English Studies

Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to the word's true meaning. We present experimental evidence showing that humans learn words effectively using cross-situational learning, even at high levels of referential uncertainty. Both overall success rates and the time taken to learn words are affected by the degree of referential uncertainty, with greater referential uncertainty leading to less reliable, slower learning. Words are also learned less successfully and more slowly if they are presented interleaved with occurrences of other words, although this effect is relatively weak. We present additional analyses of participants’ trial-by-trial behavior showing that participants make use of various cross-situational learning strategies, depending on the difficulty of the word-learning task. When referential uncertainty is low, participants generally apply a rigorous eliminative approach to cross-situational learning. When referential uncertainty is high, or exposures to different words are interleaved, participants apply a frequentist approximation to this eliminative approach. We further suggest that these two ways of exploiting cross-situational information reside on a continuum of learning strategies, underpinned by a single simple associative learning mechanism.

In the absence of direct evidence of the emergence of language, the explicitness of formal models which allow the exploration of interactions between multiple complex adaptive systems has proven to be an important tool. Computational simulations have been at the heart of the field of evolutionary linguistics for the past two decades, particularly through the language game and iterated learning paradigms, but these are now being extended and complemented in a number of directions, through formal mathematical models, language-ready robotic agents, and experimental simulations in the laboratory.For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Conflict of interest: The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article.

Traditionally, grammaticalisation has been described as being based on phe- nomena specific to language such as metaphorical extension or reanalysis. This characterisation is somewhat in contrast to claims that grammaticalisation is involved in the much more general process of the initial emergence of language. In this article, we provide a unified analysis of both the metaphor-based and
the reanalysis-based account of grammaticalisation which is grounded in the cognitive mechanisms underlying ostensive-inferential communication. We are thus able to show that the process of grammaticalisation is an instantiation of a domain-general pre-linguistic phenomenon.

Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to a word’s true meaning. Doubts have been expressed regarding the plausibility of cross-situational learning as a mechanism for learning human-scale lexicons in reasonable timescales under the levels of referential uncertainty likely to confront real word learners. We demonstrate mathematically that cross-situational learning facilitates the acquisition of large vocabularies despite significant levels of referential uncertainty at each exposure, and we provide estimates of lexicon learning times for several cross-situational learning strategies. This model suggests that cross-situational word learning cannot be ruled out on the basis that it predicts unreasonably long lexicon learning times. More generally, these results indicate that there is no necessary link between the ability to learn individual words rapidly and the capacity to acquire a large lexicon.

One important difference between existing accounts of protolanguage lies in their assumptions on the semantic complexity of protolinguistic utterances. I bring evidence about the nature of linguistic communication to bear on the plausibility of these assumptions, and show that communication is fundamentally inferential and characterised by semantic uncertainty. This not only allows individuals to maintain variation in linguistic representation, but also imposes a selection pressure that meanings be reconstructible from context. I argue that protolanguage utterances had varying degrees of semantic complexity, and developed into complex language gradually, through the same processes of re-analysis and analogy which still underpin continual change in modern languages.

Language learners must learn the meanings of many thousands of words, despite those words occurring in complex environments in which infinitely many meanings might be inferred by the learner as a word's true meaning. This problem of infinite referential uncertainty is often attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine. We provide a mathematical formalisation of an ideal cross-situational learner attempting to learn under infinite referential uncertainty, and identify conditions under which word learning is possible. As Quine's intuitions suggest, learning under infinite uncertainty is in fact possible, provided that learners have some means of ranking candidate word meanings in terms of their plausibility; furthermore, our analysis shows that this ranking could in fact be exceedingly weak, implying that constraints which allow learners to infer the plausibility of candidate word meanings could themselves be weak. This approach lifts the burden of explanation from 'smart' word learning constraints in learners, and suggests a programme of research into weak, unreliable, probabilistic constraints on the inference of word meaning in real word learners.

An absolute accident was an accident (q.v.) that some philosophers believed could act as a subject for other accidents, in the same way as a substance normally did. Wyclif was heavily critical of philosophers and theologians who spoke of such things, and was especially cynical about claims that the consecrated host was itself an absolute accident, an assumption which itself relied on the more dubious premise (for Wyclif, at least) that the substances of the bread and wine were annihilated at the point of consecration. Absolute and ordained powers of God The distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God was introduced in the twelfth century in order to negotiate questions relating to divine freedom and omnipotence. Though the distinction was formulated in a variety of subtly different ways (often with different terms for the respective powers), it was generally accepted that God's absolute power (that is, his absolute omnipotence) enabled him to do anything that did not contravene the laws of logic. In principle, he could therefore do anything that did not entail a contradiction. When he created the universe, however, God foreclosed many of the potentialities that would have been available to him in respect of his absolute power. Those that remained available to him constituted his ordained power. In broad terms, this was the theory inherited by late fourteenthcentury scholars from the earlier Oxford luminaries John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Robert Holkot. It is important to stress that none of these scholars, nor indeed Wyclif and his contemporaries, considered these two powers to be distinct entities in real terms; divine power was necessarily one thing. The distinction, however, allowed scholastics to consider divine power from two different perspectives: God's power was infinite in respect of his own nature, but it necessarily operated within the laws he had himself ordained. His absolute power, many insisted, would necessarily permit him, nevertheless, to re-ordain or even suspend his own laws, should he wish.

PHIL 101-Special Topics in Philosophy (3 Credits) Topics selected by the instructor for specialized study. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by title. PHIL 102-Introduction to Philosophy (3 Credits) An introduction to the main problems of philosophy and its methods of inquiry, analysis, and criticism. Works of important philosophers will be read. Honors section offered. PHIL 103-Special Topics in Ethics and Values (3 Credits) A study of the moral principles of conduct and the basic concepts underlying these principles, such as good, evil, right, wrong, justice, value, duty, and obligation, as they relate to specific issues or areas of life. May be repeated as content varies by title. Carolina Core: VSR PHIL 111-Introduction to Logic II (3 Credits) Philosophical foundations of inductive inference, including probability, statistics, and decision theory; application of the methods and results of inductive inference to philosophical problems such as the problem of rationality, epistemology, theory confirmation, social and political philosophy.

All biblical quotations follow the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible. Occasionally, I have departed from Douay-Rheims translation to reflect Wyclif 's own (probably unconscious) alterations to the text of the Vulgate. Note that the Vulgate and the Douay translation include the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament (books that appear in the Greek Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Scriptures): Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Note that the Vulgate and Douay translations number 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings as 1-2 Kings and 3-4 Kings, respectively. 1 and 2 Chronicles take the Greek title 1 and 2 Paralipomenon (denoting things omitted from the book of Kings), and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are called 1 and 2 Esdras, respectively. Numbering of biblical verses is here generally provided in square brackets, as such numbering was introduced only after the medieval period. Quotations from the Lauda Sion Salvatorem sequence in Wyclif 's text follow the classic English rendering that appears in The Sarum Missal done into English, by A. Harford Pearson (London: The Church Printing Company, 1884). All translations from Wyclif and all other translations from sources other than Wyclif are my own. Where alternative translations of Wyclif 's texts translated here exist, I have identified these alongside the Latin edition I have used.

All biblical quotations follow the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible. Occasionally, I have departed from Douay-Rheims translation to reflect Wyclif 's own (probably unconscious) alterations to the text of the Vulgate. Note that the Vulgate and the Douay translation include the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament (books that appear in the Greek Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Scriptures): Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Note that the Vulgate and Douay translations number 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings as 1-2 Kings and 3-4 Kings, respectively. 1 and 2 Chronicles take the Greek title 1 and 2 Paralipomenon (denoting things omitted from the book of Kings), and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are called 1 and 2 Esdras, respectively. Numbering of biblical verses is here generally provided in square brackets, as such numbering was introduced only after the medieval period. Quotations from the Lauda Sion Salvatorem sequence in Wyclif 's text follow the classic English rendering that appears in The Sarum Missal done into English, by A. Harford Pearson (London: The Church Printing Company, 1884). All translations from Wyclif and all other translations from sources other than Wyclif are my own. Where alternative translations of Wyclif 's texts translated here exist, I have identified these alongside the Latin edition I have used.