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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Forgive me if someone mentioned this earlier,
but Kenneth Pike is well-known for his take on language as particle, wave, and
field, an idea originally laid out in: </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Pike</span></font>, Kenneth. 1959. "Language as Particle, Wave,
and Field." In <i><span style='font-style:italic'>The </span></i><i><span
style='font-style:italic'>Texas</span></i><i><span style='font-style:italic'>
Quarterly</span></i> 2:2.</p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>And subsequently in more detail in other words.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Best,</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>John Goldsmith</span></font> </p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'> </span></font></p>
<div style='border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma'>-----Original Message-----<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>From:</span></b> owner-corpora@lists.uib.no
[mailto:owner-corpora@lists.uib.no] <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On Behalf
Of </span></b>Dominic Widdows<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> </span></font><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'>Wednesday,
December 14, 2005</span></font><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'> </span></font><font
size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'>10:32 AM</span></font><font
size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'><br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> Ramesh Krishnamurthy<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Cc:</span></b> joerg.schuster@gmail.com;
CORPORA@hd.uib.no<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> Re: [Corpora-List]
Stubbs' analogy?</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Dear Ramesh,<br>
<br>
I would be wary of an analogy that tried to view lexical information as
discrete and particle-like, and grammatical information as continuous and
wave-like. I think your instinct for "token" rather than
"type" is more appropriate, and of course the type / token
distinction happens in both lexicon and grammar.<br>
<br>
There are definitely models of the lexicon in which word senses have distributions
over regions of "semantic space", which is rather like the idea of
the position of a particle being represented as a wave-function. A rough
analogy then arises between observing a word in context and inferring its
appropriate sense, and observing a particle in an experiment and inferring its
actual position. <br>
<br>
Colin Cherry's 1956 book, "On Human Communication", contains a lot of
insight on the logical necessity of "quantization" in human language.
Obvious examples include concepts such as "size" which may be a
continuous variable, but we have a discrete number of words ("small",
"large", etc.) to describe sizes. Arguably, we can generate phrases
to describe any sizes we want to ("not too small", "quite large
but not very large", etc.), but we can't get very fine-grained without
resorting to number words. The process of transcribing sounds into symbolic
representations (e.g. strings of alphabetic characters) in the first place is a
form of quantization.<br>
<br>
More recent implementations of these ideas include Schutze's Word Sense
Discrimination (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/schutze98automatic.html), which
clusters word senses and "quantizes" new context-vectors my mapping
them to their nearest cluster. The close similarity between the vector model
used in this work and the vector model used in quantum mechanics is
investigated in my own book, "Geometry and Meaning" (see
http://infomap.stanford.edu/book/chapters/chapter7.html).<br>
<br>
This work relates mainly to the lexicon, and does not compare lexicon with grammar
at all. My only suggestion here is that there are enough quantum analogies in
studying just the lexicon, and I therefore doubt whether it is possible to
consign the lexicon to playing just one of the many confusing roles that abound
in quantum theory.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
Dominic</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Hi Jörg,<br>
<br>
<br>
Not a lot, unfortunately, although your question has prompted me to find out
more....*<br>
<br>
(I think it was) John Sinclair (who) once described lexis and grammar as
looking at<br>
language through opposite ends of the same telescope...<br>
<br>
Somewhere or other, I picked up the idea that if lexis and grammar were looking
at the same<br>
phenomenon (language) from different points of view, the dichotomy might be
similar to one that<br>
has confronted physicists: looking at light as particle and wave at the same
time.<br>
<br>
I'm sure this is an ultra-naive understanding on my part, but if you can help,
I'd be grateful.<br>
<br>
*e.g. Queen Mary College London ( http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~zgap118/1/ etc)<br>
has some information that might help:<br>
<br>
<i><span style='font-style:italic'>Energy and matter we have learnt from
Einstein's theories are analagous, matter can be simply described in terms of
energy. So far we have only discovered two ways in which energy can be
transfered. These are particles and waves....</span></i><br>
<i><span style='font-style:italic'>Particles are discrete, their energy is
concentrated into what appears to be a finite space, which has definite
boundaries and its contents we consider to be homogenous (the same at any point
within the particle)... </span></i>[lexical item?]<i><span style='font-style:
italic'> Particles exist at a specific location. If they are shown on 3D graph,
they have x, y, and z coordinates. They can never exist in more than one place
at once... </span></i>[so "token" rather than "type"?] <br>
<i><span style='font-style:italic'>Waves unlike particles cannot be considered
a finite entity. Their energy cannot be considered to exist in a single place
since a wave by definition varies in both displacement and in time.... In an
area of space, unlike a particle, a wave can propagate until it exists in all
locations and at all times... </span></i>[grammar?]<br>
<br>
Best<br>
Ramesh<br>
<br>
At </span></font>11:00 14/12/2005, you wrote:</p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I also use the 'particle/wave'
analogy for the 'lexico-grammar'<br>
continuum<br>
<br>
<br>
Could you tell us more about this? I have never heard of it.<br>
<br>
Jörg</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Ramesh Krishnamurthy<br>
Lecturer in English Studies<br>
School of Languages and Social Sciences<br>
</span></font>Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK<br>
Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812<br>
Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766<br>
<?color><?param 0000,0000,EEEE>http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/english/<?/color> </p>
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