The contents and structure of semantic memory have been the focus of much recent research, with major advances in the development of distributional models, which use word co‐occurrence information as a window into the semantics of language. In parallel, connectionist modeling has extended our knowledge of the processes engaged in semantic activation. However, these two lines of investigation have rarely been brought together. Here, we describe a processing model based on distributional semantics in which activation spreads throughout a semantic network, (...) as dictated by the patterns of semantic similarity between words. We show that the activation profile of the network, measured at various time points, can successfully account for response times in lexical and semantic decision tasks, as well as for subjective concreteness and imageability ratings. We also show that the dynamics of the network is predictive of performance in relational semantic tasks, such as similarity/relatedness rating. Our results indicate that bringing together distributional semantic networks and spreading of activation provides a good fit to both automatic lexical processing (as indexed by lexical and semantic decisions) as well as more deliberate processing (as indexed by ratings), above and beyond what has been reported for previous models that take into account only similarity resulting from network structure. (shrink)

The standard approach to model how human beings understand natural languages is the symbolic, compositional approach according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its constituents. In other words, meaning plays a fundamental role in the model. In this work, because of the polysemous, flexible, dynamic, and contextual structure of natural languages, this approach is rejected. Instead, a connectionist model which eliminates the concept of meaning is proposed.

We investigate how short and long-range word length correlations evolve in Chinese narrative texts. The results show that, for short-range word length correlations, no significant linear evolutionary trend was found. But for long-range correlations, there are two opposite tendencies for two different regimes: the Hurst exponent of small-scale word length correlations decreases over time, and the exponent of large-scale shows an increasing tendency. The increase of word length is corroborated as an essential regularity of word evolution in written Chinese. Further (...) analyses show that a significant correlation coefficient is obtained between Hurst exponents from the small-scale correlations and mean word length across time. These indicate that word length correlation evolution possesses different self-adaptive mechanisms in terms of different scales of distances between words. We speculate that the increase of word length and sentence length in written Chinese may account for this phenomenon, in terms of both the social-cultural aspects and the self-adapting properties of language structures. (shrink)

***Platão ou Platonismo. Um tópico em dialética descendente***A ontologia dialética pode ser reconstruída percorrendo dois caminhos complementares. A via ascendente parte da influência da ontologia de Platão, mediada por Nicolau de Cusa, sobre Bertalanffy, o fundador da teoria de sistemas. Esta abordagem teórica, uma vez convergindo com o darwinismo, dará nascimento à teoria dos sistemas adaptativos complexos e logo se espalhará pelas diversas ciências, transmudando-se de uma ontologia regional em parte relevante de uma nova ontologia geral. O caminho descendente, a (...) via eminentemente filosófica, também parte de dois ramos distintos que, ao final, convergem: por um lado, esta via conduz da teoria das ideias de Platão ao idealismo alemão e à crítica imanente ao sistema de Hegel ; por outro lado, e este será nosso tópico principal no presente ensaio, ela investiga o impacto decisivo do desenvolvimento autocrítico da filosofia de Platão sobre o projeto de uma ontologia relacional deflacionária ou, simplesmente, uma ontologia de redes. (shrink)

A central concern of the cognitive science of language since its origins has been the concept of the linguistic system. Recent approaches to the system concept in language point to the exceedingly complex relations that hold between many kinds of interdependent systems, but it can be difficult to know how to proceed when “everything is connected.” This paper offers a framework for tackling that challenge by identifying *scale* as a conceptual mooring for the interdisciplinary study of language systems. The paper (...) begins by defining the scale concept—simply, the possibility for a measure to be larger or smaller in different instances of a system, such as a phonemic inventory, a word's frequency value in a corpus, or a speaker population. We review sites of scale difference in and across linguistic subsystems, drawing on findings from linguistic typology, grammatical description, morphosyntactic theory, psycholinguistics, computational corpus work, and social network demography. We consider possible explanations for scaling differences and constraints in language. We then turn to the question of *dependencies between* sites of scale difference in language, reviewing four sample domains of scale dependency: in phonological systems, across levels of grammatical structure (Menzerath's Law), in corpora (Zipf's Law and related issues), and in speaker population size. Finally, we consider the implications of the review, including the utility of a scale framework for generating new questions and inspiring methodological innovations and interdisciplinary collaborations in cognitive-scientific research on language. (shrink)

On July 14, 1866 Franz Brentano stepped up to the pulpit to defend his thesis that “the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences”. This thesis bound his first students to him and became the north star of his school, against the complex background of the progress and specialization of the natural sciences as well as the growth and professionalization of universities. I will discuss the project of the renewal of philosophy as science in (...) the School of Brentano and how this aimed to provide a scientific foundation for the humanities independently from the natural sciences, while preserving the unity of science. Through his well-known re-introduction of the concept of intentionality as criterion to distinguish internal and external perception, Brentano was able to supply an empirical foundation for the Geisteswissenschaften. While philosophy would use the method of natural science, its domain would not be nature, but consciousness: a full-blooded science of the mind that did not require a reduction to the physical in order to be scientific. Brentano’s science of consciousness was empirical, but not experimental, and relied on subjective methods, but was not introspective. Brentano’s students Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl and others came to occupy important chairs in philosophy throughout Europe. While they were certainly not all orthodox followers, they adapted and spread his theories far and wide in the schools and movements they founded and influenced: Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, phenomenology, etc.. Moreover, the 19th century idea of scientific research as a collaborative and collective achievement led to a division of labor in Brentano’s school. Each of his students was meant to work out a part of the greater whole: Stumpf, the philosophy of sound and music; Marty, language; Meinong the history of philosophy; Husserl, mathematics; etc. Yet all of them also contributed to the shared project of the renewal of philosophy as science and discussed the (foundational) relation of philosophy to other sciences in programmatic works. Though often forgotten and overlooked due to contingent historical circumstances, the scientific paradigm of the School of Brentano was very fruitful and highly influential in philosophy and the human sciences in general, throughout the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Yet it is relevant then as now to preserve the independent scientific dignity of the humanities. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 78-92, January 2022.

Natalia López Cortés Dept. de Lingüística General e Hispánica, Universidad de Zaragoza, España La ambigüedad léxica se produce cuando una … Read More →.

The search for a systems‐level picture of metabolism as a web of molecular interactions provides a paradigmatic example of how the methods used to characterize a system can bias the interpretation of its functional meaning. Metabolic maps have been analyzed using novel techniques from network theory, revealing some non‐trivial, functionally relevant properties. These include a small‐world structure and hierarchical modularity. However, as discussed here, some of these properties might actually result from an inappropriate way of defining network interactions. Starting from (...) the so‐called bipartite organization of metabolism, where the two meaningful subsets (reactions and metabolites) are considered, most current works use only one of the subsets by means of so‐called graph projections. Unfortunately, projected graphs often ignore relevant biological and chemical constraints, thus leading to statistical artifacts. Some of these drawbacks and alternative approaches need to be properly addressed. (shrink)