All Questions
692 questions
-4
votes
2
answers
72
views
Does the apparent creativity of AI, like GPT, challenge Chomsky's claim that only humans possess a uniquely creative capacity for language?
Chomsky argued that the creative use of language is a uniquely human ability, one that machines inherently lack. In Cartesian Linguistics, he built on Descartes' notion that human language, due to its ...
1
vote
1
answer
83
views
Is something similar to orthogonality defined in linguistics?
In mathematics, two vectors are orthogonal to each other if you cannot produce one from the other using linear operations (there is a more precise definition, but this is the simplest).
For example, &...
user48828
0
votes
1
answer
70
views
Is there an error-free web-based parser that automatically draws a syntax tree from an English text?
The only web-based automatic parser I know is CoreNLP version 4.5.5, where you can put in an English text and get a constituency tree (when you select 'parts-of-speech' as Annotations and click '...
- 812
0
votes
0
answers
84
views
Insight into basic machine translation error from major email service
I recently ordered a product through a Japanese company (I live in Tokyo), and received an email response that due to a recent backlog of orders I should expect my product shipped within 2-3 weeks (in ...
1
vote
0
answers
49
views
Information rate of ultra-information-sparse languages
Pellegrino 2011
Also Pellegrino
YoonMi
These popular researches found out information density (ID) inversely correlates with speech rate (SR) to make information rate (IR) of languages cluster around ...
- 374
3
votes
0
answers
35
views
List of counter examples + statistics of Greenberg's universal
I could not find a list of counter examples/ statistics of Greenberg's linguistic universals.
There are numbers that I could find relevant information on WALS. There are some I could not find anything....
- 374
0
votes
0
answers
66
views
What language has a small difference between word length of advanced VS basic vocabulary?
word length on Swadesh list
Zipf's Law
Basic vocabulary is used more frequently and the word length (#syllables/#segments) is generally shorter than advanced/technical/formal vocabulary.
In English:
...
- 374
1
vote
1
answer
179
views
Did big languages generally have a net loss of inflectional morphology in the past 1-3 millennia and small languages the other way round?
a.
R. M. W. Dixon (1998) theorizes that languages normally evolve in a cycle from fusional to analytic to agglutinative to fusional again like a clock. There are two opposing forces: one reduces ...
- 374
2
votes
0
answers
44
views
Dependency grammar based dictionary
A presupposition of constructing the dependency semantic structure of a sentence is the knowledge of semantic features of all sentence's semantemes (actants, semantemes' nature as predicate or name ...
- 171
5
votes
1
answer
269
views
A predicate as argument of a predicate
In Dependency Grammar we consider the meaning of a wordform either as a semantic predicate (:=predicate) or as a semantic name. Let us suppose we have a predicate, which has a predicate as argument (e....
- 171
1
vote
0
answers
26
views
Specifically which Corpora were used by the Ofsted Research Team in designing the new curricula for MFL GCSE 2026?
Specifically which corpora were used by the Ofsted Research Team in designing the new curricula for MFL GCSE 2026?
- 11
0
votes
0
answers
95
views
What is the information density of factual knowledge in large bodies of English text?
An ML paper I was reading mentioned an estimate of no more than 0.7 bits per word, in footnote 4:
As of February 1, 2024, English Wikipedia contains a total of 4.5 billion words [...] We estimate ...
- 1,140
0
votes
0
answers
58
views
What is the most accurate way to parse a text so that we can get the characters and the list of sentences that refer to each character?
I'm trying to come up with a method that will take a text and parse it so that we can get all the characters and a list of the sentences from the text that have references to the character (either ...
- 109
0
votes
0
answers
9
views
Discourse similarity techniques, beyond LSA
I want to think of a methodology that would claim two “discourses” are “equivalent” or fuzzily equivalent in form.
I think this requires some sort of semantic parse where you choose very precisely ...
- 817
0
votes
0
answers
23
views
Are open-ended questions allowed for an interview focused on corpus creation?
NOTE: I am not a linguist, but my interest is in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) field.
I am doing a research which is focused only on gathering new or distinct words on a recently described ...
- 101
-5
votes
1
answer
234
views
How has computational linguistics contributed to the preservation of endangered languages?
Computational tools and techniques had been applied to the field of historical linguistics, aiding in the analysis of old or endangered languages. This has contributed to the documentation and ...
- 105
1
vote
0
answers
56
views
What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer?
The first concerns the theory of syntax and grammar that typologists prefer:
What theory of syntax and grammar do language typologists tend to prefer? Do they prefer a transformational phrase ...
- 319
2
votes
0
answers
38
views
How do different grammar theory (e.g. PSG, FG) explain word order in different language? [closed]
In typology, how do different types of grammar theories (such as phrase structure grammar, functional grammar, etc.) explain different linear word order in different languages? I know that dependency ...
- 319
0
votes
0
answers
68
views
how much text data an AI chatbot is based on vs how accurate its language use is
This question is motivated by a question I read on another online forum, to which the answerers said that when they tested ChatGPT's Hindi, it made grammatical errors all the time and was also trash ...
- 153
5
votes
2
answers
272
views
What software for interpreting phonological rules exists?
So far, I have found PHONO33 for DOS, which is a quite old yet impressive program. Though overly strict and simplistic, applying rules in a strict order, which results in weird outcomes ×D
It ...
- 153
-1
votes
1
answer
80
views
Replace bad spelling with correct spelling
I have a large old text, written in language A but according to the spelling rules of language B. Words are understandable, but I need to make spelling correct according to the rules of A. How this ...
5
votes
1
answer
159
views
Analysis of relative pronouns in dependency grammar
A dependency grammar represents the structure of a clause as a set of pairs of words, such that the first "depends" on the second. My question is ultimately how loops are prevented in such a ...
- 993
10
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Is there a list of word meanings that are universally represented in all languages?
I am looking for a comprehensive list of words/concepts that are represented in most if not all known languages - presumably the category would include human body parts (hand, foot, mouth, eye), ...
- 231
2
votes
1
answer
70
views
How to write a program that lists out all the grammar patterns used in a given sentence?
Disclaimer, I have no formal background in linguistics so I'm really asking in the dark here.
Problem: I'm trying to write a program that, given a grammatically correct (this is assumed) sentence, ...
- 23
2
votes
1
answer
204
views
Are there dictionaries which use Venn diagrams or set theory to clarify similarities between words?
Do there exist dictionaries containing
lists of many different specific, not general, definitions of a word x
lists of many detailed definitions or examples of a word y
Venn diagrams showing which ...
- 133
1
vote
2
answers
68
views
How can the morphology of a language be formally represented i.e. computerized? [closed]
Languages can have very different morphologies. For instance, Sanskrit has a morphology that is heavily based on the root, and the combination of roots with other roots results in new words (it is ...
- 523
1
vote
1
answer
40
views
Synthesize tone contours?
Is there software that I can use to synthesize how a hypothetical tone contour would sound?
I'm aware of "sound from formula" feature in Praat, but I'm unsure how to create the right formula ...
- 113
1
vote
0
answers
80
views
Which school of linguistics is the most related to computational linguistics and NLP?
I heard that there are different schools of linguistics: functional, cognitive, and structural/generative/formal.
I was wondering which schools the following books belong to:
Essentials of ...
- 913
2
votes
1
answer
79
views
A parser for grammars with movement
I'm trying to figure out how the parser algorithm of Harkema 2000 works. It is a bottom-up parser that uses an agenda-driven, chart-based deduction procedure, but what is not clear to me is in what ...
1
vote
2
answers
414
views
In absolute numerical terms, what is the computational size of human language, particularly semantic processing?
What is a numerical estimate for the “RAM” of the human brain required to actually compute resolutions of the semantic content of sentences?
For example, consider there is an algorithm that expends 1 ...
- 817
2
votes
1
answer
239
views
Parsers and syntax trees for natural languages
Say I have a string representing text in a natural language, for example:
She is an effective teacher. Most students have found her reasonably helpful.
Is there a programming library or command line ...
- 347
9
votes
2
answers
496
views
Are linguistic corpora under threat from AI-generated text?
As many will be aware, there has been a lot of concern about the spread of AI generated text posted on the Stack Exchange network, leading to moderators on several sites standing down. See here and ...
- 4,118
-1
votes
1
answer
386
views
Why words are the basic building blocks of language?
I'm asking this both in the sense that for me (as a human) words seem to be the fundamental building blocks of language, and from the perspective of NLP applications, where word-vectors and word-...
- 329
-2
votes
1
answer
427
views
Is large language model “perplexity” on an input the total of its perplexity for the smallest parts? [closed]
“Perplexity” is how likely a large language model scores an output it gives as being the output it should have given. If the model does not produce responses for itself to choose from that it ...
- 17
0
votes
1
answer
98
views
What tools are there to measure aspects of language?
I am seeking to construct an a priori language that is optimized to provide the greatest creativity for songwriting and poetry, in addition to being extremely general and productive in neologism, ...
- 523
6
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Linguistic analysis of ChatGPT's default style of writing
Even though ChatGPT can - better or worse - mimic other writers' styles, it exhibits something like a default style of writing which is not very "characteristic" (because it's the ...
-3
votes
1
answer
94
views
Is there a formal system in Linguistics like Boolean algebra to reduce the grammar rules of a language to minimum items ignoring semantics? [closed]
To get the grammar rules down to the minimum necessary for teaching. Semantics not included.
This is example what what I am thinking about.
Grammar with all the semantics cut out, means it is easy to ...
- 111
1
vote
2
answers
386
views
Is there an automatic way to divide French words into syllables/morphemes?
Context:
I am trying to come up with a way to divide French words into syllables, phonemes, morphemes, or any other individually pronounceable/meaningful sub-unit in order to model word corruption in ...
- 11
6
votes
2
answers
792
views
What is dependency grammar and what are the possible relationships?
I have just started studying dependency grammar and I am really struggling with the relationship types and trees. I have only ever drawn classic syntactic trees so I keep getting confused. Could you ...
- 61
-1
votes
1
answer
84
views
Generating random logically consistent chains of sentences
I'm interested in generating random logically consistent chains of natural language sentences. I don't know anything about computational linguistics. I'm wondering if there are software packages or ...
- 99
1
vote
3
answers
343
views
Are there heuristics to tell if a character is from Chinese, Kanji, or Chu Nom?
Suppose I know nothing about Chinese writing systems but some basic strokes and radicals. When given a blocky-looking character, how do I tell if it's a character only used in Kanji, in Chữ Nôm, or in ...
- 113
2
votes
0
answers
32
views
What are the practical differences between type-logical/categorial and context-free based approaches to semantic parsing?
I am currently reading Bob Carpenter's Type-Logical Semantics, which goes over the Type-Logical approach to natural language semantics. I understand that categorial grammar is technically different ...
- 161
3
votes
1
answer
81
views
Name for ongoing syntactic dependencies after a word
Consider the sentence "I love my dog." There are three syntactic dependencies in this sentence: (a) the subject dependency from "I" to "love," (b) the modifier dependency ...
1
vote
1
answer
82
views
Where to find English POS words?
Given a POS (part of speech), tag, and dependency for words, where can I find words that have the same POS, tag, and dependency?
I only need a list of words by (pos,tag) and do not need code for this (...
- 21
0
votes
1
answer
129
views
How to Do NACLO Problem with Frogs 🐸, Ducks 🦆, and Bats 🦇
The Problem
My Question
How do you solve this?
My Pitiful Progress
(w), in Witsuwit'en, is likely a compound word of (a) and (v)
(15) and (16) are very similar spelling-wise. It is probable that ...
1
vote
4
answers
916
views
How good ChatGPT is at answering questions?
I am looking for evaluations of ChatGPT on some question-answering dataset.
I'm especially interested in how good (or bad) ChatGPT is at answering questions posted on Stack Exchange, specifically in ...
- 1,698
0
votes
0
answers
159
views
Which datasets can I use to train a medical speech recognition system?
So far I found:
ezDI Medical Dictation Dataset (16h)
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/paultimothymooney/medical-speech-transcription-and-intent (8h)
Which other datasets can I use to train a medical ...
- 1,698
0
votes
0
answers
39
views
Is there any mathematically studied ontology space?
I am considering “ontology generation”. I have not yet read the specifics of these techniques.
Still, the point must surely be to identify some kind of cooccurrences / associations between words. ...
- 817
0
votes
2
answers
67
views
How do I select rules from Grammatical Framework and build sentences with them?
Here is I think the actual computational grammar for Turkish in the Grammatical Framework framework:
I am going to read this page, which seems to explain how to read and understand those grammar code ...
- 817
0
votes
1
answer
134
views
The sequence of parts of speech in English
Considering the main eight parts of speech, every two adjacent words in a sentence can be one of the possible 64 pairs. The probability of these pairs significantly varies, as some might even be ...
- 121