语言伴随性手势是否和语言共享同一交流系统?

语言伴随性手势是人类语言交流的一个普遍的特征, 它可以发挥信息交流的功能。依据产生目的以及适用范围的不同, 手势可以分成表象性手势和非表象性手势。多数研究者认为, 语言和手势动作是“近亲”, 具有“家族相似性”。来自语言发展、认知心理学和认知神经科学的证据均表明, 手势和语言共享同一个交流系统。当手势动作和发音单词意义相同时, 手势动作受到单词发音的干扰, 同时引发发音共振峰2 (F2)的放大。手势和言语之间遵循互相作用理论, 它们作用的基础是语义一致性, 镜像神经系统完成了两者语义一致性的传递。由于语言伴随性手势和语言之间的关系是语言和行为结合良好的特例, 因此, 对语言伴随性手势的研究将有助于对人类心智有一个更深层次的认识和理解。     

Break philosophy through internally

This paper contrasts and illustrates two types of breakthroughs in philosophy; i.e., external and internal ones. Both are made possible through its application to a newfield. In the external breakthrough, a new field is discovered by such factors without philosophy as encounters with different traditions of thought and advance in technology. In the internal one, a new field is brought into attention by critical examination of one or another assumption within philosophy that has once dismissed the field as too trivial or insignificant to be its proper subject. Based on this distinction, a research guideline for philosophy is proposed that one must always seek the possibility of its internal breakthrough. It is also suggested that the philosophy of science and epistemology can be innovated internally when they are applied to a new field, that is, statistics. Finally the distinction between pure and applied philosophy is reinterpreted in the light of the internal breakthrough.     

ANIMALIA,HOMO, AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Abstract. I selectively and critically review the state of knowledge about human evolution and the place of humans vis‐à‐vis living apes, with emphasis on bipedal posture and locomotion, expansion of the brain and associated cognitive capacities, speech, tool behavior, culture, and society. I end with a personal perspective on God and Heaven.     

What Causes Specific Language Impairment in Children?

ABSTRACT— Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child's language development is deficient for no obvious reason. For many years, there was a tendency to assume that SLI was caused by factors such as poor parenting, subtle brain damage around the time of birth, or transient hearing loss. Subsequently it became clear that these factors were far less important than genes in determining risk for SLI. A quest to find "the gene for SLI" was undertaken, but it soon became apparent that no single cause could account for all cases. Furthermore, although fascinating cases of SLI caused by a single mutation have been discovered, in most children the disorder has a more complex basis, with several genetic and environmental risk factors interacting. The clearest evidence for genetic effects has come from studies that diagnosed SLI using theoretically motivated measures of underlying cognitive deficits rather than conventional clinical criteria.     

论庄子的语言怀疑论

庄子的怀疑论其实是对语言本身的怀疑。庄子并不怀疑客观世界的“真”,他只是怀疑语言表达“真”、表达“道”的有效性。《齐物论》的主旨就是对人们语言中的“是非”、“彼此”、“然否”的意义表示怀疑和否定。庄子的语言怀疑论有助于人们破除对既有话语体系的盲从与迷信,启发人们怀疑既有思想体系与常规,大胆进行创新和探索。但他根本否定语言之说的客观性和普遍意义,则又难免导致彻底的虚无主义。     

《易传》"立象以尽意"思想发微

“言”、“象”、“意”之间的关系问题,是易学研究中一个至关重要的问题。以老庄道家“言不尽意”论立论,《易传》作者不仅第一次明确提出了“言不尽意”的命题,而且首创“立象以尽意”之说,不仅实现了《周易》由卜筮之书到哲学之书的整体转换,而且完成了儒道言意思想的创造性整合,从而确立了其在中国思想文化史上至为重要的地位。至于“象”能否尽“意”,《易传》作者并没有说。没有说并不等于没有问题。而这个问题在其后的提出和讨论,则不仅直接引发了魏晋玄学的“言意之辨”,实现了两汉经学向魏晋玄学的转换和玄学本体论哲学的理论建构,而且通过玄学“言意之辨”,即按照“言不尽意”和“得意忘言”的理论和方法,不仅为佛教的中国化和宋明理学的综合创新开辟了广阔的道路,同时也为以“意象”为核心的中国审美文化的繁荣和发展奠定了坚实的思想理论基础,而这也正是《易传》“立象以尽意”思想的意义和价值所在。     

Supporting the formal verification of mathematical texts

The formal verification of mathematical texts is one of the most interesting applications for computer systems. In fact, we argue that the expert language of mathematics is the natural choice for achieving efficient mathematician–machine interaction. Our empirical approach, the analysis of carefully authored textbook proofs, forces us to focus on the language and the reasoning pattern that mathematician use when presenting proofs to colleagues and students. Enabling a machine to understand and follow such language and argumentation is seen to be the key to usable and acceptable math assistant systems. In this paper, we first perform an analysis of three textbook proofs by hand; we then describe a computational framework that aims at mechanising such an analysis. The resulting proof-of-concept implementation is capable of processing simple textbook proofs and constitutes promising steps towards a natural mathematician–machine interface for proof development and verification.     

儿童语言获得之认知发展机制研究新进展

儿童母语的习得是以已有的知识经验为基础的,即概念信息,由此儿童可以对经验过的对象、关系和事件做出区分并加以归类。这为以后儿童语言的获得奠定了基础。因此,儿童首先建立的是对事物的概念性表征,然后再以语言的形式表达之,即获得了语言性表征。但是,当儿童获得了语言表征之后,原先的概念表征还是继续发挥着它应有的作用。     

Explaining color term typology with an evolutionary model

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, green, and blue were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time.