Don't Blame Distributional Semantics if it can't do Entailment

Distributional semantics has had enormous empirical success in Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science in modeling various semantic phenomena, such as semantic similarity, and distributional models are widely used in state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing systems. However, the theoretical status of distributional semantics within a broader theory of language and cognition is still unclear: What does distributional semantics model? Can it be, on its own, a fully adequate model of the meanings of linguistic expressions? The standard answer is that distributional semantics is not fully adequate in this regard, because it falls short on some of the central aspects of formal semantic approaches: truth conditions, entailment, reference, and certain aspects of compositionality. We argue that this standard answer rests on a misconception: These aspects do not belong in a theory of expression meaning, they are instead aspects of speaker meaning, i.e., communicative intentions in a particular context. In a slogan: words do not refer, speakers do. Clearing this up enables us to argue that distributional semantics on its own is an adequate model of expression meaning. Our proposal sheds light on the role of distributional semantics in a broader theory of language and cognition, its relationship to formal semantics, and its place in computational models.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS 2019), Gothenburg, Swede

Les migrations au Canada sous le régime français (1608-1760)

Depuis un siècle et demi, plusieurs historiens et généalogistes ont traité de l’immigration au Canada sous le régime français. Or, pour la plupart, ils se sont préoccupés d’une fraction seulement de l’immigration totale, celle correspondant aux individus qui ont fait souche au pays, constituant les racines de ce qui allait devenir la population canadienne. Dans cet article, on examine la littérature sur le sujet, tout en introduisant les concepts nouveaux d’immigration fondatrice et d’immigration observée. Enfin, on présente de nouvelles estimations de l’immigration observée et de la migration nette pour la période 1666-1760. On montre que l’immigration totale, soit l’immigration brute, a été d’au moins quelque 30 000 Français entre 1608 et 1760. Cette valeur excède de beaucoup l’estimation consacrée par l’historiographie qui fixait à quelque 10 000 le nombre d’immigrants de cette période.For a century and a half, several historians and genealogists have examined immigration to Canada under the French regime. However, for the most part, they dealt with only a fraction of the total immigration, that which relates to individuals who settled in the country, thus constituting the roots of what was to become the Canadian population. In this article, we review the literature on the subject, while introducing a couple of new concepts: founding immigration and observed immigration. Lastly, we present new estimations of observed immigration and net migration, for the 1666-1760 period. We show that total immigration, that is crude immigration, was of at least some 30,000 Frenchmen, between 1608 and 1760. This figure greatly exceeds the estimation sanctioned by the historiography, which sets at 10,000 the number of immigrants for that period.Varies historiadores y genealogistas han trabajado sobre la inmigración a Canadá durante la dominación francesa. Sin embargo, esta contribución concierne exclusivamente une parte de la inmigración total. Se trata de aquellos individuos que se instalaron en el país, "fundando" el corazón de Io que más tarde sería la población canadiense. En este artículo se presenta la literatura sobre el tema, introduciendo un par de conceptos nuevos, a saber: la inmigración fundadora y la inmigracion observada. Por ultimo, se dan a conocer los resultados de nuevas estimaciones en Io que atañe a la inmigración observada y a la migración neta correspondiente al período 1666-1760. Se demuestra que la inmigración bruta ha sido, por Io menos, de aproximadamente 30 000 franceses, entre 1608 y 1760. Esta nueva estimación es sensiblemente más fuerte que la antigua cifra consagrada por la historiografia (10 000)

La Difusió de la il·luminació elèctrica a Barcelona en la primera meitat del segle XX

At last 20s, beginnings of 30s of the last century, Catalonia completed the industrial stage in its electrification. The supply companies, interested in increasing the number of subscribers, fixed their objective in individual users. Diverse initiatives were launched to convince potential clients of the electrical illumination advantages as well as the goodness of new household electrical technologies. This paper analyses some of this initiatives in the framework of the new approximations to popularization of science and technology

Time-dependent patterns in quasivertical cylindrical binary convection

This paper reports on numerical investigations of the effect of a slight inclination a on pattern formation in a shallow vertical cylindrical cell heated from below for binary mixtures with a positive value of the Soret coefficient. By using direct numerical simulation of the three-dimensional Boussinesq equations with Soret effect in cylindrical geometry, we show that a slight inclination of the cell in the range a˜0.036rad=2° strongly influences pattern selection. The large-scale shear flow (LSSF) induced by the small tilt of gravity overcomes the squarelike arrangements observed in noninclined cylinders in the Soret regime, stratifies the fluid along the direction of inclination, and produces an enhanced separation of the two components of the mixture. The competition between shear effects and horizontal and vertical buoyancy alters significantly the dynamics observed in noninclined convection. Additional unexpected time-dependent patterns coexist with the basic LSSF. We focus on an unsual periodic state recently discovered in an experiment, the so-called superhighway convection state (SHC), in which ascending and descending regions of fluid move in opposite directions. We provide numerical confirmation that Boussinesq Navier-Stokes equations with standard boundary conditions contain the essential ingredients that allow for the existence of such a state. Also, we obtain a persistent heteroclinic structure where regular oscillations between a SHC pattern and a state of nearly stationary longitudinal rolls take place. We characterize numerically these time-dependent patterns and investigate the dynamics around the threshold of convection.Postprint (author's final draft

The interaction between cognitive ease and informativeness shapes the lexicons of natural languages

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive in language, and often systematic. Previous work shows that systematic ambiguities involve related meanings. This is attributed to cognitive pressure towards simplicity in language, as it makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and competing pressure for languages to support accurate information transfer. We hypothesize that ambiguity is shaped by a balance of the two pressures; and find support for this idea in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal forces shape the lexicons of natural languages