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NL-KR Digest Volume 03 No. 45
NL-KR Digest (11/05/87 23:13:24) Volume 3 Number 45
Today's Topics:
Acquiring Collocational Information
Re: Why can't my cat talk?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 10:55 EST
From: Rita.McCardell@NL.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Acquiring Collocational Information
My name is Rita McCardell and I'm a visiting researcher/graduate student
doing research for my Ph.D. dissertation in the Center for Machine Translation
at Carnegie-Mellon University. My research deals with developing a methodology
for acquiring collocational information from on-line corpora. Once obtained,
this knowledge will then be incorporated into a generation lexicon which will
then be used within a Natural Language Generation system for the application of
Machine Translation.
Collocational information can be described as any word or phrase that
occurs/exists in a particular relationship with another word or phrase. For ex-
ample, when one wishes to convey the intensity of darkness within a cave, the
use of the word "pitch" is preferred over the words "very" or "extremely", so
that the resulting phrase "pitch dark" is expressed. Extracting this type of
information from text (via a concordance, for example) requires the inverse pro-
cess of locating the phrase and then determining the relationship or function
that exists. In the above example, the following functional expression could
result:
INTENSITY("dark") = "pitch"
where the `function' INTENSITY, when `applied' to the word "dark", `equates'
(loosely) to the word "pitch". Properties of this nature can best be referred
to as lexical-semantic relationships.
I would very much be interested in receiving any information (i.e.,
articles, research overviews, conference reports/papers, etc.) that would have
any relevant application/connection to my current research.
Sincerely,
Rita McCardell
Center for Machine Translation
Carnegie-Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
rita@nl.cs.cmu.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 87 00:08 EST
From: William Calvin <wcalvin@well.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <12400006@iuvax> merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes:
>There is evidence that supports an argument the humans are "pre-equipped" to
>speak and to participate in language. In particular, the structure of the
>adult human velum is different from that found in other great apes, which,
>like human babies, can brethe while they swallow. Adult humans (in fact,
>human one-year-olds) can no longer do so. This modification is closely
>associated with the ability of the tongue to produce a number of the standard
>vowels. This argument is not air-tight, since children deaf from birth can
>(and do, if given the chance) acquire language, even though they do not speak.
>[...]
>John Merrill
>ARPA: merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
>UUCP: merrill@iuvax
>BITnet: merrill%iuvax.cs.indiana.edu@psuvax
It seems to me that we need to draw a distinction between the mental ability
to comprehend and form independent thoughts (called phrases and sentences)
from the vocal organs necessary for speech. I once had a cat that seemed
smart enough to talk (but didn't often condescend to speak to me :-) though
she didn't have the vocal chords for it, and there are mentally retarded
people that don't seem to have the necessary intelligence to speak.
While it is not exactly "speech", monkeys have been taught sign-language.
They can ask for food, recognize people (even from photographs), ask to
be let out of their cages, etc. I don't know enough about the study
(but perhaps someone out there does), but the last I heard, the research
with monkeys doing sign was curtailed.
"Why can't my cat talk?" Perhaps if she could think as we understand thought,
she would learn to meow in Morse Code or use a PC.
--
Douglas J. Bonn, Esq. djb@rayssd.ray.com
"As far as we can determine, our system has never had an undetected error..."
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 87 20:45 EST
From: merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
/* Written 12:08 am Oct 29, 1987 by wcalvin@well in iuvax:comp.ai */
[...a small segment of one of my recent postings...]
What's special about human language beyond primate language isn't the
mellifluorus quality of our sounds -- it is our ability to string together
individual sounds (phonemes, etc.) into a meaningful order. Human left
brains are specialized for handling sequencing problems like hand movements,
and that has probably made left brain a natural home for our word-order-ruled
language.
[...]
/* End of text from iuvax:comp.ai */
I fear that you, like many readers, missed the point of my posting
entirely. I was not arguing that the reason humans were special was
any one thing, but rather that there were reasons to believe that
humans were special. I didn't say that the position of the velum was
the only, or, indeed, the primary adaptation of the human race to
speak, but rather that it was *a critical* adaptation *to speak*.
The writers who have pointed out that apes can learn to generate novel
sentences in sign language have a good point. But those apes acquired
only a small vocabulary (a few hundred signs.) Even a human with a
few months experience with language has a vocabulary far in excess of
what chimps acquire with many years of intensive coaching. Looked at
in this light, the experiments with Lucy provide even stronger
evidence for what I intended to argue in my previous posting: your
cat can't talk because it isn't human. And there's something special
about humans.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 87 13:47 EST
From: Alan Lovejoy <ihnp4!homxb!whuts!mtune!codas!usfvax2!pdn!alan@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <4337@well.UUCP> wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin) writes:
>What's special about human language beyond primate language isn't the
>mellifluorus quality of our sounds -- it is our ability to string together
>individual sounds (phonemes, etc.) into a meaningful order. Human left
>brains are specialized for handling sequencing problems like hand movements,
>and that has probably made left brain a natural home for our word-order-ruled
>language.
Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in
suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and
transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the
language, the more likely this is to be true. Syntax is a
two-dimensional tree structure, not a one dimensional sequence.
Sequence variations are more often used to signal thematic (theme-rheme)
structure. The difference between "John Smith purchased a Ferrari" and
"A Ferrari was purchased by John Smith" is a thematic difference; the
syntactical relations are signaled more by the word-forms than the word
positioning. The two different meanings of "Flying planes can be
dangerous" have nothing at all to do either with word order or
ambiguities in the constituent words.
Also, the proposition that human hand movements are significantly more
sophisticated than a racoon's seems specious to me. Do you have proof?
Current attempts to explain human language have about as much chance of
being correct as Newton had of discovering superstring theory. We don't
know enough yet. Maybe next century.
--alan@pdn
P.S. "Purchased by was John Smith Ferrari a" can probably be correctly
unscrambled by most native speakers of English. This also shows how
much information is contained in the words themselves and not in the
word order.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 87 16:03 EST
From: Robert Stanley <roberts@cognos.uucp>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000)
writes:
> [Aside: It is known that the human brain (and that of other mammals, as
> well) undergoes physiological changes during the period of infancy and
> early childhood. It is possible that the initial acquisition of
> linguistic skills can only occur effectively during this period, during
> which time these physiological changes are significantly ``molded'' by
> the socialization process, where certain ``symbolic'' structures
> actually become ``wired in''. If this were the case, then the period
> during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited
> to this ``crystallization'' period, which is possibly much longer in
> humans than in other mammals.
This little aside opens up an alternative line of study. There have been a
number of well documented and researched cases of feralism in humans. In each
case the human child had effectively been deprived of the necessary language-
building stimuli during the period the author of the previos article refers to
as the crystallization period. This has been discussed several times on the
net in the last year, but from a different viewpoint.
If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age, this would tend
to reinfore the crystallization period theory. From memory, the last net
discussion centered around whether feral children ever developed independent
language skills or other viable communication systems, and it seems to me that
the literature said they didn't.
Assuming that rehabilitated feral children fail to acquire language abilities,
some sort of practical threshold for the end of the crystallization phase could
be determined. However, given the wide variance in individual physiology,
coupled with the possibly unusual organic stresses of feral upbringing, this is
unlikely to yield a very precise figure.
Should this crystallization hypothesis prove true, what does this tell us about
gorillas? And is AMSLAN, in which I understand at least one gorilla has
achieved not only a considerable vocabulary but a remarkable proficiency at
combining "symbols" to denote new concepts, a natural language? That is to
say, does mastery of a sign language require the same brain functions as those
required to speak a natural language?
Robert_S
--
Robert Stanley Cognos Incorporated S-mail: P.O. Box 9707
Voice: (613) 738-1440 (Research: there are 2!) 3755 Riverside Drive
FAX: (613) 738-0002 Compuserve: 76174,3024 Ottawa, Ontario
uucp: decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!roberts CANADA K1G 3Z4
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 87 18:04 EST
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <goldberg@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in
>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and
>transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the
>language, the more likely this is to be true.
Do you have any reason to believe this?
>--alan@pdn
-jeff goldberg
--
Jeff Goldberg
ARPA goldberg@russell.stanford.edu
UUCP ...!ucbvax!russell.stanford.edu!goldberg
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 13:44 EST
From: Ritchey Ruff <ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes:
>In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000)
> writes:
>> ...during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited
>> to this ``crystallization'' period...
>If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
>acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age...
It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the
"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral"
child but was "educated" LONG after the normally
hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an
exception, but...
--ritchey ruff
Internet: ruffwork@cs.orst.edu
UUCP: { hp-pcd | tektronix }!orstcs!ruffwork
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 87 13:47 EST
From: Alan Lovejoy <alan@pdn.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU> goldberg@russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg) writes:
>In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>
>>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in
>>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and
>>transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the
>>language, the more likely this is to be true.
>
>Do you have any reason to believe this?
Sure, having studied Linguistics extensively, and having seen the
grammars of numerous third-world and/or American Indian languages,
I feel quite justified in saying what I said.
Your question implies doubt. Why do you doubt? If the examples I gave
from English did not suffice to convince you, how about Russian? (I
*know* that language).
"Igor' lyubit svoyu s'istru" and "Svoyu s'istru lyubit Igor'" both mean the
same thing (Igor loves his sister). Word order is irrelevant, except
to signal whether Igor or his sister are the topic of conversation.
This is not an isolated example, but is paradigmatic of Russian
sentential sytax.
--alan@pdn
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 87 00:37 EST
From: Murray Watt <murrayw@utai.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in
>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and
>transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>language, the more likely this is to be true.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RE: "Primitive culture" If such a term can even be applied to
a culture then it is at best highly subjective. (e.g.
Western Culture is very primitive but has a superficial gloss.)
RE: "the more likely....."
I think you'll have a hard time trying to show that language is
evolving in a particular syntactic and morphological direction.
Murray
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 87 01:04 EST
From: srt@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <849@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU.UUCP (Ritchey Ruff) writes:
>>If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
>>acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age...
>
>It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the
>"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral"
>child but was "educated" LONG after the normally
>hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an
>exception, but...
Languages learned after a certain age (by feral children or simply as a second
language by an adult) seem to be learned in a different manner than "native"
languages. This is not to say that they can't be learned; just that they aren't
learned with the proficiency of a native language.
Scott R. Turner
UCLA Computer Science "I wanna be sedated"
Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu
UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 87 04:07 EST
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <goldberg@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
Alan answers (<1705@pdn.UUCP>):
>Your question implies doubt. Why do you doubt? If the examples I gave
>from English did not suffice to convince you, how about Russian? (I
>*know* that language).
Yes, my answer implicates doubt. In fact, I had been tempted to
originally write "Bullshit". But I will explain.
I agree that a very large number of languages have much freer word
order then English. The languages rely on affixation (case
marking, agreement, incorporation, etc) to encode the kind of
information that is incoded in word order in the more word order
oriented languages.
To draw statistical conclusions you need to factor a number of
things out. If you are able to somehow determine a working
definition of "primitive" you might find that a very large
number of "primitive" people use free word order languages (Or
loose constituent order languages). But when you go counting up
languages you had better take into account historical relation
and areal relation. This is, two languages may be of similar
type because they derive (historically) from the same language.
Two cultures may be of the same type because they derive from
(historically) from the same culture. Two languages may be similar
when the people who speak them have had long term contact.
So, if you want to add all the austronesian languages up (I think
it is the largest language family in terms of number of languages)
I will count that as one. The same, I would hold for the languages
of Papua/New Guina. Once we eliminate these 2000 or so languages.
We are left with anecdotes and nothing that is statistically
significant. And anecdotes can be dangerous. It is very to look
at a strange language and notice all kinds of things about it that
one ignores in ones own language. For example, Benjamin L. Whorf
had noticed in one of the languages he studied that the marker for
the future tense was related to forms for "intention" and "desire".
He concluded from this that these people had a notion of time that
was nearly beyond the understanding of us Standard Average European
speakers. He never seemed to pay much attention to the English
future marker "will".
>"Igor' lyubit svoyu s'istru" and "Svoyu s'istru lyubit Igor'" both mean the
>same thing (Igor loves his sister). Word order is irrelevant, except
>to signal whether Igor or his sister are the topic of conversation.
>This is not an isolated example, but is paradigmatic of Russian
>sentential sytax.
But if you want anacdotes, fine. Why is French so similar in word
order and topicalization to Chichewa. Or Irish to Biblical Hebrew.
Or Enlish (in word order) to Chinese. While English and Russian
differ (your example). Are the Siamese a primitive culture, what
about the Lao? Are (East) Indian cultures primitive? Has it
always been that way?
Depending on what your definition of "primitive" is we could each
through out example and counter example. The "winner" would be the
one who knew about the most languages. I don't want to get into
that kind of fight. It would prove nothing except who was willing
to spend more time in the library.
They view you hald may be seductive because under some possible
definitions there are just a handful of non-primitive cultures.
Most of these are from one language family.
I will take your claim seriously if you do the following:
(1) Devise a sampling method that factors out things that should
be factored out. (I linguist named Matthew Dryer has done
some excellent work on this problem, and has consturcted a
method that I would certainly trust.)
(2) Provide a definition of "primitive" which would yeild the same
result when applied by a number of anthropologists. (That is,
your definition must be explicit enough so that an arbitrary
anthropologist could determine what what "primitive".)
(3) Provide a definition of what ever grammatical property you wish
to test for which would yeild the same result when applied by a
number of linguists. (That is, your definition must be
explicit enough so that an arbitrary linguist could tell
whether it is "free word order" (or whatever).)
(4) Apply standard statistical techniques to determine
significance.
Until you move to do something like that your claim is like claiming:
"People with big feet like tometos". And basing this on the fact
that you have met a couple families with bigger feet then yours who
served spaghetti with tomato sause and one even put tomatoes in the
salad.
This will probably be my last posting on this subject.
>--alan@pdn
--
Jeff Goldberg
ARPA goldberg@russell.stanford.edu
UUCP ...!ucbvax!russell.stanford.edu!goldberg
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 87 10:57 EST
From: Elizabeth D. Zwicky <zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <849@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU.UUCP (Ritchey Ruff) writes:
>In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes:
>>In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000)
>> writes:
>>> ...during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited
>>> to this ``crystallization'' period...
>>If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
>>acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age...
>
>It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the
>"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral"
>child but was "educated" LONG after the normally
>hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an
>exception, but...
>
>--ritchey ruff
Helen Keller was *not* a feral child, nor did she learn langauge after
the crystallization period. Feral children are children who have been
deprived of all human contact; Helen Keller was by most accounts much
loved. The crystallization period for human language has been pretty
well determined as ending at puberty. The data for this comes primarily
not from children abandoned in the wild, but from children abused and
deprived by human beings. The most famous of these was Genie, who was
found just after puberty (because, as it turned out, her mother was
willing to let her father keep her as a pet, but drew the line at
having her killed, which was what her father intended to do when she
became adult). Most of the linguists who worked with Genie to this
day have difficulty lecturing about it without tears. I have heard
people who never knew her claim that she was never fully human; the
sad truth is that Genie was obviously an intelligent, loving human
to all those who knew her, capable of charming strangers in the
street, and with a love for learning and language. But she never
learned the grammar of English, even though she gained an enormous
vocabulary, and she never was capable of learning to behave like
everyone else. This is in comparison to children found as late as
10 who learned English if anything faster than babies, and frequently
caught up with their peers in a few years.
Ameslan, by the way, is accepted in the linguistic world as a human
language. Babies brought up in Ameslan-speaking households learn
Ameslan with the same patterns as they would have learning English.
There is some debate about its using some different neurological
centers, but there is a great deal of overlap.
Elizabeth Zwicky (zwicky@ohio-state.arpa, ...cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!zwicky)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 00:10 EST
From: srt@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <938@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
>...The data for this comes primarily
>not from children abandoned in the wild, but from children abused and
>deprived by human beings. The most famous of these was Genie...
You should be careful drawing conclusions about normal human linguistic
behavior from examples like Genie and aphasiacs. Genie is an interesting
case, but her language isolation to puberty is probably the least of her
problems. She's a psychological mess due to her upbringing, and it isn't
clear whether her problems with learning manners (say) has to do with her
language isolation or her other mental problems. Hypotheses drawn from
degenerate cases like Genie need to be carefully tested in the normal adult
population before they can be given any serious consideration.
Scott R. Turner
UCLA Computer Science "Because no one else wanted me."
Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu
UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 10:05 EST
From: Alan Lovejoy <alan@pdn.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes:
/In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000)
/If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
/acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age, this would tend
/to reinfore the crystallization period theory. From memory, the last net
If the Crystallization Theory were true, how would natural language have
evolved at all?
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 10:11 EST
From: Stephen Smoliar <smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Volume II, Section xi
(p. 223e in the Basil Blackwell paperback)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 12:50 EST
From: 04-Nov-1987 0950 <glantz@yippee.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
ritchey ruff writes:
> It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the
> "crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral"
> child but was "educated" LONG after the normally hypothesized
> "crystallization period".
Good point. If true, this is reasonably strong evidence refuting
the hypothesis.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 15:44 EST
From: Laurie Cavanaugh <laurie@quintus.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
In article <12085@decwrl.DEC.COM>, glantz@yippee.dec.com (04-Nov-1987 0950) writes:
> Good point. If true, this is reasonably strong evidence refuting
> the hypothesis.
Unfortunately, this is not true. I read a biography of Helen Keller several
years ago in which it was made clear that Ms. Keller was not blind and
deaf from birth. Rather, at the age of about two a disease (I don't recall if
this was congenital or acquired) destroyed her ability to see and hear.
Thus, this is not a reliable example of a human learning speech without
undergoing this 'crystallization period'. I would be interested in a
supported case of blindness and/or deafness from birth and its effects
on the acquisition of language.
Laurie Cavanaugh
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
