Quantitative methods in syntax/ semantics research: A response to Sprouse and Almeida (2013) Edward Gibson a b , Steven T. Piantadosi c & Evelina Fedorenko a a Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA b Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA c Brain and Cognitive Sciences Depar...

Using an ontology to automatically generate questions for ordinary people requires a structure and concepts compliant with human thought. Here we present methods to develop a pragmatic, expert-based and a basic-level ontology and a framework to evaluate these ontologies. Comparing these ontologies shows that expert-based ontologies are most easy to construct but lack required cognitive semantic...

following the categorical approach to universal algebra through algebraic theories, proposed by f.~w.~lawvere in his phd thesis, this paper aims at introducing a similar setting for general topology. the cornerstone of the new framework is the notion of emph{categorically-algebraic} (emph{catalg}) emph{topological theory}, whose models induce a category of topological structures. we introduce t...

In this superbly written essay, Francois Rastier, a distinguished French linguist with several books on interpretative semantics, questions the foundations of linguistics and cognitive science in order to investigate the role of semantics with respect to the other disciplines of this 'new' interdisciplinary science of cognition. The book is organized into three sections: the first, of 100 pages...

Based on the actual uses of polysemous motion verb zǒu ‘walk’ in corpora Chinese texts from Old to Modern period, this paper argues that directed sense manner mainly derives pragmatic inference contexts and cognitive preference for conceptualization events. In addition, it is essential favorable morphosyntactic constructions language promote be lexicalized as verb’s lexical meaning. That is, sp...

Three discussion points are addressed from two perspectives: that of an anthropological tradition in cognitive science, and that of application--oriented natural language processing. From the cognitive perspective, knowledge of the world is not as influenced by linguistic semantics as we are tempted to think. From the applied NLP perspective, the distinction between world and lexical knowledge ...

is special track is a forum for discussing the latest approaches in computational linguistics related to cognitive semantics and to artificial intelligence. Its aim is also to exchange ideas concerning the way of building efficient systems for language analysis based on cognitive semantic models. e need for flexible, adaptable, consistent and easy-to-use tools and platforms in a recent and ac...

A recent meta-study shows that the conclusions driven by human reasoners in psychological experiments about syllogistic reasoning are not the conclusions predicted by classical first-order logic. Moreover, current cognitive theories deviate significantly from the empirical data. In the following, three important cognitive approaches are presented and compared to predictions made by a new approa...

This paper will appear, in a slightly shortened form, as an in-depth article (# 231) in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. For alerts on the project’s progress, visit www.cognitivescience.net. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science #231, Categorial grammar and formal semantics Michael Moortgat Professor of Computational Linguistics Utrecht Insti...

Term rewriting is a well established formal method used for defining semantics of programming languages, program transformations, automatic theorem proving, symbolic programming, intelligent tutoring system development etc. In this paper, we present a language based on term rewriting as an alternative formalism for modelling cognitive skills. We show how the language overcomes some deficiencies...