Will computers ever be capable of thought?

The Thinknowlogy Concept: http://mafait.org/en/

The Thinknowlogy Concept is based upon the following rules:

• Programming languages are based upon algebra and logic.
• Every person has an inborn feel for algebra and logic, although it is more developed in one person than another. This is communicated for the most part through the use of natural language.
• In combining algebra and logic in natural language with algebra and logic of programming language, it is possible to program using natural language.
• The final goal is the automation of information.

In the first place it is researched how the algebra and logic of natural language can be combined with the algebra and logic of programming, so that programming using natural language is possible.

Passing Thought...

Love is only a social construct, stemming from the selfishness of the human nature. Love is a social construct, which puts people in a state of bliss, to hide from them the ugliness of reality, and themselves willing to be blinded. Love is but an excuse to hold on to something, fearing the change, the despair and the solitude. And if in survival we have evolved to such a complex race, then love would be humankind's downfall.

Sexim in Axomiya...

The two terms Sex and Gender have always been used with a very distinct meaning. Sex refers to biological category, male and female. Gender, on the other hand, is usually thought of as the learned behavior and culture associated with being male or female. Language that provides a filter to cultural and social reality of the society determines how speaker perceives the world around and the language one speaks helps to build this world view.

The simplest definition of gender is that ‘it is a social construction organized around biological sex. Individuals are born male or female, they acquire gender identity, that is what it means o be male or female.’ Gender is society’s interpretation of maleness or femaleness, that society will determine what should be male or female roles. Children, growing up are encouraged to adopt these characteristics and fulfill their roles. Gender is the package of expectations which society associates with sex. (Susan Backingham, 2000)

During my MA days, made an attempt to explore gender inequalities and sexism in the Axomiya language. I made a questionnaire, distributed it to some native speakers, mixed male and female and get some statistics. I tried to look into the categorization of classifiers in Axomiya which has a wider application in the language and mandatory with each noun, whether the ideal of masculinity is communicated through the use of the classifiers. I picked up some words to see if the feminine marker classifier is added to the bases like philosopher, scientist, managing director etc. which are always being used as prototypes for masculinity. I also included in the questionnaire the stereotype model, which is the Metonymic model, in which the term ‘mother’ have been subcategorized defining social expectations. Some culturally determined categories of profession which is being marked associated with either of the sexes were also looked into. What could be the reason that for some categories we do not have female counterparts or even though we have, that is by feminizing the word denoting masculinity. Is it because speakers of the language are inherently sexist? In spite of the language providing choice, people stick to only one use. Or the language itself restricts use even if any speaker wishes to be non sexist?

Axomiya classifier for masculine is [jon], for feminine its [joni] and gender neutral classifier is [goraki] (equivalent to Hindi [mahoday & mahodaya]). Words that were considered as model words are philosopher, scientist, commentator, managing director, police inspector, mechanic, weaver, boatman, reaper, mahut, mid wife, barber, founding father, rape victim, pilot, dean, servant, dancer, actor, dog, cat. The idea was to see which classifier speakers use with these nouns. Since Axomiya does not have grammatical gender agreement (like Hindi), use of classifiers is the only means to know whether the noun is a male or female.

Sample Questionnaire:

Translate the following sentences:

The great philosopher died at an early age.

The research scientist got the noble prize.

The commentator has not arrived yet.

The new managing director is quite efficient.

The newly appointed police inspector took charge yesterday.

The young mechanic did a good job.

The weaver is from Suwalkusi.

The boatman has gone to that side of the river.

The reaper has finished the work.

The mahut fell down from the elephant’s back.

The midwife of this village is reputed.

The barber never works on Tuesday.

The lecture was delivered by the founding father of linguistics

The pilot caused the accident.

The rape victim approached the people welfare committee.

I met the deam yesterday.

The servant comes at 9 o’ clock in the morning.

The dog named Tomy is the collective farm watch dog.

I am sick of this cat! _____ drank up the milk. (Use a pronoun)

As a native speaker of Axomiya, how do you find the following constructions --- Odd, Funny, Normal, Impossible?

grihini maatree --- ghoruaa pitree (house working mother --- house working father)

karmarata maatree ---- karmarata pitree (working mother ---- working father)

paloniya maatree ---- paloniya pitree (adopting mother --- adopting father)

a-bibaahito maatree ---- a-bibaahito pitree (unwed mother ---- unwed father)

maahi mmak --- xotiya baapek (step mother ---- step father)

The observation displays the exclusive preoccupation with gender differences in Axomiya society. The notion of sexism is so inherent in people’s mind that their selection and creation of images always results in sex stereotypes and attitudes held in respect of them, constitute the social representations of man and woman as distinct groups, the formula for masculinity and femininity. Some professions are absolutely dominated by male like barber, mechanic, boatman etc. But the striking thing is the use of male classifiers for those professions, where women are also equally engaged, still speakers conceive of male sex only when asked. For example, professions like managing director, pilot, dean, scientist etc. There is no explanation for why woman can not constitute the prototype for ‘Mahut’ (all respondents marked masculine classifier for it)? In fact, Assam takes pride in Mrs. Parvati Baruah, the first female mahut of India and have been recognized all over the world.

Generally in Axomiya, feminine gender is formed by adding the suffix (Shtree Pratyaya) [-i] or [-a] after nouns indicating male, like,

gaayak (singer) ---- gaayikaa

But there is no rule for forming feminine for words like philosopher [daarxonik], scientist [boigyanik] etc. At best, the word [mohila] can be prefixed to these words to feminize them. But the classifier used with these words, in most cases, is masculine. Another interesting point is the use of classifier for the word ‘rape victim’. By default, it is marked as feminine, although no dictionary defines the meaning of the word ‘rape’ as ‘sexual harassment of woman by man’. Conversely, the Axomiya word for ‘rapist’ is [balaatkari] and as most of the feminie words are formed by adding either [-i] or [-a], [balaatkari], though ends with [i] is not perceived as female. It is the social perception of the speakers that women are perceived as objects of such kind of harassments.

Representation of man and woman as distinct categories within the society is also influenced by cultural aspects. In every village of Assam, weaving is the most common aspect of life and both man and woman are equally engaged in it. But the prototype model of a weaver is always feminine. The most frequently words used for weaver is [xipini] or [buwoni], both ending in [i] and always marked by female classifier. Another such term is reaper [daawoni]. There is no morphological affix to make these words masculine. So it is not always true that it’s the speakers of the language who are sexist. Sometimes, language too does not provide grounds for delimiting the use of sexist terms. Even some profession like ‘mid wife’ [dhaai] which are not in use now, still speakers associate it with females.

Semantic of Gender:

Trying to explore the use of gender specific classifiers and the pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘she’, not only for human beings, but also for animals and things. The use pronoun ‘he’ for dog and ‘she’ for cat, are based on sexual simile. Andrew Pawley (1995), what he calls an ‘animated style’ refers to the use of ‘he’ for portable goods to express an attitude of detachment, objectivity and indifference. Humanizing attitude to animals like dog (using masculine pronoun), reflects the view of man as brave, gallant, loyal etc. And use of ‘she‘ for cat reflects the view that woman are kept as prized possession as cats are kept as pets or for catching mice.

Metonymic Model for Mother:

The socio cultural orientation in the manipulation of gender can be looked into through the effect of Metonymy, a situation as Roach (1978) stated – “the same subcategory or member or sub model is used to comprehend the category as a whole”. The clustering of Mother based on social expectation finally shows that one of them (house mother) has a socially recognized stature standing for the whole. A mother is one who gives birth to a child, nurtures and raises the child and in any case a mother who stays in the house is better than any subcategory of Mother like working mother, adopting mother, unwed mother etc. Even word like unwed mother [abibaahito maatri] is not socially acceptable (but the word exists in the language). In contrast to this, in case of the concept of Father, we do not have such categories (Is there any need for word like working father?!). In the cognitive model, father is supposed to be working. Term like unwed father does not even exist in the language. Since there is no difference between house father and working father, no question arises about the degree of attention and care given to the children by the father.

A language is called Sexist if it embodies, affirms or reinforces discrimination against woman. Language, linked with the manipulation of gender, usually have to do with the speakers’ attitude to a person rather than with any inherent feature. They themselves are sexist, sticking to some prejudices. Sometimes language itself restricts non sexist use due to absence of rules in the language.

Target Reading for today..

Extracting Semantically Related Queries By Exploiting User Session Information

A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Developers


AN INTERVIEW ON MINIMALISM: Noam Chomsky,interviewed by Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi

Categorial features

Features and relationship among Thematic Categories like Noun, Verb, Adjectives and Prepositions and Functional Categories like Complementizers, determiners etc.

But how can we explain these perceived relationships? It is certain that if we define word categories in individual terms, say by just listing possible categories, then any explanation of the categories themselves or their relationships will be impossible. An analogy might serve to make the point clearer. Suppose that biologists had never thought of categorizing living things into taxonomic groups and instead simply identified individual sub-species such as ladybirds, field mice, pythons, etc. From this perspective it would be impossible to answer questions such as why do ladybirds and bluebottles both have six legs and wings? At best, biologists would only be able to claim that this was an accidental chance happening. Once there is a taxonomic system, such questions are easily answered: ladybirds and bluebottles are both insects and all insects have six legs and wings. The same is true for word categories. If we merely identify categories such as nouns, verbs and determiners, we cannot explain relationships between the categories.

One way to impose a system on elements is to use a set of features to distinguish between them. Each category can then be defined in terms of a unique collection of these features, but they may share some of the features with other categories, accounting for similarities between them. In linguistics, binary features, i.e. those which can be valued in one of two ways (plus or minus), have been found useful for producing systems of categorization. For example, we might propose a feature [±F] (‘F’ to indicate functional) to distinguish between the thematic and functional categories. All thematic categories would possess the [–F] feature and all functional categories would possess the [+F] feature. In this way we can immediately distinguish between the two groups and account for why certain categories are similar to others in terms of which feature they possess.

Other features that have been proposed include [±N] and [±V], first suggested by Chomsky (1970). The ‘N’ and ‘V’ used in these features obviously do not stand for noun and verb as these categories are to be defined by these features. However, the fact that nouns are categorized as being [+N] and verbs as [+V] indicates that these features are meant to have something to do with these categories. To some extent, it is irrelevant what the features ‘mean’. The important point is which categories share which features and hence have something in common and which have different features and hence are distinguished. From this perspective we could have used features such as [±1] and [±2].

Consider now the intuition that nouns and verbs are diametrically opposed categories. We can account for this if we assume that they have exactly the opposite features to each other. We have said that nouns are categorized as a[+N] category and so verbs must be [–N] if we are to maintain that they oppose nouns. Similarly, as verbs are [+V], nouns must be [–V]. We therefore categorize nouns and verbs as the following:

		nouns	=	[–F, +N, –V]
		verbs	=	[–F, –N, +V]

Note, both nouns and verbs are thematic categories and hence they share the [–F] feature, but in every other way they differ.

How can we capture the sense that determiners have something in common with nouns and modal auxiliary verbs have something in common with verbs, even though one of these pairs of elements is function and the other is thematic? The answer is fairly easy. The pairs may differ in terms of the [±F] feature, but they are similar in terms of the [±N] and [±V] features:

		determiners	=	[+F, +N, –V]
		modals	=	[+F, –N, +V]

In other words, determiners are the functional equivalents to nouns and modals are functional verbs.

To develop the system a little further, consider the intuitions that adjectives seem to have something in common with nouns, as they are typically used to modify nouns, as in crazy kid or thoughtful suggestion, but they also seem to have something in common with verbs, as they have certain distributional properties in common:

		Rick is {	rich running	}
		the {	rich running	} robber

In this example, rich is an adjective and running is a verb and obviously they can both appear in similar environments. But if nouns and verbs are diametrically opposed to each other, how can adjectives be similar to both? The answer is that adjectives share different features with both nouns and verbs. Thus, we may categorize both nouns and adjectives as [+N] and both verbs and adjectives as [+V] and in this way adjectives will share features with both nouns and verbs. Of course, they will also have features different from nouns and verbs, but as we do not want to categorize adjectives as the same as the other categories, this is a positive aspect of this proposal. Adjectives can therefore be categorized as:

adjectives

=

[–F, +N, +V]

Having demonstrated that we can capture similarities and differences between word categories using binary features, let us turn to the issue of what categories there are. We will start this discussion by considering the two binary features [±N] and [±V]. So far we have shown how combinations of these features can be used to define nouns, verbs and adjectives. The two binary features can be combined in four possible ways, however, and hence there is one possible combination that we have yet to associate with a category. This is demonstrated by the following table:

				N
				+	–
		V	+	adjective	verb
			–	noun	?

This is fortunate as there is one more thematic category left to be included into the system: the prepositions. Thus we can claim that prepositions fill this slot:

prepositions

=

[–F, –N, –V]

However, this cannot be put down to good fortune. After all, categorising elements in terms of these features has consequences concerning what other categories are related to or different from these elements. Note that the feature combination in (29) predicts that while prepositions differ from nouns in that they are [–N], they are similar to nouns in that they are [–V]. Similarly, prepositions differ from verbs in being [–V], but they share the [–N] feature with them. Thus prepositions are predicted to be similar to nouns and verbs, but in a different way to how adjectives are similar to these categories. Indeed, while prepositions do not have similar distribution patterns as verbs, as do adjectives, they share another property with verbs. Consider the following observations:

	a	see him
	b	to him
	c	*portrait him	(portrait of him)
	d	*mindful him	(mindful of him)

We see that both verbs (see) and prepositions (to) can be followed by a word such as him, which is a pronoun. Nouns (portrait) and adjectives (mindful) cannot. We might claim therefore that the ability to be followed by a pronoun is restricted to the [–N] categories. Now consider the following:

	a	it was Sally that Sam saw
	b	it was underneath that I found the treasure
	c	*it was stupid that Steve seemed
	d	*it was fishing that Fred went

As shown above, a noun like Sally and a preposition such as underneath can sit in the position between the words was and that in this English construction, known as a cleft construction. However, an adjective (stupid) and a verb (fishing) cannot occupy this position. We might claim therefore that this position can only be occupied by [–V]categories.

We see from the discussion above the predictive power of the system that we have set up: the system predicted that there should be a fourth thematic category that has certain properties and these fit the category of prepositions very well. We can take this as evidence in favor of this system of features. What else does the system predict? It is clearly predicted that if we add a third binary feature to the two we have just been discussing, then a further four categories will be defined. With the third feature, [±F], there should be four functional categories which match the four thematic categories in terms of their feature settings for [±N] and [±V]. We have already seen how determiners and modals can be analyzed as functional nouns and functional verbs, respectively. The expectation is that degree adverbs, such as so and too, and Complementizer, such as that and if, should be related to adjectives and prepositions in the same way. As degree adverbs modify adjectives in a very similar way to how determiners modify nouns, it is not difficult to conclude that degree adverbs are functional adjectives. This leaves Complementizer to fill the final place as functional prepositions. There is evidence in favour of this assumption, but it rests on notions not yet introduced, so we will have to wait until later to demonstrate it. We can draw the typology using the three features in the following way:

A further advantage of this system is that it places restrictions on what categories we can suppose to exist, hence increasing its explanatory power. For example, we would not be entitled to come up with an extra category without destroying the system developed. One way to add extra possible categories within the system would be to declare another binary feature. But this would not allow the addition of one extra category, but a further eight! Moreover, these extra categories would have to be shown to be related and opposed to the existing categories in the same way that these are related and opposed to each other.

Another way to extend the system, which we will be making some use of, relies on the notion of underspecification of features. All the categories discussed above are fully specified for all the features, so each is associated with a plus or minus value for all three features. Underspecification is a situation in which one or more features is not specified for its value. Thus, we might propose a new category [+N, –V] which is not specified for the[±F] feature. This category would then be a noun which is neither functional, nor thematic. We will see that there is evidence that the [±F] feature can be left underspecified and hence there are a further four ‘non-functional’ categories. We will introduce these categories in the following sections. The important point for the moment is that the system of features restricts our ability to invent new categories ‘willy-nilly’.