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Record W2112296121 · doi:10.7557/12.3411

Reductio ad discrimen: Where features come from

2015· article· en· W2112296121 on OpenAlexaff
Elizabeth Cowper, Daniel Currie Hall

Bibliographic record

VenueNordlyd · 2015
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicHistorical Linguistics and Language Studies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsLinguisticsConstruct (python library)PhonologyUniversal grammarGrammarContrast (vision)Set (abstract data type)Variety (cybernetics)Variation (astronomy)Construction grammarReductio ad absurdumComputer sciencePhilosophyInterpretation (philosophy)Artificial intelligence

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This paper addresses two fundamental questions about the nature of formal features in phonology and morphosyntax: what is their expressive power, and where do they come from? To answer these questions, we begin with the most restrictive possible hypothesis (all features are privative, and are wholly dictated by Universal Grammar, with no room for cross-linguistic variation), and examine the extent to which empirical evidence from a variety of languages compels a retreat from this position. We argue that there is little to be gained by positing a universal set of specific features, and propose instead that the crucial contribution of UG is the language learner's ability to construct features by identifying correlations between contrasts at different levels of linguistic structure. This view resonates with current research on how the interaction between UG and external 'third factors' shapes the structure of language, while at the same time harking back to the Saussurean notion that contrast is the central function of linguistic representations.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.010
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.011
Threshold uncertainty score0.038

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.010
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.010
Scholarly communication0.0080.023
Open science0.0020.007
Research integrity0.0020.006
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0110.003

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.041
GPT teacher head0.255
Teacher spread0.214 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations36
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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