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00:00
did u ever read The Linguistic Wars
There is a problem with Anglo-Saxon linguistics.
No, I have not.
well neither have I, but I've heard several linguists talk at length about that particular stage in the history of ling
What is it about again? I have forgotten.
well here, Steven Pinker talks about it youtube.com/watch?v=piGbuSTckr8
i should prolly get this book
well the host chatting with Pinker says something interesting about the time when he was working with Chomsky
What does he say?
00:07
As long as you don't change the type of feed I like, I won't come here @Otavio!
No emotional blackmailing in this room.
he was dubious about the future of ling and when he asked Chomsky for his thoughts Chomsky said that the debate had already been decided because its really up to the grad students and what they decide to investigate and preserve
@Cerberus Yeye.
@taylor What is that supposed to mean?
No Cerberobustocracy here, please.
00:12
well, if like 90% of graduate linguistics students come from biology or literature, you can be sure that computational linguistics won't advance as deeply as the other subfields
I think it works differently here.
"children are the future"
well im exaggerating
It's just a full programme, I believe.
And I don't think there is much input from mathematics or biology.
a masters in classics sounds like a lot of reading
whats the topic
Yeah, lots of reading. Always.
My thesis is about how the Biblical epics of the 4th/5th/6th centuries were directly influenced by the great classics.
00:19
directly influenced aye
sounds like work
nods
C'est la vie!
how do you know for sure that all observed similarities did not simply arise by chance?
You need to think, and consider the context.
It's not simply word matching, of course.
But I have found an account of the discovery of metals in Avitus that resembles Lucretius both in form and in content—if such a distinction can be made at all.
What will you specialise in?
well i started reading a book on how languages are classified
Good.
So it will be linguistics?
00:25
i dunno if you're familiar with that stuff, but there's an interesting methodology used
Formal similarities and genealogical metaphors?
in showing that any two languages must be related
no im just talking about langauge classification
@Gigili Welcome back :-)
And happy birthday, Linguistics.SE!!
ill have to read more, but what ive read so far, it seems that there is quite a convincing way to argue that any two languages are not related
pretends not to notice
Umm, happy birthday what?
bangs head on desk
00:28
@OtavioMacedo Thanks!!
That warms my heart.
@taylor How would you do it without exploring similarities (while taking into account phonological history)?
well, i wanted to ask you if you were doing something similar to this. Basically its a way of showing quantitatively that, under some conditions, some common set of features between two languages could not have happened by chance
or vice versa
@taylor I think you will need a lot of premises for that.
its just a way to calculate, under some assumptions, the likelihood that a feature would be shared
yeah i guess, that's what is called the null hypothesis
The assumptions are tremendously important...
it seems to work with languages because you can be very explicit about the structures, like phonemes and word order
yeah, but the game is to make those assumptions, then try to prove your self wrong
i mean if you make some assumptions and no one can successively prove you wrong, well that seems pretty convincing to me
00:35
The question is also, do you need an algorithm for that, or can you just tell by looking at them with a (highly) informed eye?
yeah the problem is that, in forming the assumptions which are your null hypothesis, which then you try as hard as you humanly can to disprove, you need have to formulate things in a quantitative way
not necessarily in a numerical way, but in a quantitative way for sure
You will have to forgive me, but I am generally very sceptical of the modern trend of quantification, and drunk.
well the world gets along just fine without incessant quantification of anything and everything, but when its doable, it does make for quite a persuasive argument
It can absolutely be a useful instrument.
to be honest, its my personal belief that nothing in reality is impervious to quantitative analysis, but i don't think its particularly interesting or fruitful in all cases
although i do make a distinction between numerical and quantitative
00:42
The problem is assigning meaning to these quantitative data. I think it often goes wrong there.
it is quite easy to be over zealous in that endeavour yes lolz
nods
Sometimes people forget to look at their data with a human eye and go over part of them by hand.
on a related topic, i read that in the field of forensic linguistics, one commonplace task is to test if one document or statement is a plagiarization, and its the same method
But that is about plain, literal copying of words and phrases.
That is easy enough.
I mean, it is convenient if you can use a computer.
well, at least in the thing i was looking at, it actually went quite beyond words and phrases etc.
yeah you definitely need a computer
but it was pretty sophisticated, the goal was to argue backwords, and not really test for equality in statement, but equality in thinking on the part of the author
to show that an idea had been stolen
00:50
sceptical look
well actually that was a bit on recognizing IP infringement, plaugarizing was just a part of that
Oh, don't get me started on that.
Sorry.
lolz well im not much interested in all that anways, but the type of theoretical stuff involved was really quite fascinating
I would be very, very sceptical if I were you.
That stuff is known for false positives if you don't go through all of it yourself, by hand.
well, they start out with a 'cognitive lexicon'
modelled as a topological space
00:54
They just stick some words from a thesaurus together, yay!
well no, i looked at
its a topological space
I don't know how they would apply that to researching literature...
take a loook at this "Readings in Cognitive Linguistics" scribd.com/doc/20995101/Cognitive-Linguistics-Basic-Readings
Chapter 3 Radial Network
Cognitive topology and lexical networks
Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff
that was the framework for the forensic linguistics thing
an authors ideas form in some sort of cognitive topology, and they surface through their writing
the jump from deep cognitive form to observable written form is modelled by a topological embedding
Ehm I'm too drunk now.
well i may be too green in ling, but to me this new way of investigating cognition by topological mappings from cognitive space (we cant measure) into metric spaces (we can measure), seems to me the general relativity of linguistics
could be wrong, but at least its wacky lolz
ah dang now i feel like drinking too
01:05
Hehe.
Do it!
01:27
What are you drinking?
 
8 hours later…
09:41
@OtavioMacedo We reached one year? :D
 
2 hours later…
11:57
@Alenanno Yep! Cool, isn't it?
@OtavioMacedo I wish we could have celebrated by being a graduated site. :P
The key is sharing!
 
8 hours later…
20:29
0
Q: How do we know what words we are going to say next?

Nick AndereggHow do we know what words we are going to say next before the words in that concept have actually been made into words for us to utter? More simply, how do we maintain subject-verb agreement in complex sentences while speaking? For example (a highly simplified one at that), I heard someone say r...

lolz thats a funny question
I don't think it's THAT funny. I have an opinion about it, but I can't give any sources.
20:55
well its a good question, it just lacks technicality
Umm, yes, maybe.
I'm not good at recognising technicality.
@taylor How could it be improved?
It seems clear, I think, if verbose. I know that if I answered though, my answer would be very low quality.
well, the intent of the question is a little under-developed, you could reword it or rephrase it, but without elaboration its a very general question
you could say that grammatical constraints truncate the number of successive possible word combinations
It went from general to quite specific. "How do we know what words we are going to say next?" is a bit meaningless. Then he jumped to subject/verb agreement. Which is a bit more specific than he intended. I think the REAL question is somewhere between the two.
21:03
yeah
but subject verb agreement should be obvious
My personal belief is that we think in some kind of meta-language; then speaking and writing are actually just translation processes. But I can't prove it.
What I should say is that I think in something that isn't English. Then I translate.
@DavidWallace Yeah, I could say the same about Portuguese.
I feel a poll coming on.
But when I speak English, I tend to think more in grammatical terms
@Cerberus - you want to participate? It will be fun!
21:06
Since it's not my native language
No, but that's a different issue.
My point is, my thoughts don't have a language.
Yeah, I got it :)
Steven Pinker call it "mentalese"
If the word order is such that verbs follow subjects in the speech stream, then when a subject emerges in speech stream, the set of all possible verbs and verbs + conjugations that can follow are limited by a set of rules called verb-subject agreement
I think that if you're speaking a SECOND language; you might either translate your thoughts directly to that language; or you might translate them to your first language first, then translate them to the second language. Or use a mixed strategy.
thats a question of grammar
and of course the words you utter conform to the grammatical demands of the langauge
21:09
Sure. So we think "There are topics that we can discuss" in mentalese. Then, since we already know what we're saying, then saying it in grammatical English/Portuguese/Russian whatever is a trivial exercise.
well its interesting to speculate, but you can't really say for sure until you study the stuff
Can't I? I know what happens in my head. What I can't speculate on is what happens in other people's heads. And I don't see what sort of study could help me with that.
well you can't discover the mechanisms of thought by introspection or meditation
@DavidWallace Yes, there are mixed strategies.
if it were that easy, there would be no need for cognitive science
21:15
Not the physical mechanisms, sure. But that's not what we're discussing here, is it?
@Cerberus I actually knew that. Being sesquilingual myself and all.
It's not either/or, nor is it always from x to y.
Good.
You can also say one thing, but be thinking of another thing, for a short moment.
Sure. Especially if they sound similar.
And you can give the appropriate (short) answers/responses when somebody else is telling you something, without understanding what she's saying.
Without remembering, at least.
21:18
(See what I did there?)
Mmm.
Whenever I speak to someone in something other than their first language, I wonder how much of each strategy they are using.
For me, it's a trade-off between quality and speed.
Really?
I get better quality from the faster route, but a smaller vocabulary.
I think I just need more practice.
I'm with Otavio here.
21:25
@DavidWallace Hmm interesting.
Although a few beers help too.
Yes, beer! That's what I need!
Oh, wait ....
a few beers always helps
er while not if your driving
@OtavioMacedo What I mean is that I'm more likely to produce grammatical sentences if I don't actually try to. Or something.
Beers on the house!

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