Multidimensional Visualization of Sound–Sense Harmony for Shakespeare’s Sonnets Classification

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article describes a relationship between sound and sensory sound using the SPARSAR system and proposes a four-dimensional representation method. 1. The description of the SPARSAR system is unclear, and it seems to refer to existing research. The specific algorithm details are difficult to discern, leading to a lack of scientific rigor. 2.Throughout the method description, the process is conveyed entirely in text. I find it puzzling that this area of research does not require a mathematical or formal representation. 3.Most of the related literature cited is quite outdated, making it hard to demonstrate specific progress in the current field. 4.I strongly urge the authors to improve their methodology, as readers cannot comprehend the proposed method's process, and theoretical justification is necessary. 5.The citations are very inappropriate due to the prevalence of outdated literature, which dominates the entire paper. In summary, despite some efforts from the authors, I have to recommend rejecting this paper.

Author Response

The article describes a relationship between sound and sensory sound using the SPARSAR system and proposes a four-dimensional representation method. 1. The description of the SPARSAR system is unclear, and it seems to refer to existing research. The specific algorithm details are difficult to discern, leading to a lack of scientific rigor. 2.Throughout the method description, the process is conveyed entirely in text. I find it puzzling that this area of research does not require a mathematical or formal representation. 3.Most of the related literature cited is quite outdated, making it hard to demonstrate specific progress in the current field. 4.I strongly urge the authors to improve their methodology, as readers cannot comprehend the proposed method's process, and theoretical justification is necessary. 5.The citations are very inappropriate due to the prevalence of outdated literature, which dominates the entire paper. In summary, despite some efforts from the authors, I have to recommend rejecting this paper.

Thanks to the first reviewer for his comments. The reviewer complains about the lack of mathematical formalization in the description of the method. I have the impression that he did not read the article through to the last page, and if he managed to go over page 10 he would have found that mathematical information is used to tell irony and sarcasm apart, that graphical representation are a byproduct of mathematical computing. Theoretical justifications are clearly expressed in the sections dedicated to irony and sarcasmn. So I suspect that the reviewer has no linguistic nor literary knowledge seen that he does not appreciate the complexity of Shakespeare's sonnets and the ability of the rule-based system to analyse them. In order to allow lay readers to better understand the way in which SPARSAR works, rather than referring to previous research I added an Appendix where I describe succinctly what a symbolic NLP system is made of and how it works. I also updated the references to the relation of sense and sound with recent research.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this article. The ideas are presented clearly in this article. There are some minor issues with formatting, such as spacing. Please check the guidelines for this journal for labelling graphs and figures, since they are not to APA 7. Additionally, the paper mentions correlations, but there are no correlations used. It also discusses that the design is experimental, but it doesn't appear to be. Please see the attachment with my comments. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this article. The ideas are presented clearly in this article. There are some minor issues with formatting, such as spacing. Please check the guidelines for this journal for labelling graphs and figures, since they are not to APA 7. Additionally, the paper mentions correlations, but there are no correlations used. It also discusses that the design is experimental, but it doesn't appear to be. Please see the attachment with my comments. 

Thanks to the second reviewer for his comments. I followed the suggestions improving spacing and formatting. I also checked the guidelines for labelling graphs and figures. I corrected the expression "correlation" which was not intended mathematically. As to the comment related to the design not being experimental maybe this is due to the overall presentation of the analysis and the lack of a starting hypothesis about the nature of Shakespeare's sonnets. In fact, it is a fairly accepted view that the sonnets are mostly ironic, but this is not scientifically proven nor shown in detail. It is just in this sense that the paper presents experimental evidence for the hypothesis using two different methods. The data derived automatically from the analysis have been used to feed variables for the graphical representation of each sonnet, thus validating the hypothesis. I added these notes in the discussion and the conclusion.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The introduction lacks an explanation of the research background and its research value. At the same time, the first part of the introduction lacks citations of relevant references, which limits the credibility of the article’s views.

2. There is a typographical error on line 66: there are two periods. The manuscript needs to be carefully checked to avoid similar low-level errors

3. The introduction introduces a lot of basic knowledge and related work and lacks an explanation of this article's contribution. Please focus on this article's motivation and contribution and its differences from existing work. It is recommended that you focus on research perspectives.

4. The quality of all the pictures in the article is not clear and difficult for readers to understand.

5. The discussion should analyze the limitations or potential shortcomings of the method in this article. The conclusion lacks an outlook for future work.

Author Response

1. The introduction lacks an explanation of the research background and its research value. At the same time, the first part of the introduction lacks citations of relevant references, which limits the credibility of the article’s views.

2. There is a typographical error on line 66: there are two periods. The manuscript needs to be carefully checked to avoid similar low-level errors

3. The introduction introduces a lot of basic knowledge and related work and lacks an explanation of this article's contribution. Please focus on this article's motivation and contribution and its differences from existing work. It is recommended that you focus on research perspectives.

4. The quality of all the pictures in the article is not clear and difficult for readers to understand.

5. The discussion should analyze the limitations or potential shortcomings of the method in this article. The conclusion lacks an outlook for future work.

 

Thanks for the useful comments. I added the required information on the aim of the research proposed in the article. More references are added in a specific Appendix where the system is described in some detail.

I also defined better the motivations and contributions, and added shortcoming and future work as suggested.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article presents an algorithm to visualize a multidimensional representation of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

The article is well-structured and well-written. However, I suggest changing subsection 1.1 to a new section named "Background" or "Related Work."

The footnotes on page 3 are very long, and they are not correctly legible.

In section 2, I suggest including a brief paragraph introducing the subsections.

Figures 1, 2, 3, 4 must be replaced. They have a very low resolution, and the colors have a very bad contrast. Is it possible to export these images in SVG format? It would increase their quality.

I did not understand why you focused on Sonnets 47 and 38. Why these are special? How did you select them? Later, you focused on 7 and 60.

I also recommend replacing figures 5, 6, 7. The resolution is not too bad, but they are too big, and the colors might be smoother.

In the discussion section, the authors state, "Deep Neural Networks and Large Language Models are unable to carry out complex tasks like the one proposed here: first of all, they cannot produce a correct and complete phonetic transcription of the text contained in the 154 sonnets, whereby the sound is derived to be subsequently matched with the semantic annotation." I think the authors must argue this statement or might include some references.

In general, the article is interesting and I think it makes a good contribution

Minor comments

Unify the term "article". In some places, it is "paper"

Author Response

The article presents an algorithm to visualize a multidimensional representation of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

The article is well-structured and well-written. However, I suggest changing subsection 1.1 to a new section named "Background" or "Related Work."

The footnotes on page 3 are very long, and they are not correctly legible.

In section 2, I suggest including a brief paragraph introducing the subsections.

Figures 1, 2, 3, 4 must be replaced. They have a very low resolution, and the colors have a very bad contrast. Is it possible to export these images in SVG format? It would increase their quality.

I did not understand why you focused on Sonnets 47 and 38. Why these are special? How did you select them? Later, you focused on 7 and 60.

I also recommend replacing figures 5, 6, 7. The resolution is not too bad, but they are too big, and the colors might be smoother.

In the discussion section, the authors state, "Deep Neural Networks and Large Language Models are unable to carry out complex tasks like the one proposed here: first of all, they cannot produce a correct and complete phonetic transcription of the text contained in the 154 sonnets, whereby the sound is derived to be subsequently matched with the semantic annotation." I think the authors must argue this statement or might include some references.

In general, the article is interesting and I think it makes a good contribution

Minor comments

Unify the term "article". In some places, it is "paper"

 

Thanks for the comments they have been very useful. I did take them all into due account: improved the footnotes font, unified the term article and added a reference to my statement that DNNs and LLMs are unable to produce a correct grapheme to phoneme transcription.

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The subject raised in this work is interesting, but it does not have a conclusion for an application beyond what is exposed in the same work, it does not denote the contributions of the same and therefore it is considered of little interest, 

It would be appropriate for the authors to present an application in addition to the one presented in the text, in order to be able to think that it has a more objective contribution.

There is no objective for which this type of work should be carried out. 

Author Response

The subject raised in this work is interesting, but it does not have a conclusion for an application beyond what is exposed in the same work, it does not denote the contributions of the same and therefore it is considered of little interest, 

It would be appropriate for the authors to present an application in addition to the one presented in the text, in order to be able to think that it has a more objective contribution.

There is no objective for which this type of work should be carried out. 

 

Thanks for the comments. In fact I included in the Introduction a paragraph explaining what the aim the article and the described experiments really are and what would be their usefulness. Seen that the system producing the graphical representations can work with any English poem, the corresponding application could be used for literature teaching programs. It could also be used to analyse the sentiment expressed in short texts written daily by columnists, or opinions written in X or on FB.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It can be seen that the author has made significant changes, which may be acceptable

Author Response

It can be seen that the author has made significant changes, which may be acceptable.

 

Thanks

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Blurred figures and English writing could be further polished.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

See comments.

Author Response

 

Blurred figures and English writing could be further polished.

 

That's the best that I do

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

could explain better the results since the interpretation of the a-e indexes are not explained anywhere, why are they interpreted with that range of numbers, why are they interpreted in that way, is there a threshold, if there is, this can change, what impact do those data have at the time of classifying them to obtain the graphs that show

Author Response

could explain better the results since the interpretation of the a-e indexes are not explained anywhere, why are they interpreted with that range of numbers, why are they interpreted in that way, is there a threshold, if there is, this can change, what impact do those data have at the time of classifying them to obtain the graphs that show

 

Of course there's a threshold, everything is clearly explained: numbers are derived from average values of all parameters computed by the system for all sonnets