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Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4 If not Latin, then what? Please see the links at...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3 Plants and the moon. For thousands of years, people...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are...

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #1

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. ...

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Patrick LockerbyRSS Feed of this column.

Retired engineer, 73 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge... Read More »

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The Bookworm And The Encyclopedias - The Solution



Last Monday I posed a simple math puzzle:


A set of 10 encyclopedias is sitting on a bookshelf in left-to-right numerical order.


Each single volume contains 1,000 pages.    


A bookworm eats its way directly and linearly through them in a straight line.


It starts on page 1 of volume 1.


It ends on page 1,000  of volume 10.


Question:    Not counting any covers, flysheets, etc., how many pages does the bookworm eat ?
A Science Of Human Language - Part #3

In Part #1
of this series, I suggested that a grammar heavily based in syntax was not sufficiently scientific as a general theory of how language functions.

Part #2 was an overview of how linguistic error-handling processes can add to the reliability and predictability of communication using human language.
A Science Of Human Language - Part #2




Quistic Grammar : A New Universal Grammar

In
Part #1 of this series, I suggested that a grammar heavily based in syntax was not sufficiently scientific as a general theory of how language functions.  In developing the current theory I shall try to demonstrate that various observations about human language can be tied together into an inclusive theory of how language functions.  The first, and to my mind most important observation about human language is its redundancy, its apparent inefficiency in the use of the resources of sounds and symbols.

A Science Of Human Language - Part #1


Quistic Grammar : A New Universal Grammar

In this series of articles I hope to build, on a sure foundation, a theory which explains language as a means by which evolution can encode information of value to the survival of a species so that it may be transmitted between individuals without the use of genes.  The core of the theory suggests that language, in order to transmit information most effectively, encodes that information as 'packets of ideas' which form the answers to simple questions.


Introductory Remarks
The Brain's Linguistic Auto-Pilot



We tend to be not very good at proof-reading and 'proof-hearing' our own words.  It takes mental training and a great deal of concentration even to proof-read other peoples' words, or to notice common slips of speech.  This, I suggest, is because our brain holds a linguistic auto-pilot which is so good at error-correction that we are blissfully unaware of most typos and slurs of speech.


The Jabberwock Effect
Open Source For New Hydrogen Powered Car


A new hydrogen powered car unveiled in the UK is to be developed using open source methods.
The Riversimple Urban car was unveiled in public for the first time at Somerset House in London on 16th June 2009. 


Image source: Riversimple.com