The Liberal Arts and the End of Education

1998 ◽  
pp. 137-141
Author(s):  
Kathleen Haney
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Historical Tradition

An international conference that takes Philosophy Educating Humanity as its theme does well to revisit the liberal arts tradition. Although the liberal arts are most often assimilated to studies brought together as the Humanities, the old usage included the arts which employed artificial languages in mathematics, music, and astronomy, as well as the literature and letters of the various natural languages. The current conflation of liberal education with the humanities does violence to the historical tradition in education, reducing it to fluff in the eyes of tough-minded scientists who know that only numbers deliver objectivity. The liberal arts of the traditional undergraduate curriculum provided the skills to liberate the student's linguistic powers so that he or she could read, speak, and understand natural language in all its functions. To educate human persons to master language is to encourage students to take possession of their natural powers so that they can express themselves, understand what others say, and reason together. The arts of natural language lead to mastery of the mathematical arts which use a language that is no one's mother tongue. Together, the seven arts rid students of the worst enemies of humankind: ignorance and prejudice.

Technologische Innovatie

1984 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
A.L.M.P. Olde Kalter
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Operational Environment ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Software House ◽  
The Usa

Within the Dutch software house BSO, a 14-months study for the European Commission has been performed on the feasibility of DLT: Distributed Language Translation, a semi-automatic, multilingual translation system. This project, in cooperation with a number of experts from universities in several EC-counties, resulted in a report that found its way to science and industry. DLT is an interlingual system, as opposed to the transfer system EUROTRA. Whereas the interface of the latter, apart from a one-to-one lexical substitution as its transfer, heavily leans on semantic information in the form of abstract formatives such as 'agent','patient', DLT's Intermediate Language (IL), having the form of natural language, gives the advantage of an IL-dictionary at both sides of the dividing-line between Source Language (SL) and Target Language (TL): the translation can profit intensively from valency information. As a compromise between the ambiguous character of natural language and the need of an effective IL to be sufficiently similar to natural languages, DLT has adopted as its IL a modified subset of an artificial language that is less ambiguous than natural languages, especially on the syntactical level: a good starting point to further reduction of this problem. As opposed to e.g. the batch-oriented system SYSTRAN, DLT's networked correspondence of SL/IL/TL with its outside operational environment links up with hardware developments. This is also true of the computer-initiated interactive disambiguation dialogue during source text entry instead of traditional post-editing. The graduates' unemployment of Faculties of Arts is relatively high. Nevertheless, a report, published by the Arts Section of the Dutch Academic Council by the end of 1983, suggests employment possibilities in sectors other than education, e.g.: language projects in the software industry and information technology. As the actual machine translation market in the USA shows, there may be some hope for these graduates. Perhaps a more flexible way of study programming in Faculties of Arts may help to find these ways.

The translator’s sensitivity to syntactic ambiguity—a psycholinguistics experiment

1976 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elyse Piquette
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Finite Number ◽  
Infinite Number ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Important Notion

Transformational grammar has attempted to outline the systematic nature of language structure while also stressing the creative aspect of language. Language is systematic in that speakers use a finite number of means to make up their messages, and yet it is creative in that there are an infinite number of individual different messages which are possible in any natural language. In natural languages, however, there is not a perfect one-to-one correspondence between possible messages—intended or perceived—and possible linguistic realizations, as there exists in conventional or artificial languages. Often it is found in natural languages that a single linguistic form may have two or more meanings. Homonymy, whether it is lexical or syntactic, is an important notion, not only because syntactic ambiguity plays a central role in linguistic theory, but also because its study gives us a better understanding of the systematics of language and of the way we attach meaning to linguistic representations. Hence, the importance of evaluating how speakers deal with syntactic ambiguity in their attempts to understand and to be understood.

Negation

2006 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Napoli
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Negation Sign

The paper is concerned with negation in artificial and natural languages. "Negation" is an ambiguous word. It can mean three different things: An operation(negating), an operator (a sign of negation), the result of an operation. The threethings, however, are intimately linked. An operation such as negation, is realizedthrough an operator of negation, i.e. consists in adding a symbol of negation to an entity to obtain an entity of the same type; and which operation it is dependson what it applies to and on what results from its application. I argue that negation is not an operation on linguistic acts but rather anoperation on the objects of linguistic acts, namely sentences. And I assume that the negation of a sentence is a sentence that contradicts it. If so, the negation of a sentence may be obtained, in case the sentence is molecular, by applying the operation of negation not to the sentence itself but to a constituent sentence. To put it in a succinct and paradoxically sounding way we could say that in order to negate a sentence it is sufficient but not necessary to negate it. However that negation applies to sentences is true only for artificial languages, in which the sign of negation is a monadic sentential connective. In natural language, negation applies to expressions other than sentences, namely word sand non-sentential phrases. Still words and not sentential phrases are interesting and valuable only as ultimate or immediate constituents of sentences, as a means of saying (something that can be true or false) and the concern with negation is ultimately the concern with the negation of sentences. So the problem is what sub-sentential and non sentential expressions negation should apply to in order to obtain the negation of the containing sentence. The standard answer is that the negation of a natural language sentence is equivalent to the negation of its predicate. Yet, I argue, predicate negation is necessary but not sufficient, due to the existence of molecular sentences. Finally I notice that if to apply negation to an artificial sentence is to put the negation sign in front of it, to negate the predicate of a natural language sentencemay or may not be to put the negation sign in front of it.

Cultural Institutions, Theatre and Humanistic Liberal Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-171
Author(s):  
J. Scott Lee ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts

The purported crisis and opportunity in liberal education may be approached via a reconsideration of the arts in liberal arts education. The advantage of such a view is that proponents of humanistic liberal education could speak in their own terms, while incorporating in a systematic way studies of ancient and modern liberal arts, addressing public questions of the value and substance of a liberal education. A plausible issue for consideration is whether the “arts” can address a crisis, its purported causes and solutions, and the key role the humanities may have in building a renewed liberal arts education. At stake in the classroom is the realization of the possibilities, the intellectual freedom, which humans make for themselves in artistic making. This freedom differs from, but is complementary to, political freedom, the loadstone of standard liberal education defenses, because it is based in innovations and inventions of the arts and sciences, not in constitutions or politics of democracy.

Linguistic Data Model for Natural Languages and Artificial Intelligence. Part 5. Introduction to Logic

Discourse ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
O. M. Polyakov
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
General View ◽  
World Model ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

Introduction. The article continues the series of publications on the linguistics of relations (hereinafter R–linguistics) and is devoted to an introduction to the logic of natural language in relation to the approach considered in the series. The problem of natural language logic still remains relevant, since this logic differs significantly from traditional mathematical logic. Moreover, with the appearance of artificial intelligence systems, the importance of this problem only increases. The article analyzes logical problems that prevent the application of classical logic methods to natural languages. This is possible because R-linguistics forms the semantics of a language in the form of world model structures in which language sentences are interpreted.Methodology and sources. The results obtained in the previous parts of the series are used as research tools. To develop the necessary mathematical representations in the field of logic and semantics, the formulated concept of the interpretation operator is used.Results and discussion. The problems that arise when studying the logic of natural language in the framework of R–linguistics are analyzed. These issues are discussed in three aspects: the logical aspect itself; the linguistic aspect; the aspect of correlation with reality. A very General approach to language semantics is considered and semantic axioms of the language are formulated. The problems of the language and its logic related to the most General view of semantics are shown.Conclusion. It is shown that the application of mathematical logic, regardless of its type, to the study of natural language logic faces significant problems. This is a consequence of the inconsistency of existing approaches with the world model. But it is the coherence with the world model that allows us to build a new logical approach. Matching with the model means a semantic approach to logic. Even the most General view of semantics allows to formulate important results about the properties of languages that lack meaning. The simplest examples of semantic interpretation of traditional logic demonstrate its semantic problems (primarily related to negation).

Rethinking Liberal Education

1996 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts Colleges ◽  
Approaches To Learning ◽  
Academic Departments ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Howard Gardner ◽  
Ernest Boyer ◽  
Education Needs ◽  
Changing Times

Liberal education has always had its share of theorists, believers, and detractors, both inside and outside the academy. The best of these have been responsible for the development of the concept, and of its changing tradition. Drawn from a symposium jointly sponsored by the Educational Leadership program and the American Council of Learned Societies, this work looks at the requirements of liberal education for the next century and the strategies for getting there. With contributions from Leon Botstein, Ernest Boyer, Howard Gardner, Stanley Katz, Bruce Kimball, Peter Lyman, Susan Resneck Pierce, Adam Yarmolinsky and Frank Wong, Rethinking Liberal Education proposes better ways of connecting the curriculum and organization of liberal arts colleges with today's challenging economic and social realities. The authors push for greater flexibility in the organizational structure of academic departments, and argue that faculty should play a greater role in the hard discussions that shape their institutions. Through the implementation of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to learning, along with better integration of the curriculum with the professional and vocational aspects of the institution, this work proposes to restore vitality to the curriculum. The concept of rethinking liberal education does not mean the same thing to every educator. To one, it may mean a strategic shift in requirements, to another the reformulation of the underlying philosophy to meet changing times. Any significant reform in education needs careful thought and discussion. Rethinking Liberal Education makes a substantial contribution to such debates. It will be of interest to scholars and students, administrators, and anyone concerned with the issues of modern education.

scholarly journals Editorial: Special Issue on Interdisciplinary and Experiential Entrepreneurship Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 251512742199251
Author(s):  
Christoph Winkler ◽  
Doan Winkel ◽  
Julienne Shields ◽  
Dennis Barber ◽  
Donna Levin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Worcester Polytechnic Institute ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Inherent Feature ◽  
Editorial Special Issue ◽  
Iona College ◽  
East Carolina University

A group of six colleges and universities (East Carolina University, Iona College, John Carroll University, Millikin University, Rowan University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute) partnered up to co-host the January 2020 USASBE Conference in New Orleans, LA, with the theme Interdisciplinary & Experiential Entrepreneurship Education. The conference thematically aligned its overall program with this special issue, which features scholars and programs representing the arts, design, engineering, liberal arts, physical sciences, STEM, and – yes – business. This editorial further discusses the importance of interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education as an inherent feature of itself to truly evolve as a discipline.

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