LINGUIST List 10.60

Fri Jan 15 1999

Qs: Deixis, Physics & Language, Encoding

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>



We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate.

Directory

  • clifton soh, Research done on deixis
  • Melih Sener, Language as an Evolving Dynamical System
  • Fred Cummins, Low bit-rate encoding and linguistic insight

    Message 1: Research done on deixis

     Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 10:42:40 PST
    From: clifton soh <clifsohhotmail.com>
    Subject: Research done on deixis


    Dear Linguistlist,

    I am an honours student and am currently doing my thesis on deixis and child language. However, it has been rather difficult obtaining recent research done in this area. I would be most grateful for references (or other relevant information) that could be of use to me.

    Many thanks in advance.

    Clifton Soh (National University of Singapore)

    Message 2: Language as an Evolving Dynamical System

     Date: Thu, 14 Jan 99 12:24:14 EST
    From: Melih Sener <MSENERccvm.sunysb.edu>
    Subject: Language as an Evolving Dynamical System


    Hi,

    I am a physicist by training with only peripheral knowledge of linguistics. The question that I am about to pose started out as some sort of curiosity but having talked to a number of linguists I realize it might be worth more serious consideration.

    Take the list of all words in English language [by word I mean any combination of letters that would pass a spellchecker] and count the number of words K[l] of a given length l. If you plot K[l] vs. l you realize that it is a very smooth curve reminiscent of the normal distribution [it isn't one] peaked around 8 letters.

    Now there is saying that "any beautiful experimental curve shall have a reasonable theoretical explanation". [In this case the curve is very smooth, unlike for example in a Zipf's plot] Language being as complex as it is, it was natural to think of a model based on "economy" [or the principle of least effort as Zipf would say - which is also quite natural for a physicist] that might reproduce some properties of the curve in question.

    The basic idea here is that as a language evolves the dynamical process that is responsible for adding words to it will have an average effect which under very general circumstances gives a distribution as mentioned above. [This of course is totally conjectural and because of this I'm posting this message.]

    Without going into the details of any possible models for such an explanation I would very much like to hear from the linguistic community, whether I am talking about something that is well known and already explained. [And also who in the world probably deals with such problems....]

    Thanks for your time,

    Melih Sener Physics Department SUNY Stony Brook

    Message 3: Low bit-rate encoding and linguistic insight

     Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:25:20 +0100
    From: Fred Cummins <fredsedano.idsia.ch>
    Subject: Low bit-rate encoding and linguistic insight


    In developing the many ways of coding the speech signal (LPC, cepstral coefficients, Rasta, etc), researchers have typically been interested either in fidelity (ensuring that a reconstituted signal is 'close' to the original in some sense), or in economy (getting the number of bits down). My question is whether there has been any significant *linguistic* insight which is attributable to the attempts to reduce the number of bits required to represent the signal. For example, has LPC analysis provided evidence for the existence of any underlying phonetic/phonolgical units? If responses warrant, I'll post a summary.

    - '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Fred Cummins, IDSIA, Corso Elvezia 36, CH-6900 Lugano, Switzerland Web: www.idsia.ch/~fred email: fred at idsia.ch (replace ' at ' with '') ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''