Newport addresses a fundamental question in language learning: When, why, and how do learners come to form rules, given linguistic input that varies probabilistically? She presents several case studies that confirm and extend a long‐standing theme of her work: that young learners tend to form rules from variable input, whereas adult learners store and use its statistical probabilities. Thus, child and adult learners use quite different kinds of computations when learning language; the consequence is that operating on the very (...) same input to learning results in quite different outcomes of learning. (shrink)

The language sciences—Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, and Computational Linguistics—have not been broadly represented at the Cognitive Science Society meetings of the past 30 years, but they are an important part of the heart of cognitive science. This article discusses several major themes that have dominated the controversies and consensus in the study of language and suggests the most pressing issues of the future. These themes include differences among the language science disciplines in their view of numbers and symbols and of modular and (...) distributed cognition, and the need for an increasing prominence of questions concerning language and the brain. (shrink)

We present a series of three analyses of young children's linguistic input to determine the distributional information it could plausibly offer to the process of grammatical category learning. Each analysis was conducted on four separate corpora from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000) of speech directed to children under 2;5. We showthat, in accord with other findings, a distributional analysis which categorizeswords based on their co‐occurrence patterns with surroundingwords successfully categorizes the majority of nouns and verbs. In Analyses 2 and 3, (...) we attempt to make our analyses more closely relevant to natural language acquisition by adopting more realistic assumptions about howyoung children represent their input. In Analysis 2, we limit the distributional context by imposing phrase structure boundaries, and find that categorization improves even beyond that obtained from less limited contexts. In Analysis 3, we reduce the representation of input elements which young children might not fully process and we find that categorization is not adversely affected: Although noun categorization is worse than in Analyses 1 and 2, it is still good; and verb categorization actually improves. Overall, successful categorization of nouns and verbs is maintained across all analyses. These results provide promising support for theories of grammatical category formation involving distributional analysis, as long as these analyses are combined with appropriate assumptions about the child learner's computational biases and capabilities. (shrink)

Across languages of the world, some grammatical patterns have been argued to be more common than expected by chance. These are sometimes referred to as language universals. One such universal is the correlation between constituent order freedom and the presence of a case system in a language. Here, we explore whether this correlation can be explained by a bias to balance production effort and informativity of cues to grammatical function. Two groups of learners were presented with miniature artificial languages containing (...) optional case marking and either flexible or fixed constituent order. Learners of the flexible order language used case marking significantly more often. This result parallels the typological correlation between constituent order flexibility and the presence of case marking in a language and provides a possible explanation for the historical development of Old English to Modern English, from flexible constituent order with case marking to relatively fixed order without case marking. In addition, learners of the flexible order language conditioned case marking on constituent order, using more case marking with the cross-linguistically less frequent order, again mirroring typological data. These results suggest that some cross-linguistic generalizations originate in functionally motivated biases operating during language learning. (shrink)

Previous studies of auditory statistical learning have typically presented learners with sequential structural information that is uniformly distributed across the entire exposure corpus. Here we present learners with nonuniform distributions of structural information by altering the organization of trisyllabic nonsense words at midstream. When this structural change was unmarked by low‐level acoustic cues, or even when cued by a pitch change, only the first of the two structures was learned. However, both structures were learned when there was an explicit cue (...) to the midstream change or when exposure to the second structure was tripled in duration. These results demonstrate that successful extraction of the structure in an auditory statistical learning task reduces the ability to learn subsequent structures, unless the presence of two structures is marked explicitly or the exposure to the second is quite lengthy. The mechanisms by which learners detect and use changes in distributional information to maintain sensitivity to multiple structures are discussed from both behavioral and computational perspectives. (shrink)

Roper, Elissa The contemporary Catholic Church is experiencing a breakthrough into a fuller stage of self-understanding, and of self-appropriation as the Body of Christ, known as 'synodality'. It is an opening to the possibility of a new experience of transformation on all levels of being Church. Synodality is being promoted and provoked by the papacy of Pope Francis, which has been accompanied by the progressive uncovering of sexual abuse within the Church, prevalent and deeply wounding. Both synodality and the (...) scandal of abuse demand the transformation of all members, processes and structures of the Church. (shrink)

Many of Derrida's formative texts from 1967 about writing, the trace, supplementarity, death, and différance feature striking liminal references to the figure of the mother and are implicitly haunted by the question of birth. In a pivotal passage of De la grammatologie, Derrida links the very futurity of deconstruction to the emergence of ‘a reading discipline to be born’. In this essay, I show that through his readings of the ‘birth of language’ in Lévi-Strauss and Rousseau, Derrida implicitly invites us (...) to relate the inscription of this ‘discipline of reading yet to be born’ to a deconstructive writing of birth that still remains to be read. Birth, as it emerges through this re-reading of the 1967 texts, can neither be conceived as a fixed moment of past plenitude nor contained by a natural, human figure. Instead, it is an exorbitantly exorbitant supplement that is temporally dislocated, iterative, and fissured with non-being. (shrink)

Blending high-interest original writing with select primary sources on political theory, From Concept to Dialogue: An Introduction to Political Theory fosters appreciation for and critical thinking about major political concepts. The text poses thought-provoking questions that guide readers into drawing critical information out of challenging material. Section 1 of the text introduces key concepts and questions of political theory such as human nature, political change, justice, power, governance, and citizenship. Each chapter in this section contains engaging activities that allow readers (...) to apply these concept to their lives. In Section 2 readers are introduced to seminal thinkers including Aristophanes, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill. Original works such as The Clouds, The Prince, the Apology of Socrates, and Leviathan are framed by introductions that place them in context. The discussion questions spark thought and discussion, support comprehension and retention, and encourage reflection on the concepts and questions in Section 1. Featuring foundational readings geared to students with no prior exposure to the discipline and original material that shows how they relate to our contemporary political world, From Concept to Dialogue is an ideal textbook for courses in introductory political science and political philosophy. Elissa Alzate holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Alzate is currently an assistant professor at Winona State University in Minnesota, where she has taught courses in the history of political thought, political ideologies, American political thought, political theories of education, religion and toleration in political thought, and feminist political theory. Her writing has appeared in Polity, and she is the author of the book Religious Liberty in a Lockean Society: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which is forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan. Dr. Alzate is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Association for Political Theory. (shrink)

Any first step in organisational adaptation starts with individuals’ responses and willingness (or otherwise) to change an aspect of themselves given the transcontextual settings in which they are operating (Bateson in Small arcs of larger circles: framing through other patterns, Triarchy Press, Axminster, 2018). This research explores the implications for organisational adaptation strategies when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being embedded into the ecology of the organisation, and when employees have a dominant fixed or growth mindset (Dweck in Mindset: changing the (...) way you think to fulfil your potential. Robinson, London, 2017). Research participants were supplied with a single scenario based in 2030, where—as a result of Artificial Intelligence technology implementation—employees were going to be displaced. Using Torbert’s (Organizational wisdom and executive courage, New Lexington Press, San Francisco, 1998) ‘first, second and third person’ research theory, participants were asked to independently review their thoughts, sense, and image of the future from a fixed mindset position (considered to be the worst case), then from a growth mindset perspective (best case), and then do the same collectively. Five key findings are outlined which support the principle that having a growth mindset is a key component of adaptive capacity and futures literacy. The five key findings conclude that AI adaptation processes need to include compassion and authenticity, embodiment, fundamental needs and motivations, mutual learning and considering what lies beyond the edges of the organisation (Bateson in Small arcs of larger circles: framing through other patterns, Triarchy Press, Axminster, 2018). (shrink)

This essay traces the pivotal—although largely unspoken—relation between the mother and language in Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s reading of Trakl in Geschlecht III. Derrida’s gloss of the “idiom” in Heidegger’s text leads to a reflection on the language of gestation through the family of words linking “tragen” (carrying) to “austragen” (carrying to term). Following Derrida, the essay proposes that Heidegger’s conception of the time of the “unborn” in his essay “Language in the Poem” is the time of the promise and (...) the promise of a future that would not be conceived according to a vulgar conception of time. Heidegger’s idiomatic use of the prefix “un-” in the terms “unspoken” and “unborn” can be read as a temporal inflection that opens up another kind of thinking about birth. The essay concludes by asking how the place of the mother is inscribed otherwise in this unthinking of birth. (shrink)

This article argues that climate change puts excessive demands on the psyche. The omnipresent specter of climate change and global warming cannot be processed by individual psyches because there is little – if anything – that individual people can do to stop the devastation that hovers on the horizon. Unlike other disasters and calamities that have affected humans (war, genocide, nuclear destruction, pandemics, despotism) climate change presents unique challenges to the human psyche as it engages traumatic temporality on a global (...) scale. The inexorably real threat of climate change threatens the psyche’s ability to establish a rational relation to reality. The scale and speed of the catastrophic destruction underway calls for a reconsideration of the force and quality of the denial that accompanies it. Some of the most ‘wellmeaning’ forms of denial may turn out to be the most insidious as they attempt to rationalize, humanize and normalize actions and events that ought to force us to reckon with what we cannot bear to know. (shrink)

Evidence from optic ataxic patients with bilateral lesions to the superior parietal lobes does not support the view that there are separate planning and control mechanisms located in the IPL and SPL respectively. The aberrant reaches of patients with bilateral SPL damage towards extrafoveal targets seem to suggest a deficit in the selection of appropriate motor programmes rather than a deficit restricted to on-line control.

In Hesiod’s legendary account of how humans came to be, two extrahuman characters, Prometheus and Pandora, play decisive roles. Both figures intercede and intervene in man’s world and indeed inaugurate the series of events that culminates in the becoming human of man.1 Although neither Prometheus nor Pandora is human, they both participate actively in human life, and through their respective actions the race of men becomes not only alienated from the realm of gods and animals but also from its own (...) prior, prelapsarian existence. The irrevocable and irreducibly self- alienated and internally contradictory status of the human emerges as a direct consequence of the actions of these two “extrahuman” figures. These two .. (shrink)

Que les violences sexuelles fassent partie intégrante de la guerre est un constat aujourd’hui largement accepté. Pourtant, lorsqu’il s’agit de la Wehrmacht, cela reste une question controversée et un domaine de recherche récent. Pendant trop longtemps la Guerre froide, rendant difficile voire impossible l’accès aux archives soviétiques, avait favorisé le mythe d’une Wehrmacht “propre” (saubere Wehrmacht). Parce que c’est bien le front de l’Est qui était le théâtre des violences les plus extrê...

This paper celebrates the work of Pleshette DeArmitt. In this essay, I show how Pleshette DeArmitt's book, The Right to Narcissism, is haunted by Freud's essay "On Narcissism.".

By juxtaposing readings of selected feminist critics with a reading of Ovid's account of Philomela's rape and silencing, this essay interrogates the rhetorical, political, and epistemological implications of the feminist "we." As a political intervention that comes into being as a response to women's oppression, feminism must posit a collective "we." But this feminist "we" is best understood as an impersonal, performative pronoun whose political force is not derived from a knowable referent.