Entries with tag "linguistics"

A new bit of AI has been developed which can teach itself new languages. You feed it some text, and it analyzes its structure looking for patterns, and thus learns the language's grammar. Once it has learned it, it can produce new, meaningful sentences in that language. That's a very cool use of two of my big interests—artificial intelligence and linguistics. I couldn't find any more information about this project aside from the single webpage linked above, but I'll have to see if more turns up, because I'm very interested in learning more about how it works. In particular, I wonder how it addresses the issue of vocabulary.

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This is not really what I'd expect to find at a linguistics-oriented blog, but Language Log has an interesting series of posts analyzing the term 'tighty-whiteys', discussing first the phonology and then the semantics of the term, before moving on to consider the sociology behind the relative perceptions of boxers vs. briefs, first considering everyday society and eventually proceeding into gay porn. Mmm, edifying.