tag-rank model are used to boost the key words＇ weights. A new word integration algorithm named word sequence blocks building （WSBB） is designed to create N-gram word sequences. Sentences are generated according to the N-gram word sequences and predefined templates. Experimental results show that both the BLEU-1 scores and BLEU-2 scores of the sentences are superior to those of the state-of-art baselines.
