黑料正能量 invites you to join a talk given by Tony Veale, who is amongst the leading researchers in the field of the听linguistic computational creativity. The event is sponsored by the听FirstBridge fund听which is coordinated by Prof Elizabeth Kinne.
Unweaving The Lexical Rainbow:听Grounding Linguistic Creativity in Perceptual Semantics
Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. From a chemical perspective he was certainly correct: a rose retains all of its olfactory qualities no matter what we choose to call it. Yet as a talented poet, Shakespeare often exploited the power of words to evoke fond memories, to arouse the imaginations and to stir the emotions of his audience. It is certainly true that the word 鈥渞ose鈥� obtains its warm associations and poetic resonance from its perceptual qualities 鈥� its deep red color, silky texture and sweet fragrance 鈥� but it is surely just as true that this flower would not be so beloved of poets if its established name were a lexical eyesore like 鈥済oreweed鈥�, 鈥渂loodwort鈥�, 鈥渢horngore,鈥� 鈥減rickstem鈥� or 鈥渢urdblossom.鈥�
The challenge of linguistic creativity is to use words in a way that is novel and striking and even whimsical, to convey meanings that remain stubbornly grounded in the very same world of familiar experiences as serves to anchor the most literal and unimaginative language. The challenge remains unmet by AI [Artificial Intelligence] systems that merely shuttle or arrange words to achieve novel arrangements without concern as to how those arrangements are to spur the processes of meaning construction in a reader. In this talk I explore a problem of lexical invention that cannot be solved without an explicit model of the perceptual grounding of language: the invention of apt new names for colours. To solve this problem I shall call upon the notion of a听linguistic readymade, a phrase that is wrenched from its original context of use to be given new meaning and new resonance in new settings. To ensure that our linguistic readymades, which owe a great deal to Marcel Duchamp鈥檚 notion of听found art, are anchored in a consensus model of perception, I also introduce the notion of a lexicalized colour stereotype.
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