Group items tagged

"In everyday life in America, for example, I hear people expressing the same sentiment… 'What is done is done,', 'Let it go and move on,'," she says. Japanese commonly use a phrase, "shikata ga nai", for situations that are generally negative but leave you no alternative but to get over it. Its loose English translation is "it can't be helped".This phrase - and the sentiment behind it - raises some interesting questions. Is there something useful about the meaning of phrases like shou ga nai? Is there anything freeing about accepting frustrating situations, rather than trying to constantly fight them? This article discussed the benefits of phrases like this.

can't access full article, but this describes how they set up research experiments to answer their questions about the relationship between speech and gesture

"In cultures with left-to-right orthography (e.g., English-speaking cultures) time appears to flow rightward, but in cultures with right-to-left orthography (e.g., Arabic-speaking cultures) time flows leftward." Participants who read regular text tended to press the left button for past-oriented phrases and the right button for future-oriented phrases, but participants who read mirrored text did the opposite.

Including answers to questions such as: - Can you walk us through the logic Watson would go through to answer a question such as, "The antagonist of Stevenson's Treasure Island." (Who is Long John Silver?) - ...I found myself wondering whether what it does is really natural language processing, or something more akin to word association... does Watson really need to understand syntax and meaning to just search its database for words and phrases associated with the words and phrases in the clue?

Article looks at the linguistic shift away from the older generation "you're welcome" to "no problem" or "no worries." The article notes that formal language is unquestionably falling by the wayside, likely due to the increasing use of digital technology. Instant messaging and texting have compelled many young people to forgo punctuation altogether, since receiving a message with a period or question mark at the end of it can induce anxiety for some. This is because punctuation is now considered "formal," which roughly translates to "serious."The same is true for "you're welcome," according to linguists, and it might explain why younger generations are using less formal phrases when someone thanks them. While some people might mistakenly think that doing so suggests that the service was irksome or inconvenient, the linguists cited in the article contribute this phenomenon largely to linguistic mirroring. This basically means if the people you interact with on a day-to-day basis often say "you're welcome" or "no problem," then you'll likely mirror whatever phrase is more frequently being used around you. "I believe that this is just part of the evolution of language," adds Saccardi. "The majority of speakers will not intellectualize the connotative meanings of their utterances. Rather, they are more likely to just use particular phrases instead of others because that's what they have grown into." Interestingly, the phrase "you're welcome" has acquired a new meaning for younger generations, as many use it sarcastically to point out that another person forgot to thank them, as in Maui's song in _Moana_.

Brain-imaging studies have shown that music activates many diverse parts of the brain, including an overlap in where the brain processes music and language. Brains of people exposed to even casual musical training have an enhanced ability to generate the brain wave patterns associated with specific sounds, be they musical or spoken, said study leader Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Illinois. Musicians have subconsciously trained their brains to better recognize selective sound patterns, even as background noise goes up. In contrast, people with certain developmental disorders, such as dyslexia, have a harder time hearing sounds amid the din. Musical experience could therefore be a key therapy for children with dyslexia and similar language-related disorders. Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug has found that stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak can be trained to say hundreds of phrases by singing them first. Schlaug demonstrated the results of intensive musical therapy on patients with lesions on the left sides of their brains, those areas most associated with language. Before the therapy, these stroke patients responded to questions with largely incoherent sounds and phrases. But after just a few minutes with therapists, who asked them to sing phrases and tap their hands to the rhythm, the patients could sing "Happy Birthday," recite their addresses, and communicate if they were thirsty. "The underdeveloped systems on the right side of the brain that respond to music became enhanced and changed structures," Schlaug said at the press briefing.

palindrome-a phrase that reads the same forward or backward. Discover the mathematical properties of an interesting phrase.

This article highlights the phrases that Clinton used during the presidential debate to attract black voters. Phrases like "systematic racism", "implicit bias", "black bias", and "racist" were used to identify with the black voters. Many viewers were excited that she was facing such issues and was tackling them head on because according to this article, "A big chunk of Americans - not just people of color - want our leadership to talk about race, and to talk about policing the criminal justice system and the role that race plays in those institutions." As a presidential candidate, Clinton has been forced to become more skilled with the word choice. Here, she attempts to appeal herself to different groups of people to attract votes.

This article by Psychology Today is about phrases people say that may signifiy deceit. However, there are no verbal cues that can accurately predict that someone is lying. Some phrases that were mentioned in the article are "why would I do that", "that's about it", and " are you accusing me".

This article is about how scientists are discussing an A.I. that could translate thoughts into speech through MRI scans. A study was done on three people and analyzed their brain patterns as they listened to words and phrases in order to understand what part of the brain lights up when that word/phrase is said. They also used an A.I to translate MRI scans into words and phrases. However, the A.I.'s translation is doesn't make sense. While the result wasn't perfect, it discovered that the A.I can also decode meaning and imagination. While this is beginning of this kind of A.I. technology, it's possible that in the future, they will be able to decode our thoughts.

A Liverpool University study found reading poetry lights up both the left part of the brain concerned with language, as well as the right hemisphere, an area that relates to autobiographical memory and emotion. Reading triggers "reappraisal mechanisms" that cause people to reflect on their own experiences in light of what they read. The study might also suggest that word choice and sound are crucial elements in creating beneficial literary experiences: more "challenging" prose and poetry (striking wording/phrasing, complex syntax) sparks far more electrical activity in the brain than more pedestrian translations of those passages.

Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. This year, UW sophomores Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor - who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively - won the "Use It" undergraduate category that recognizes technology-based inventions to improve consumer devices. Their invention, "SignAloud," is a pair of gloves that can recognize hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in American Sign Language. Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data match a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.

Study finds that positive self talk phrases improve performance, while positive self talk sentences and negative forms of self talk do not improve performance

(This article was by my college friend, Quinn Eastman, who's a trained scientist and science writer for Emory University.) Listening to metaphors involving arms or legs loops in a region of the brain responsible for visual perception of those body parts, scientists have discovered. The finding, recently published in Brain & Language, is another example of how neuroscience studies are providing evidence for "grounded cognition" - the idea that comprehension of abstract concepts in the brain is built upon concrete experiences, a proposal whose history extends back millennia to Aristotle. When study participants heard sentences that included phrases such as "shoulder responsibility," "foot the bill" or "twist my arm", they tended to engage a region of the brain called the left extrastriate body area or EBA. The same level of activation was not seen when participants heard literal sentences containing phrases with a similar meaning, such as "take responsibility" or "pay the bill." The study included 12 right-handed, English-speaking people, and blood flow in their brains was monitored by functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). "The EBA is part of the extrastriate visual cortex, and it was known to be involved in identifying body parts," says senior author Krish Sathian, MD, PhD, professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine, and psychology at Emory University. "We found that the metaphor selectivity of the EBA matches its visual selectivity." The EBA was not activated when study participants heard literal, non-metaphorical sentences describing body parts. "This suggests that deep semantic processing is needed to recruit the EBA, over and above routine use of the words for body parts," Sathian says. Sathian's research team had previously observed that metaphors involving the sense of touch, such as "a rough day", activate a region of the brain important for sensing texture. In addition, other researchers have shown t

The choice of words and phrases in a question is critical in expressing the meaning and intent of the question to the respondent and ensuring that all respondents interpret the question the same way. Even small wording differences can substantially affect the answers people provide.

Some game modes: Try to created the longest sentence. The longer the sentence, the higher the score. Timed feature to test ability to construct nonsensical phrases under pressure. App called Sleep Furiously. Available from Apple, Google and Amazon

My favorite: "mamihlapinatapei," meaning "the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start." Note (via Language Log) that by "untranslatable," the author really means that there's no one English word which corresponds exactly with the foreign word. Clearly, the words are translatable, just as English phrases.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long." - Mitch Hedberg