The semantic origins of word order

Where do the different sentence orders in the languages of the world come from? Recently, it has been suggested that there is a basic sentence order, SOV (Subject–Object–Verb), which was the starting point for other sentence orders. Backup for this claim was found in newly emerging languages, as well as in experiments where people are asked to convey simple meanings in improvised gesture production. In both cases, researchers found that the predominant word order is SOV. Recent literature has shown that the pragmatic rule ‘Agent first’ drives the preference for S initial word order, but this rule does not decide between SOV and SVO. This paper presents experimental evidence for grounding the word order that emerges in gesture production in semantic properties of the message to be conveyed. We focus on the role of the verb, and argue that the preference for SOV word order reported in earlier experiments is due to the use of extensional verbs (e.g. throw). With intensional verbs like think, the object is dependent on the agent’s thought, and our experiment confirms that such verbs lead to a preference for SVO instead. We conclude that the meaning of the verb plays a crucial role in the sequencing of utterances in emerging language systems. This finding is relevant for the debate on language evolution, because it suggests that semantics underlies the early formation of syntactic rules.     

A Quantitative Empirical Analysis of the Abstract/Concrete Distinction

This study presents original evidence that abstract and concrete concepts are organized and represented differently in the mind, based on analyses of thousands of concepts in publicly available data sets and computational resources. First, we show that abstract and concrete concepts have differing patterns of association with other concepts. Second, we test recent hypotheses that abstract concepts are organized according to association, whereas concrete concepts are organized according to (semantic) similarity. Third, we present evidence suggesting that concrete representations are more strongly feature‐based than abstract concepts. We argue that degree of feature‐based structure may fundamentally determine concreteness, and we discuss implications for cognitive and computational models of meaning.     

Avoid violence,rioting, and outrage; approach celebration,delight, and strength: Using large text corpora to compute valence,arousal, and the basic emotions

Ever since Aristotle discussed the issue in Book II of his Rhetoric, humans have attempted to identify a set of “basic emotion labels”. In this paper we propose an algorithmic method for evaluating sets of basic emotion labels that relies upon computed co-occurrence distances between words in a 12.7-billion-word corpus of unselected text from USENET discussion groups. Our method uses the relationship between human arousal and valence ratings collected for a large list of words, and the co-occurrence similarity between each word and emotion labels. We assess how well the words in each of 12 emotion label sets—proposed by various researchers over the past 118 years—predict the arousal and valence ratings on a test and validation dataset, each consisting of over 5970 items. We also assess how well these emotion labels predict lexical decision residuals (LDRTs), after co-varying out the effects attributable to basic lexical predictors. We then demonstrate a generalization of our method to determine the most predictive “basic” emotion labels from among all of the putative models of basic emotion that we considered. As well as contributing empirical data towards the development of a more rigorous definition of basic emotions, our method makes it possible to derive principled computational estimates of emotionality—specifically, of arousal and valence—for all words in the language.     

How does the provision of semantic information influence the lexicalization of new spoken words?

The integration of a novel spoken word with existing lexical items can proceed within 24 hours of learning its phonological form. However, previous studies have reported that lexical integration of new spoken words can be delayed if semantic information is provided during learning. One possibility is that this delay in lexical integration reflects reduced phonological processing during learning as a consequence of the need to learn the semantic associations. In the current study, adult participants learnt novel words via a phoneme monitoring task, in which half of the words were associated with a picture referent, and half were phonological forms only. Critically, participants were instructed to learn the forms of the novel words, with no explicit goal to learn the word–picture mappings. Results revealed significant lexical competition effects emerging one week after consolidation, which were equivalent for the picture-present and form-only conditions. Tests of declarative memory and shadowing showed equivalent performance for picture-present and form-only words, despite participants showing good knowledge of the picture associations immediately after learning. These data support the contention that provided phonological information is recruited sufficiently well during learning, the provision of semantic information does not slow the time-course of lexical integration.     

Sculptors,Architects, and Painters Conceive of Depicted Spaces Differently

Sculptors, architects, and painters are three professional groups that require a comprehensive understanding of how to manipulate spatial structures. While it has been speculated that they may differ in the way they conceive of space due to the different professional demands, this has not been empirically tested. To achieve this, we asked architects, painters, sculptors, and a control group questions about spatially complex pictures. Verbalizations elicited were examined using cognitive discourse analysis. We found significant differences between each group. Only painters shifted consistently between 2D and 3D concepts, architects were concerned with paths and spatial physical boundedness, and sculptors produced responses that fell between architects and painters. All three differed from controls, whose verbalizations were generally less elaborate and detailed. Thus, for the case of sculptors, architects, and painters, profession appears to relate to a different spatial conceptualization manifested through a systematically contrasting way of talking about space.     

Parametric effects of syntactic-semantic conflict in Broca's area during sentence processing

The hypothesized role of Broca’s area in sentence processing ranges from domain-general executive function to domain-specific computation that is specific to certain syntactic structures. We examined this issue by manipulating syntactic structure and conflict between syntactic and semantic cues in a sentence processing task. Functional neuroimaging revealed that activation within several Broca’s area regions of interest reflected the parametric variation in syntactic-semantic conflict. These results suggest that Broca’s area supports sentence processing by mediating between multiple incompatible constraints on sentence interpretation, consistent with this area’s well-known role in conflict resolution in other linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.     

Language, perception, and the schematic representation of spatial relations

Schemas are abstract nonverbal representations that parsimoniously depict spatial relations. Despite their ubiquitous use in maps and diagrams, little is known about their neural instantiation. We sought to determine the extent to which schematic representations are neurally distinguished from language on the one hand, and from rich perceptual representations on the other. In patients with either left hemisphere damage or right hemisphere damage, a battery of matching tasks depicting categorical spatial relations was used to probe for the comprehension of basic spatial concepts across distinct representational formats (words, pictures, and schemas). Left hemisphere patients underperformed right hemisphere patients across all tasks. However, focused residual analyses using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) suggest that (1) left hemisphere deficits in the representation of categorical spatial relations are difficult to distinguish from deficits in naming these relations and (2) the right hemisphere plays a special role in extracting schematic representations from richly textured pictures.     

Escape from Twin Earth: Putnam's 'Logic' of Natural Kind Terms

Many still seem confident that the kind of semantic theory Putnam once proposed for natural kind terms is right. This paper seeks to show that this confidence is misplaced because the general idea underlying the theory is incoherent. Consequently, the theory must be rejected prior to any consideration of its epistemological, ontological or metaphysical acceptability. Part I sets the stage by showing that falsehoods, indeed absurdities, follow from the theory when one deliberately suspends certain devices Putnam built into it , presumably in order to block such entailments. Part II then raises the decisive issue of at what cost these devices do the job they need to do. It argues that - apart from possessing no other motivation than their capacity to block the consequences derived in Part I - they only fulfil this blocking function if they render the theory unable to deal with fiction and related 'make-believe' activities. Part III indicates the affinity Putnam's account has with the classically 'denotative' view of meaning, and thus how its weaknesses may be seen as a variant of the classical weakness of 'denotative' approaches. It concludes that the theory is a conceptual muddle.     

The puzzling rabbis

Religion is one of the cultural systems that attempts to deal with human puzzlement. This paper uses the metaphor of the puzzle to make sense of what has always been a disconcerting feature of rabbinic Judaism, namely, the rabbis’ (200–600 C.E.) blatantly ad hoc manner of interpreting Scripture. The rabbis seem to know in advance what a verse must mean and go to great lengths to find a legitimation of that reading in the verse in question. Typically this ad hoc quality of rabbinic interpretation is explained as a means whereby the rabbis provide ‘prooftexts’ for new practices without Scriptural warrants. But what from one perspective appears as an attempt to find prooftexts is from another perspective an attempt to solve a puzzle. Conceptually speaking, solving a puzzle and finding prooftexts are worlds apart. This paper treats the rabbis as an inter‐generational community of puzzle solvers involved in the quest to discover how the oral Torah is already contained in the written Torah. Like all matching puzzles, this one is necessarily ad hoc.

The intellectual seeks in various ways, the casuistry of which extends into infinity, to endow his life with a pervasive meaning, and thus to find unity within himself, with his fellow men, and with the cosmos (Weber 1925, 1978 p. 506).

Analysis into parts is not really so important in these societies as is the periodic construction or reconstruction of the whole. The whole is what is truly edifying, and its reconstruction is a purpose which puzzlement can subtly serve (Fernandez, 1986, p. 179).     

God,Information, and Complexity: From Descriptive to Explorative Metaphysics

Abstract

Information and complexity have become central concepts in our contemporary worldview. On this background, it is discussed in which sense concepts of information and complexity may apply to theology proper. While the inherited axiom of divine simplicity forbids complexity and plurality as features of divine nature, an argument is developed for the presence of information and complexity in divine life. Three forms of information are proposed as relevant for a contemporary concept of God: Information as difference (Information1), information as form and relational structure (Information2) and semantic information (Information3). It is argued that features of these forms of information must be internal to divine life, if God can properly be said to facilitate and value the complex world of creation, to allow embodied creates to participate in divine life, and to communicate with creatures. In this light, the notion of divine simplicity will have to be redefined as the divine self-identity throughout temporal flux.