Currently I'm very busy in learning the formal foundations of linguistics (Set Theory, Relations), programming (Python) and computational linguistics (Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Context Free Grammars).
I got an e-mail. Really. From a reader. By the way, it's my first; that's why I'm quite enthusiastic. He suggested to introduce my readers (do I have any?) to his blog Neuropolitics. Well, well, I read the first sentences and decided to mention it in this post. Form your own opinion.
Perhaps I'm going to write about the foundations of Natural Language Processing or upload some Python code which could be used to play with strings. Mostly harmless, not really meaningful code. I don't think that I'll have time for something else anyway.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Time's running, running out
Unfortunately, I don't have time to blog for the time being. I study natural language processing, which is very intense. So give me a week or two and I'll come back.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Points of Interest 05. October, 2008
1. Please dear god make this an imperative:
2. Why don't apes use language although they could? Because they don't have a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality. Bolles' Review of Tomasello's Power Point Prose: Part 1 & Part 2
3. I always wondered which type of camouflage the US Army use since it looks like bad pixels of ancient computer days. Here's why they use digital camouflage: Can You See Me Now?
4. Dying of capsaicin? Well, I eat Habaneros every day - no joke: Which organisms can feel pain? & Chili, capsaicin and cancer
5. Time for linguistic lolcat:
6. After several years of detective work, philologists at the University of Stavanger in Norway have collected a unique collection of texts online. Now they're about to start the most comprehensive analysis of middle English ever: New life for Middle English: Norwegian detective work gives new knowledge of the English language.
7. Syntactic persistence is the tendency for speakers to produce sentences using similar grammatical patterns and rules of language as those they have used before. Although the way this occurs is not well understood, previous research has indicated that this effect may involve a specific aspect of memory function. Memory is made up of two components: declarative and procedural. Declarative memory is used in remembering events and facts. Procedural memory helps us to remember how to perform tasks, such as playing the piano or riding a bike. A recent study suggests that the common phrase, "it's so easy, it's like riding a bike" should perhaps be replaced with "it's so easy, it's like forming a sentence.": Un-total recall: Amnesics remember grammar, but not meaning of new sentences
9. Cool new robots from Japan with cool abilities: Photos: Robots at CEATEC 2008
10. It's the thalamus that actually matters for sentence processing: Thalamus? Yes. Basal ganglia? Nope.
11. Beautiful statue: "Transi de René de Chalon," Ligier Richier, 1547
12. Broca's area shows a "sentence complexity" effect. It responds more during the comprehension of object relative (OR) constructions than easier to process subject relative (SR) constructions: Broca's area, sentence comprehension, and working memory
13. Carbon nanotechnology in an 17th century Damascus sword
14. A Bob Dylon song encoded in XML: Encoding Dylan
15. Why choose the lesser evil?
16. Interesting, really: How to beat of a cold
17. Taking the new out of neurons
18. Robo-starfish learns about itself and adapts to injuries
19: 2008 IgNobels
2. Why don't apes use language although they could? Because they don't have a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality. Bolles' Review of Tomasello's Power Point Prose: Part 1 & Part 2
3. I always wondered which type of camouflage the US Army use since it looks like bad pixels of ancient computer days. Here's why they use digital camouflage: Can You See Me Now?
4. Dying of capsaicin? Well, I eat Habaneros every day - no joke: Which organisms can feel pain? & Chili, capsaicin and cancer
5. Time for linguistic lolcat:
6. After several years of detective work, philologists at the University of Stavanger in Norway have collected a unique collection of texts online. Now they're about to start the most comprehensive analysis of middle English ever: New life for Middle English: Norwegian detective work gives new knowledge of the English language.
7. Syntactic persistence is the tendency for speakers to produce sentences using similar grammatical patterns and rules of language as those they have used before. Although the way this occurs is not well understood, previous research has indicated that this effect may involve a specific aspect of memory function. Memory is made up of two components: declarative and procedural. Declarative memory is used in remembering events and facts. Procedural memory helps us to remember how to perform tasks, such as playing the piano or riding a bike. A recent study suggests that the common phrase, "it's so easy, it's like riding a bike" should perhaps be replaced with "it's so easy, it's like forming a sentence.": Un-total recall: Amnesics remember grammar, but not meaning of new sentences
9. Cool new robots from Japan with cool abilities: Photos: Robots at CEATEC 2008
10. It's the thalamus that actually matters for sentence processing: Thalamus? Yes. Basal ganglia? Nope.
11. Beautiful statue: "Transi de René de Chalon," Ligier Richier, 1547
12. Broca's area shows a "sentence complexity" effect. It responds more during the comprehension of object relative (OR) constructions than easier to process subject relative (SR) constructions: Broca's area, sentence comprehension, and working memory
13. Carbon nanotechnology in an 17th century Damascus sword
14. A Bob Dylon song encoded in XML: Encoding Dylan
15. Why choose the lesser evil?
16. Interesting, really: How to beat of a cold
17. Taking the new out of neurons
18. Robo-starfish learns about itself and adapts to injuries
19: 2008 IgNobels
Monday, 22 September 2008
Points of Interest 22. September, 2008
1. Listeneres can only keep up with the rapid rate of speech (5 syllables/second) because they anticipate the missing possible syllables of the word. A new study conducted by scientists of the University of Rochester and Georgia Tech showed that this is not only true for the phonology but also the semantics of words: Scientists watch as listener's brain predicts speaker's words & Neural correlates of partial lexical activation
2. At age 3–4, the overwhelming majority of children behave selfishly, whereas most children at age 7–8 prefer resource allocations that remove advantageous or disadvantageous inequality: Egalitarianism in young children
3. The evolution of speech. Speech recognition part in macaques found: Monkey Brains Hint at Evolutionary Root of Language Processing
4. World largest semantic map revealed. First steps toward Semantic Web? Computers figuring out what words mean
5. The right word is in our jaw: Speaking Without Sound & Breakthrough in understanding of speech offers hope to the deaf
6. Stuttering causes bilingualism: Does bilingualism cause stuttering?
7. Neuroaesthetics? Beauty & the Brain and Beauty and the Brain
8. Save humanity. But first I want more funds for computational linguistics: Funding the Mitigation of Extinction Risks and How can we reduce the risk of human extinction?
9. Humans - The best race there is and ever was on earth? Stop kidding me, Lystrosaurus dominated more: Technologies to Watch Out For: Self-Copying
10. The geometric bucket a systematical view: A simple toy, and what it says about how we learn to mentally rotate objects
11. Oh my arse: The Evolution of Assholes
12. The seven gates to humanity: What I've Learned About Human Origins
13. I like the picture of possible paths for human evolution: Mark Stoneking’s Four Models Of Human Origins
14. About rhymes in Japanese Hip Hop and what they reveal about the language: I'll experiment like a scientist/ You wanna rhyme, you gotta sign my list
15. “Thinking about Not-Thinking”: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation
16. Suicidal Individuals: Evaluation, Therapies, and Ethics – Part 1 & Part 2
2. At age 3–4, the overwhelming majority of children behave selfishly, whereas most children at age 7–8 prefer resource allocations that remove advantageous or disadvantageous inequality: Egalitarianism in young children
3. The evolution of speech. Speech recognition part in macaques found: Monkey Brains Hint at Evolutionary Root of Language Processing
4. World largest semantic map revealed. First steps toward Semantic Web? Computers figuring out what words mean
5. The right word is in our jaw: Speaking Without Sound & Breakthrough in understanding of speech offers hope to the deaf
6. Stuttering causes bilingualism: Does bilingualism cause stuttering?
7. Neuroaesthetics? Beauty & the Brain and Beauty and the Brain
8. Save humanity. But first I want more funds for computational linguistics: Funding the Mitigation of Extinction Risks and How can we reduce the risk of human extinction?
9. Humans - The best race there is and ever was on earth? Stop kidding me, Lystrosaurus dominated more: Technologies to Watch Out For: Self-Copying
10. The geometric bucket a systematical view: A simple toy, and what it says about how we learn to mentally rotate objects
11. Oh my arse: The Evolution of Assholes
12. The seven gates to humanity: What I've Learned About Human Origins
13. I like the picture of possible paths for human evolution: Mark Stoneking’s Four Models Of Human Origins
14. About rhymes in Japanese Hip Hop and what they reveal about the language: I'll experiment like a scientist/ You wanna rhyme, you gotta sign my list
15. “Thinking about Not-Thinking”: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation
16. Suicidal Individuals: Evaluation, Therapies, and Ethics – Part 1 & Part 2
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Points of Interest 17. September, 2008
I got a bit picky about the Points of Interest I choose these days; so less is more. A problem which occured while writing this and which is bothering me: What's the difference between:
a) It is not
b) It isn't
c) It's not
I think the first is the most emphasised because there is no contraction at all. The second emphasises the subject - due to the contraction of "is not" the stress shifts to "It". The third emphasises the negation because the stress lies on "not". Language Hat had a post about this in 2005.
1. [...] findings suggest that New Caledonian crows can solve complex physical problems by reasoning both causally and analogically about causal relations: Do New Caledonian crows solve physical problems through causal reasoning?
Alex Taylor explains the experiment:
2. Pro Transhumanism. It's not a matter of philosophy - It's a matter of time: Transhumanism as Universal
3. About the temperature of excluding metaphors: Social exclusion literally feels cold
4. Pulvermuller's vs. Wernicke-Lichtheim's functional anatomy of language: Pulvermuller = Wernicke-Lichtheim
a) It is not
b) It isn't
c) It's not
I think the first is the most emphasised because there is no contraction at all. The second emphasises the subject - due to the contraction of "is not" the stress shifts to "It". The third emphasises the negation because the stress lies on "not". Language Hat had a post about this in 2005.
1. [...] findings suggest that New Caledonian crows can solve complex physical problems by reasoning both causally and analogically about causal relations: Do New Caledonian crows solve physical problems through causal reasoning?
Alex Taylor explains the experiment:
2. Pro Transhumanism. It's not a matter of philosophy - It's a matter of time: Transhumanism as Universal
3. About the temperature of excluding metaphors: Social exclusion literally feels cold
4. Pulvermuller's vs. Wernicke-Lichtheim's functional anatomy of language: Pulvermuller = Wernicke-Lichtheim
Monday, 15 September 2008
Points of Interest 15. September, 2008
1. An interesting article about the neurobiology of a hallucination based on Ffytche, D. (2008). The hodology of hallucinations. Cortex 44: 1067-1083. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2008.04.005:
2. Gestalt meets linguistic relativism: What Bolles have learned about language.
3. "[...] some so-far anonymous computational linguist caused United Airlines to lose more than a billion dollars of its market capitalization, over the course of about 12 minutes last Monday: Economic linguistics
4. Who carried out 9/11? Views Differ...
5. From E-Paper to Semantic Web. What kind of technologies could we expect in 2018? Nature asks: What will happen in the next 10 years?
"In the EEG experiments, the activity recorded from two of the electrodes was found to become sychronous whilst the subjects were hallucinating. [...] Ffytche hypothesizes that the changes in connectivity could be due to changes in the firing mode of the thalamo-cortical connections [...] Overall, Fytche's findings suggest that hallucination cannot be explained by a topological or hodological explanation alone, but instead by a combination of the two. [...]"
2. Gestalt meets linguistic relativism: What Bolles have learned about language.
3. "[...] some so-far anonymous computational linguist caused United Airlines to lose more than a billion dollars of its market capitalization, over the course of about 12 minutes last Monday: Economic linguistics
4. Who carried out 9/11? Views Differ...
5. From E-Paper to Semantic Web. What kind of technologies could we expect in 2018? Nature asks: What will happen in the next 10 years?
Thursday, 4 September 2008
One word != one number
Earlier this year a study was conducted by researchers from the University of Melbourne and University College London - namely Brian Butterworth, Robert Reeve, Fiona Reynolds and Delyth Lloyd. Children of two indigenous communities were tested for their numeracy skills; one from Tanami Desert and the other from Groote Eylandt. Another group were indigenous preschool children from Melbourne. Here's a map of the locations:
The results showed clearly that the children of indegenious communities - who have no words or even gestures for numbers - have numeracy skills equal to native English speaking children. So numeracy is not based on culture or language but probably an innate facility.
Publications:
The results showed clearly that the children of indegenious communities - who have no words or even gestures for numbers - have numeracy skills equal to native English speaking children. So numeracy is not based on culture or language but probably an innate facility.
Publications:
- Butterworth, B., Reeve, R. (Forthcoming). Verbal counting and spatial strategies in numerical tasks: Evidence from indigenous Australia. Philosophical Psychology
- Butterworth, B., Reeve, R., Reynolds, F., Lloyd, D. (Forthcoming). Numerical thought with and without words: Evidence from indigenous Australian children. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the USA
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