Class Business
- Reading for Next Class
- For Thursday
- Ryan Heuser, “Word Vectors in the Eighteenth Century” (conference proceedings abstract) (2017)
- Optional: If you are interested, you may wish to read Ryan Heuser’s series of blog posts about word embedding linked from this page on his blog (with individual posts on “Concepts,” “Methods,” “From Fields to Vectors,” and “Semantic Networks”).
- Ryan Heuser, “Word Vectors in the Eighteenth Century” (conference proceedings abstract) (2017)
Due Thursday, Nov. 3rd: Word Embedding Exercise
- For Thursday
Structural Linguistics & the 20th-C. “Linguistic Turn”
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916) – read pp. 114-117, 123-27
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Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth” (1951) and Savage Mind (1962)
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“The Linguistic Turn”
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| Roland Barthes, The Fashion System (1967, trans. 1983) | |
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The “Information” Turn
Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)
Derrida, Positions (1972)
The maintenance of the rigorous distinction–an essential and juridical distinction — between the signans and the signatum, the equation of the signatum and the concept, inherently leaves open the possibility of thinking a concept signified in and of itself, a concept simply present for thought, independent of a relationship to language, that is of a relationship to a system of signifiers. By leaving open this possibility — and it is inherent even in the opposition signifier/signified, that is in the sign — Saussure contradicts the critical acquisitions of which we were just speaking. He accedes to the classical exigency of what I have proposed to call a “transcendental signified,” which in and of itself, in its essence, would refer to no signifier, would exceed the chain of signs, and would no longer function as a signifier. On the contrary, though, from the moment that one questions the possibility of such a transcendental signified, and that one recognizes that every signified is also in the position of a signifier, the distinction between signified and signifier becomes problematical at its root. (pp. 19-20)
Some key terms used by Derrida and deconstruction:
- “Presence” / “Absence”
- “Center” / “Decentered”
- “Supplement”
- “Trace”
- “Différance”
- “Intertextuality”
- “Catachresis”
Major (Scientific/Cultural) Paradigms of Modern Thought
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Relativity
- Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” (paper on special relativity) (1905)
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The Unconscious
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
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Language (Langue)
- Ferdinand de Saussure, Course on General Linguistics (1916)
Distributional Semantics (“distributional hypothesis”)
J. [John] R. [Rupert] Firth, “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930-55” – read sections III-IV (pp. 7-13)
The basic assumption of the theory of analysis by levels is that any text can be regarded as a constituent of a context of situation or of a series of such contexts…. The context of situation according to this theory is not merely a setting, background, or ‘back-drop’ for the ‘words’. The text in the focus of attention on renewal of connection with an instance, is regarded as an integral part of the context, and is observed in relation to the qther parts regarded as relevant in the statement of the context. (7)
The placing of a text as a constituent in a context of situation contributes to the statement of meaning since situations are set up to recognize use. As Wittgenstein says, ‘the meaning of words lies in their use.’ The day to day practice of playing language games recognizes customs and rules. It follows that a text in such established usage may contain sentences such as ‘Don’t be such an ass!’, ‘You silly ass!’, ‘What an ass he is!’ In these examples, the word ass is in familiar and habitual company, commonly collocated with you silly–, he is a silly–, don’t be such an–. You shall know a word by the company it keeps! One of the meanings of ass is its habitual collocation with such other words as those above quoted. (11)
It will then be found that meaning by collocation will suggest a small number of groups of collocations for each word studied. (13)
- Aurelie Herbelot, “Distributional Semantics: A Light Introduction”
Case Study
Word Embeddings (Word Vectors)
- Benjamin Schmidt, “Vector Space Models for the Digital Humanities” (2015)
- Saptarashmi Bandyopadhyay et al., “Word Embedding Demo Tutorial” (2022)
- Ben Schmidt’s Twitter on Oct. 27, 2022
- “What Is Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and How It Is Used?” (2020)
- Fabian Offert, “Intuition and Epistemology of High-Dimensional Vector Space” (2021)
- Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (1982)
- Catachresis “concerns first the violent, forced, abusive inscription of a sign, the imposition of a sign upon a meaning which did not yet have its own proper sign in language” (255)
- J. Hillis Miller, “The Figure in the Carpet” (1980):
- “Catachresis is the name for that procedure whereby [Henry] James uses all the realistic
detail of his procedure as a novelist to name in figure, abusive transfer, something else for which there is no literal name and therefore, within the convention of referentiality which the story as a realistic novel accepts, no existence” (111)
- “Catachresis is the name for that procedure whereby [Henry] James uses all the realistic
