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NL-KR Digest Volume 03 No. 37
NL-KR Digest (10/20/87 01:12:55) Volume 3 Number 37
Today's Topics:
CELEX lexical databases - notice for broadcasting
SUNY Buffalo Cog. Sci.: A. ter Meulen
Re: The real issue with concepts/words
Re: concepts vs. words; false dichotomies
Re: concepts vs. words
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 20:07 EDT
From: CELEX%HNYMPI52.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
Subject: CELEX lexical databases - notice for broadcasting
We think the work of the CELEX project may be of interest to the readers
of your digest, and would be grateful if you could include this short
notice in a future edition.
With thanks, Marcel Bingley
Gavin Burnage
-- CELEX Nijmegen --
================================================================================
C E L E X - CENTRE FOR LEXICAL INFORMATION
=============================================
CELEX is a new and rapidly-developing project undertaken by several Dutch
institutions which aims to provide extensive information on the English
and Dutch languages for use in many types of research. Detailed
information on orthography, morphology, phonology, word frequency,
syntactical categories etc. has been collected and collated from several
sources and, by means of the ORACLE relational database management
system, structured to form a highly flexible and wide-ranging source of
lexical information.
Newsletters detailing the development and current standing of the first
stage of the CELEX project (the first stage covers all but semantic
information, which will be added in the second stage beginning 1989) are
now available to anyone who is interested. If you have not already been
placed on our mailing list, then please send your surface and electronic
addresses to :
CELEX@HNYMPI52
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 87 15:15 EDT
From: William J. Rapaport <rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: SUNY Buffalo Cog. Sci.: A. ter Meulen
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
ALICE G. B. terMEULEN
Department of Linguistics
University of Washington at Seattle
and
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Holland
NON-WELL-FOUNDED GRAPHS FOR EVENT-STRUCTURES
This will be a sneak preview of a book on the semantic representation of
tense and aspect that Dr. terMeulen is currently working on. Non-well-
founded graphs are presented as a new visual aid in understanding some
central lattice-theoretic concepts--``T-divisible'', ``indivisible'',
and ``incomplete''--as properties of internally structured events.
This linguistically motivated application of such graphs provides a good
foundation for the representation of inferences concerning temporal
relations in contexts with tense and aspectual inflection in a fragment
of English that includes the simple past, progressives, and the past
perfect. The representation employs the internal structure of events to
account for temporal relations between aspectual classes, and obviates
the need for the Reichenbachian notion of reference time.
Background Reading: J. Barwise & J. Etchemendy, The Liar: An Essay in
Truth and circularity, Chapter 3 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).
Monday, November 9, 1987
7:30 P.M.
Erwin Segal's home: 101 Carriage Circle, Williamsville
Call Bill Rapaport (Dept. of Computer Science, 636-3193 or 3181) or Gail
Bruder (Dept. of Psychology, 636-3676) for further information.
------------------------------
From: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: The real issue with concepts and words
Date: 13 Oct 87 06:39:45 GMT
In article <3923@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> dmcanzi@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (David Canzi) writes:
>In article <208@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (jc) writes:
>> Proposition: that our thoughts are strongly influenced and
>> constrained by the language that we use.
>
>But first, a preliminary comment: In order for language to influence
>our thinking, it must influence us towards some beliefs and away from
>others.
>If I exhibited a *truth* that our language has influenced us
>to believe, the audience would attribute their belief to astute
>observation and would think that language had nothing to do with it. A
>good example of the influence of language on thought, therefore, must
>be a *falsehood* that our language fools us into believing. The
>falsehood will be something that seems "obviously" true, and in
>attempting to contradict that falsehood I will have to say something
>that seems "obviously" false...
>The specific part of the belief in beautiful art that I disagree with
>is the idea that there is some characteristic of artworks which we call
>"beauty". In terms of some form of predicate calculus or other, this
>is the belief that there is a one-place predicate, "B", for beauty, such
>that if "a" is a work of art, either B(a) or ~B(a).
Until this century, there was a clear distinction between a beautiful
thing and a sublime thing. Let's talk in terms of landscapes--a sublime
landscape was mountainous, craggy, awe-inspiring, terrifying and so on
(like a waterfall or cliff.) A beautiful landscape was pastoral, peaceful,
and so on. Once this was well established as an important kind of
distinction (in the eighteenth century, after Burke's _Enquiry into
the Causes of the Sublime and Beautiful_) people began looking around
and enjoying things which they had never noticed before. Once these
categories became completely codified, people started to criticise
(and, presumably, not enjoy) paintings which violated those rules--
any painting which had red or blue in the foreground and was not sublime,
for example. Once someone else came up with the category of the
picturesque, those kinds of paintings were acceptable again.
A similar thing happened with drama. With the rediscovery (and, to some
extent, misreading) of Aristotle's _Poetics_, people decided that drama
like Shakespeare was bad, because it didn't follow those rules. In
other words, at least for art and literary critics, their enjoyment of
certain pieces of art was largely determined by the categories which
words like "unity of place," "sublime," and "beautiful" conveyed.
The question is, of course, was it the power of the words, or was it
the power of the concepts which the words conveyed?
-skyler
usenet ucbvax!jade!violet!skyler
arpa skyler@violet.berkeley.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 87 19:35 EDT
From: Frank Adams <franka@mmintl.UUCP>
Subject: Re: The real issue with concepts/words
In article <1504@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:
|In article <2461@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
|/This qualifies as a false belief which persists in spite of language; it is
|/not due to language.
|
|First of all, note that I said "due to *or* reflected by language".
|
|Secondly, language is not just syntax but semantics. Semantics is
|mostly learned by observing other peoples' usage.
Can you give an example of a commonly held false belief which is *not*
reflected by language in this sense? *Of course* people use words in a way
which accords with their beliefs. How could they do otherwise?
I guess I'm just much more interested the "due to" part.
--
Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 87 22:33 EDT
From: David Canzi <dmcanzi@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Subject: Re: The real issue with concepts/words
In article <208@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>Congratulations, Mr. Canzi -- you've rediscovered General Semantics! ...
>In fact, if I thought you had anything to gain by it I would be dead sure that
>you had marinated in GS theory for years and were playing an elaborate hoax.
Well, I'm not running a hoax. I have mentioned before, fairly long
ago, that I had read part of "Science and Sanity", and most of "The
Meaning of Meaning" by Ogden & Richards (the latter work is a look at
the nature of language and the effect of language on thought from a
different, i.e. Aristotelian and non-GS, point of view), and I asked if
anybody knew of some simpler books on this subject I could read as
these two books are tough going. Unfortunately, I accompanied this
request with a sample of text written in a modified form of English in
an attempt to demonstrate how our thinking about a subject could be
affected by the form of the language we use in describing that
subject. The result was that the people who followed up my article
wanted to dispute what I had said, and I didn't have the energy or time
to defend it.
I want people to take the idea of "the effect of language on thought"
seriously (and in the case of feminists, who already take it seriously,
I'd like them to look beyond pronouns and consider the effects of other
parts of speech). I prefer not to mention Korzybski because (1) I
didn't get all my ideas from him; I didn't even get 1/4 of the way
through his book, and (2) his ideas seem to be most often used (or
perhaps abused) by the New Age nut fringe, to "prove", for example,
that one can levitate an end wrench with the powers of one's mind.
I'm still looking for a simpler treatment of Korzybski's ideas. I've
added your book suggestions to my read queue.
--
David Canzi
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 16:12 EDT
From: David Sher <sunybcs!sher@RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Real Issue with Concepts/Words
#Date: Sun, 4 Oct 87 17:55 EDT
#From: Alan Lovejoy <alan@pdn.UUCP>
#
#Commonly believed falsehoods due to or reflected by language:
#
# 1) Velocity is an absolute (the syntax for specifying an object's
# velocity does not require mention of a frame of reference).
# 2) "Black" and "White" are "colors".
# 3) Visible light, radio waves and radiation are fundamentally
# different things (the average person will answer "false" or "I
# don't know" to the question "Are visible light, radio waves and
# gamma rays all just different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation?".
# If the terms for these things reflected their common identity as
# forms or EM radiation, this would not be the case).
# 4) "Weight" is the same as "mass" (the average person thinks these are
# synonyms).
# 5) Water, steam and ice are different substances (there is no common
# term for H2O that does not also imply a phase state).
# 6) "Word" is a well-defined concept (everybody knows what a word is,
# right? Wrong! The recent discussion in this newsgroup should prove
# that!)
# 7) Life starts at birth (ages are counted from the birthday).
# 8) Humans are not animals ("man and the animals" is one of many
# common expressions which teaches this falsehood).
# 9) Computers are intelligent, thinking, sentient machines (after all,
# they 'say' or 'write' messages, 'calculate', 'solve' problems, 'look
# up' information and 'remember' things--all attributes of sentient
# actors in the average person's world-view).
#
#This list is certainly not exhaustive, and 100 years from now it would
#probably be considered quaint for what it leaves out :-).
#
#--alan@pdn
This article is going to (and already has) gotten clobbered but it was
too much fun for me to avoid.
Since my area is vision I'll start with 2.
Black and White are colors if what we mean by colors are reflectance
illumination combinations perceived qualitatively differently by
human beings. Similarly Orange and Brown are colors even though they
differ only in intensity relative to the surround.
3. Visible light and radio waves are "fundamentally" different things?
What is fundamentally? Relative to our reception equiptment they are
fairly fundamentally different. The equiptment to recieve and parse
visible light is very different from the equiptment to recieve radio.
Note that sonar and radar are often mixed up. This is because wavelength
is far more fundamental than medium. Also with regard to generating the
waves.
The rest will be addressed by others (or has been). All in all the
sentences are perfectly valid with considering the perceptual equiptment,
probable locations and other characteristics of human beings. Unless
you spend much time talking to radio telescopes and the like it makes
sense then for your speech to make these assumptions.
-David Sher
ARPA: sher@cs.buffalo.edu BITNET: sher@sunybcs
UUCP: {rutgers,ames,boulder,decvax}!sunybcs!sher
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 17:43 EDT
From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Subject: Re: The real issue with concepts/words
[franka@mmintl.UUCP ]
>In article <277@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (jc) writes:
>>There are two terms for
>>"Russia", with quite different meanings, and both are simple words.
>>One is "Rus", which refers to the Russian people/society. The other
>>is "Rossiya", which refers to the political/legal entity.
This is incorrect. Both terms refer to the same entity:
the *land* with its population; the only difference is that *Rus*
is an archaic word, used now only in very pompous rhetoric:
rather like "Albion" for England or "Hibernia" for Ireland - or
else in historical texts.
By extension, both terms may apply to international actions of
the nation (e.g. "Rossiya declared war on Japan" or "Rus esta-
blished ties with Bysantium"); but never to the government as op-
posed to its own citizens or regions (like U.S. vs. John Smith or
U.S. vs. the State of Nevada). The basic meaning is geographi-
cal, also ethnic; but not political, and certainly not legal.
The geographical boundaries to which the term "Rossiya" apply
vary: e.g., a Russian in Siberia might apply it to European Rus-
sia, as distinct from Siberia (though most people in Siberia are
ethnic Russians); but a Russian abroad might apply it to the
whole of the USSR, even the non-Russian parts (but a Ukranian
abroad would be quick to correct him.) (The term "Russki" (Rus-
sian) only applies to one ethnic group: a Russian Jew isn't a
Russian. Only about half the USSR population are Russian. But the
term "Rossiya" is more flexible.)
>>Anyhow, consider the USA. ... We don't seem to be
>>able to separate the notion of America1 as a (fairly good, though not
>>wonderful) society from the America2 that is a political/legal entity
>>that as often as not acts as poorly as most others of its ilk.
>On the other hand, it may be that Americans hold their leaders to a higher
>standard of conduct than Russians do, precisely *because* we identify the
>people with the polity.
>Likewise, the relative lack of emphasis on the people in the concept of
>America both reflects and enhances the openness of Americans to immigrants.
>I don't want to get into a political discussion in this newsgroup. I hope
>that I have made the point that the *lack* of a distinction may be as
>important, useful, and honest a feature of a language as the presence of a
>feature is in other cases.
Yes, the *logical* point is made; but a *factual* conjecture
about alien psychology ought not to be based on such slim founda-
tion. Russian patriotism *is* somewhat different from the U.S.
patriotism - e.g., there is practically no guilt feeling in Rus-
sia towards foreign nations or alien ethnic groups, even though
Russians have a sensitive, guilt-prone conscience in other
respects. So, on this, Frank is closer to the truth than his op-
ponent. But this couldn't be deduced from mere vocabulary - even
if it had been quoted accurately.
Jan Wasilewsky
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 87 01:21 EDT
From: Sarge Gerbode <sarge@thirdi.UUCP>
Subject: Re: concepts vs. words; false dichotomies
In article <327@odyssey.ATT.COM> gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman) writes:
>[S]tatements communicate perceptions.
Perhaps you are using the word "perception" somewhat differently from the way I
would use it. I think a statement *could* communicate a perception, but
ordinarily I think of them as communicating concepts or ideas.
>We have (at least) two criteria for calling them true.
>1. A statement is true insofar as it communicates the perception
> faithfully.
>In this case no statement can be perfectly true, since statements are
>mere symbolic representations of what we perceive.
This does follow and would follow whether we are talking about concepts or
perceptions. Who can say whether one person's concept of, say, a car is
identical to another's?
But suppose the communicator had a wrong concept or a wrong perception?
Suppose I had the idea that pigs could fly or I thought I saw a ghost? I
could communicate these relatively accurately, but the statements would not be
*true* -- merely a true reflection of what I thought or perceived.
>2. A statement is true insofar as the perception it communicates
> can be relied on for some purpose.
This statement intrigues me. I sense there is something important about it.
It's like the concept of "*the* cause". When we search for "*the* cause", we
are looking for that cause or set of causes that are somehow *relevant* to
what we are doing at the time. If a person eats cyanide and dies, what is the
cause of death? The detective would say it was his unfaithful wife, the
coroner would say it was a cyanide tablet, a cell physiologist would say it
was inhibition of cellular metabolism, a sociologist would say it was
surrounding social conditions, the defense attorney would say it was temporary
insanity, the prosecuting attorney would say it was malice aforethought,
etc.. Each of these explanations serves a purpose for the one giving the
explanation..
What intrigues me is that similar considerations could apply to the truth or
falsity of a statement. That would imply a pragmatic criterion for truth.
But doesn't this imply that different *meanings* are being attributed to the
same pattern of words? Does "the sun goes around the earth" mean the same to
an astronomer as it does to a factory worker? I think there might be an
argument for saying that two different statements are involved, here, despite
the similarity in phraseology. Certainly two different concepts are involved.
It is not that there is one concept which is viewed as true by one person and
false by the other.
Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that you are onto something.
--
"Absolute knowledge means never having to change your mind."
Sarge Gerbode
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
UUCP: pyramid!thirdi!sarge
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 09:30 EDT
From: g.l.sicherman <gls@odyssey.ATT.COM>
Subject: Re: concepts vs. words; false dichotomies
) >[S]tatements communicate perceptions.
>
> Perhaps you are using the word "perception" somewhat differently from
> the way I would use it. I think a statement *could* communicate a
> perception, but ordinarily I think of them as communicating concepts or
> ideas.
To me, a concept or idea is a kind of pattern, and thus a perception in
its own right. I still distinguish a concept from a statement of it.
) >1. A statement is true insofar as it communicates the perception
) > faithfully.
) >In this case no statement can be perfectly true, since statements are
) >mere symbolic representations of what we perceive.
>
> This does follow and would follow whether we are talking about concepts or
> perceptions. Who can say whether one person's concept of, say, a car is
> identical to another's?
>
> But suppose the communicator had a wrong concept or a wrong perception?
> Suppose I had the idea that pigs could fly or I thought I saw a ghost? I
> could communicate these relatively accurately, but the statements would not be
> *true* -- merely a true reflection of what I thought or perceived.
You have touched the fulcrum of the argument. A perception cannot be
"wrong"--your senses are just doing their job. If you genuinely saw
pigs fly, it doesn't matter whether the pigs were actually caught in
a whirlwind, or you were watching an animated cartoon, or you were
asleep and dreaming. Your perception was *true.*
On the other hand, if you preach that "pigs cannot fly," you are committing
yourself to a categorical assertion. Having mortgaged yourself to a mere
belief, you had better get something in return! And you do--you get
something to rely on. You will build pens instead of cages for your pigs.
Sure, there's a very faint chance that some of your pigs will fly away;
you could be wrong. You'll take that risk.
By the way, you're right that "the sun goes around the earth" means
one thing to a farmer and another to an astronomer. What it means to
the astronomer has to do with Cartesian space, which is so artificial
a concept that she may never be able to communicate it to the farmer.
Quarrels arise only when the astronomer ceases to regard the concept of
Cartesian space as artificial.
---
The incident which had caused the laughter of those youngsters
was not a thing to joke about. I expressed my conviction briefly; but
the time-honoured word I made use of seemed unfamiliar to them;--they
looked at each other and began whispering together. Then one of them
asked in a hushed voice, "It's _what,_ did you say?"
I repeated my monosyllable loudly.
Again they whispered together, and again their spokesman came
forward.
"Do you mind telling us how you spell it?"
"I spell it, I spell it with a W!" I shouted. "W-R-O-N-G--
WRONG!"
--L. P. Smith
--
Col. G. L. Sicherman
....!ihnp4!odyssey!gls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 16:00 EDT
From: sigrid@geac.UUCP
Subject: Re: concepts vs. words
Hopefully this will not sound like a posting from the Department of
Redundancy Department...
In article <327@odyssey.ATT.COM> gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman) writes:
>I think that some of you are being too hard on language. If people
>find a way to say something, it's always because the thing is a useful
>thing to say.
>
Note, however, that the *choice* of words will have an impact on how the
recipients of that communication will interpret it. It may be "useful" only
for the person who chooses the wording of what is to be communicated.
If you look at virtually any TV commercial, you will understand how the
advertiser's choice of words for the product is specifically designed
to invoke a (possibly misleading) favourable understanding in the listener.
An example is the use of the term "Nutrasweet" for the product called
"aspartame" ... Nutrasweet makes the product sound nutritious when in reality
it is not at all and possibly far from it. Of course, in this case, as with
many advertisers ("flavour buds", "chocolaty" etc), the word is made up
specifically to invoke a certain conceptualization.
Lawyers use this nifty strategy alot too. As do politicians, cult leaders (as
previously described) and yes, even programmers...
For example, the use of the word "feature" to describe what in reality is a
"bug" ... you know ...
customer: "why does that STAT_OK_4Q2 always come up when I press RETURN?"
vendor : "well, that's a *feature* which tells you the system is still alive"
That is the danger of our language: on a small scale the choice of words
used to express a single "useful something" sets up the understander's
(mis)conception of what is meant by them.
On a larger scale the set of "all" words available influence meaning in the
same way. Even the structure of the language itself (grammar, I guess),
influences the way we think as does the linear nature of communication
(e.g., " ... and last, but not least ...").
All in all, I still believe that our language affects our conceptualizations
as much as our conceptualizations affect our language. It's just that one
is a short term influence (language over concept) whereas the other is
a longer term influence (concept over language) ...
hmmmm ....
Sigrid Grimm at Geac
(p.s., I got this one from a really disgusting novel by an author know as
Anonymous: "Beauty is no more than the promise of pleasure ...")
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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