Space is the machine, part four: theoretical syntheses

Part IV of the book, ‘Theoretical Syntheses’, begins to draw together some of the questions raised in Part I, the regularities shown in Part II and the laws proposed in Part III, to suggest how the two central problems in architectural theory, namely the form-function problem and the form-meaning problem, can be reconceptualised. Chapter 10, ‘Space is the machine’, reviews the form-function theory in architecture and attempts to establish a pathology of its formulation: how it came to be set up in such a way that it could not be solved. It then proposes how the configuration paradigm permits a reformulation, through which we can not only make sense of the relation between form and function in buildings, but also we can make sense of how and why buildings, in a powerful sense are ‘social objects’ and in fact play a powerful role in the realisation and sustaining of human society. Finally, in Chapter 11, ‘The reasoning art’, the notion of configuration is applied to the study of what architects do, that is, design. Previous models of the design process are reviewed, and it is shown that without knowledge of configuration and the concept of the non-discursive, we cannot understand the internalities of the design process. A new knowledge-based model of design is proposed, with configuration at its centre. It is argued from this that because design is a configurational process, and because it is the characteristic of configuration that local changes make global differences, design is necessarily a top down process. This does not mean that it cannot be analysed, or supported by research. It shows however that only configurationally biased knowledge can really support the design Introduction Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax Introduction process, and this, essentially, is theoretical knowledge. It follows from this that attempts to support designers by building methods and systems for bottom up construction of designs must eventually fail as explanatory systems. They can serve to create specific architectural identities, but not to advance general architectural understanding. In pursuing an analytic rather than a normative theory of architecture, the book might be thought by some to have pretensions to make the art of architecture into a science. This is not what is intended. One effect of a better scientific understanding of architecture is to show that although architecture as a phenomenon is capable of considerable scientific understanding, this does not mean that as a practice architecture is not an art. On the contrary, it shows quite clearly why it is an art and what the nature and limits of that art are. Architecture is an art because, although in key respects its forms can be analysed and understood by scientific means, its forms can only be prescribed by scientific means in a very restricted sense. Architecture is law governed but it is not determinate. What is governed by the laws is not the form of individual buildings but the field of possibility within which the choice of form is made. This means that the impact of these laws on the passage from problem statement to solution is not direct but indirect. It lies deep in the spatial and physical forms of buildings, in their genotypes, not their phenotypes. Architecture is therefore not part art, and part science, in the sense that it has both technical and aesthetic aspects, but is both art and science in the sense that it requires both the processes of abstraction by which we know science and the processes of concretion by which we know art. The architect as scientist and as theorist seeks to establish the laws of the spatial and formal materials with which the architect as artist then composes. The greater scientific content of architecture over art is simply a function of the far greater complexity of the raw materials of space and form, and their far greater reverberations for other aspects of life, than any materials that an artist uses. It is the fact that the architect designs with the spatial stuff of living that builds the science of architecture into the art of architecture. It may seem curious to argue that the quest for a scientific understanding of architecture does not lead to the conclusion that architecture is a science, but nevertheless it is the case. In the last analysis, architectural theory is a matter of understanding architecture as a system of possibilities, and how these are restricted by laws which link this system of possibilities to the spatial potentialities of human life. At this level, and perhaps only at this level, architecture is analogous to language. Language is often naïvely conceptualised as a set of words and meanings, set out in a dictionary, and syntactic rules by which they may be combined into meaningful sentences, set out in grammars. This is not what language is, and the laws that govern language are not of this kind. This can be seen from the simple fact that if we take the words of the dictionary and combine them in grammatically correct sentences, virtually all are utterly meaningless and do not count as legitimate sentences. The structures of language are the laws which restrict the combinatorial possibilities of words, and through these restrictions construct the sayable and the meaningful. The laws of language do not therefore tell us what to say, but prescribe the structure and limits of the sayable. It is within these limits that we use language as the prime means to our individuality and creativity. In this sense architecture does resemble language. The laws of the field of architecture do not tell designers what to do. By restricting and structuring the field of combinatorial possibility, they prescribe the limits within which architecture is possible. As with language, what is left from this restrictive structuring is rich beyond imagination. Even so, without these laws buildings would not be human products, any more than meaningless but syntactically correct concatenations of words are human sentences. The case for a theoretical understanding of architecture then rests eventually not on aspiration to philosophical or scientific status, but on the nature of architecture itself. The foundational proposition of the book is that architecture is an inherently theoretical subject. The very act of building raises issues about the relations of the form of the material world and the way in which we live in it which (as any archaeologist knows who has tried to puzzle out a culture from material remains) are unavoidably both philosophical and scientific. Architecture is the most everyday, the most enveloping, the largest and the most culturally determined human artefact. The act of building implies the transmission of cultural conventions answering these questions through custom and habit. Architecture is their rendering explicit, and their transmutation into a realm of innovation and, at its best, of art. In a sense, architecture is abstract thought applied to building, even therefore in a sense theory applied to building. This is why, in the end, architecture must have analytic theories

On The Impact of Passive Voice Requirements on Domain Modelling

Context: The requirements specification is a central arte- fact in the software engineering (SE) process, and its quality (might) influence downstream activities like implementation or testing. One quality defect that is often mentioned in standards is the use of passive voice. However, the con- sequences of this defect are still unclear. Goal: We need to understand whether the use of passive voice in requirements has an influence on other activities in SE. In this work we focus on domain modelling. Method: We designed an experiment, in which we ask students to draw a domain model from a given set of requirements written in active or passive voice. We compared the completeness of the resulting domain model by counting the number of missing actors, domain objects and their associations with respect to a specified solution. Results: While we could not see a difference in the number of missing actors and objects, participants which received passive sentences missed almost twice the associations. Conclusion: Our experiment indicates that, against common knowledge, actors and objects in a requirement can often be understood from the context. However, the study also shows that passive sentences complicate understanding how certain domain concepts are interconnected

Understanding and Interpreting Japanese NP1 WA NP2 DA Sentences: Mechanism and Contextual Factors

This dissertation investigates the contextual factors that affect the understanding and interpretation of one Japanese topicalized construction, NP1 wa NP2 da sentences, by native speakers of Japanese. The construction allows two possibilities in the relation between the NP1 and the NP2. When the two NPs are not syntactically connected (Type I), the sentence is generally vague, and a particular context is required to specify the meaning. When they are syntactically connected (Type II), they can refer to a semantically identical referent, and the sentence is naturally interpreted as an identity sentence. The aim of the study is to examine how context determines the meaning of Type I and Type II NP1 wa NP2 da sentences. These sentences were examined in a set of controlled experimental contexts by two kinds of test: Understandability and Interpretation. Results showed that readers generally tried to connect the NP 1 wa NP2 da sentences to the context syntactically, semantically, or pragmatically when the sentences were presented in a context. Specifically, a syntactic and semantic relation with a particular verb in the preceding context sentence and the NP2 or information about a particular place presented by a locative frame enhanced the comprehension of Type I NP1 wa NP2 da sentences. When these contextual factors were presented consistently and appropriately, Type II NP1 wa NP2 da sentences could be interpreted as non-identity sentences. When such context was not available, the interpretations tended to depend on the sentence-internal conceptual connection between the NP1 and the NP2 in both types of NP1 wa NP2 da sentences. These results suggest the reader\u27s use of their linguistic and pragmatic knowledge differs according to the context and sentence type. The results also reveal a new understanding of the \u27aboutness\u27 relation, a notion that accounts for the non-syntactic connections between the topic and the predicate. Specifically, in the process of understanding NP1 wa NP2 da sentences, establishing an \u27aboutness\u27 relation refers to the process of finding an appropriate predicate in the context to create a proposition to connect the predicate (NP2) to the topic NP (NP1)

On the Role of Cognitive Environment of Translation for English- Chinese Translation

This paper put forward the concept of cognitive environment of translation based on the concept of cognitive context and proposed world knowledge, language knowledge and translation knowledge as its three constituents. World knowledge can also be referred to as encyclopedic knowledge, including all the knowledge acquired about diverse aspects of internal and external life through direct and indirect experience. Language knowledge refers to all the knowledge about the phonetics, phonology, lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, stylistics, etc. of the two languages involved and the comparative and contrastive features between the two languages. Translation knowledge concerns all the knowledge about the strategies and techniques for translation in general and specific solutions applicable for the translation between the two languages in question. The three types of knowledge get involved at different stages of translation: world knowledge and language knowledge about the source text facilitate accurate understanding of the source text, knowledge about the target language and knowledge about the comparative and contrastive features between the source and the target language, in combination with translation knowledge help with the translation process. All the knowledge can be activated more than once in case any uncertainty occurred at understanding or translation stages. As regards English-Chinese translation, translators are expected to use Chinese words, syntactic and textual structures most acceptable to the Chinese readers to replace the original English text, rendering them as close as possible in content, style and receptor effect. Efforts must be made to cater to the Chinese conventions of language use. Three major suggestions, among others, can be summarized in the paper. The first one is to use suitable words or expressions to match the Chinese ways of expression in various cases. The second one is to break the chains off the long and sophisticated English sentences, using shorter Chinese ones with a subject or theme, converting the nouns in English back to the verb or adjective they are derived from, etc. The third is to re-organize the textual structure of the target text according to the temporal, spatial and logical ways of expression in Chinese

Generación automática de resúmenes abstractivos mono documento utilizando análisis semántico y del discurso

The web is a giant resource of data and information about security, health, education, and others, matters that have great utility for people, but to get a synthesis or abstract about one or many documents is an expensive labor, which with manual process might be impossible due to the huge amount of data. Abstract generation is a challenging task, due to that involves analysis and comprehension of the written text in non structural natural language dependent of a context and it must describe an events synthesis or knowledge in a simple form, becoming natural for any reader. There are diverse approaches to summarize. These categorized into extractive or abstractive. On abstractive technique, summaries are generated starting from selecting outstanding sentences on source text. Abstractive summaries are created by regenerating the content extracted from source text, through that phrases are reformulated by terms fusion, compression or suppression processes. In this manner, paraphrasing sentences are obtained or even sentences were not in the original text. This summarize type has a major probability to reach coherence and smoothness like one generated by human beings. The present work implements a method that allows to integrate syntactic, semantic (AMR annotator) and discursive (RST) information into a conceptual graph. This will be summarized through the use of a new measure of concept similarity on WordNet.To find the most relevant concepts we use PageRank, considering all discursive information given by the O”Donell method application. With the most important concepts and semantic roles information got from the PropBank, a natural language generation method was implemented with tool SimpleNLG. In this work we can appreciated the results of applying this method to the corpus of Document Understanding Conference 2002 and tested by Rouge metric, widely used in the automatic summarization task. Our method reaches a measure F1 of 24 % in Rouge-1 metric for the mono-document abstract generation task. This shows that using these techniques are workable and even more profitable and recommended configurations and useful tools for this task.Tesi

Context Effects in Embodied Lexical-Semantic Processing

The embodied view of language comprehension proposes that the meaning of words is grounded in perception and action rather than represented in abstract amodal symbols. Support for embodied theories of language processing comes from behavioral studies showing that understanding a sentence about an action can modulate congruent and incongruent physical responses, suggesting motor involvement during comprehension of sentences referring to bodily movement. Additionally, several neuroimaging studies have provided evidence that comprehending single words denoting manipulable objects elicits specific responses in the neural motor system. An interesting question that remains is whether action semantic knowledge is directly activated as motor simulations in the brain, or rather modulated by the semantic context in which action words are encountered. In the current paper we investigated the nature of conceptual representations using a go/no-go lexical decision task. Specifically, target words were either presented in a semantic context that emphasized dominant action features (features related to the functional use of an object) or non-dominant action features. The response latencies in a lexical decision task reveal that participants were faster to respond to words denoting objects for which the functional use was congruent with the prepared movement. This facilitation effect, however, was only apparent when the semantic context emphasized corresponding motor properties. These findings suggest that conceptual processing is a context-dependent process that incorporates motor-related knowledge in a flexible manner

Comprehension, Use Cases and Requirements

Within requirements engineering it is generally accepted that in writing specifications (or indeed any requirements phase document), one attempts to produce an artefact which will be simple to comprehend for the user. That is, whether the document is intended for customers to validate requirements, or engineers to understand what the design must deliver, comprehension is an important goal for the author. Indeed, advice on producing ‘readable’ or ‘understandable’ documents is often included in courses on requirements engineering. However, few researchers, particularly within the software engineering domain, have attempted either to define or to understand the nature of comprehension and it’s implications for guidance on the production of quality requirements. In contrast, this paper examines thoroughly the nature of textual comprehension, drawing heavily from research in discourse process, and suggests some implications for requirements (and other) software documentation. In essence, we find that the guidance on writing requirements, often prevalent within software engineering, may be based upon assumptions which are an oversimplification of the nature of comprehension. Furthermore, that these assumptions may lead to rules which detract from the quality of the requirements document and, thus, the understanding gained by the reader. Finally the paper suggests lessons learned which may be useful in formulating future guidance for the production of requirements documentation

Context and the development of metaphor comprehension

Running title: Metaphoric understandingIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 9-10)Supported in part by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement under cooperative agreement no. OEG 0087-C100

The role of Comprehension in Requirements and Implications for Use Case Descriptions

Within requirements engineering it is generally accepted that in writing specifications (or indeed any requirements phase document), one attempts to produce an artefact which will be simple to comprehend for the user. That is, whether the document is intended for customers to validate requirements, or engineers to understand what the design must deliver, comprehension is an important goal for the author. Indeed, advice on producing ‘readable’ or ‘understandable’ documents is often included in courses on requirements engineering. However, few researchers, particularly within the software engineering domain, have attempted either to define or to understand the nature of comprehension and it’s implications for guidance on the production of quality requirements. Therefore, this paper examines thoroughly the nature of textual comprehension, drawing heavily from research in discourse process, and suggests some implications for requirements (and other) software documentation. In essence, we find that the guidance on writing requirements, often prevalent within software engineering, may be based upon assumptions which are an oversimplification of the nature of comprehension. Hence, the paper examines guidelines which have been proposed, in this case for use case descriptions, and the extent to which they agree with discourse process theory; before suggesting refinements to the guidelines which attempt to utilise lessons learned from our richer understanding of the underlying discourse process theory. For example, we suggest subtly different sets of writing guidelines for the different tasks of requirements, specification and design