tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post6805007335339949034..comments2024-03-26T03:22:12.899-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Linguistic agnotology continuedNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-42543374148991763412015-04-20T07:36:30.681-07:002015-04-20T07:36:30.681-07:00It's worth noting that Gretchen and others are...It's worth noting that Gretchen and others are now bringing in much more core linguistics into the Lexicon Valley column than most other "on language"-type columns---and, as part of Slate, presumably reaching many more non-specialist eyes than even Language Log. <br /><br />On top of this, we now also have an entire online magazine devoted to well-informed and widely accessible popular science writing in linguistics: Michael Erard's Schwa Fire.<br /><br />So there's a start. But again, the O'Neil and Honda (and others) project of K-12 linguistics is essential, and deserves much more attention, input, and flat-out service from all of us in the field. And we can definitely use much more general-public-accessible work beyond even what has already come out.<br /><br />It's oddly persistent, this weird notion that the core ideas of generative linguistics---especially syntax---are somehow inherently difficult to present in an interesting/engaging way. <br /><br />I've never found that to be the case, which is why I'm still surprised that beyond Pinker (and Jackendoff and Baker, and a handful of others), there hasn't been much popular science writing in this particular vein of the field.redcatblackcathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15447493938751004640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-63967579331306249092015-04-15T10:49:44.338-07:002015-04-15T10:49:44.338-07:00I think that at bottom, what you don't want to...I think that at bottom, what you don't want to do in a class is oversell. There are lots if reasons for taking linguistics. There is no reason why one set of interests are better motivators than others. But we do it because it is fun. And being fun is infectious and a good way of attracting a large audience. However, I've know English majors take it because they wanted to know how to diagram sentences for their own reasons and some take it because they are fascinated by the different ways you say things in different languages. We can cater to all types. What we should not do, because it is both often counterproductive and, more importantly because teachers should not lie/exaggerate, is oversell. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-58905069671520228742015-04-15T09:30:03.247-07:002015-04-15T09:30:03.247-07:00Asya wrote: arguments for teaching linguistics in ...Asya wrote: <i>arguments for teaching linguistics in HS or to GP that are based on immediate usefulness (like "helping you be a better writer" or "helping you learn foreign languages") more often than not backfire, and badly. It is perhaps the argument based on intrinsic value of understanding language as part of human mind, etc-etc... that would be a better approach.</i><br /><br />I very much agree with this. It can not only backfire in the sense that students might feel short-changed if don't actually come away with the kind of immediately useful skills they thought they were being promised, but (based on my admittedly relatively limited teaching experience) it also backfires in the sense that students who have those sorts of goals in mind have trouble seeing what we're actually doing. So stating clearly that the goal of studying linguistics is *not* to help you be a better writer, for example, can help to direct students' attention towards the things we are actually trying to teach them about.<br /><br />This kind of approach might seem worrying to the extent that we think that knowing something about linguistics can in fact make you a better writer. For all I know, this might indeed be the case. But even if it is, I don't think potential students of linguistics need any help in realizing this; the natural tendency is for them to overestimate this outcome. So I think the thing to do is to play down this outcome, not because it's not there, but in order to correct this overestimation. And similarly for helping you learn foreign languages, or any other of these connections that are all too easy to make.Tim Hunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11810503425508055407noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-37609025695174749642015-04-14T22:01:42.302-07:002015-04-14T22:01:42.302-07:00Thank you for the links to these articles, Peter (...Thank you for the links to these articles, Peter (they do work!). Very sad reflection of the public's awareness indeed. <br /><br />One thing that jumped at me is Ms. Florey's complaint that "diagramming ... teaches us nothing about punctuation, and it can’t help with spelling". But it's never meant to! Punctuation in English, in particular, is not especially structure-related, certainly not as it is in Russian, for example. <br /><br />But there is an important lesson here: arguments for teaching linguistics in HS or to GP that are based on immediate usefulness (like "helping you be a better writer" or "helping you learn foreign languages") more often than not backfire, and badly. It is perhaps the argument based on intrinsic value of understanding language as part of human mind, etc-etc... that would be a better approach.Asya Pereltsvaighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06111831062274618509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-82348430873559752532015-04-14T15:07:06.420-07:002015-04-14T15:07:06.420-07:00Did anybody else see the discussion of sentence di...Did anybody else see the discussion of sentence diagramming in the NYT a couple of years ago? I don’t know if links to the pieces will work without a paid subscription, but I include them below in case they do.<br /><br />The author of the opinion piece, one Kitty Burns Florey, portrayed sentence diagramming as a lost art, and seemed to believe that it was done mostly by gut instinct, with the occasional consultation of somebody who is better at it than you are.<br /><br />There were a couple of hundred commentaries from readers. Some readers agreed with Florey’s position that it was good for you (“like brocolli”), and helped you think clearly, while other people thought it was a big waste of time.<br /><br />Nobody seemed to know that linguists continue to diagram sentences and even have theories about what different constituencies represent. A rather sad commentary on public awareness of linguistic science.<br /><br /><br />http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2012/03/26/a-picture-of-language/<br /><br />http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/taming-sentences/<br />Peter Svenoniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09436844670309091617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-49581289813812225472015-04-14T11:15:46.976-07:002015-04-14T11:15:46.976-07:00Charles — Yes indeed. Morris Halle knew him.Charles — Yes indeed. Morris Halle knew him.David Pesetskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09666557087629655596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-45239818704166626312015-04-14T05:33:58.837-07:002015-04-14T05:33:58.837-07:00Evidently Bodmer taught at MIT in the Dept of Mode...Evidently Bodmer taught at MIT in the Dept of Modern Languages. Then he retired in 1955 ... <br /><br />http://web.mit.edu/shass/soundings/issue_00f/fea_lum_mh_00f.htmlCharles Yanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06041398285400095406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-77551195998637072812015-04-13T20:51:52.719-07:002015-04-13T20:51:52.719-07:00Funny: one of my adult students gave me this book ...Funny: one of my adult students gave me this book as a present and I thought about as much of it as Bloomfield... What a small world...Asya Pereltsvaighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06111831062274618509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-9062387097316433452015-04-13T19:12:46.115-07:002015-04-13T19:12:46.115-07:00In 1944, Leonard Bloomfield published a wonderfull...In 1944, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bloomfield" rel="nofollow">Leonard Bloomfield</a> published a wonderfully harsh review of a book intended to introduce linguistics to a popular audience. Here are its first two paragraphs. Depressing how little the world has changed, isn't it:<br /><br /><i>"What would one say of a chemical textbook sponsored by an authority on the history of music and written by a man who had made extensive use of paints, drugs, and cosmetics, but had never troubled himself to acquire so much as the rudiments of chemistry? What publisher, indeed, would think of issuing such a book, what critic of seriously considering its merits? To a student of language it is shocking and humiliating to see how little of the results of linguistic science has reached even the upper levels of our culture. The methodical and cumulative study of language, dating from about the year 18oo, is approximately as old as that of chemistry. Its results have been plentiful and often unexpected. Here perhaps more than at any other point of attack, science has gained systematic and other than trivial knowledge about specifically human behavior-a notable result, since the study of language seemed at first to hold out no such promise. <br /><br />"The book here under review intends to inform the general reader about language. Its author is evidently an educated man with some knowledge of several European languages. His book is recommended and prefaced by an eminent man of science (in another field, of course), it is being energetically distributed by a reputable publisher, and it has been praised by critics who know nothing about its subject. If one were willing to ignore the tiresome, sciolistically facetious, and repetitious style of this book, its total lack of clarity and structure, and the errors and misunderstandings in which it abounds, there would remain the fact that in the state of its information it lies some decades behind Whitney's excellent popular books, Language and the Study of Language (1867) and The Life and Growth of Language (1874)."</i><br /><br />The book in question was <i>The Loom of Language</i> by Frederick Bodmer, intended as the second in a series of science books for the working man with alliterative titles — the first being <i>Mathematics for the Million</i>, which was something of a best-seller. <br /><br /><i>Loom of Language</i> is every bit as bad as Bloomfield said. I know that because I read it (over and over, in fact) when I was in junior high school or maybe 9th grade. It is actually the book that got me interested in linguistics when I stumbled on it in the local public library, and somehow I ended up on the right side of the law. Would I recommend the book to others? Of course not But one thing led to another, and here I am as a linguist, and I owe it to all this awful but somehow inspiring book. So you never know.David Pesetskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09666557087629655596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-84050904014734902792015-04-13T16:53:46.536-07:002015-04-13T16:53:46.536-07:00No, I wouldn't like "Language Myth" ...No, I wouldn't like "Language Myth" to be used as a textbook or supplementary writing, but not because of the ideas it advocates but because of the ways it advocates them. Asya Pereltsvaighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06111831062274618509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-81877467979631445812015-04-13T01:31:19.083-07:002015-04-13T01:31:19.083-07:00Just how is expressing my surprise part of a '...Just how is expressing my surprise part of a 'vendetta', Thomas? And why would you so deliberately miss the point of my comment? It was not to suggest that 'The Language Myth' as is should be used as a textbook - obviously it was not written for that purpose. But I certainly could picture it as 'supplemental reading' for kids who want to get excited about your field, just as back in the 1980s Pinker's book could have served that purpose.<br /><br />Getting back to the curriculum to be: naively I assumed that any high school course on linguistics would start with the question "What is language?" Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think one can answer that question without pointing out that there are very different opinions among linguists (e.g. not everyone agrees that language is a biological organ of the kind sketched by David A.). And, depending how one answers that question one will structure the course rather differently I imagine...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-8665947756281986022015-04-12T11:53:40.334-07:002015-04-12T11:53:40.334-07:00Seconding the recommendation to look at Suzanne Lo...Seconding the recommendation to look at Suzanne Loosen's writing about her class! <br /><br />I've also met a couple of high school English teachers via friends-of-friends recently, and their ears tend to perk up when I mention linguistics activities for high schoolers, so I compiled a list of resources here allthingslinguistic.com/post/115887024603/linguistics-resources-for-high-school-teachers <br /><br />I don't think it's a hard sell to get linguistics into English classrooms, more an issue of making resources available (Loosen mentions that the textbook Linguistics for Everyone is designed for this) -- there's still an idea that language arts classes should be doing something in the way of grammar, but what currently exists for grammar is a list of decontextualized factoids that both teachers and students find deathly dull. Linguistics as a replacement is both more engaging and more accurate. <br /><br />-This is from Gretchen McCulloch, by the way -- I don't know why Blogger persists in calling me "unknown"Gretchen McCullochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05601807553679991529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-32997051346371522612015-04-12T07:10:24.536-07:002015-04-12T07:10:24.536-07:00@Christina: Still seizing every opportunity to dra...@Christina: Still seizing every opportunity to drag people into your little vendetta, hmm? But no, I wouldn't want Evans' book to be used in a high school class, just like I wouldn't want Pinker's Language Instinct to be used for that. The questions these books tackle go way beyond what matters for the layman, and they omit many topics that do matter. Even most Ling 100 lecture notes are unsuitable since they focus a lot on theoretical linguistics at the expense of historical linguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics, i.e. the parts that most non-linguists find much more exciting.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-4790171315643788312015-04-12T05:04:20.543-07:002015-04-12T05:04:20.543-07:00Thomas you say "I don't think that the cu...Thomas you say "I don't think that the current trench wars would factor much into curriculum design." <br /><br />I am very surprised by this statement because it seems to imply that you'd be fine with using a book like Vyv Evans' 'The Language Myth' [seems to be written at the level of say 8 or maybe 10 graders]. Somehow I doubt that Asya or David A./P. or Norbert or maybe even you would be fine with that. And their [your?] reasons for rejecting this particular book seem to be coming exactly from the 'trench wars' [your term not mine] ...<br /><br />Having said this, I am encouraged by the fact that at least in some places [very basic] linguistics is taught in schools. I hope it is a trend that'll catch on in Canada eventually...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-35295632820344820262015-04-11T20:57:57.655-07:002015-04-11T20:57:57.655-07:00@Asya: Chemists don't need to persuade people ...@Asya: Chemists don't need to persuade people that Chemistry should be taught because it already is. Thus, we have to make arguments and they don't. This is perhaps unfair, but that is the reality of the situation.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-17990267619716783112015-04-11T19:46:31.141-07:002015-04-11T19:46:31.141-07:00@Thomas: that's not exactly "an old-man m...@Thomas: that's not exactly "an old-man mode", as I agree with you and I am neither ;)<br /><br />Yes, for most parents HS = daycare (or prison?) where children are to be kept out of trouble. What is taught to them is the least the parents' concerns.<br /><br />@David Adger: it's great to know that there are some good examples for us to follow.Asya Pereltsvaighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06111831062274618509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-5406560642086509742015-04-11T19:41:00.203-07:002015-04-11T19:41:00.203-07:00@Alex, what persuades people that chemistry should...@Alex, what persuades people that chemistry should be taught? If, say, we ask that it be thrown out and replaced by linguistics, do you think an average non-linguist/non-chemist would care one way or another? Let alone be able to put forward a cogent argument why chemistry is more important than linguistics?Asya Pereltsvaighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06111831062274618509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-39227917369541099532015-04-11T16:27:14.919-07:002015-04-11T16:27:14.919-07:00Apropos of all this:
http://highschoollinguistics....Apropos of all this:<br />http://highschoollinguistics.blogspot.com/2013/06/final-exam-essay-example.html<br /><br />The rest of the blog looks inspiring as well, I think (though I haven't read through everything). This is the person who published the article about high school linguistics in a recent issue of Language.David Pesetskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09666557087629655596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-22065559805851456532015-04-11T09:35:31.392-07:002015-04-11T09:35:31.392-07:00@Asya: It seems to be very difficult to get this p...@Asya: It seems to be very difficult to get this point across, but we (or at least me) were not trying to justify teaching linguistics in high school because we ourselves are terribly worried that it might not be justified. Rather, I was wondering if there are reasons for teaching it in high school that would persuade people other than linguists. So yes, teaching linguistics may be no less justified than teaching chemistry, but chemistry is already taught -- life is unfair like that. If we want things to change, we'll need to find reasons that are persuasive to non-linguists, who simply don't care at all about many of the issues that we perceive to be very important.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-58745994613833309202015-04-11T08:27:31.104-07:002015-04-11T08:27:31.104-07:00Quick piece of affinity analysis using Amazon'...Quick piece of affinity analysis using Amazon's proprietary algorithm:<br /><br />People who bought Evans' 'Language Myth' most often also bought Pinker's Language Instinct and a book by Tomasello (I don't know how the Amazon algorithm decides rankings, I'd assume the list runs from highest to lowest correlations - though Amazon itself picks out Pinker's book as the most likely pairing, when it's actually in 6th place on the list). Other popular 'also boughts' were a book by John McWhorter criticising the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis and one by Stanislas Dehaene. Most of the rest is general 'popular science' stuff, though David Crystal and Nick Enfield also make appearances, as does another Tomasello and one by Lakoff. No clue as to the political views of the buyers.<br /><br />People who bought Everett's 'Language: The Cultural Tool' also bought the Language Instinct. Chomsky's 'On Language' makes an appearance, as does Lakoff again. A book titled "The Everyday Language of White Racism" makes the top six, suggesting that Everett's readers are at least not excessively right-wing. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00971771924223348187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-14360571755297230432015-04-11T08:15:07.560-07:002015-04-11T08:15:07.560-07:00There's no need to rush with a reply, David A....There's no need to rush with a reply, David A. - whenever you're back. Maybe in the meantime someone can confirm what you list ARE the core commitments of minimalists? They sound rather vague to me so some specificity would be appreciated<br /><br />A few comments below.<br /><br />1. Here is the entire paragraph you wrote re biological organs:<br /><br />"Evans’ book and article both claim that a consequence of this idea is that language should be anatomically lumped together in a single bit of our brains. But there's no logic to this. After all, the nervous system is a distinct part of human beings’ anatomy in just the same sense that language is thought by linguists to be a distinct part of the human mind, but the nervous system is hardly localized. When I stub my toe, I feel it in my toe, not in my brain, but without my brain, I wouldn't do much feeling at all! That's a straightforward misunderstanding of what it means to be a biological system."<br /><br />First, you provide no citation where Vyv actually says what you attribute to him [but I notice that you talk about bits of brain structure above] - so maybe you can give a page reference now? Second, your analogy seems rather misleading. What you describe is exactly the kind of stimulus-response reaction Chomsky points out cannot account for the creativity of language. So just why do you think you stumping your toe and feeling pain via the nervous system is a better analogy than other analogies? Third, you sketch ONE biological system. But that Vyv has sketched ANOTHER biological system does not imply he straightforwardly misunderstands what it means to be a biological system. You say you find what we wrote about your 5 page paper unpleasant. Maybe you could reflect on how Vyv might have felt about the activities initiated on this blog concerning his work? You have quite happily participated in that witch-hunt and passages of your own paper are quite condescending. One is the above, another is: at the end of a 6 line paragraph about what you call Evan's proposal you say: "... but it's hardly an actual proposal" and there are more. <br /><br />As for the 'language instinct' issue: you say now is that your sentence is compatible with some generativists using the term while others do not. If this is the case 2 questions arise: [1] why is it problematic that Vyv uses the term and [2] what makes your view privileged over that of those generativists who use the term? Incidentally I believe that you did not think much about tweeting your paper under that title because you do not really think the term is as problematic as you claim in the attack on Vyv. Be that as it may, using so much space in your reply about what really is a non-issue indicates that you are not able to address the substantial criticism in Vyv's book...<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-41236708987075714512015-04-11T04:01:09.325-07:002015-04-11T04:01:09.325-07:00Interesting discussion. Here in the UK there's...Interesting discussion. Here in the UK there's been a fairly longstanding attempt to develop school level curriculum and associated examination in linguistics, mainly through the work of the Education Committee of the LAGB (with Dick Hudson doing a lot of the heavy lifting). That work has had some impact on, especially, the teaching of grammatical aspects of English at quite a young age. When I started teaching linguistics in the early 1990s, none of the beginning students knew even what a prepositional phrase was, but that's changed, and there' s at least some linguistics in the English Language A-level. This is a senior high school level qualification that is optional, but growing. <br /><br />We also have quite an active linguistics olympiad here, and at least in my University, we do quite a bit of outreach work in schools.davidadgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00821774928618824698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-78659517734908728102015-04-11T03:56:12.934-07:002015-04-11T03:56:12.934-07:00Briefly, as I'm off to the sunny beaches of Ma...Briefly, as I'm off to the sunny beaches of Majorca: the Crain/Pietroski quote, of course, isn't an if...then statement, unlike the claim from Evan's I was discussing, so logic is indeed irrelevant. <br /><br />Core claims: I think there's good evidence that human beings (i.e. biological creatures) have a capacity to pair up articulatory actions and some aspects of meaning across an unbounded domain in a systematic way, and I think that a recursive generative system is a good way of modelling that, from which it follows that that system is a model of something biological. More specifically, I think that there’s good evidence that the particular recursive function that models these mental (hence brain related) capacities is one that achieves the linking via hierarchical structures that involve localised dependencies between bits of the structure, and moreover, that these structures are linked via a causal (though not fully determined) set of information changing processes to the articulatory mental systems and those involved in certain aspects of thought. I understand that people can follow other ideas - you can deny the pairing is well-defined (which is, I think, what Cognitive Grammar does), or you can say that it can be dealt with via a non-generative system (which, I think, is what certain varieties of Construction Grammar do). These are perfectly reasonable approaches to follow (though my own hunch is that you still need a generative system to effect the pairing, and I think that the pairing is important). How is this system biologically implemented? I really don’t know (do you know how addition or long term memory is biologically implemented?), but there is some interesting evidence for at least the hierarchical aspects of it in David Poeppel’s recent work (see the interesting video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIqO4wz3VCs), arguing that the relevant systems are about temporal aspects of the brain’s rhythms.<br /><br />On the footnote: to be honest, I think I just clicked on the `tweet’ button on the New Scientists page and added a comment, and the title came up when I clicked the tweet button. I guess I could have edited it, but that would have been a bit odd, since that was the title that the New Scientist published it under. <br /><br />And for the record, bare plural subjects in English usually have a generic interpretation admitting of exceptions. It wasn’t a resort to semantic implications, it was stating what the meaning of bare plurals is. <br /><br />ok, off on holiday.<br /><br /><br /><br />davidadgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00821774928618824698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-61448376674376093692015-04-11T00:46:31.895-07:002015-04-11T00:46:31.895-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00971771924223348187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-58178121482612844112015-04-11T00:27:03.750-07:002015-04-11T00:27:03.750-07:00@John: I don't think that the current trench w...@John: I don't think that the current trench wars would factor much into curriculum design. Pretty much every subject except foreign languages that is taught in high school stays at the level of a very basic 101 intro class (looking back, I'm shocked how little we covered in 7 years of biology, 6 years of physics, and 3 years of chemistry). And at that very basic level there's very few disagreements.<br /><br />For the acquisition case you mention: everybody agrees that some aspects of language are innate, some are learned, and that's all you want the average person to know.<br /><br />As for NLP: brute-force statistics would not be in the curriculum because students wouldn't understand the methods (e.g. Good Turing smoothing), just like nobody teaches statistical mechanics in high school You focus on very simple cases and what the broad generalizations are. For example, how does your smart phone predict the next word when you're typing a text message, and do humans do something similar? That requires only some basic talk about data structures (dictionaries as prefix trees) and transition probabilities (how likely is one word to follow a given word, which is an intuitive concept that doesn't need any formal probability theory). And that's about as far as I would go for computational linguistics, there's many topics that are a lot less complicated and more insightful, e.g. the ELIZA example I gave.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.com