Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics

I just ran accross a really great discussion on Cognitive Semantic Poetry. It is at The Suburban Ecstasies. The following is a slight rewrite of my comments left there.


I write linguistic processing software (Rosoka) that is based on Cognitive Linguistics. Putting into practice as algorithms that have to interpret meaning from written text makes one think a lot about the theory of linguistics in practical since.

In that regards I have always taken exception to the generally sighted definition of cognitive linguistics "it denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind" That is like saying I can't use my hands to read a book. I need them to turn the page or I will not get very far in he book. So that "an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind" is another tool used to read and understand that same book, and after all I could use my feet, elbows, etc. to turn the page.

With regards to Cognitive-Semantics, I like to use the example of the west coast chain restaurant name "El Pollo Loco" which most people would structural English translate to by switching the order as "The Crazy Chicken" where as a word for word translation is "The Chicken Crazy". Since is a restaurant chain that I am rather partial to, either definition would work. But preserving the order it should translate to "The chicken that is crazy" which in my mind doesn't work. Why? Because, cognitively, to me, the crazy chicken is a restaurant that serves broiled chicken.


It is said a picture is worth a thousands words, but with a less one hundred,
I can paint a pictures far more vivid to your mind and heart a kindred,
to suffer the agony of star crossed lovers, as romeo and juliet once more fated,
to smell the roses sweet scent,
then suffer the thorn of lost love for whom it was intended,
to feel that hand on the night you held a true loves with the moon above,
now change image of that moon with the small step of a man.

While my poem may not be very good, it does illustrate one of the short falls of the cognitive semantics, (as well as many other) as a linguistics study, in that it uses references that must be conceptually understood in order to for complete conceptualization. If the references are not known to the reader, then the words have little or no meaning. Furthermore, the ideas are either direct references, or to abstract references that are unique to each reader as well as me the author. For example if one does not know Neil Armstrong's quote "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" then the conceptual image alluded to in the ending will be totally meaningless.

So how is this technology? These are concepts used in what is generally classified as Natural Language Processing. Although most language processing software follows Chompsky's generative grammar since they need to code syntactic rules.

News from IRAN

For those new to social media technology here are two links.

Iran which will give you the most recent YouTube postings regarding Iran.

and

Iran Riots which will give you the most recent YouTube posting regarding the Iranian Riots.

Since the video's of Neda I have noticed the adoption of the phrase "Big Sister" as the personal response to "Big Brother".

The Ayatollah's have not allowed her burial for fear of further unrest, and have forbidden her eulogy. (Religious leader? so I have included this link below in this technology blog).
Incidentally, Neda means "voice" or "call" in Farsi. If you follow what is being said about social media impact in Iran, then you may com to the conclusion that trying to stop her "Neda's" voice may be the Iranian regime's undoing.



A Tribute to Neda, the martyr of the Great Iranian Revolution

Social Media and the Tea Party

For those that doubt that social media technology is having an effect in Iran just take a look at a similar event here in the United states. Social Media had a huge impact in the organization of the Tea Parties that occurred on tax day at over 800 simultaneous events across the country. Just Google (or Bing) the word "teaparty"

In a contrasting opinion from Speaker Pelosi : … "This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end — we call call it astroturf, it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of

Image via Wikipedia

for the great middle class."

"Astroturf", it may or may not have been, but regardless of which side of the political debate one falls on [this is intended to be a technology blog], the technology was used for the organizing The Tea Party event strongly utilized Social Media technology. And those taking exception to the tea parties used the same technology as can be shown from the Huffington Post with the qoute
"More than 2,000 HuffPost citizen journalists signed up to report on their local tea parties, sending photos, videos, and written dispatches, and we've already received hundreds of photos"

To be technologically correct, AstroTurf is a brand of artificial turf. And Wikipedia defines "Astroturfing is a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf".

Twitter in Iran

Image via Wikipedia

In the news today is the story of how Twitter maintenance was postponed on account of the activities in Iran. We may be witnessing one of the first time social networking technology contributes to enabling a revolution.

In the past governments could control a populous by controlling the news media. So the Iranian government did the classic response, and jammed the radio and TV, restricted foreign reporters to their hotels... But they didn't account for social networking technology.

Social networking technology has become pervasive form of instant information. It reaches from individual to individual, with no single controlled outlet points. Blogs, Twitter, and other forms of information dissemination is near instantaneous and very personal.

News stories through classic electronic dissemination is becoming history, in more ways than one. It is in comparison disseminating a description of what happened, and not what is happening. It this regards it is worth noting that the wiki definition for news media does not include such near real time sources for information as Twitter and YouTube postings from cell phones and Face Book entries.

The recommendation for ailing news outlets would be to incorporate this technology and individuals as sources. The Washington Post has an excellent editorial on all "Iran's Twitter Revolution", but hasn't yet seemed to recognize the significance to the Post as a business.

Who is John Galt?

Image via Wikipedia

"Who is John Galt?" The answer to this question is something that every CTO in America should know. "whoisjohngalt" can be entered as a cheat code in the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. In the game, it accelerates research speed on unit improvements. But who is John Galt in the real world and why is it important to know?

As America watches the president replace CEO's of car companies, take over those companies, and begin to dictate how much executives can be paid, the implications don't register with most people, but to some, is the image portrayed in Atlas Shrugged. This is a very close correlation between Atlas Shrugged. No, CEO's, CTO's, inventors and entrepreneurs may not be going on “strike” in the instant case of today. Some claim they are cutting back hours to lower tax impacts under the new rules. Under the path of socialist leaning and left wing thinking Obama administration, the current action are discouraging and take away the incentives for our entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, risk-takers of all ilk, creators of jobs, payers of taxes (like it or not, these folks provide almost all of our income tax revenue). As proof, look what just happened to the investors in Chrysler. Now what is the impact to any investor in any company. With Ruth Bader Ginsburg's ruling this week secured investments just became unsecured. Handouts, followed by ownership.

The next step on the agenda seems to be the takeover of health care. "A moral imperative" -- Obama.

"This country -- the product of reason -- could not survive on the morality of sacrifice. It was not built by men who sought self-immolation or by men who sought handouts. It could not stand on the mystic split that divorced man's soul from his body. It could not live by the mystic doctrine that damned this earth as evil and those who succeeded on earth as depraved. From its start, this country was a threat to the Ancient rule of mystics. In the brilliant rocket-explosion of its youth, this country displayed to an incredulous world what greatness was possible to man, what happiness was possible on earth. It was one or the other: America or mystics. The mystics knew it; you didn't. You let them infect you with the worship of need..." from Galt's speech.

Federal Chief Technology Officer

In April 2009 President Obama chose Anneesh Chopra to be the Federal Chief Technology Officer. It should be noted that Chopra's history as Virginia's secretary of technology is dominated with dealing with very large companies like Google and Cox Cable. In contrast innovation and new technology predominately comes from small companies. Large companies tend to purchase these types of small companies full of entreprenural spirit rather than directly invest. Maybe trickle down economics will work for technology.

Now that Obama wants to regulate CEO pay, will he want to regulate how much Technologies gets paid for technology contracts and grants?

BING

Bing
was the technology event of the week. Bing is Microsoft latest attempt to compete with Google. Google of course has dominated the web search market for some time. So from a CTO's point of view how does Bing compare? The search features are somewhat better, and it seems to give results closer to the information that I was after. Bing is definitely good enough so that people will go and check it out, given that it is Microsoft. But that is not the real question.

The real question is, is it good enough to get people to switch their default search tool from Google over to Bing. I will answer that first by stating what I have done, and then my projection.

Between office and home I use a collection of computers. I have and use both IE and Firefox. So far I have only set one of the IE to point to Bing. But that is more to see how it does that anything else. The Bing splash screen is nice with the changing daily pictures. And the search results seem to be a little tighter. But I still haven't set the rest of my browser over.

For the projection: Both Google and MS are psudo-monopolies, and neither one product is dramatically better than the other. But people like to root for the underdog, which gave Google an origal edge over Microsofts previous attemps. But who is the underdog in this case? Yahoo? I project that the search engines will undergo a significant round of improvements.

Google has added many new tools (e.g Google Earth, Blogger, etc) for the web but hasn't improved thier search engine in a long time. Microsoft hasn't had a good search tool up till the recent purchase of FAST to power Bing. Search technology for the web will be taking some significant advances in the near future, with both companies capable of, and needing to make significant investments in the technology.

Monitors

A couple of weeks ago my monitor on my home computer died. Not wanting to be cut of from the world I went to the store to get a monitor so that I would not have to wait for shipping. I ended up going to several stores. What I found was nothing but annoying. I found all sorts of wide screen format monitors. At first I thought well but then I looked closer. All of these were great if I wanted to watch a movie, but if I wanted to do work I might as well be using a blackberry or looking at the screen on my laptop (without the docking station). All of the monitors had a 16:9 aspect ratio.

16:9 Aspect ratio is an interesting. Wide screen is immersion providing background to action. I is ideal for movies and video games in that it provides the background world that activities are taking place in. And of course the video gaming is why these monitors sell.

Reading and writing is a focused effort, which is why paper is long and narrow. Word processors still format to papers that are 8 1/2 by 11 or 8 1/2 by 14 for legal pads. But at monitor with1600 pixels wide there is not quite 800 pixels tall. So MS windows resolution choices reverts using a word processor on one of these monitors to using an old line editor. Might as well be using a teletype machine.

Now Apple sells monitors that have page formatted. And there are still 4:3 monitors out there that can be ordered on line. But I ended up going to store to store and couldn't find one, and called up all sorts of nearby stores. Finally I found a store that sold used computer equipment and bought one there.

This is an interesting lesson in technology forecasting and in marketing. There is a technology need that the manufactures are making, but not selling because it can't be found in the market place. Hmm....

Welcome to the CTO's Blog

Welcome the CTO's blog. This blog is intended for Chief Technologist and any one else that has general interest in where technology of the future is going. The owner of this blog site is the Chief Technologist for IMT Holdings which makes language processing software.