Hi Ada and Anil, I'm enjoying reading your discussion. It's been very informative and thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing your insights!
Best, Hesham On Fri, Aug 4, 2023, 8:51 PM Anil Singh via Corpora <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been enjoying the discussion. I hope it will continue. I have > learnt some new things. I was also confused about the tensor thing, > although not in the same way. > > I hope I am not among one of the scare quoted NLP practitioners, because > that's exactly what I like to call myself. I certainly don't think I am > qualified to work on language just because I can speak one. > > I am currently reading your thesis and trying to digest it. > > I also glanced through the syllabus you are preparing. I share your > interest in text encodings. among other things. I can't resist talking > about text encodings, whether I am teaching NLP or Computer Programming, > because I know first hand the problems in doing NLP for low resource > languages which are related to text encodings. > > If you can actually teach that syllabus, I envy you as I am unable to get > people interested in the very basics of language/linguistics. > > About the importance of granularities, I had, in my (very badly written) > PhD thesis, explicitly talked about NLP problem formulation in terms of > granularities. In my second research paper, I had used byte n-grams for > language identification. I use byte n-grams whenever I can. Actually, I > used it for language-encoding pair identification, as there are so many > non-standard 'encodings' which were used and perhaps are still used for > South Asian languages. My very first -- unsuccessful or you may say > unfinished -- attempt at doing some kind of NLP even before knowing that a > field called NLP or CL existed, was on building an encoding converter that > will work for all 'encodings' used for Indian languages. I too wish there > was a good comprehensive history text encodings, including non-standard > ad-hoc encodings. > > I also share your interest in word level language identification. In 2007 > I had published one of the earliest papers on what I called language > identification in a multilingual document, where I had tried word level > language identification, and what is now called language identification for > code switched data. > > About gender, I had actually made a kind of category assumption. I didn't > pay attention to the name, which you share with no less than Ada Byron. > > We have to be tolerant of what you call bad research for various > unavoidable reasons. Research is not what it used to be. At least that's my > opinion. Still, in some ways it is better, perhaps like in the case of > gender representation. > > About grammar, I have come to think of it as a kind of language model for > describing some linguistic phenomenon. I once received a review in which > the reviewer mentioned some grammatical mistakes and wrote that you don't > have to just see how the sentence/phrase sounds, you have to explicitly > check the grammar according to the rules. Thank you very much, but I learnt > English without paying any explicit attention to grammar. I am pretty sure > I didn't learn much from explicit teaching of grammar, whether of English, > or of Sanskrit, or of French.That doesn't necessarily mean I don't believe > in grammar, but I guess I am moving towards the language games view of > language. > > As to language being magical, well, that depends on what you mean by > magical. To me, it seems it is magical in the same sense as life itself is > magical. Nothing more, nothing less. Even computer programming I have been > known to call magical in a certain sense. > > I also completely agree that we can only hope that we are communicating as > we intended, but we rarely, if ever, actually attain that goal. > > I can't match your background, but I did have -- what can be called -- > four rounds of graduate training in different disciplines. I am still > trying to learn new things about language. However, I have no experience of > field work at all and that I regret, but it is partly because I am not a > social creature, or, to be more precise (as if one can be precise with > language), I am socially totally incompetent. I wouldn't know how to > approach anyone for fieldwork in Linguistics. > > On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 9:03 PM Ada Wan via Corpora <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> @Toms: >> for completeness' sake: would you mind please sharing your background? >> Thanks. >> >> On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 5:31 PM Ada Wan <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Thanks x2, Ibrtchx. >>> >>> On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 3:30 AM Albretch Mueller <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On 8/3/23, Toms Bergmanis <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> ... >>>> >>>> I, for one, have benefited from Ada's, as well as other member's >>>> suggestions and comments as I hope they have somehow benefited from >>>> mine. >>>> lbrtchx >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >> Corpora mailing list -- [email protected] >> https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >> > > > -- > - Anil > _______________________________________________ > Corpora mailing list -- [email protected] > https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >
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