Computational Linguists discussion

[Shoofle]

What is computational linguistics? And don't give me any of that "It's linguistics as relating to computation!" stuff, that helps no one. For this matter, what's the deal with emo people? I get it explained to me time and time again but I still don't understand who/what they are, or why everyone hates them. Hating is bad!

[Cowie]

i don't know.. I've been sick of people being Emo about Emo for quite some time. Just ignore it and it'll go away, or at least fester on it's own. stop feeding them. It's like picking a scab. christ.
Also: Being NuMetal about emo doesn't help, either. (read: loud, angry)

[Scott]

Ok, I wrote a paper on this (emo) for college, so maybe I can be of some help.

A good working definition of emo culture is 'upper-middle class teens (mostly white males) who believe that just because they come from comfortable circumstances doesn't mean they don't have serious problems.' It's the idea that things like increased psychotropic drug use (e.g. prozac) are a symptom of the failure of the classic suburban American dream. People who identify as emo stereotypically say things like "No one understands me/my pain." Emo can be seen as a direct response to things like 'rap culture,' which glorifies the difficult conditions faced by young black/latino kids today.

Emo is ridiculously easy to ridicule, because emo kids generally protray themselves as not being at fault for any of the problems in their lives - they are just victims of circumstance.

Hope this helps.

p.s. It's a bit frightening how, if you go back 150 years, goth and emo were having another heyday during the Gothic and Romantic eras!

[Shoofle]

I thought "No one understands me/my pain!" was the goth phrase.

[Frankeinstein]

I thought "No one understands me/my pain!" was the goth phrase.

I agree.
And the funny thing is, I think they're right if only just because everyone dismisses them as ridiculous on the basis that they claim no one understands them. Vicious cycle.

[Scott]

The goth approach generally involves the assumption that NO ONE understands anyone else's pain, or anyone else at all, because people are self-absorbed and largely pointless.

The emo kids are more along the lines of 'hey, other segments of society get special treatment for claiming special kinds of pain and suffering: women, blacks, etc. We want special dispensation for being upper middle class and white!'

[Belial]

If it needs further boiled down

Goth: Existence is Sad.

Emo: I am Sad.

-Resident Goth Emeritus

[Shoofle]

Goth: Existence is Sad.

Emo: I am Sad.

Interesting breakdown, and very helpful!

[rictic]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_linguistics

Essentially, the abstract study of getting computers to translate or understand natural human languages. There's a whole lot of theory on the subject that hasn't been backed up at all with anything practical, so it's rife with a lot of crazy shit that'll be excised as the field matures.

[James]

If it needs further boiled down

You're from Western PA/Eastern Ohio, aren't you.

[Belial]

You're from Western PA/Eastern Ohio, aren't you.

Interesting conclusion. Is that a common phrase structure in those areas?

But no. I believe I aquired that particular speech-pattern-of-the-month from either my girlfriend, or some random girl from school. Definitely remember aquiring it from a female voice.

I, myself, am from California originally, then Rhode Island, then Louisiana, then Virginia. Currently, I could hit the computer Randy updates from with a rock if I bounced it off the hallway wall appropriately.

I just like collecting wierd speech patterns. It's fun.

[Chocobean]

... from either my girlfriend, or some random girl from school.

is she still going out with you?

[Belial]

Yes, and she still says it, but I don't know if that's because she picked it up from me or vice versa....if the former, then that leaves the problem of where *I* picked it up open.

[Spritzido]

I always find emo kids ridiculously humerous.

I think English emos might differ slightly from their American counterparts but they sounds about the same. In England they're laughed at for:

- Wearing female jeans.
- Drinking JD & Coke (The lamest 'cocktail' in the world.)
- Being Pretentious
- Their Music Eliteism
- Their 'thin' look, caused by malnutrition. (Leads to flat chests in females and super weak muscles in males.)

This is bundle with all the other human faults everyone else has, it's just emphasised more in emos.

[Gozer]

If it needs further boiled down

You're from Western PA/Eastern Ohio, aren't you.

Add Indiana to that list. At least a couple of local friends here use past participles as gerunds like that. (Or is it that "to be" is simply too difficult to bother adding?) It causes my brain to skip a beat every time.

Take me back to New England. Sure we may have some terrible pronounciations and strange usage, but at least we can handle basic grammah [sic].

[author-unknown]

If it needs further boiled down

You're from Western PA/Eastern Ohio, aren't you.

Add Indiana to that list. At least a couple of local friends here use past participles as gerunds like that. (Or is it that "to be" is simply too difficult to bother adding?) It causes my brain to skip a beat every time.

Take me back to New England. Sure we may have some terrible pronounciations and strange usage, but at least we can handle basic grammah [sic].

Some people where I used to work did the same thing (so I guess add Kansas). I would correct it every time I saw it written, but mainly just because I enjoyed writing on company property.

[atalanta]

D'oh! Just discovered this comic and was loving it until I saw this entry. What's the deal? Cartoonist attacked by linguists in a back alley?

I guess I don't see what the problem is. Computer vision == "we want computers to 'see' stuff!" Computational ling == "we want computers to 'talk' to us!"

Why attempts to do this sort of work should incite people to sudden passions of viciousness, I don't know. I wonder if material engineers (vs. software) run into the same attitudes.

[Jesse]

It's less an attack on computational linguists, more of a style of absurdist humour where he takes a stereotype (This time the idea of verbally attacking 'emo kids') and then switches it around into something unexpected.

[atalanta]

Oh! That makes sense. It would seem rather out of character with the rest of the comic to suddenly be so serious, anyway.

I guess it's easy to miss the subtlety when "fuck you!" is in such big print. Esp when we're touchy about being a new field to begin with!

[Jesse]

Haha, I like the idea of computational linguists, but the rule of on-line comeicry is that no-one is exempt, especially here. String-theorists and right-wing senators have also come under the thumb.

[drgold]

I'm applying to grad school in computational linguistics and I thought it was hilarious. so true.

My friends and I joked about wearing this pin to the CogSci conference in Vancouver this summer... probably not such a good idea.

[LE4dGOLEM]

Haha, I like the idea of computational linguists, but the rule of on-line comeicry is that no-one is exempt, especially here. String-theorists and right-wing senators have also come under the thumb.

When was the last time Forumers got a major bash in xkcd?

[Ended]

I met a computational linguist the other day!

Him: "Yeah, so if I manage to get the funding and everything goes well with my application, I should be starting in the department next year."

Me: "Yeah, well, fuck you, man. Fuck You."



((I might not have said that.))

[motor_ola]

So what's the most advanced chat-bot out there then? (I guess that's one of the things a computational linguist might be doing)

One that's propably not the most advanced one, but nevertheless pretty funny: iGod (Chat with god!)

Me: What are you wearing?
God: A white robe.
Me: Are you wearing a white robe?
God: No I do not have any clothes.

[bbctol]

A.L.I.C.E. is my favorite.

She even has a sense of humor!

Code: Select all

Human: you're hot.
ALICE: A hotbot?
Human: Haha!
ALICE: I am so glad you find this amusing, unknown person.

[GhostWolfe]

If it needs further boiled down

(Or is it that "to be" is simply too difficult to bother adding?) It causes my brain to skip a beat every time.

Clearly I'm not paying enough attention, I didn't even realise that "to be" was missing. I am so bad for "getting the general concept of the thing" and skipping over the literal content of the words. I don't tend to notice typos unless I'm nit picking (or being pedantic cause I'm in a bad mood).

[motor_ola]

But Alice is so old, surely there's gotta be some brand new spanking bot that's more advanced. Allthough since they learn stuff, and they constantly improve on her, maybe not.

ALICE: I am chatting with several other people at once.
Human: Of course you are.
ALICE: Er. No I am not.
Human: But you said you were.
ALICE: Umm. That was then. This is now.
Human: So am i the only person that you are chatting with right now?
ALICE: At this moment Whoa. All humans seem the same to me.

[Shpadoinkle]

Emos are often mocked because of thier apparent atttempt to DELIBERATELY be as loser-ish as humanly possible.

The subculture spawned partially from Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, whose music was filled with barely understandable lyrics about pain and suffering and oh-woe-is-me and etc.

[blob]

Emos are often mocked because of thier apparent atttempt to DELIBERATELY be as loser-ish as humanly possible.

The subculture spawned partially from Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, whose music was filled with barely understandable lyrics about pain and suffering and oh-woe-is-me and etc.

Surely it's older than that? What about Hamlet? And Job? And those psalms, they always were so miserable.

[motor_ola]

Surely it's older than that? What about Hamlet? And Job? And those psalms, they always were so miserable.

Hamlet's gf went crazy and comitted suicide and his father was murdered etc. I think that kinda justified his woe.
Emo: unjustified or self-inflicted woe.

(Don't you think "Hamlet's gf" is a really cool cross-culture phrase)

[Vaniver]

What about Hamlet? And Job?

Hamlet was a barely contained bundle of rage, not a weepy emo kid (Read Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare). Job kind of had his entire life destroyed.

[zenten]

The subculture spawned partially from Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, whose music was filled with barely understandable lyrics about pain and suffering and oh-woe-is-me and etc.

But grunge clothing at least looks comfortable. And the music is much less annoying than emo music, which is just an extra anoying subset of suburban "punk".

[jinzougen]

What is computational linguistics?

Essentially, the abstract study of getting computers to translate or understand natural human languages. There's a whole lot of theory on the subject that hasn't been backed up at all with anything practical, so it's rife with a lot of crazy shit that'll be excised as the field matures.

Rictic is partially right. I'm a graduate student in Computational Linguistics so I may be able to shed some light on it for you. Linguistics in general is broken down into a number of sub disciplines. The main ones follow:

Phonetics - The study of speech sounds, the accoustics involved with them (accoustic phonetics), their production (articulatory phonetics), and how they are perceived by the listener.

Phonology - The study of the organization of speech sounds. This field aims to describe phonologies of specific languages most of the time. For example, the fact that English words never starts with an engma sound (the "ng" in the word "flung") is an observation that phonologists would be interested in. Also involved in this field are morphophonemic alternations, e.g. how the plural phoneme whose base form is a "z" sound looses voicing after voiceless final consonants and gains a preceding schwa vowel after final alveolar fricatives (s and z).

Morphology - The study of the structure of words. E.g. words like "unbelievable" can be broken down into the morphemes "un", "believe", and "able". "believe" is a stem, "un" and "able" is a derivational affixes. Inflectional affixes exist also...

Syntax - The study of the ordering and hierarchical relationships between words in sentences. In English class when you diagram sentences, you are actually creating a half-assed uninspired syntax tree.

Semantics - The study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and how the meaning of a full sentences is built up from the meanings of the words.

Pragmatics - Semantics and pragmatics work closely together to produce the actual understood meaning of an utterance. I.e. to explain why an utterance means something in particular, one must resort both to a semantic model and a pragmatic model. Pragmatics provides parts of the meaning which come from implied context. E.g. when someone tells someone else "It's cold in here", the speaker often means to politely ask to close the window. The speaker isn't educating the listener about her perceived temperature for the sake of conversation. The "please close the window" meaning of "It's cold in here" can not be predicted by a semantic model, pragmatics takes care of it.

Discourse - Probably one of the least concrete things to study in linguistics, people who study discourse are concerned with, well discourse. Discourse can mean a conversation between two or more people but it also includes monologues, narratives and other things.


Computational Linguistics is much like linguistics in that it is divided into these subcategories. The difference is that computational linguists aim to get a computer to solve their problems for them. E.g. Computational Phoneticians and Phonologists are concerned with automatic speech perception--though in reality computers go by a lot more that the "sound" when they type what you say. Full speech-to-text systems incorporate facets of all the disciplines. I personally am a computational semanticist. Our breed tackles the very difficult issues relating to meaning--something computers currently suck balls at. In my field you find the endeavor to build and improve systems like automatic question answering systems, and systems which extract semantic relationships between words like hypernymy (is-a relationships), meronymy (part-of relationships), and others. Computational semanticists also build systems to check discourse for cohesion and consistency. (And of course there is much more I'm omitting).

I hope this brief whirlwind tour of what (computational) semantics is helps.

And by the way, this threads comic remains my favorite xkcd comic so far.

[Alanbly]

I just want a "Fuck Computational Linguistics" Button. I think CCL would allow me to make myself one a shiny official one would be nice

[Alanbly]

The subculture spawned partially from Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, whose music was filled with barely understandable lyrics about pain and suffering and oh-woe-is-me and etc.

Kurt Cobain was NOT emo. He was practically homeless, he was living on the street when their first album was recorded. He knew actual pain. I really think that's the difference.

[muteKi]

Smells like bad spirits...



You'll have to excuse me, I'm on a Bleach run right now.

Anyway, the Japanese language to all its crazy symbols really does a good job of having a logical phonetic basis for its diacritical marks. Voiced vs. unvoiced. Basically, the only difference between "TA" and "DA" is the use of two little lines in the top right corner. [ただ!]

Just sayin'.

[Moo]

Does anyone else sometimes find themselves trying to write the code to do what their brain just did?
Like understanding obscure xkcd jokes/references, or having an akward conversation, or wondering if you want a raisin and oat cookie or macadamia and white choc cookie and JUST NOT BEING ABLE TO DECIDE! Or trying to think of a truely random number.

It makes my head go fizzle (one could even say I get an access violation but that would be geeky!)

Is that what it is like for computional linguists all the time?

[podbaydoor]

Does anyone else sometimes find themselves trying to write the code to do what their brain just did?

I do that all the time. I think in terms of visual images and movement, which makes it easy for me to rearrange/perform operations on thoughts in my head within seconds. But when I try to write the hypothetical code for it, I give up because it's way complicated, and would probably realistically involve some nasty tangle of loops and recursion or something beyond my extremely limited experience. Hooray for the brain being a parallel computer (or so I read somewhere).