Hurricanes and hashtags: Characterizing online collective attention for natural disasters

We study collective attention paid towards hurricanes through the lens of n-grams on Twitter, a social media platform with global reach. Using hurricane name mentions as a proxy for awareness, we find that the exogenous temporal dynamics are remarkably similar across storms, but that overall collective attention varies widely even among storms causing comparable deaths and damage. We construct ‘hurricane attention maps’ and observe that hurricanes causing deaths on (or economic damage to) the continental United States generate substantially more attention in English language tweets than those that do not. We find that a hurricane’s Saffir-Simpson wind scale category assignment is strongly associated with the amount of attention it receives. Higher category storms receive higher proportional increases of attention per proportional increases in number of deaths or dollars of damage, than lower category storms. The most damaging and deadly storms of the 2010s, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, generated the most attention and were remembered the longest, respectively. On average, a category 5 storm receives 4.6 times more attention than a category 1 storm causing the same number of deaths and economic damage.

Morphological Marking Irregularity of Bahasa Indonesia and the Acquisition of English Words

All languages share the same lexical categories such as verb, noun, adjective, and adverb. Unlike English, however, Bahasa Indonesia carries fewer consistent patterns of morphological markers for word categories. A verb, for instance, is marked with the prefix {me-} as in me-nginjak (to step on); however, other verbs do not carry this marker as in makan (eat), tidur (sleep), and tergantung (depend). As for English, the suffix {-ing} or {-ed/-en}, for instance, indicates that the root is a verb regardless of the verb transitivity. This research investigated if the irregularity in the morphological marking of Bahasa Indonesia verbs created problems in acquiring English words. A test of the "word category assignment" (Test 1) was provided to two groups of respondents: undergraduate students of English and doctoral students of Bahasa Indonesia. A "word-in-context translation into English" (Test 2) was given to a group of undergraduates of English. The first was to know if the respondents managed to assign the Bahasa Indonesia words with correct lexical categories, and the second was to know if the words were assigned with correct word categories when translated in English. This was to know if the Bahasa Indonesia and English words received the same word-category. The results show that errors in the assignment of the grammatical categories of the Bahasa Indonesia words were found pervasive among the two groups. And the lexico-grammar behavior seems to give impact on the categorization of the Bahasa Indonesia words when provided in English as also detected in the translation. It is strongly indicative that confusion in the word category assignment of Bahasa Indonesia gives impact on the acquisition of English words.Key words: morphological markers, suffix, word category, language transfer, lexico-grammarAbstrak: Semua bahasa memiliki kategori leksikal yang sama seperti verba, nomina, adjektiva, dan adverbia. Tidak seperti bahasa Inggris, Bahasa Indonesia memiliki pola penanda morfologi yang lebih sedikit untuk kategori kata. Kata kerja, misalnya, ditandai dengan awalan {me} seperti pada me-nginjak; namun verba lain tidak memiliki penanda ini seperti pada makan, tidur, dan tergantung. Sedangkan bahasa Inggris, misalnya sufiks {-ing} atau {-ed /-en}, akar kata (root) adalah kata kerja terlepas dari kata kerja transitivitas. Penelitian ini mencari tahu apakah ketidakteraturan dalam penandaan morfologi kata kerja Bahasa Indonesia menimbulkan masalah dalam mempelajari kata dalam bahasa Inggris. Tes "tugas kategori kata" (Tes 1) diberikan kepada dua kelompok responden: mahasiswa sarjana Bahasa Inggris dan mahasiswa doktoral Bahasa Indonesia. Tes "terjemahan kata-dalam-konteks ke dalam bahasa Inggris" (Tes 2) diberikan kepada sekelompok mahasiswa dari kelompok bahasa Inggris. Tes pertama untuk mengetahui apakah responden berhasil menentukan kata-kata dalam Bahasa Indonesia dengan kategori leksikal yang benar, dan tes kedua untuk mengetahui apakah kata-kata tersebut diberi kategori kata yang benar ketika diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Inggris. Tujuan kedua tes tersebut untuk mengetahui apakah kata-kata dalam Bahasa Indonesia dan Bahasa Inggris memiliki kategori kata yang sama. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kesalahan dalam pengkategorian gramatikal kata-kata Bahasa Indonesia ditemukan di kedua kelompok. Perilaku lexico-grammar berdampak pada kategorisasi kata-kata dalam Bahasa Indonesia jika diberikan dalam bahasa Inggris seperti yang ditemukan dalam terjemahan. Hal ini menjadi indikasi kuat bahwa kebingungan dalam penetapan kategori kata dalam Bahasa Indonesia berdampak pada pembelajaran kata dalam bahasa Inggris.Kata kunci: penanda morfologi, sufiks, kategori kata, transfer bahasa, lexico-grammar

Robot Career Fair: An Exploratory Evaluation of Anthropomorphic Robots in Various Career Categories

Robots are being used in a host of different work environments currently. However, to date there has been very little broad exploration into the designs of systems and how that affects users’ perception of fit for the robots in different job categories. In the present experiment we showed participants images of 252 robots and asked them to make assignments of the robots into 16 potential job categories taken from the U.S. Department of Labor. The robots’ overall human likeness, as well as four contributory components of anthropomorphism were used to predict job category assignment. Results indicate that participants expect higher levels of anthropomorphism in jobs with more direct human interactions (such as education and hospitality), whereas they expect minimal levels in jobs with less human interaction (e.g. agriculture and architecture). Results also indicate that there is more nuance required for these judgments than general human likeness.

Denominal verb formationin English and Modern Greek

Cross-linguistically, there are different patterns for denominal verb formation and languages show preferences for certain patterns (cf. McIntyre, 2015). In this paper, I focus on denominal verb formation in English and Modern Greek. The analyzed data come from the TenTen corpora (Sketch Engine, Kilgariff et al., 2014). The first aim is to quantify the use of the patterns of denominal verb formations in both languages. The results of the analysis corroborate the findings of previous analyses, such as the strong preference for conversion for denominal verb formation in English and for suffixation in Modern Greek. However, the present paper aims to go a step further. The second aim is to discuss why English and Modern Greek show these preferences. I propose that the preferences can be explained if we correlate the parameters of inflectional marking, word order/configurationality, system of lexical category assignment and boundary permeability.

A computational model of context-dependent encodings during category learning

Although current exemplar models of category learning are flexible and can capture how different features are emphasized for different categories, they still lack in the flexibility to adapt to local pressures in category learning, such as the effect of different sequences of study. In this paper we introduce a new model of category learning, the Sequential Attention Theory Model (SAT-M), in which the encoding of each presented item is influenced not only by its category assignment (global context) as in other exemplar models, but also by how its properties relate to the properties of temporally neighboring items (local context). We demonstrate that SAT-M is able to capture the effect of local context and predict not only learning but also learners’ attentional patterns during learning.

Extreme classification

Categorization retains its key importance in research on human cognition. It is an intellectual area where all disciplines devoted to human cognition – psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics – intersect. In language, categorization is not only a central part of lexical structure but is also salient in systems of nominal classification, notably gender and classifiers. Recent years have seen great progress in the description and analysis of nominal classification systems, so that we are now in a position to offer an account of such systems which brings cognition and typology together, providing the essential parameters for the calibration of experiments for investigating cognition. To this end, we establish the extremes of nominal classification systems, from the surprisingly simple to the surprisingly complex. We analyse the two essential components of nominal classification systems: (i) assignment, i.e. the principles (semantic or formal) which govern category assignment and (ii) exponence, i.e. the morphological means by which systems of nominal classification are expressed. We discuss extreme configurations of assignment and exponence in individual languages and extreme multiple pairings of assignment and exponence in languages with two or even more concurrent classification systems.

Afrikaans directionality switch in ‘triple’ V-clusters with the auxiliary het

The general perspective of the paper is that all (dis)harmonic branching orders within the West-Germanic V-clusters imply a different categorization by the acquisition procedure that should be independently motivated. More specific, the paper discusses the directionality switch with the temporal auxiliary het (‘have’) in Afrikaans. Afrikaans has a right-branching V-cluster 1-2-3. The directionality switches in subordinate clauses when V1 is the auxiliary het, which seemingly gives rise to the a-typical order 2-3-1 [[leer 2 swem 3] het 1]. V2 is in this case an IPP (Infinitivus-pro-participio) infinitive. I propose to derive the directionality switch as a matter of category assignment by an acquisition procedure that is unaware of underlying structure followed by movements. I argue that sentence-final het has been reanalyzed as a morphological suffix on the V3. This leads to a simplification of the apparent 2-3-1 V-cluster into a binary 1–2 V-cluster [leer 1 [swem het]2].

Focal versus distributed temporal cortex activity for speech sound category assignment

SummaryPercepts and words can be decoded from largely distributed neural activity measures. The existence of widespread representations might, however, conflict with the fundamental notions of hierarchical processing and efficient coding. Using fMRI and MEG during syllable identification, we first show that sensory and decisional activity co-localize to a restricted part of the posterior superior temporal cortex. Next, using intracortical recordings we demonstrate that early and focal neural activity in this region distinguishes correct from incorrect decisions and can be machine-decoded to classify syllables. Crucially, significant machine-decoding was possible from neuronal activity sampled across widespread regions, despite weak or absent sensory or decision-related responses. These findings show that a complex behavior like speech sound categorization relies on an efficient readout of focal neural activity, while distributed activity, although decodable by machine-learning, reflects collateral processes of sensory perception and decision.