30 Sept 2016 - Terry Regier: Seminar

TITLE:

Semantic typology and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in computational perspective

ABSTRACT:

Why do languages have the semantic categories they do, and what do those categories reveal about cognition?  Word meanings vary widely across languages, but this variation is constrained.  I will argue that this pattern reflects a range of language-specific solutions to a universal functional challenge: that of communicating precisely while using minimal cognitive resources. I will present a general computational framework that instantiates this idea, and will show how that framework accounts for cross-language variation in several semantic domains. I will then address the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - the claim that such language-specific categories in turn shape cognition. I will argue that viewing this hypothesis through the lens of probabilistic inference has the potential to resolve two sources of controversy: the challenge this hypothesis apparently poses to the widespread assumption of a universal groundwork for cognition, and the fact that some findings supporting the hypothesis do not always replicate reliably.  

BIO:

Terry Regier received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1992.  He subsequently taught at the University of Chicago, in Psychology, before returning in 2009 to Berkeley, where he is now professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, and director of the Cognitive Science Program.  His research explores the relation of language and cognition using computational methods, coupled with behavioral experiments and cross-language semantic data.

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Sep 30 2016 -

30 Sept 2016 - Terry Regier: Seminar

ILCC seminar by Terry Regier in IF 4.31/4.33

Informatics Forum 4.31/4.33