9 research outputs found
Vector Semantics
This open access book introduces Vector semantics, which links the formal theory of word vectors to the cognitive theory of linguistics. The computational linguists and deep learning researchers who developed word vectors have relied primarily on the ever-increasing availability of large corpora and of computers with highly parallel GPU and TPU compute engines, and their focus is with endowing computers with natural language capabilities for practical applications such as machine translation or question answering. Cognitive linguists investigate natural language from the perspective of human cognition, the relation between language and thought, and questions about conceptual universals, relying primarily on in-depth investigation of language in use. In spite of the fact that these two schools both have ‘linguistics’ in their name, so far there has been very limited communication between them, as their historical origins, data collection methods, and conceptual apparatuses are quite different. Vector semantics bridges the gap by presenting a formal theory, cast in terms of linear polytopes, that generalizes both word vectors and conceptual structures, by treating each dictionary definition as an equation, and the entire lexicon as a set of equations mutually constraining all meanings
Changing Paradigms : Designing for a Sustainable Future
Changing Paradigms: designing for a sustainable future is intended for designers, design students and design educators, who want to understand why and how to integrate Sustainability into design education and practice. It consists of five parts; Part One presents why we must design for a sustainable future, Part Two describes how to design for a sustainable future, Part Three presents student design projects exemplifying sustainable design, Part Four is a glossary of 120 terms and concepts about Sustainability and design, and finally, Part Five includes three appendices: The Cumulus Kyoto Design Declaration, and guidelines on how to green both school campuses and conferences. This book has been edited by Peter Stebbing and Ursula Tischner, who have invited internationally renown experts to contribute chapters. Changing Paradigms offers a comprehensive survey of essential knowledge for designers and other creative professions to shift their focus to the new design paradigm for sustainable production, consumption, and life styles
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning
These are the proceedings of the 11th Nonmonotonic Reasoning Workshop. The aim of this series is to bring together active researchers in the broad area of nonmonotonic reasoning, including belief revision, reasoning about actions, planning, logic programming, argumentation, causality, probabilistic and possibilistic approaches to KR, and other related topics. As part of the program of the 11th workshop, we have assessed the status of the field and discussed issues such as: Significant recent achievements in the theory and automation of NMR; Critical short and long term goals for NMR; Emerging new research directions in NMR; Practical applications of NMR; Significance of NMR to knowledge representation and AI in general
State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity
This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on
the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages
to be carried out within the Rewerse project.
From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of
interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of
the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give
an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs;
in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and
in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks
Langages et modèles à objets - état des recherches et perspectives
Langages et modèles à objets donne un aperçu de la diversité des travaux développés autour de la notion d'objet, à un moment où leur incidence est de plus en plus grande dans tous les domaines de l'informatique. l'ouvrage est divisé en quatre parties, centrées autour de thèmes choisis : génie logiciel, concepts avancés, représentation des connaissances et applications. Tous les chapitres (sauf un) ont été spécialement conçus pour l'occasion et leurs auteurs ont été choisis parmi les meilleurs spécialistes français. l'ouvrage peut être lu sans la connaissance préalable d'un langage particulier et ne donne pas une connaissance approfondie d'un langage ou de son histoire. l'accent est plutôt mis sur les grands principes des thèmes traités, qui sont présentés en détail et caractérisés les uns par rapport aux autres
The pragmatics of humorous interpretations: a relevance-theoretic approach
The aim of this thesis is to provide a pragmatic account of how humorous discourse
is interpreted within the cognitive framework of Relevance Theory. I argue that being
humorous is not a property of texts, but of the type of mental representations that
hearers are led to entertain during their processing, and the specific way in which
these representations are manipulated.
One of my objectives is to provide a psychologically plausible explanation of
how humorous effects are created and understood in language, and to relate it to
philosophical views of humour. In order to place my account in this broader
perspective, in Chapter 1 I review the main philosophical and psychological
approaches of verbal humour. From this discussion it emerges that the notion of
incongruity plays a central role in most contemporary treatments of humour. I raise
the question whether a theory of
humorous interpretations should endeavour to
develop a better defined notion of the precise type of incongruity that is at stake in
humour, or should rather explore the cognitive impact of encountering something
incongruous as a result of processing an ostensive stimulus. I take the second line.
In Chapter 2 some linguistic approaches to the study of verbal humour are
discussed. I argue that they are flawed because they assume that verbal humour is
inherent in the linguistic code, and that the alternative interpretations of an utterance
derive fully from structures of meaning present in the text and the co-text. I question
their conclusion that humorous language is deviant, and argue that the proper field to
approach verbal humour is not linguistics, but pragmatics.
Chapter 3 and 4 assess recent pragmatic analyses of verbal humour. Although
these approaches take into account the role of inference in the interpretation of
humorous effects, without exception they either assume or conclude that humorous
language transgress the rules that regulate the operation of non-humorous discourse,
that special principles are needed for its interpretation, and that humans possess a
domain-specific 'humour competence' that enables them to create and produce verbal
humour. I argue against all these claims.
Chapter 5 outlines the relevance-theoretic framework, and discusses the few
analysis of verbal humour and related issues that have been carried out within it, so
it sets the ground for the approach I develop in the remaining chapters.
In Chapter 6 I single out a number of pragmatic mechanisms that seem to be
typical of the generation and interpretation of humorous effects and argue that they
fit one particular definition of the notion of incongruity. I suggest that leading hearers
to entertain the incongruous in the ways described is only a device exploited by
speakers to give rise to additional cognitive effects, the precise nature of which is
discussed in Chapter 7. It is claimed that in dealing with the incongruity encountered,
hearers perform inferences that take metarepresentations of various orders as premises.
Different orders of these metarepresentations produce different effects. This suggests
that the ability to engage in humour is a direct consequence of the capacity to attribute
(false) beliefs and intentions to others.
Finally, Chapters 8 and 9 consider the implications of my proposal for
humorous figurative language. Poetic and humorous metaphors are contrasted in
Chapter 9, while Chapter 9 extends and elaborates on the standard relevance-theoretic
approach to irony, and addresses some recent attacks against it
Vector Semantics
This open access book introduces Vector semantics, which links the formal theory of word vectors to the cognitive theory of linguistics. The computational linguists and deep learning researchers who developed word vectors have relied primarily on the ever-increasing availability of large corpora and of computers with highly parallel GPU and TPU compute engines, and their focus is with endowing computers with natural language capabilities for practical applications such as machine translation or question answering. Cognitive linguists investigate natural language from the perspective of human cognition, the relation between language and thought, and questions about conceptual universals, relying primarily on in-depth investigation of language in use. In spite of the fact that these two schools both have ‘linguistics’ in their name, so far there has been very limited communication between them, as their historical origins, data collection methods, and conceptual apparatuses are quite different. Vector semantics bridges the gap by presenting a formal theory, cast in terms of linear polytopes, that generalizes both word vectors and conceptual structures, by treating each dictionary definition as an equation, and the entire lexicon as a set of equations mutually constraining all meanings