Graduate School of Informatics

This work investigates the meaning of the perfective/evidential suffix -mIş, focusing on its perfect interpretation. It has been argued that there are two distinct syntactic structures for simple verbal sentences [verb+past] and complex verbal sentences [verb+part+cop+past] (Kornfilt, 1996; Kelepir, 2001). Demirok and Sağ (2023) offer a compositional account for these two structures, taking the temporal relations as the basis. Building on that, we propose an Aktionsart-oriented analysis of the verb-participle relation. We offer a continuation-based compositional account within quantificational event semantics (Champollion, 2015) to reconcile the syntactic account of Kelepir (2001) and observations on the perfect meaning of -mIş.

Date: 06.09.2024 / 15:30 Place: A-212

This thesis aims to identify the factors influencing practitioners' continuance intention toward Agile methodology usage. The study also examines the influence of identified factors on the continuance intention of Agile methodology usage and proposes a model in the context of Agile methodology. The model was verified with the reliability tests, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. By utilizing Structural Equation Modeling, the influencing factors and the relationships among these factors were analyzed and the final model is proposed.

Date: 05.09.2024 / 09:45 Place: A-108

This thesis explores the identification and prioritization of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in data analytics projects. Through a systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews with data professionals, a comprehensive list of CSFs was developed, structured hierarchically, and refined based on expert feedback. The study addresses gaps in existing literature by providing a cross-disciplinary CSF framework applicable to various fields like AI, big data, and business intelligence. Additionally, the research prioritizes these factors through the semi-structured interviews based on organizational contexts such as company size, project complexity, and technological maturity.

Date: 05.09.2024 / 11:00 Place: A-212

In this thesis, a Bayesian cognitive model of Theory of Mind in communication is developed based on a prior experimental study on joint action and attention. Specifically, the model compares demonstrative utterances between individuals with high-functioning autism and typically developing, non-clinical controls. It applies the Rational Speech Act framework, incorporating visual (joint) attention measures obtained through dual eye-tracking. By parameterizing context-dependence, nestedness of inference, and the preference for different demonstrative systems, the model provides insights into group differences observed under conditions of high ecological validity.

Date: 05.09.2024 / 09:00 Place: B-116

In the present thesis, the social nature of learning in a verbal communication setting has been investigated by employing a multimodal hyperscanning method to correlate non-complex and replicable ocular and neural features with the socio-linguistic process of interlocutors establishing and sustaining conceptual common grounds. A dyadic interaction setting was formed with a dual-EEG, dual-fNIRS, and dual-eye tracking setup wherein experiment data were synchronized on the same time-domain to explicate these features. The results showed that replicable features for ocular, hemodynamic, and neuroelectric domains constituted both linear and non-linear relationships in between that correlate with linguistic behavioral data during dyadic verbal communication.

Date: 05.09.2024 / 15:00 Place: A-108

This thesis presents a method of comparing the cost-effectiveness of 3D mesh simplification algorithms using the McGurk effect, where visual and auditory cues are combined to create an illusion. The study involves designing a human head mesh, animating mouth movements, and recording certain syllable sounds to produce a virtual scene. Using this virtual scene and applying three different mesh simplification algorithms on the animated head, a user study was conducted to test and measure the effectiveness of each algorithm for each different syllable in medium and high difficulty levels. Results highlight the balance between computational efficiency and perceptual accuracy, providing insights for 3D modeling and virtual reality applications.

Date: 04.09.2024 / 10:00 Place: II-06

This thesis explores the use of small to medium-sized language models (LLMs) for multi-hop question answering, focusing on overcoming their limitations in knowledge and reasoning compared to larger models like GPT-4. The research explores using knowledge graphs to enhance these models' performance, specifically by integrating entity-relation triplets extracted from text. Techniques like supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning are evaluated for improving entity-relation extraction. A new prompting technique, Connect-the-Entities (CTE), is introduced to improve question answering performance with lower computational costs.

Date: 29.08.2024 / 10:00 Place: A-212

In this thesis  the parameters of the successful transformation from traditional grid to smart grid in Turkey are determined and analyzed by a survey with the participation of 535 respondents from  Turkish electricity ecosystem. The dependent and independent variables of Turkish smart grid transformation are  determined with the literature review, delphi analysis, expert views and survey research method. Correlation, regression and anova  analyse, are implemented. This study is a multidimensional study including all dimensions of the smart grid transformation success in Turkey with the views of  Turkish electricity grid institutions, stakeholders, and experts.

Date: 28.08.2024 / 14:00 Place: A-212

There are two goals of the thesis: (i) to understand the descriptive properties of the so-called negative dependencies in Turkish, which are expressions that basically require the presence of a negative-like element or environment to be well-formed; and (ii) to understand the so-called intervention effects on negative dependencies, where the term refers to the anti-licensing of negative dependencies in an otherwise adequate structure due to the presence of some elements (e.g. conjunction, universal quantifier, etc.).

Date: 06.09.2024 / 14:00 Place: A-212

In the literature, it is widely accepted that there is a direct relationship between the aspectual interpretation of the predicate and the internal argument of the verb. For languages such as Turkish and Finnish, it is argued that the accusative case marker on the direct object functions as a measurer and elicits a delimited event interpretation. However, in this thesis, we will argue that the correlation between the accusative case and the delimited interpretation of events is not a result of the supposed direct relationship between case and aspect, and show that the said relationship is only indirect following MacDonald’s (2006) work. 

Date: 06.09.2024 / 12:00 Place: A-212