Hypothetical Language Research Articles

The methodological incompatibility between an innate grammar and a bottom-up approach

For Universal Grammar (UG), the identification of substantial universals seems unprincipled, because it is indeterminable, with solely bottom-up assumptions, whether a category advanced in UG is entailed by the notion of innateness, or on that basis, what sufficiently evidences its presence. Unable to constrain the theorization of UG, innateness only seems to be inexplicable, that is, it must be questioned how UG is framed within an innate blueprint. I contend that bottom-up assumptions hardly create an innate universal grammar. A theory resulting from bottom-up assumptions is contingent whereas UG must be a promise that the hypothetical Language Faculty (LF) is epistemologically unique (necessary truth). From bottom up, the identity of a linguistic item always points to multiple possibilities and is ad hoc, as no one has real access to the way that a linguistic item naturally exists in LF. Therefore, unless the principle(s) of how categories are recognised and organised in the LF can be genuinely set out for UG, so that its categorisation inputs all linguistic items methodically and outputs their identities uniquely, the putative substantial inventory of UG is unlikely to be complete and systematic: categories in it are merely opportunistically thrown up on random grounds.

BOLD signal changes in response to pseudowords after giving them semantic meaning in the course of special training: an fMRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to determine the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in response to pseudoword stimuli. Pseudowords were presented as deviant acoustic stimuli in the oddball paradigm, which activated the involuntary attention. In the course of special training, the meanings of the words of a hypothetical language were assigned to the stimuli. It was found that the local cerebral blood flow in response to the pseudowords presentation changed as a result of their semantization during the short-term learning. After training, significant differences in the BOLD signal parameters were observed on the right in the middle and superior temporal gyrus and on the left in the temporal plane and in the superior temporal gyrus. As a result of short-term training, there was a significant increase in local activity in the right hemisphere in the middle temporal gyrus. The results obtained indicated that the semantization of pseudowords led to the significant enhancing of the involuntary attention system reaction to them. In addition, the hemodynamic response intensity after training became noticeably higher on the left in the temporal plane and in the superior temporal gyrus. Thus, as a result of semantization, there was the BOLD reaction increase in speech-related regions of the neocortex.

Effects of modified risk tobacco product claims on consumer comprehension and risk perceptions of IQOS

IntroductionTobacco industry studies on consumers’ perceptions of modified risk claims (MRCs) often had important omissions (eg, no control group, not investigating whether consumers understand what ‘switching completely’ means). This study...

Testing the effects of certain versus hypothetical language in health risk messages

ABSTRACTThis paper tests how certainty conveyed through language can be harnessed to enhance the effectiveness of health risk messages. We conducted experiments with low-income, adult smokers (n = 317) and middle schoolers (n = 321) on pictorial cigarette warning labels. We manipulated hypotheticality of risk through verb modality: present tense, may, can, and will. For adult smokers, present tense led to greater health risk beliefs, compared to hypothetical, among adult males but not females. For youth, contrary to what might seem intuitive, the hypothetical may verb was more effective than the present tense language in promoting health risk beliefs, which was associated with reduced susceptibility to use cigarettes. We discuss the findings in relation applications of construal level theory to health communication.

Orchestrations of consciousness in the universe: Consciousness and electronic music applied to Xenolinguistics and Adnyamathanha aboriginal songs

Abstract This article deals with the reframing of the concept of universal mediated communication on a global scale. Subjects include the following: the universe has a conscious force field at all its scales, requiring continuous inter-scale communication of information; the field exhibits distinct electromagnetic frequencies associated with the building blocks of life; and advances in the technology of sound production with electronic synthesizers can be applied to study mechanisms of such universal communication. The question being addressed is how electronic synthesizers can be used to create sonic xenolinguistic expressions when composing with sonified frequencies obtained from bio-organisms, human protein structures, phonemes and various types of interstellar frequencies that include, but are not limited to, gamma bursts, pulsars and neutron stars. The objective is to construct sonic xenolingusitic expressions that can act like feedback loops within the field of consciousness. These sonic expressions can include anomalous cognitive, emotive or spiritual experiences that may be emerging out of the universal field of consciousness in real time. Xenolinguistics is a hypothetical language used to communicate with other sentient beings in the universe. The rationale for composing sonic xenolingustic expressions is the belief that the universe is considered conscious and that there is a field of consciousness existing throughout the universe that in principle is also instrumental in how communication can evolve with extraterrestrials. Outlines of other attempts at extraterrestrial communication by other researchers will be offered based on current literature. The probability that other life forms have established some mode of information exchange that is detectable and that, in return, may be able to create a form of communication to respond will be covered. It is postulated that various energy fields existing before and after the creation of our universe interacted with one another becoming abiotic, and then over time, formed even more complex structures. It is these complex structures that were then able to communicate essential information for maintaining their stability and survivability by using specific signalling frequencies. It is hypothesized that first life in the universe emerged within an already existing field of information and that our consciousness is thereby able to establish communication with other forms of consciousness in the universe. It is on this basis that a novel scientific and philosophical paradigm is considered in which the universe is conceived of as an active information matrix that can entertain potential extraterrestrial communication. In this framework, the present article will offer a new approach to orchestrated electronic sounds as a means to such communication. By integrating quantum physical properties into that sonic framework, a new study emerged on how sonic xenolinguistic elements can be incorporated into electronic composition techniques. This new framework may produce new algorithms for musical expression that not only represent an innovative future of electronic music but may also be crucial in the formulation and induction of new states of consciousness that will enable humankind to directly participate in the further becoming of the universe as a result of the evolution of this universal field of consciousness.

XVII Century Ottoman Chronic “Tarih-I Naima” in Corpus Comparison

An Ottoman prose work (Naima's Histor y) for a long time has been the subject of special interest for literary critics, historians and linguists due to its stylistic features. The general comparison of the chronicle frequency lexical parameters with other Ottoman prose texts by corpus approach demonstrated that it had been created according to the canons of Ottoman Prose Literature and rules of its language norm. Yet at the same time differs from other t exts in some obscure, inexpressive form which let the annalist work stay quite famous in Ottoman Literature for two centuries and not be forgotten aswas the chronicle Seyahatname of the famous traveler Evliya Chelebi. Corpus approach enables an exact idiolect analysis due to its broad comparison with other texts in synchronistic and diachronic perspective. The comparison is usually based on the data of texts frequency vocabularies and syntax. At the same time, the correlation analysis between frequency vocabularies rank parameters can be used for the sample validation while compiling electronic documents collection (Prohorov, 2002). Such collection (corpus) in total of 21Ottoman prose texts was created for our research on idiostyle of the 18th century Turkish chronicle Tarihi Naima (Naima's History), or in the full name:The Garden of Husayn in the Summary of the Chronicles of Eastand West (Ravḍatu'l�Ḥuseynfi ḫulāsati aḫbāri'l�ḫāfiqa yn), written by the first vakanuvis (state chronicler) of Ottoman Empire Mustafa (1655�1716).While researching his idiostyle, we proceeded from the linguistic view of this phenomenon as deviation from language norm and tried to fix it in empirical statistical way. In our case, the calculation of the Pierson correlation coefficient (R) between rank parameters of electronic documents vocabularies verified the sampling adequacy for created corpus. However, the analogical computation between frequency vocabularies of researched text and documents collection demonstrated lexical deviation of Tarihi Naima from other Ottoman chr onicles. Meanwhile lexicon of selected documents in the view of their common frequency dictionary and according to high lexical closeness between them can be considered as hypothetical language norm of Ottoman chronicles. Method

The Sacrament of Language

The Sacrament of Language

Signs unsigned and meanings not meant: linguistic theory and hypothetical, simulated, imitation and meaningless language

Standard linguistic theory assumes that meanings are attached to linguistic artefacts by some semantic component during their production yet prior to their material realization, and it is those meanings that are decoded by the recipient/interpreter of the realized signs according to the same mental machinery/semantic component inside their brain. Rather than theorizing a single sign that is encoded, materialized, transmitted and then decoded, integrationism assumes that signs are created not only by speakers/writers but also by hearers/readers. This paper looks at linguistic artefacts that are not created to mean anything but to do something. The successful accomplishment of those actions depends entirely upon the recipient recreating them as meaningful linguistic signs, no matter what the meaning assigned to them. Examples of such linguistic artifacts to be examined are simulated language as a product of “user-friendly” software, whether programmed as potential aids for human use of technical systems (e.g. Google’s “Did you mean…? and machine translation) or as deceptions (spam and texts inserted into emails to “fool” anti-spam programs), and utterances whose meanings have no relation to what the standard theory regards as lexical meaning nor to interpretative rules (e.g. glossalalia). Of particular interest are the hypothetical language of examples in linguistic theory (Bill is a farmer but John is not; Colorless green ideas sleep furiously) in which nothing is meant other than “this text represents a certain structure,” and the reproduction of texts that would be meaningful in one context but whose sole meaning is reduced to technical manipulation. In all of these cases a linguistic sign is produced (or its production programmed) by someone intent on accomplishing a certain end not through the recipient’s comprehension of a sign and its lexical or discourse meaning but by the human recipient’s creation of a linguistic sign on the one hand, or software unable to distinguish meaningful signs from meaningless textual strings on the other.

Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures

AbstractModern genetics, ecology and archaeology are combined to reconstruct the domestication and diversification of rice. Early rice cultivation followed two pathways towards domestication in India and China, with selection for domestication traits in early Yangtzejaponicaand a non-domestication feedback system inferred for ‘proto-indica’. The protracted domestication process finished around 6,500–6,000 years ago in China and about two millennia later in India, when hybridization with Chinese rice took place. Subsequently farming populations grew and expanded by migration and incorporation of pre-existing populations. These expansions can be linked to hypothetical language family dispersal models, including dispersal from China southwards by the Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian groups. In South Asia much dispersal of rice took place after Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers adopted rice from speakers of lost languages of northern India.

Late Talkers: Do Good Predictors of Outcome Exist?

Both small-scale and epidemiological longitudinal studies of early language delay indicate that most late talkers attain language scores in the average range by age 5, 6, or 7. However, late talker groups typically obtain significantly lower scores than groups with typical language histories on most language measures into adolescence. These findings support a dimensional account of language delay, whereby late talkers and typically developing peers differ quantitatively on a hypothetical language ability spectrum. Variation in language ability is presumed to derive from variation in skills subserving language, such as auditory perception/processing, word retrieval, verbal working memory, motor planning, phonological discrimination, and grammatical rule learning. Expressive language screening at 18-35 months can serve an important public health function by identifying children whose expressive delay is secondary to autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, hearing impairment, receptive language delay, or demographic risk. Finally, the review suggests that demographic risk associated with low SES may become more important as a causal factor in language delay as children get older.

On some representations of the real number field

Work on problems that we are coming up with began with an inquiry into whether the structure 〈R,+,×, <, 0, 1, exp〉, where R = 〈R,+,×, <, 0, 1〉 is an ordered field of real numbers, is Σ-definable over HF(R). In terms of theoretical programming, the question above can be informally restated as follows. Assume that there exists some hypothetical programming language which admits of a faithful realization of real numbers, with +, ×, and a strict order relation <. Suppose that this language has rich possibilities for constructing abstract data types. In other words, the language contains a collection of tools which allows us to determine new abstract structures based on available ones and then program calculations over just these new structures. Usually, in realizing a function exp(x) = ex, we have to use its expansion into a series and content ourselves with more or less exact approximations. Is it possible that this system will allow for defining in it a new structure, classically isomorphic to an ordered field of reals, in which the function exp will be computed accurately? Also of interest are similar questions for ln, sin, cos, and other functions. The intuitively correct answer being ‘no’ is in fact not so obvious: one of our results says that the restriction of the structure in question to 〈R;<, exp〉 already has a rather simple Σrepresentation over HF(R). In addition, it is shown that the algebraic structure 〈R,+,×, <, 0, 1, f〉, where f is one of the functions exp, sin, cos, or ln, has no Σ-representation over HF(R), whose universe is a subset of R. The statements proved can be used to uniformly derive analogous results for some other functions as well. Such a possibility is presented by the following:

The child in time: The influence of parent–child discussion about a future experience on how it is remembered

We investigated the influence of preparation provided by parents on preschoolers’ recall. One day before children participated in a staged novel event, parents discussed the event with their child either with (verbal+photos) or without (verbal) photographs. Parents and children in a control condition read an unrelated story. Then 8–10 days later the children were interviewed about the event. Children in the verbal+photos condition recalled significantly more than those in the control condition. Parental preparation style (e.g., evaluations, hypothetical language) was associated with the child's contributions to the preparatory discussion, but no aspect of parent or child style or content was associated with children's verbal recall. Similarly, there were no significant associations between children's performance on a task of episodic future thinking, and their preparatory discussion or recall, although episodic future thinking was strongly associated with language ability. The potential underlying mechanisms and theoretical implications are discussed.

What Samuel Butler saw: Classics, authorship and Cultural Authority in late Victorian England

They are taught what is called the hypothetical language for many of their best years – a language which was originally composed at a time when the country was in a very different state of civilisation to what it is at present, a state which has long since disappeared and been superseded. Many valuable maxims and noble thoughts which were at one time concealed in it have become current in their modern literature, and have been translated over and over again into the language now spoken. Surely then it would seem that the study of the original language should be confined to the few whose instincts led them naturally to pursue it.But the Erewhonians think differently; the store they set by this hypothetical language can hardly be believed; they will even give any one a maintenance for life if he attains a considerable proficiency in the study of it; nay, they will spend years in learning to translate some of their own good poetry into the hypothetical language – to do so with fluency being the mark of a scholar and a gentleman. Heaven forbid that I should be flippant, but it appeared to me to be a wanton waste of good human energy that men should spend years and years in the perfection of so barren an exercise, when their own civilisation presented problems by the hundred which cried aloud for solution and would have paid the solver handsomely; but people know their own affairs best.

Formal semantics for rule-based systems

The existence of a formal description of any language is a prerequisite to any rigorous methods of proof, validation, or verification. This article develops a formal semantics in the denotational style for rule-based production systems. Primarily, a formal description of a generalized, hypothetical language for rule-based expert systems is developed as a base. Building on this base, it is possible to specify in detail the variations that distinguish individual real-world systems in a usable way.

Relativism-pragmatism and the goals of cognition

The central goal of cognition is truth. This thesis is defended against the new wave relativist-pragmatists, notably Stephen Stich. First, the relativist-pragma-tist stance and its central line of argumentation is briefly presented, pivoting around the plurality of TRUTH-predicates. Against this, the following theses are argued for: (1) various TRUTH-predicates are not in semantic, epistemic, and instrumental competition, and they will stand for the same higher-level epistemic goal — believing and saying "p" only if p; (2) the choice among TRUTH-predicates for natural languages is epistemically and instrumentally insignificant; whereas (3) the choice among TRUTH-predicates for the (hypothetical) language of thought is not available to thinkers, since they do not choose in what interpreted language they think and therefore are not to be blamed for not exercising a choice where there is none.

Language and the Psychiatric Diagnosis of Preschool Children

The behaviors that are clinically relevant to language evaluation include speech, verbal problem solving, comprehension, rhetoric, and other communication skills. These behaviors may serve as markers against which we may measure retardation, unusual advance, or deviance. Following a brief review of the various language behaviors that a clinician may observe to tap the hypothetical language acquisition device, the author suggests the various combinations of signs that should help to differentiate among general retardation, specific language lags, and the specific language deviance shown by children with pervasive developmental disorders and dysphasia.

On the language of old Rus: Some questions and suggestions

Scholars attempting to deal with the history of Russian culture have for years been embroiled in a many-faceted controversy about the language used before the eighteenth century.1 The obvious interplay of native and South Slavic that is to say, non-native but nonetheless related linguistic elements poses a series of complex problems, which are by no means the same in all historical periods. Particularly intriguing is the initial stage, when the East Slavs began to use writing, presumably in the tenth century. Since the salient facts are well known, let us try to define the major points at issue, focussing primarily on the earliest documentation, from 1056 on. Was there one language or two? If one, then was it primarily Bulgarian Slavonic2 with admixtures of East Slavic, or primarily autochthonous East Slavic with pervasive South Slavic elements? How foreign was the relatively pure Slavonic to the East Slav? Leaving aside the practical language of diplomacy and law, scarcely attested in the earliest period, was the language of hagiography and didactic literature standardized, or divided into dialects? What can we assume about the spoken language of the East Slavs in the period from с 800 to c. 1250? Starting with the last question, let us consider a pronouncement in a recent authoritative work: "Древнерусский язык, на котором в X-XI вв. говорило примерно четыре-пять миллионов человек, представлял собой систему норм, обязательную для всех говорящих" (Filin, 1972, 85). This is a pretentiously elaborate way of stating the hypothesis and hypothesis it must be, for we have no direct evidence that there was a single "drevnerusskij" language. Filin obviously assumes that this hypothetical language was spoken by all (or most of) the populace of the political state ruled by Vladimir Svjatoslavi6 and his descendants at least through Monomax.3 This assumption of a single East Slavic language, spoken throughout the land of Rus back at least to the ninth century, is a commonplace accepted by linguists of all persuasions; differences of opinion concern the beginnings of this unity, its territorial extent, and possible dialect subdivisions. This assumption is a part of an even more basic problem in the study of early East European culture: anachronism the projection of later, historically verifiable conditions into much earlier periods. During the last thirty years, technical advances in dating objects by means of carbon 14 and the

Is ‘Moral’ A Dirty Word?

The word moral and its derivatives are showing signs of strain. Like a small carpet, designed to fit a room which has been enlarged, they are wrenched this way and that to cover the bare spaces. Perhaps in the end we shall be forced to abandon them altogether, as Nietzsche suggested. But this would be wasteful, and it seems a good idea to examine first the various spaces they can cover, and try to fix them to the one where they are needed most. I shall approach this problem by making very full quotations. It is not an isolated verbal puzzle which can be settled by showing that a particular usage exists; we need to know as well just what it is doing. There are real muddles here, within common-sense, about the relation of thought to life. There is no simple plain-man's usage prepared for us to follow. Anyone who uses moral in anything beyond the Daily Mirror sense is no longer a quite plain man anyway, and we had better follow careful writers than casual ones, real ones than imaginary ones. Philosophers, unlike the Erewhonians, do not have to study a hypothetical language. I am sure both that quotations are necessary and that mine are inadequate; I hope other people will supplement them. As for my choice, I can only say that I have tried very hard not to be tendentious. Certainly I have quoted authors who are capable of being silly and perverse, but as far as I can see the remarks I have taken from them are sober and normal. Anyone may disagree with them, but not, I hope, think them oddly worded. My point affects all the derivatives of moral and to some extent those of ethical too, so I have drawn my illustrations from all of them.

The languages of science

The author presents his ‘hierarchical metatheory’, which conceives of a scientific ‘theory’ or text as being composed of 3 levels of abstraction: the descriptive level or D-level, the hypothetical level or H-level, and the metatheoretical level or M-level. Each level is supposed to have its own language and functions: The D-level presents descriptions of observations of objects and events in an observational or ‘data-language’; the H-level presents explanations (and predictions) in an ‘hypothetical language’ which represents hypothetical constructions and models; the M-level presents arguments about methods, theory-construction and philosophical presuppositions in a ‘metalanguage’. While the D-level is basic from an epistemological point-of-view, we think that the M-level is paramount from both an historical and a psychological point-of-view. This hierarchical metatheory is based upon a metascientific study of psychological theories, but the author thinks that this metatheory may have a broader application.