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NL-KR Digest Volume 04 No. 20
NL-KR Digest (2/23/88 14:05:51) Volume 4 Number 20
Today's Topics:
Turkish dictionary
Advice Requested: Cog Sci Course
Language Translation Assistance
Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Ambiguity in 2nd person plural
uses of grammar etc
Origins of "intension"
Re: What is a grammar(for)
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 88 04:58 EST
From: Hans Weigand <hansw@cs.vu.nl>
Subject: Turkish dictionary
Does anybody know of a computerized dictionary of Turkish?
Thanks,
Hans Weigand
VU Informatica, Amsterdam hansw@cs.vu.nl
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 12:59 EST
From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU
Subject: Advice Requested: Cog Sci Course
I am teaching an undergraduate level introduction to cognitive science course
in spring quarter this year. The course is the first on this subject to be
taught at the University of Utah, and is part of an effort to establish a
cognitive science program here. I would greatly appreciate advice and
suggestions on the following. Please reply to carolg@cc.utah.edu. Thanks.
1. I know that graduate students and nonstudents (e.g., faculty) will be
attending this course, so I will have to tailor requirements to different
groups. If I were to encourage participants to read current literature, what
in your opinion is the single (or the two) most important general source(s)
(of cognitive science, ai, nl processing, comp ling, etc. literature)
accessible to beginners?
2. I will use the text Cognitive Science: an Introduction, by Neil Stillings,
et al., from MIT Press (1987), to anchor the course, but intend to supplement
it considerably by other readings and invited speakers. If you have already
used this text in a course, what did you find to be its main strengths and
weaknesses? Are there any other entry-level pedagogical materials available?
3. Is there any current and regularly updated overview of research in
cognitive science, broadly interpreted, that is accessible to beginners or
to those outside of the field?
4. Are any conference materials like those used in tutorials for ACL available
in printed form?
5. General recommendations for planning the course? (The best suggestion
might be rewarded with an invitation to Utah and a change at The Greatest
Snow on Earth, m. nature and the dean permitting.)
Cheers,
Carol Georgopoulos / Linguistics Program / U of Utah / Salt Lake City UT 84112
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 18:32 EST
From: fosli@ifi.UIO.NO
Subject: Language Translation Assistance
I am a graduate student at the University of Oslo, Norway, currently working
towards an M.Sc. in the area of Computer Science for physical handicaped
students.
I want however to build a language assistant system where one by entering an
English text can get the meaning of a word, or a phrase in a foreign
language - possible reversible.
I expect no one to have one which works for translating english to norwegian,
but may be from english to another language? Idealistic the program should work
for any Latin language supposing the morphological rules and a dictionary
specific to that language is provided.
I would be very grantful if someone could provide some useful code, or give me
some tips.
\ystein Fosli Use
P.O.Box 1059, Blindern
fosli@ifi.uio.no N-0316 Oslo 1
Norway 245-5973 Norway
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 88 07:14 EST
From: Sjaak Schuurman <sjaak@wundt.psy.vu.nl>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
In article <186@wundt.psy.vu.nl> I asked:
>Do there exist any natural languages in which this ambiguity is solved in
>a syntactical way, i.e. do they distinguish two forms, one including
>the addressed object, and one excluding this object?
>
> Thanks in advance, ~sjaak.
I got several responsesby e-mail to my former question, so I'll summarize:
- Hawaiian
- Indonesian
- Maori
- Vietnamese
- Zuni (thanks Jack!)
Also someone pointed me a document about these kind of features in natural
languages, written by Bloomfield, with the suggestive title 'Languages'.
I thank all people who have taken the effort to e-mail me.
~sjaak.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 88 11:05 EST
From: Alex Colvin <mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
> >there were any languages that distinguish first-person-plural inclusive
> >from exclusive, no-one has mentioned any Indo-European languages. Are
This isn't a feature of the old IE pronoun systems.
I expect that there are various idioms that people use. Has anything like
this been adopted into the grammar of any modern IE language?
Anyone know about such non-IE European languages as Basque, Magyar,
Finnish/Estonian?
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 00:47 EST
From: troly@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
In article <2644@dciem.UUCP> mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) writes:
>
>Among all the positive anwers to the original question as to whether
>there were any languages that distinguish first-person-plural inclusive
>from exclusive, no-one has mentioned any Indo-European languages. Are
>there any that make this distinction? All the positive answers have been
>from around the Indian Ocean or N. American, so far as I remember.
>--
New Guinea "Pidgin English" has to qualify as Indo-European, but its
yumi/mipela distinction is borrowed from local (non-IE) languages.
?
Bret Jolly (Bo'-ret Tro Ly) Mathemagus LA Platygaean Society
.
troly@MATH.UCLA.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 16:30 EST
From: Rich Wales <wales@maui.cs.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural (non-IE European lang's)
In article <162@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu
(Alex Colvin) writes:
# [The inclusive/exclusive distinction in first-person-plural] isn't
# a feature of the old IE pronoun systems.
# Anyone know about such non-IE European languages as Basque, Magyar,
# Finnish/Estonian?
Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish definitely do *not* make an inclusive/
exclusive distinction in first person plural.
I haven't studied anything specific about Estonian, but given its simi-
larity to Finnish, I doubt it makes this distinction either.
I browsed through a book on Basque grammar some time ago, and my recol-
lection is that Basque doesn't make the inclusive/exclusive distinction.
(Note that this question is unrelated to the ergative structure of
Basque; there is no a-priori reason why an ergative language either must
or must not distinguish inc/exc.)
As for other non-IE European languages still in use today: Turkish (if
you want to count it as European) doesn't distinguish inc/exc. I have
not studied anything about Maltese, but since it is a Semitic language
and supposedly very similar to Arabic, I would assume it also lacks the
inc/exc distinction.
So it appears that *no* modern European language distinguishes inc/exc.
-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(ucbvax,rutgers)!ucla-cs!wales
"Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder."
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 88 11:22 EST
From: Laurie Reid <reid@uhccux.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
>I think you are right about IE, but I recall at least two examples
>mentioned that were not "from around the Indian Ocean or N.
>American". Chamorro (Guam) which I mentioned, and Quechua (SA)
>which some else mentioned maintain the inclusive/exclusive
>distinction. I think that there were other examples as well.
>
Chamorro is only one of many hundreds of Austronesian languages from
around the Pacific that make a distinction between first person
inclusive and exclusive. These include all aboriginal languages
of Taiwan, more that a hundred languages in the Philippines, and
the great majority of Indonesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and
Polynesian languages. The distinction is reconstructed for Proto-
Austronesian. Most Philippine languages (Ilokano, and some dialects
of Tagalog included) have elaborated the system by treating the
exclusive form as the plural of the first person singular, and
developing a dual person (singular speaker, singular hearer) as the
singular of the inclusive form. Polynesian languages have elaborate
dual and trial numbers for each person.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 88 18:10 EST
From: Erland Sommarskog <sommar@enea.se>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Martin Taylor (mmt@dciem.UUCP) writes:
>Among all the positive anwers to the original question as to whether
>there were any languages that distinguish first-person-plural inclusive
>from exclusive, no-one has mentioned any Indo-European languages. Are
>there any that make this distinction? All the positive answers have been
>from around the Indian Ocean or N. American, so far as I remember.
Actually one such a case have already been mentioned, at least if we
count Tok Pisin to the Indo-Eurpean languages. Tok Pisin is an English-
based pidign from Papua New Guinea. In Tok Pisin we have:
"yumi" = "you me" and "mipela" = "me fellow(s)".
We yet have to see for an "ancient" language of the IE family with
this distinction though.
--
Erland Sommarskog
ENEA Data, Stockholm
sommar@enea.UUCP Io, chi parlo di niente,
lo faccio soltanto in paura di silenzio
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 88 23:12 EST
From: Frank Adams <franka@mmintl.UUCP>
Subject: Ambiguity in 2nd person plural
While we're on the subject, how about the ambiguity in the 2nd person
plural? That is, you (the people I'm talking to) vs. you (the people I'm
talking to and some others). Does any language make this distinction?
(Note that I am *not* talking about the ambiguity in English and some other
languages between 2nd person singular and plural. I am well aware that a
great many languages make this distinction, many with formal/informal
complications.)
--
Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 18:13 EST
From: Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: uses of grammar etc
MT> Date: Sun, 7 Feb 88 15:29 EST
MT> From: Martin Taylor <mmt@dciem.UUCP>
MT> Subject: What is a grammar (for)
MT> . . . a grammar (a) is a theory
MT> about the nature of real language, or (b) [is] a mathematics with its own
MT> axioms and procedures for developing theorems, which by chance might
MT> parallel some things that are observed in real language.
Generative Grammar is an example of type (b), a theory of language-like
mathematical systems and their possible relations to natural language.
Likewise, many formalisms that have developed from the Generative
paradigm but do not give themselves the Generative trademark: GPSG,
HDPSG, unification grammars, categorial grammars, and so on and on.
These formalisms have in common that they overgenerate, that is, they
produce structures that do not occur in natural language and must be
pruned or filtered out.
The Constructive Grammar of Harris (construction-reduction grammar,
composition-reduction grammar, operator-argument grammar) is an example
of type (a), a mathematical theory of precisely those relations and
operations that suffice for language. It does not overgenerate.
MT> . . . view that
MT> a grammar constitutes a set of rules that determine whether a particular
MT> string of words is grammatical or not within a language. If her view is
MT> correct, then what is a grammar FOR? What would it matter whether a string
MT> is grammatical or not?
This is an interpretive view of syntax, the stance that grammar
specifies linguistic *competence* as constraints on linguistic
*performance*--the latter to be accounted for by a still unformulated
theory of linguistic performance. I have to echo again Quillian's 1967
complaint that such a view contravenes the obvious intuition
first that a person has something to say, expressed somehow in
his own conceptual terms . . . and that all his decisions about
the syntactic form that a generated sentence is to take are then
made in the service of this intention.
(M. Ross Quillian, Word concepts: a theory and
simulation of some basic semantic capatilities.
_Beh. Sci._ 12:410-420 (1967); p. 114 as reprinted in
Brachman & Levesque, _Readings in KR_)
(BTW, The word "generative" in the trademark refers not to the
generation or production of utterances but to the generation of a set of
abstract structures by which to determine whether utterances produced by
some other means are in fact in the language or not. The term has a
strict technical sense borrowed from the production systems developed by
the mathematician E. L. Post in the 1930s and 1940s. Equivocation
between this technical sense and the more obvious senses of the verb
"generate" has been a source of considerable confusion over the years.)
This stance follows from the thesis of the autonomy of syntax: that
syntax or rules of grammar have nothing to do with semantics or
representations of meaning. Opposing this is the finding of
Constructive Linguistics that
THE STRUCTURES SPECIFIED BY GRAMMAR *ARE* A REPRESENTATION
OF THE INFORMATION IN UTTERANCES
--that form or structure or redundancy equals information. I have given
references before, would be happy to give them again.
Your proposals as to what a grammar might be or might be for all have to
do with the application of grammars to performance.
I think you overestimate the normative effects of an official standard
grammar. This has been tried in Spain, in France, in Greece, and
elsewhere, without doing more than putting new twists in the exuberant
ongoing change of language. The Gross article talks about so-called
"aspirated h" in French as such an artifact, which has been given
unwarrented importance in Generativist discussions of French phonology;
see more below.
AC> From: Alex Colvin <mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>
AC> Subject: Re: What is a grammar (for)
AC> Consider the effect of Panini's grammer on Sanskrit.
AC> All previous grammars (of which there must have been many) were discarded.
AC> The development of grammatical forms was frozen, though usage continued
AC> to develop.
You've left out an important feature of the cultural context. They
*wanted* the language frozen, for religious reasons. (If the Vedic
hymns and so on were not pronounced correctly, they wouldn't work.)
Panini (long a, dots under the ns) did an amazing job of making the
language itself (and offering his grammar as) an object of meditation.
Remember, it was memorized, not pulled off a shelf and read. (Still is,
by traditionalists.) It was up to the voluminous commentaries of later
centuries to make his very succinct statement intelligible for other
purposes.
We don't have the same appeal to religious authority to end the
prescriptivist-descriptivist dialectic. (Not that some fundamentalists
haven't tried, and probably more will as the language as she is spoke
diverges more and more from the language of the King James translation.)
Indeed, Samuel Johnson had strong religious and political opinions that
he explicitly intended his Dictionary to promulgate. Some of his
definitions and etymologies are quite amusing to contemporary readers
because of the transparency of this motivation, though we might regard a
similar effort as rather scary and cult-like today.
The crux of the matter is that language changes and dialects diverge,
yet speakers of different dialects must communicate with one another:
Language changes: people identify with one or another social group, and
in-form their presentation of self by the group's norms of behavior,
largely without conscious awareness. This happens mostly at puberty,
as Labov has shown. And to identify with a group (one's in-group or
"us") means to participate in distinguishing that group from other
groups (the out-groups or "them"). Therefore language changes and
dialects diverge, and people will always resist and resent
prescriptivist attempts to standardize the language.
Communities must communicate: and to do so people have to get past the
in-group/out-group one-upmanship that drives language change. A
standard language can serve as lingua franca or trade language, for
example, as Standard English does today for most speakers of Black
English, and as did the trade language of West Africa (Mali empire)
that gave rise to Black Spanish, Black Portuguese, and Black English.
Communication results in each community borrowing expressions and other
cultural artifacts from the other (such as "OK" from Black English,
straight from West African Mande "okeh"--the "Oll Korrect" etymology is
a ludicrous canard). Ironically, then, use of a standard language as
lingua franca can provide a pipeline between dialects that actually
contributes to the yeastiness of language change.
As to the possible progression from (iii) predictive model for testing
to (ii) model of normal behavior to (i) normative or prescriptive
standard, by the time you get there the language has changed out from
under you. Your model must encompass diachronic processes of change in
the same way that it must encompass relations among (a) geographical
dialects, (b) social dialects, and (c) subject-matter specific
sublanguages.
BP> From: Bill Poser <poser@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
BP> Subject: Re: The failure of generative grammar
BP> As to Gross' qualifications as a generative
BP> grammarian, I really can't say as I haven't read enough of
BP> his work. But my impression is that he was never a
BP> generative grammarian. I think that he was a Harrisian
He worked with Harris after working with Chomsky and others. I believe
his book on mathematical linguistics has nothing Harrisian in it.
AL> Date: Mon, 8 Feb 88 12:28 EST
AL> From: Alan Lovejoy <alan@pdn.UUCP>
AL> Subject: Re: failure of TM
AL> First of all, let me state that I have never believed that
AL> Transformational Grammar was The Last Word in grammar. It's biggest
AL> flaw is the fact that it needs a theory of semantics that is at least as
AL> precise and well-defined as TG itself is. Such a science of semantics
AL> does not yet exist (progress IS being made, however).
See comments on relation of form to meaning and citations to e.g.
_The Form of Information in Science_ given previously.
AL> but there are things like compiler-compilers,
AL> LR(k) parsers and symbolic equation solving programs.
This is in keeping with the observation that GG is a theory of
language-like formal systems. CG on the contrary is a theory of the
formal structure of natural language. It would be interesting to try to
write a programming language with the structure disclosed by CG in
natural language.
AL> TG is a stepping stone on the path to linguistic enlightenment. Just
AL> because it may not be the final one is no reason to throw it out,
AL> especially when the next step is not yet available. Physicists didn't
AL> retire Newton until they had a superior replacement. Pointing out the
AL> flaws in TG, Newtonian Gravity, Einsteinian Gravity, String Theory or
AL> Capitalism is a valid exercise. That's how progress is made. But
AL> progress also depends on constructive creativity. Don't just criticize,
AL> improve.
I have pointed you to an improvement.
PN> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 88 17:11 EST
PN> From: Paul Neubauer <neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP>
PN> Subject: Re: failure of TM (really TG)
. . . the particular criticism that I was claiming to be
misguided was the implication (and even assertion) that a primary evaluation
criterion for grammatical theories was the extent to which they enable and
encourage complete, encyclopedic grammars of particular languages.
PN> To
PN> the extent that Gross bases his criticism of TG on an unfavorable comparison
PN> with traditional encyclopedic grammars, I reject that criticism.
Again, Gross is not comparing TG with traditional grammars.
PN> I contended (and continue to contend) that as long as we do not understand the
PN> underlying hardware and must include brain-emulators in our grammars (or
PN> grammar fragments), we are going to find it prohibitively expensive to try
PN> to write even a good bluff at a complete grammar.
I have pointed you to existence proofs to the contrary. They indicate
that the structure of language is considerably less complex than GG
suggests.
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
<usual_disclaimer>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 20:55 EST
From: Allen H. Renear <ALLEN%BROWNVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Origins of "intension"
Peter Berke asks about the origins of the terms "intension" and "extension".
The following extract is from the "Historical Introduction" to a great
classic introduction to modal logic -- *The 'Lemmon Notes:' An Introduction
to Modal Logic* by E. J. Lemmon, in collaboration with Dana Scott,
edited by Krister Segerberg, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1977. pp. 8.
> ...The medieval term *intentio* was originally employed as a translation
> of the Arabic *ma 'na*, a form in the soul identified with a meaning or
> notion, and meant throughout medieval epistemology a natural sign in the
> soul. Later the *Port Royal Logic* [1662 --ahr] distinguished between the
> *comprehension* and *extension* of a general term in something of the way
> in which Mill later distinguished connotation and denotation: whilst the
> extension is the set of things to which the term applies, its
> comprehension is the set of attributes which it implies. In the
> nineteenth century, Sir William Hamilton replaced 'comprehension' by
> 'intension', faultily spelling the word with an 's' by analog with
> 'extension'. Since then the term 'intentionality has gone one way, via
> Brentano to Chisholm [refs], and the word "intensionality" another via
> Carnap to Quine. It is the latter term with which we are most interested,
> though there is no doubt that it is intimately connected with the former.
The "Lemmon Notes" are wonderful, though hard to get a hold of.
(They are also sometimes called "An Introduction to Intensional Logic"
I think.) They are a draft for the first chapter of an "Introduction to
Intensional Logic" that Lemmon and Scott were collaborating on at the
time of Lemmon's death in 1966.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 88 02:31 EST
From: Chriz@cup.portal.com
Subject: (Chris Lapp)RE:What is a grammar(for)
In Martin Taylor's article:
>Read article (Usenet).1What is a grammar (for)
>2/7/88 12:29mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
>A question that is simple on the surface, but I suspect not so simple in
>implication: "What is a grammar, and what is a grammar for?"
Rand says the following:
Grammar is a science dealing with the formulation of the proper methods
of verbal expression and communication, i.e., the methods of organizing
words (concepts) into sentences. Grammar pertains to the actions of
consciousness, and involves a number of special concepts--such as
conjunctions, which are concepts denoting relationships among thoughts
("and," "but," "or," etc.). These concepts are formed by retaining the
distinguishing chractersitics of the relationship and omitting the
particular thoughts involved. The purpose of conjunctions is verbal
economy: they serve to integrate and/or condense the content of certain
thoughts.
(Ayn Rand, "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology";New York,Mentor,
1979, p.48)
I think that your discussion of grammar would be greatly enhanced if you
familiarized yourself with the criticisms of Ayn Rand on current thinking
about linguistic analysis and conceptualization. The above citation is
a good place to start!
Chris Lapp
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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