What is Digg?28 Comments
- psxman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Don't forget the marklar of Marklar, who use the marklar "marklar" for marklar.
- jav1231, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Our research indicates that basically, we just put words together in such a way that not only makes sense to us, but to other people. Yeah, make that grant check out to me. See? I just did it again!"
- digBee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4For those of us who work in Natural Language, I feel that this is a bit simplistic approach. The first question I would have is are they using only one language. What also seems pretty silly is to think that after reading the Metamorphosis that with no knowledge of the human condition one can realize that it is an allegory to the human condition and not that the main character is actually a bug...The former is never explicitly stated. Furthermore, I wonder if they are saying that the words that are left are some sort of conceptual map and when "THEY" read them "THEY" can get an understanding from it. I wonder if it is like skimming...you don't look at all the words just look at some of them to get a gist. I don't know if this type of research is showing the underlinings of communication or how the researchers can reason given a set of terms.
- Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They're really not taking into account the listener very much, or the context. This is just code theorism being rehashed...linguistics took a wrong turn with Chomsky decades ago and the importance of context is just starting to regain momentum.
Talking isn't so much about 'communicating ideas' as it is orienting other people into the direction you want them to think. The strong example of this is saying "Shut the window" when you want the person to do so, but it also extends to what i'm saying right now to get you to understand my viewpoint. In the words of my linguistic prof, we are 'living languaging beings,' and while there are many different 'options' that pop up for the listener trying to decipher your intentions, they are all highly dependent on context and the meaning the listener already associates with those words or images. - bramkok, on 07/02/2009, -2/+4The relation of language and thoughts/ideas is really interesting.
I love the fact that people in Tibet have one word for things like computers, fridges, radios, TVs etc (they don't define them like individual things) and that they have a far larger set of words for feelings and thoughts in contrast to the western languages where we can't express ourselves in a very exact way. - retawd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In business school everything is a "widget".
- fuzzmello, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2and i wasted all that time in post-graduate linguistics and semiotics classes and seminars...
- brandonking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This isn't particularly new in the way they described it, but anything that gets people reading more science gets a digg from me. Google "semantic language processing" if this whets your appetite.
- surfdragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is a very interesting view into how humans communicate - it is interesting to think of how poetry can have a profound impact on people - saying so much w/ so few words.
- genetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the finger
- Mister, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It would be interesting to see whether or not this research is transcultural; it seems like they only applied their mathematical analysis to western pieces of literature and evaluated their research in a western cultural context.
- retawd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Like Bukowski's poetry. Very concrete scores from Santa Anita in 1975. ;P
- diggerphelps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Italians discovered this centuries ago.
Just ask Justice Scalia.
"Vafanculo!!" - bluesydude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Communication about communication while communicating is not always communicated.
- jejones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A couple of questions:
1. Did they just delete pronouns, or replace them with their referents? I'd think that would affect the results, but the article didn't make clear which was done.
2. Do they think there's any fundamental difference between necessarily linear spoken/written language and signed languages? Spoken languages have recursive grammar rules, which would seem to serve in part to get around the linear nature of speech. (Children's songs and literature typically have pieces built around repeated application of recursive grammar rules, e.g. "The House That Jack Built," "The Rattling Bog.") I've asked people whether ASL has similar recursive rules, but haven't managed to get a straight answer yet. - jabelar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The key ...
Is in how the one-dimensional string "unlocks" the heirarchay and the the concept map for the reader. This concept map is in the reader's mind, so the real magic of communication is that different people's concept maps have enough commonality to allow language to be so efficient. - peter303, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Tarzan talk" versus language
I read a recent linguistics book speculating on how language may have evolved
from "Tarzan talk" to modern language. Tarzan talk is basically stringing words
together in short two or three word sentences without declinations and prepositional
phrases. Generally a work can relate to the one before it or after it, but connecting
more than three concepts together smooth becomes stilted. I saw a piece of literature
translated into tarzan talk. The main concepts come through, but not clairty and subtlty.
Many animals can be trained for some tarzan talk, but rarely something more complicated. - DavidDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Original article: http://www.citebase.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai:arXiv.org:physics/0510276
- theOster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1the key to poetry is to simply make it as abstract and with as little specific meaning as possible...*obviously* it can mean "so much", but only because it means so little...
i can't stand poetry - WilliamTanksley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Poetry isn't abstract. Read (almost) any poem -- they're almost always extremely concrete, and if they mention abstract things, they do so only by comparison to concrete things.
Perhaps you don't understand poetry because you don't read it? (No offense meant.) - WilliamTanksley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The abstract linked to wasn't very interesting; it appears that the scientists made a bunch of reasonable guesses about the nature of communication, and then measured numbers derived from their hypothesis. I don't see any indication of falsification, just a simple setup for future exploration.
- spamzor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I agree;
"translating an idea into a one-dimensional sequence, a string of words to be read or spoken one after the other."
.... riiight - flowctrl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This article is rather vacuous; the "mathematical tools" that are the real invention here, if it can be called that, were only mentioned, never described. Is there any relation whatsoever between what they've produced and brain science?
This is the meat of the article: "Our contribution to research in this basic field is in the creation of mathematical tools that can be used to make the connection between concepts or ideas and the words used to express them, making it possible to trace in a speech or text the path of an idea in an abstract mathematical space. We can understand theoretically how the structure of the wording serves to transmit concepts and reconstruct them in the mind of the reader."
I doubt that linguists, philosophers or neurologists will find this work useful or interesting. - warrenfalk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6That's not so special. In the rural U.S. we have the one-word term "thingamajigger" that means a bunch of stuff too.
And online we have "lol," and "rofl," then "roflmao," then "OMG ROFLMAO!!!! ok bye." - stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0SO what have these scientists done? Just found out about the Shannon-Weaver Model (1947)?
Wake up at the back there. - tsunamisteve, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4If you know right now that communication happens on many levels other than (and in addition to) just plain words, there is no sense in reading this article.
Flagged as 'Scientists wasting time' - gtiness, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0only physicists...let's just ignore all the social factors :)
- NekoIan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Um, there's already an academic field that studies this called linguistics. I'm not sure scientists should be replicating their work. Isn't cancer still a problem?
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is