Category: Linguistics

The Dispossessed – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dispossessed – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The story explores many ideas and themes, including anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

The book also explores the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, that language shapes thinking, and thus, culture. The language spoken on the anarchist planet Anarres, Pravic, is a constructed language that reflects many aspects of the philosophical foundations of utopian anarchism.

For instance, the use of the possessive case is strongly discouraged (a feature that also is reflected by the novel’s title). In one scene, Shevek’s daughter, meeting him for the first time, offers him “You can share the handkerchief I use,”[6] rather than “you may borrow my handkerchief”, thus conveying the idea that the handkerchief is not owned by the girl, merely carried by her.[7]

NAiST

Screen shot 2011-08-21 at 5.28.34 PM

Specialty Research Unit in Natural Language Processing and Intelligent Information System Technology (NAiST) was established in 1996. We aim to research,design and develop applications, which can analyze, understand and generate languages,that human use naturally on Text, Speech and Image based on Natural Language Processing Technique.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) researches are essential to the enhancement of computer capability to process human-being language. Result of the researches originated various technique and computational linguistic theorem which cause the business software such as a language translator, automatic text extraction, information retrieval by using user own language as well as writing erificvation.

via NAiST.

A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter : The New Yorker

A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter : The New Yorker

The article described the extreme simplicity of the tribe’s living conditions and culture.

The Pirahã, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition.

Does Language Influence Culture?

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

via Does Language Influence Culture? – WSJ.com Continue reading “Does Language Influence Culture?”

Fargo: A Scheme-like Programming Langauge That Runs on Node.js

Developer James Coglan has created Fargo, a small experimental programming language for a asynchronous systems in JavaScript. It works in both Node.js and in browsers. Fargo is a modified version of Scheme, a dialect of LISP.

via Fargo: A Scheme-like Programming Langauge That Runs on Node.js.

Continue reading “Fargo: A Scheme-like Programming Langauge That Runs on Node.js”