[Corpora-List] minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a corpus as it appeared)

[Krishnamurthy, Ramesh]

Hi Bill
I don't understand Russell's assertion: "a perfectly logical natural language will contain only grammar words and no vocabulary items".
This would be like maths with only the symbols "+ - x" etc?
Surely even maths/logic, like natural languages, has to operate on something (operands, variables, vocabulary words)?
I can say X + Y = Z, but without X, Y, and Z, the symbols by themselves mean absolutely nothing? Or does logic not require meaning?
best
Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Visiting Academic Fellow, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET
Room: NX01. Tel: 0121-204-3812.
Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/
Project Investigator, GeWiss (Volkswagen Foundation) project: http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/research-projects/gewiss-spoken-academic-discourse/


Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 04:48:08 +0100 (BST)

From: Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a

      corpus it appeared) ... (2nd attempt (after first one was deleted))

To: corpora at uib.no, Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx at gmail.com>



Hi Albretch and all,



The similarity of paragraphs will hinge upon their argument and logic. So, by looking for minimal changes and intertextuality, you are looking for variables in natural language that mirror those in logic, and that Wittgenstein found difficult to isolate in his 1929 article:'Some remarks on logical form'.



Your best bet may be to apply the method I have evolved for finding subtext. It involves automating Bertrand Russell's assertion that a perfectly logical natural language will contain only grammar words and no vocabulary items.



So: (1) Take the paragraph you want to use and REPLACE all vocabulary words with WILDCARDS and search for those strings in a reference corpus;

(2) You may have difficulty finding a search engine that allows this;

(3) You will need to break up your search into shorter strings in order to prevent the machine from gagging on whole paragraphs, but this will reward you by showing up slight variations. (4) Questions of entailment will be cross-verifying and will assist in isolating the structure of type of logical event involved.





My method is to be found in an article that appears in a Festschrift for Professor Luis Quereda of the University of Granada. Title of collection (2010) is 'Para por y sobre Luis Quereda'. Published in Spain by University for Granada Press. The article examines subtext in the poetry of William Butler Yeats.



best wishes



Bill Louw

University of Zimbabwe



--- On Tue, 9/8/11, Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx at gmail.com> wrote:





From: Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx at gmail.com>

Subject: [Corpora-List] minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a corpus it appeared) ... (2nd attempt (after first one was deleted))

To: corpora at uib.no

Date: Tuesday, 9 August, 2011, 2:24





~

Say, you have a certain paragraph belonging to a text and relating to

the other paragraphs of that same text and to other ones of other

texts and you want to generate similar paragraphs.

~

How could you do that?

~

Thanks

lbrtchx



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