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#pragmatics

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🇪🇺 Yet Another Owl 🕯️🕊️

Your personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing / The Conversation

Un bell'aticolo sul Principio di Relatività Linguistica, formulato da Whorf negli anni '30.

Languages don’t just allow us to communicate – they also shape our perception of what surrounds us, and ourselves.

theconversation.com/your-perso

#Whorf #Sapir
#languages #linguistics #sociolinguistics #pragmatics #languageLearning

The ConversationYour personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing
More from The Conversation ES
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Inquiry Into Inquiry

Signs Of Signs • 4

Re: Michael Harris • Language About Language

But then inevitably I find myself wondering whether a proof assistant, or even a formal system, can make the distinction between “technical” and “fundamental” questions.  There seems to be no logical distinction.  The formalist answer might involve algorithmic complexity, but I don’t think that sheds any useful light on the question.  The materialist answer (often? usually?) amounts to just‑so stories involving Darwin, and lions on the savannah, and maybe an elephant, or at least a mammoth.  I don’t find these very satisfying either and would prefer to find something in between, and I would feel vindicated if it could be proved (in I don’t know what formal system) that the capacity to make such a distinction entails appreciation of music.

Peirce proposed a distinction between corollarial and theorematic reasoning in mathematics which strikes me as similar to the distinction Michael Harris seeks between technical and fundamental questions.

I can’t say I have a lot of insight into how the distinction might be drawn but I recall a number of traditions pointing to the etymology of theorem as having to do with the observation of objects and practices whose depth of detail always escapes full accounting by any number of partial views.

On the subject of music, all I have is the following incidental —

🙞 Riffs and Rotes

Perhaps it takes a number theorist to appreciate it …

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • BlueSky • Laws of Form • Mathstodon • Research Gate
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Mathematics without Apologies, by Michael Harris · About the authorMichael Harris is professor of mathematics at the Université Paris-Diderot and Columbia University.  He is the author or coauthor of more than seventy mathematical books and articles, and has recei…
#Aesthetics#CSPeirce#CategoryTheory
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Inquiry Into Inquiry

Signs Of Signs • 3

Re: Michael Harris • Language About Language

And if we don’t [keep our stories straight], who puts us away?

One’s answer, or at least one’s initial response to that question will turn on how one feels about formal realities.  As I understand it, reality is that which persists in thumping us on the head until we get what it’s trying to tell us.  Are there formal realities, forms which drive us in that way?

Discussions like those tend to begin by supposing we can form a distinction between external and internal.  That is a formal hypothesis, not yet born out as a formal reality.  Are there formal realities which drive us to recognize them, to pick them out of a crowd of formal possibilities?

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • BlueSky • Laws of Form • Mathstodon • Research Gate
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Mathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisMathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisAn unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life
#Aesthetics#CSPeirce#CategoryTheory
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Inquiry Into Inquiry

Signs Of Signs • 2

Re: Michael Harris • Language About Language

I compared mathematics to a “consensual hallucination”, like virtual reality, and I continue to believe that the aim is to get (consensually) to the point where that hallucination is a second nature.

I think that’s called coherentism, normally contrasted with or complementary to objectivism.  It’s the philosophy of a gang of co‑conspirators who think, “We’ll get off scot‑free so long as we all keep our stories straight.”

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • BlueSky • Laws of Form • Mathstodon • Research Gate
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Mathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisMathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisAn unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life
#Aesthetics#CSPeirce#CategoryTheory
Public *
Inquiry Into Inquiry

Signs Of Signs • 1

Re: Michael Harris • Language About Language

There is a language and a corresponding literature treating logic and mathematics as related species of communication and information gathering, namely, the pragmatic‑semiotic tradition transmitted through the lifelong efforts of C.S. Peirce.  It is by no means a dead language but it continues to fly beneath the radar of many trackers in logic and math today.  Nevertheless, the resource remains for those who wish to look into it.

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • BlueSky • Laws of Form • Mathstodon • Research Gate
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Mathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisMathematics without Apologies, by Michael HarrisAn unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life
#Aesthetics#CSPeirce#CategoryTheory
Public
MottG

"Retrieval-augmented systems can be dangerous medical communicators"

This article makes some great points about some limitations of RAG-based
systems.

"Unlike a human physician, RAG-based systems often retrieve sources and generate responses according to a highly literal and narrow interpretation of patient queries, serving to reinforce patient presuppositions (e.g., queries that contain implicit assumptions) and biases; ..."

arxiv.org/html/2502.14898v1

arxiv.orgRetrieval-augmented systems can be dangerous medical communicators
#research#medicine#RAG
Public
Martin Corley

New Paper!

Those of you interested in #psychology of #language, espeically #pragmatics, might be interested in our paper showing that "some" can be made to mean "one", or even "zero", in context -- with cool real-time mousetracking analyses, thanks to Wei Li's hard work (also with Hannah Rohde)

doi.org/10.5070/G6011.19407

doi.orgNon-plural interpretations of some: Mouse-tracking evidence for quick social reasoning in real-timeAuthor(s): Li, Wei; Rohde, Hannah; Corley, Martin | Abstract: In support of an account in which disfluency can cue social reasoning in real time, Loy et al. (2019) showed that listeners are more likely to make an early commitment to a socially undesirable meaning of some as all, if it follows disfluent uh in a context where larger values are associated with greed (“I ate, [uh], some biscuits”). However, their finding is also compatible with an account in which disfluency simply heightens attention to the core semantic meaning of some, namely, some and possibly all. The current study differentiates these two accounts, using contexts in which smaller values are the socially undesirable interpretations of some. In two experiments, we recorded participants’ mouse movements as they heard fluent and disfluent utterances in a job interview context (“I have, [uh], some qualifications”) and clicked on one of four images corresponding to specific interpretations of some. Here, in keeping with an account in which the effects of disfluency reflect social reasoning, and contrary to one in which such effects depend on heightened attention, disfluency reduces the value participants associate with some. We found that participants were more likely to select images corresponding to one, or zero, qualifications following disfluent utterances. However, their mouse movements show that they are quick to commit to one qualification (Experiment 1) and slow to commit to zero (Experiment 2), suggesting that social context and manner of speech can combine to affect the interpretation of some as an utterance unfolds. Assigning its meaning to one is relatively easy, but imposing a meaning of zero – in effect, deciding that a speaker is lying – is more demanding.
Public
Oliver Czulo

Regarding #translation , we have mostly been discussing the interface between 'the #digital' and #humans in terms of process guidelines and product quality in terms of a narrowed-down set of concepts such as adequacy and fluency. But what about concepts typically studied in the humanities such as #creativity, #pragmatics and #discourse? I have jotted down a few thoughts on how we would benefit from expanding on those on the #EMTnet blog: european-masters-translation-b

What are your thoughts?

EMT BlogPushing the boundaries of Digital Translatology: some notes on creativity, pragmatics and discourseBy Oliver Czulo, full professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translatology, Leipzig University
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