In a time when genres like Dub Step (which I adore, by the way) are bringing chaotic and palpable cut & paste erraticism to soundscape, we all need a centering force to be… Read More
On the sliding scale of time that gradiently builds and ebbs and recedes I am perpetually being re-context-ed and being iteratively re-inserted into particular frames of reference and spheres of existence. I am simultaneously (at… Read More
Last week I was featured in a column on the investment blog MindfulMoney.co.uk with some comments about financial crisis language like “crash” and “stagflation”. Check out the feature here. Like I have said… Read More
I love this image from the cover of The Glitch Mob’s We Can Make the World Stop: People occasionally describe winding canyons as if they were snakes, and this image makes that language explicit… Read More
Since childhood I have thought that butterflies were good insects and that moths were bad insects. After all, popular thought is that moths are creatures of destruction (hence the need for mothballs), even… Read More
As you might observe from the infrequency of posts, I have something else going on right now. Frankly, I am frightened that the ideas I am mulling over for my thesis will get… Read More
I am slightly obsessed with Yelle’s Safari Disco Club. I have probably heard the entire album around 100 times since the start of summer. It is incredibly poetic and full of sustainable fun…… Read More
Occasionally I repost this picture book that presents a series of images and lets the viewer surmise a probable narrative. Take the time to check it out.
I was thinking about maple keys recently. The maple key is an interesting schema of a taxonomy; the kernel is like a category node – the top-level domain. Each vein in the wing… Read More
Last weekend when I was camping with some friends I was noticing how the layout of the campsite directed people’s attention. It seemed as if no one paid attention to the surrounding scenery… Read More
Yesterday (a busy Saturday at 4pm) I went to a clothing store with my wife. While I was shopping I was almost run into by 4 employees who I felt were not looking… Read More
I can’t tell if I like truffles the mushroom better than I like truffles the chocolate, but one thing is for sure, truffles of any kind offer a guilty pleasure. From a cognitive… Read More
This was a sink in my house in West Africa.
I just posted a seminar essay that I wrote a few months ago to the Cognitive Science Network. You can download the paper here (click the button that says “One-Click Download”) and read the abstract… Read More
One of the interesting features of fictive motion is that the processing of fictive motion engages the mental resources used in performing the fictive motion, or at least correlates with time (saccades and… Read More
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
In a broad sense of the term, any particular ontology serves as a framework against which we interpret information; think of it like an organized perspective that we use as a lens to… Read More
Driving home from class last night I spotted a new Chipotle billboard and it made me think about language change. The copy-writer used indefinite article a but not the form of the article… Read More
If you say the admittedly odd sentence “The baby feeds on mother’s milk.” it accesses a parasitic construal for the act of eating. Pardon any offense this might cause you; I promise to… Read More
If we don’t pay that ticket, then I will have to go to court. [causal] It would be great if everyone just got along. [idealistic] I wonder if she knows she has jelly… Read More
I was thinking about examples of caused-motion verbs and realized that English has a caused-motion transitive use of the verb to run. What might an example look like? Simple: “Brutus ran a knife… Read More
When I am writing a paper that has a page limit I use the first draft to make sure that I have a complete thought, I do not worry about exceeding the page… Read More
Modals represent a perspective of force in relation to the participatory elements of a construction. In fact, they represent an encoding of force in the relation between subject, verb, and object. Children acquire… Read More
The acquisition of abstract grammatical constructions represents the maturation of a child’s linguistic productivity. This productivity means that a child can take constructions that have already been learned and extend the application of… Read More
Since constructions are learned through usage, constructions are accumulated as individual entities that begin to form collections and these collections of constructions begin to exhibit type frequency. I think that this type frequency… Read More
Reading Michael Israel’s The Way Constructions Grow taught me some things about how novel constructions actually emerge in a language. I encourage you to check out this classic article. The -Way construction in… Read More
As mentioned (yesterday’s post) three skills emerge from this acceptance of the triadic perspective: 1) Joint Attention Frame; 2)Intention Reading; and 3) Cultural Learning (Pattern Finding). Joint Attention is the ability to coordinate… Read More
In exemplar representation situation-specific tokens are decoded and classified as being instance-overlaps with existing exemplars and thereby reinforcing that exemplar instance, or else they are classified as having slight divergence from the existing… Read More
This is part of the continuing series about Strategic Planning and outlines the process I am using with a particular organization. I wanted to briefly explain something that I think is a viable… Read More
In line with my post on collaboration as the central tenet of virtual city membership, and my posts on multifaceted learning for multifaceted living, I want to propose a few strategies to maximize… Read More
In my childhood I think it was the fable about Stone Soup that made me start to think about innovation. As I learned to cook and came further into the world of soup-lore… Read More
I never realized this, but apparently cursive writing is supposed to make you write faster. [I always hated making uppercase Q...]
Continuing on the posts about strategic planning, today I want to share how I encourage people to develop policy. The organization that I am helping had a baseline report drafted by a committee… Read More
Part of my portfolio includes this project called Weaving Narratives: Possessions = Autobiographies, it is an exploration into how any ad hoc grouping of objects has some kind of inherent narrative, albeit a… Read More
Since I am posting a lot about Soulwax this month, I thought I should include this clarifying snippet about the differences between the various acts which the Dewaele brothers lead. In “Part of the… Read More
Soulwax’s website extends an invitation for viewers to participate in DJing as they explore the website. From my first exposure this has been an amazing experience. The intuitive guided navigation doubles as a… Read More
So I am not sure why this happened, but it did: Last week I was introducing myself to the class I am TA-ing this semester and after I listed my academic qualifications I… Read More
Cut & Paste is not just a keyboard function. In fact, R.G. Collingwood coined the term in the mid 1940′s in his book The Idea of History, but being a more formal speaker… Read More
I recently created a short interview about my art project “Weaving Narratives” where I describe the process of reading objects that people own. I hope you check it out and let me know… Read More
When a specialist tries to talk about their specialist view of the world with a non-specialist it rarely ever goes smoothly. In fact, usually, the specialist either talks at too specific a level… Read More
Occasionally I read a good Generative book to balance my thinking in linguistic theory…I am drawn to the ideas of formalism, usually when I am thinking about how to develop anthropological linguistic approaches… Read More
I got a comment today on the CogLing 100 Book List page from a person with a slightly suspicious email address that I didn’t want to publish, but the content of the comment… Read More
[NB: I have told this story before, but this time I have a better understanding that I think is worth sharing.] I had an experience a few years ago, a woman stood in… Read More
While many of us like neuroscience as a discipline, many other people do not. Accordingly, I try to give session to both sides of the neuroscience fan club. Here is a link that… Read More
Daft Punk’s film “Electroma” Daft Punk’s album “Human After All” Gilles Fauconnier’s & Mark Turner’s “The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities” Stephen C. Levinson’s “Space in Language and… Read More
Una dia el pollito va a la casa blanca y toca la puerta hay una persona abre la puerta y dice: “¿que queirres?” y el pollito respondon, “necesito hablar con el presidente por… Read More
“Sometimes initial conditions can exert such an all-pervasive influence that they create the impression that a new type of law is acting. The most familiar case is that of the so-called “second law… Read More
So I wanted to share my analysis of a blend that occurs on a bumper sticker. This is a past homework assignment of mine, so keep that in mind as you read it.… Read More
If Aristotle had spoken Chinese or Dakota, his logic and his categories would have been different. – Fritz Mauthner
I was recently sucked into playing OSMOS on my iPad. I never play video games (usually I am too busy: wife, art, school, work) but I did happen to spend four hours straight… Read More
When I was living in West Africa I would wake up around 5 every morning, step outside my door and put my kettle on to boil on this fantastic little green kerosene stove:… Read More
I admit it, the “Sport” in “SportLinguist” might lead you to believe that I write about sports. Well, I don’t…but this automated software does write about sports. In fact, all you have to… Read More
The –way construction is a structure that expresses a range of ideas like “manner” in relation to an activity that follows a path. The construction is elaborated by accessing an AGENT/Trajector, using a verb… Read More
I wanted to let you know about a new blog that I have listed: “Chasing Linguistics” and deals with Cognitive Pragmatics among other things. Take a visit: http://chasinglinguistics.wordpress.com/
I started getting interested in botany during my undergraduate years when I wanted to complement the technical linguistics training with a tempered understanding of some practical skills. I have always planned on doing… Read More
I have a new link in my sidebar and I wanted to tell you a little about it. One of my three favorite poets is Conrad Aiken, a sincere and highly lucid poet… Read More
My wife and I were at an extended family party last night and as the night wore on we found ourselves sitting at a table and she was holding my cousin’s newborn girl.… Read More
Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others. If this be true it is obvious that second-rate… Read More
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I checked my email this morning and received a message telling me that my recently distributed paper “Figure-Ground Organization in Attention and Construal” made it on a top ten list for downloads yesterday… Read More
I have been laughing to myself each time that I go into the dashboard for this blog because I am noticing some fantastic trends. Over this past week the viewing patterns for particular… Read More
I wanted to share this recipe that I got from my great-grandmother (from Zagreb, Republic of Croatia)…I grew up eating this deliciousness and consequently I have become a smart scientist. http://ryandewey.org/unfold_8.html Do you… Read More
I am going through the planning process for blog posts for 2011 and as a foreshadowing to a couple of guest posts (one on astrosociology and another on the singularity) I thought I… Read More
This is old news, but happy news nonetheless…its about freakin’ time. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11594674 I remember when they went on their first world tour…
As I was riding the train home today I overheard a conversation that made me realize again how people view as odd the things which the linguist views as normal. The woman behind… Read More
I wanted to let you know about an online ejournal about Post-Colonial Literature and Culture, here it is: Post-Colonial Studies in Literature & Culture eJournal Having formerly worked in two former colonies (one… Read More
In line with this post (My Jungle Medical Kit) I wanted to pass this link regarding establishing expedient medical clinics in remote locations. These resources come from the Hesperian Foundation, a non-profit organization… Read More
So there was a time, not too long ago, that I couldn’t stand reading .pdfs on a monitor. It didn’t matter if it was on a desktop or a laptop; I hated reading… Read More
As a feature of figure-ground organization, there is inherent flexibility in how the figure is aligned with the ground. In light of evidence that permits a ground to precede a figure in the… Read More
I came across this great post today while I was searching for people who have cited Stephen Wallace’s work on Figure-Ground organization. It is a blog that looks at New Testament Greek Discourse.… Read More
I am writing a paper on attention and construal and in my reading I came across Lawrence Roberts’ 1993 work: How Reference Works -Explanatory Models for Indexicals, Descriptions, and Opacity; I didn’t want… Read More
First of all, this is not a critical interpretation of this film, it is not a hermeneutical analysis of the form of this script, I am merely using a snippet of discourse in… Read More
ugh. This makes my heart hurt because I wish I could have been there. This is a fine French thing to do… seeing Thomas Mars perform reminds me of the French Fauvist painter… Read More
Driving home tonight I heard a song on the radio, on the local hip-hop and R&B station, and while the song kind of annoys me, I kind of like it too. Anyway, this… Read More
If you are a linguist you already know this. What is “this”? I’ve not said yet. Here it is: “Linguists have the ability to make an informed comment about anything.“ Disagree? Care to… Read More
So here is a video I made this afternoon, it has some excerpts from a song I have been composing this year. I chose this because it takes two basic chords: C Major… Read More
A reasonable summary of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its tractable form is that different cultures interpret the same world differently and this has an impact on how they both think and construct meaning… Read More
Here is another network diagram…double click to enlarge…the diagram is an interpretation of the sense variation for the semantics of the modal auxiliary “Must”. [NB: I included a few obsolete usages that are… Read More
Take a look at this diagram of a possible interpretation for the polysemous network of HEAD: [Hint: double click the image to enlarge...] The senses for head have both physical and metaphorical interpretations. … Read More
ICMs structure mental spaces by providing asymmetrical matching or mismatching between concepts, center-periphery models to structure categories, and encapsulated categories to structure to the scope of predication. Below is an assortment of these… Read More
If a landscaper works to sculpt the land and then someone has to maintain that land that person cannot be called a land keeper (a) *land keeper The person who upkeeps the landscaping… Read More
“Put simply, people consistently act inconsistently, unaware of the contradiction between their espoused theory and their theory-in-use, between the way they think they are acting, and the way they really act.” from “Teaching… Read More
Today I experienced one of those classic text-book cases of construing a category member at varying levels of categorization for different purposes. I was walking down the hall in my office today and… Read More
I have several friends who are strict Generativists/Formalists and I want to start a little series that summarizes information about topics that sometimes get muddled up in cross-theoretical discussions. This is the first… Read More
While I don’t necessarily agree with Jackendoff’s use of the semantic primitives, and while I recognize that this comes from a book that is from the early 80′s, I still want to present… Read More
Today on the train I overheard one man say to another man: “I got my Stevie Wonders on…I didn’t even see you.” Either he was trying to convey that his inability to see… Read More
Reading Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar has been a dense pleasure. I am currently reading part of it in a volume edited by Dirk Geeraerts called Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings (Mouton de Gruyter). Consider these… Read More
Tonight on the way to the ballet my wife and I were riding in the car with one of her friends. It came up that my sister-in-law’s roommate’s cat pissed in a cardboard… Read More
I was working through a homework assignment about developing a language that captures the conceptualization patterns that a spider would have (given the boundaries of its embodied experience), this was a fun experiment,… Read More
I am rereading a book that I have been rereading on a consistent basis for the last twelve years, this time I am thinking more about consciousness than I have in previous readings;… Read More
If you know nothing about the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise, this overview is a great place to start. I personally think that Vyvyan Evans is one of the clearest writers in the field… Go… Read More
Ronald Langacker is considered one of the founding fathers of the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise, his seminal work in Cognitive Grammar has influenced pretty much everyone who does anything at all in Cognitive Linguistics.… Read More
This comes from the introduction to a book edited by Dirk Geeraerts: If conceptual perspectivization is the central function of a grammar, the typical formal categories of grammatical description (like word classes or… Read More
Language makes use of ecological elements (symbolic function, communicative function, et cetera) to provide an integrated “tool” with which meaning can be expressed and understood. Being a system implies the interrelationship of components… Read More
When I saw this I was so happy that I cried a little.
“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. Is translation meant for readers who do not want to understand the original?” – Walter Benjamin.… Read More
This quote is about how to achieve a natural translation. ‘And again,’ went on Claudius, ‘have your French composed by a Frenchman. You gentlemen may pride yourselves on writing good French, grammatical French,… Read More
This is part two of Cognitive Mindfulness #9, and continues the Evans & Green passage. “The difference between the domains of TIME and SPACE is that while TIME has the property of progression,… Read More
This passage covers a discussion of the conceptual domains of space and time while introducing the quantities of each domain and their instantiation in reality. I like this passage because it differentiates basic… Read More
I just posted a free download of an excerpt of my semiotics project which will be available as a paperback in September. I encourage you to check it out and let me know… Read More
I admire Lady Gaga’s desire to produce work that is more visceral and less conceptual (as she was recently quoted in a fashion magazine), but visceral presupposes the ability to conceptualize embodied experience… Read More
Today’s quote comes from one of my favorite books about architectural design, Archetypes In Architecture. The book explores the functional grounding of the major elements of architecture. “Shared experiences, like symbolic meanings, are… Read More
anyone who has a story to tell me. anyone who can see that they belong to numerous multidimensional plot lines. anyone who can see that they relate to society to solidify current culture.… Read More
Take this advice from Jack London: “When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as… Read More
I haven’t been working overseas for a while, but I still have my medical kit for the tropics. Remarkably when I open up the box it still smells like the underdeveloped world. Medical… Read More
On Beauty: “It is much harder to study the psychology of aesthetic pleasure in reference to fine art. Many artists, aestheticians, and philosophers who have tried to do so have not gone very… Read More
So today was my birthday. I received this text message from my sister-in-law’s boyfriend: “Upon quoting Homer’s famous Illiad, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ended his rule by plunging a dagger into his… Read More
A quote from one of my favorite books… “The universe is a living, creative, experimenting experience of discovering what’s possible at all levels of scale, from microbe to cosmos.” “Life’s natural tendency is… Read More
I recently found this note that I wrote to myself: “Teaching a conversation class taught me that I don’t know how to carry on a conversation myself.” For a few months in my… Read More
In Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology there are two principles that govern the well-formedness of categories: Cognitive Economy and Perceived World Structure. Cognitive Economy (CE) assumes that categories form with the most bang… Read More
“…perceptual symbols are multi-modal, drawing information from different sensory-perceptual and introspective (subjective) input ‘streams’.” [241, Evans & Green]
You can model a system and describe the way that all of the parts interact and use that description to provide the prescriptive foundations for similar systems and projects. This is good if… Read More
“If Aristotle had spoken Chinese or Dakota, his logic and his categories would have been different.” – Fritz Mauthner
“It is important to bear in mind that the stratified hierarchies which arise in the course of progress of the algorithm are hypothetical. At each moment during the learning process, stratified hierarchies represent… Read More
Anyone who speaks a language without an alphabet. Anyone who does not have electricity. Anyone who lives outside the usefulness of cash. Anyone who lets things decay which cannot be repaired. Anyone who… Read More
I feel like I have a good vantage point for recognizing problems with cognitive linguistics, especially since I have a descriptive linguistics background and I know a lot of generative linguistics. I know… Read More
Last year I built a sculpture/assemblage that explores the dynamic and time-sensitive nature of language. I say time-sensitive, and what I mean by that is that the meaning in particular utterance (or usage-event)… Read More
In my view, language is an imposed organization of organic prototypes into a linear composition structure and matched to a cultural schema that reflects notions of meaning in communication situations. That’s all for… Read More
A key concept behind Cognitive Linguistics is that language reflects the mental processes and their functions. This concept enables the linguist to work on multiple problems simultaneously, studying language and language use, but… Read More
When we encounter unfamiliar situations or find ourselves in cultures which we do not understand, it is best to gather the facts before jumping to conclusions about what is going on. Some ethnographers… Read More
The reality of everyday living is multifaceted in nature. For me, in my practice as an artist and as a scientist, I feel I need to integrate the various extensions of my reality,… Read More
