Is this sentence difficult? Do you agree?

In this paper, we present a crowdsourcing-based approach to model the human perception of sentence complexity. We collect a large corpus of sentences rated with judgments of complexity for two typologically-different languages, Italian and English. We test our approach in two experimental scenarios aimed to investigate the contribution of a wide set of lexical, morpho-syntactic and syntactic phenomena in predicting i) the degree of agreement among annotators independently from the assigned judgment and ii) the perception of sentence complexity

is this sentence difficult do you agree

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Scare-quoting and incorporation

I explain a mechanism I call “incorporation,” that I think is at work in a wide range of cases often put under the heading of “scare-quoting.” Incorporation is flagging some words in one’s own utterance to indicate that they are to be interpreted as if uttered by some other speaker in some other context, while supplying evidence to one’s interpreter enabling them to identify that other speaker and context. This mechanism gives us a way to use others’ vocabularies and contexts, thereby extending our expressive capacities on the fly. Explaining incorporation involves explaining intra-sentential shifts in lexicon and in context. Shifts of the former sort are familiar to linguists under the heading of “code-switching.” Shifts of the latter sort have been less explored; accordingly I explain how to modify Kaplan’s logic of demonstratives to allow for such shifts. I compare the incorporation account of scare-quoting with accounts offered by Brandom, Recanati, Geurts and Maier, Benbaji, Predelli, and Shan. Finally I note a possible implication concerning the speech act of assertion: that you can properly assert a content you do not believe, let alone know, because part of it is expressed with words you do not understand

Neural blackboard architectures of combinatorial structures in cognition

Human cognition is unique in the way in which it relies on combinatorial (or compositional) structures. Language provides ample evidence for the existence of combinatorial structures, but they can also be found in visual cognition. To understand the neural basis of human cognition, it is therefore essential to understand how combinatorial structures can be instantiated in neural terms. In his recent book on the foundations of language, Jackendoff described four fundamental problems for a neural instantiation of combinatorial structures: the massiveness of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables and the transformation of combinatorial structures from working memory to long-term memory. This paper aims to show that these problems can be solved by means of neural ‘blackboard’ architectures. For this purpose, a neural blackboard architecture for sentence structure is presented. In this architecture, neural structures that encode for words are temporarily bound in a manner that preserves the structure of the sentence. It is shown that the architecture solves the four problems presented by Jackendoff. The ability of the architecture to instantiate sentence structures is illustrated with examples of sentence complexity observed in human language performance. Similarities exist between the architecture for sentence structure and blackboard architectures for combinatorial structures in visual cognition, derived from the structure of the visual cortex. These architectures are briefly discussed, together with an example of a combinatorial structure in which the blackboard architectures for language and vision are combined. In this way, the architecture for language is grounded in perception

‘Nothing’s really that hard, you can do it’. Agency and fatalism: the resettlement needs of girls in custody

This report presents the results of a qualitative study, funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, of the resettlement needs of 17-year-old young women in a single young offender institution in England and Wales. Using in depth qualitative interviews with 16 girls in custody and two follow up interviews in the community, the study aimed to give expression to the girls’ views on what support they thought would be required, both while in prison and in the form of resettlement provision on release, if they were not to reoffend. The sample size, while small, is equivalent to the capacity of the young offender institution where field work was conducted and to around one third of the total female population of the secure estate on any one day. Field work was conducted between December 2011 and November 2012. Girls constitute a small proportion of children below the age of 18 in custody and have consequently tended to be ‘invisible’ from a research perspective. Yet girls in prison are among the most vulnerable young people in society and recent falls in youth imprisonment have tended to amplify that vulnerability, as less serious cases have been diverted to community based interventions. Such developments have posed additional challenges for the already difficult task of providing effective resettlement

A Dialogue

Jed Rubenfeld: Akhil, you and I have a great deal in common, but also some fundamental differences, at least in principle. Equal protection doctrine might provide a good backdrop to make these differences clear. When it comes to Brown v. Board of Education, our disagreements are not of a fundamental nature. You\u27re inclined to be much more accepting than I of the claim that the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood to bar racial segregation (at least of some kinds), so you don\u27t see Brown as the revolutionary case that many of us do. I take Brown to be a clear case of the rejection of an original No Application Understanding; you don\u27t. But this is not a fundamental disagreement because, if I understand you correctly, you do not object to my central thesis: Original No Application Understandings may be rejected when doing so does justice to the text and the original paradigm cases

Can You Be a Good Person and a Good Prosecutor?

Somehow, it is understood that prosecutors have the high ground. Most people simply assume that prosecutors are the good guys, wear the white hats, and are on the right side. Most law students contemplating a career in criminal law seem to think this. It could be that most practicing lawyers think this, as well. Prosecutors represent the people, the state, the government. This is very noble, important, and heady stuff. Prosecutors seek truth, justice, and the American way. They are the ones who stand up for the victims and would-be victims, the bullied and battered and burgled. They protect all of us. Defenders are always on the defensive. In a social climate that exalts crime control over everything else, defenders are barely tolerated. It is sometimes hard for the public to distinguish defenders from the scum we represent. We are often seen as our clients\u27 accomplices or, at best, their apologists. Much has been written about whether you can be a good person and a good defender--that is, whether it is morally acceptable to defend people who do bad things--and what the personal and professional dilemmas are for those who engage in such work. Almost nothing has been written about whether you can be a good person and a good prosecutor--that is, whether it is morally acceptable to prosecute people who do bad things. At the heart of this question is the reality that prosecution inevitably leads to punishment, which, in recent times, means locking people up (especially some people) for very long periods of time, and, with increased regularity, executing them. In this article, the author examines the morality of prosecution. First, she explores the context of criminal lawyering at the millennium and what it means to prosecute under current conditions. Then, she discusses whether it is possible to do good in this context--that is, whether a well-intentioned prosecutor can temper the harsh reality of the criminal justice system--in view of the institutional and cultural pressures of prosecutor offices. The author concludes by answering the question she poses in the title of this article and addressing some likely objections