Learning Language from a Large (Unannotated) Corpus

A novel approach to the fully automated, unsupervised extraction of dependency grammars and associated syntax-to-semantic-relationship mappings from large text corpora is described. The suggested approach builds on the authors' prior work with the Link Grammar, RelEx and OpenCog systems, as well as on a number of prior papers and approaches from the statistical language learning literature. If successful, this approach would enable the mining of all the information needed to power a natural language comprehension and generation system, directly from a large, unannotated corpus.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures, research proposa

On the Minkowski Measure

The Minkowski Question Mark function relates the continued-fraction representation of the real numbers, to their binary expansion. This function is peculiar in many ways; one is that its derivative is 'singular'. One can show by classical techniques that its derivative must vanish on all rationals. Since the Question Mark itself is continuous, one concludes that the derivative must be non-zero on the irrationals, and is thus a discontinuous-everywhere function. This derivative is the subject of this essay. Various results are presented here: First, a simple but formal measure-theoretic construction of the derivative is given, making it clear that it has a very concrete existence as a Lebesgue-Stieltjes measure, and thus is safe to manipulate in various familiar ways. Next, an exact result is given, expressing the measure as an infinite product of piece-wise continuous functions, with each piece being a Mobius transform of the form (ax+b)/(cx+d). This construction is then shown to be the Haar measure of a certain transfer operator. A general proof is given that any transfer operator can be understood to be nothing more nor less than a push-forward on a Banach space; such push-forwards induce an invariant measure, the Haar measure, of which the Minkowski measure can serve as a prototypical example. Some minor notes pertaining to it's relation to the Gauss-Kuzmin-Wirsing operator are made.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, corrections, added remark

On Differences of Zeta Values

Finite differences of values of the Riemann zeta function at the integers are explored. Such quantities, which occur as coefficients in Newton series representations, have surfaced in works of Maslanka, Coffey, Baez-Duarte, Voros and others. We apply the theory of Norlund-Rice integrals in conjunction with the saddle point method and derive precise asymptotic estimates. The method extends to Dirichlet L-functions and our estimates appear to be partly related to earlier investigations surrounding Li's criterion for the Riemann hypothesis.Comment: 18 page

Symmetries of period-doubling maps

The concept of self-similarity is central to the notion of a fractal, but the actual symmetry group that generates that self-similarity is rarely named, and it seems fractals are almost never studied according to their symmetries. Yet, in other branches of mathematics and physics, it is well understood that symmetry provides a powerful mechanism for understanding systems. In this paper, we identify the symmetry group of period-doubling maps as being a monoid (semigroup) of the modular group PSL(2,Z). To anchor this assertion, we work out an explicit, exactly-solvable fractal curve, the Takagi or Blancmange Curve, as transforming under the three-dimensional representation of the (monoid of the) modular group. By replacing the triangular shape that generates the Blancmange curve with a polynomial, we find that the resulting curve transforms under the n + 2 dimensional representation of the monoid, where n is the degree of the polynomial. We also find that the (ill-defined) derivative of the Blancmange curve is essentially the (inverse of the) Cantor function, thus demonstrating the semigrou