Hiram Ring
@hiramring.bsky.social
Linguist, musician, dabbler in arcane arts.
i’ll have to report back once the assignments are done!
July 29, 2025 at 1:45 PM
i’ll have to report back once the assignments are done!
and the challenges typologically diverse languages can pose to identifying word classes. They also contribute to developing useful annotations for crosslinguistic research. I'm excited to see how students deal with the task, and as always appreciate any feedback! 3/3 #nlproc #lowresourcelanguage
July 29, 2025 at 4:34 AM
and the challenges typologically diverse languages can pose to identifying word classes. They also contribute to developing useful annotations for crosslinguistic research. I'm excited to see how students deal with the task, and as always appreciate any feedback! 3/3 #nlproc #lowresourcelanguage
students will choose a low-resource language from the taggedPBC (github.com/lingdoc/tagged…) and annotate a selection of verses, using the NLTK library to train a tagger. Along the way they learn about dataset development, annotation, the language itself (and its family), 2/#datasetsts
https://github.com/lingdoc/tagged…
July 29, 2025 at 4:34 AM
students will choose a low-resource language from the taggedPBC (github.com/lingdoc/tagged…) and annotate a selection of verses, using the NLTK library to train a tagger. Along the way they learn about dataset development, annotation, the language itself (and its family), 2/#datasetsts
Reposted by Hiram Ring
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June 28, 2025 at 7:52 PM
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whoa dude. take a chill pill.
automation increases productivity. feel free to go back to the era before factories if you like. this is just another step along that progression. is the current approach/hype incorrect? yes. can they still be useful in specific cases? also yes. let’s be practical.
automation increases productivity. feel free to go back to the era before factories if you like. this is just another step along that progression. is the current approach/hype incorrect? yes. can they still be useful in specific cases? also yes. let’s be practical.
June 22, 2025 at 12:02 AM
whoa dude. take a chill pill.
automation increases productivity. feel free to go back to the era before factories if you like. this is just another step along that progression. is the current approach/hype incorrect? yes. can they still be useful in specific cases? also yes. let’s be practical.
automation increases productivity. feel free to go back to the era before factories if you like. this is just another step along that progression. is the current approach/hype incorrect? yes. can they still be useful in specific cases? also yes. let’s be practical.
here’s 2:
1) formatting/rephrasing text
2) idea generation
let me know if you want more elaboration. they’re pretty specific use cases & not useful without oversight, but can greatly speed up an existing workflow.
1) formatting/rephrasing text
2) idea generation
let me know if you want more elaboration. they’re pretty specific use cases & not useful without oversight, but can greatly speed up an existing workflow.
June 21, 2025 at 10:14 PM
here’s 2:
1) formatting/rephrasing text
2) idea generation
let me know if you want more elaboration. they’re pretty specific use cases & not useful without oversight, but can greatly speed up an existing workflow.
1) formatting/rephrasing text
2) idea generation
let me know if you want more elaboration. they’re pretty specific use cases & not useful without oversight, but can greatly speed up an existing workflow.
tbf, there are definite use-cases for current “Automated Inference” language tools that use LLMs, but calling them “reasoning” or “thinking” machines is spurious at best and deceitful at worst.
June 21, 2025 at 6:34 AM
tbf, there are definite use-cases for current “Automated Inference” language tools that use LLMs, but calling them “reasoning” or “thinking” machines is spurious at best and deceitful at worst.
you’d think these people would want AI to *work* instead of half-working. what they call “denialism” is just realism. if my automation in a car factory worked 90% of the time would I put it into production? maybe.. but not without significant controls!
June 17, 2025 at 4:09 AM
you’d think these people would want AI to *work* instead of half-working. what they call “denialism” is just realism. if my automation in a car factory worked 90% of the time would I put it into production? maybe.. but not without significant controls!
It’s really quite impressive what can be observed in a large (enough) and diverse (enough) dataset with the aid of automation. 3/3 #compling #linguistics #datasets #nlproc #typology
June 10, 2025 at 1:38 AM
It’s really quite impressive what can be observed in a large (enough) and diverse (enough) dataset with the aid of automation. 3/3 #compling #linguistics #datasets #nlproc #typology
…that correlate significantly with expert determinations of transitive word order in typological databases. The dependency-annotated dataset is somewhat noisy but provides an important baseline, with opportunities for significant improvement. github.com/lingdoc/tagged… 2/3
https://github.com/lingdoc/tagged…
June 10, 2025 at 1:38 AM
…that correlate significantly with expert determinations of transitive word order in typological databases. The dependency-annotated dataset is somewhat noisy but provides an important baseline, with opportunities for significant improvement. github.com/lingdoc/tagged… 2/3
I’m generally more partial to language-internal explanations for change, but external influence can’t be ruled out. I also have a working paper where I explore some other (crosslinguistic) pressures like the relative lengths of words: arxiv.org/abs/2505.13913
Word length predicts word order: "Min-max"-ing drives language evolution
Current theories of language propose an innate (Baker 2001; Chomsky 1981) or a functional (Greenberg 1963; Dryer 2007; Hawkins 2014) origin for the surface structures (i.e. word order) that we observe...
arxiv.org
May 31, 2025 at 12:10 AM
I’m generally more partial to language-internal explanations for change, but external influence can’t be ruled out. I also have a working paper where I explore some other (crosslinguistic) pressures like the relative lengths of words: arxiv.org/abs/2505.13913
it does seem to go the opposite direction more often, but that may just be an artifact of recent globalization, with large influencing lgs being V-medial/final. Some reconstructions of proto-Austronesian also posit V-medial/final, but again, shift to V-initial likely happened quite early.
May 31, 2025 at 12:03 AM
it does seem to go the opposite direction more often, but that may just be an artifact of recent globalization, with large influencing lgs being V-medial/final. Some reconstructions of proto-Austronesian also posit V-medial/final, but again, shift to V-initial likely happened quite early.
pre-Ancient Irish is assumed to have been xVx or xxV on the basis of its descent from Proto-Indo-European, but at least as early as the 700s it was clearly Verb-initial. Ancient Mayan was also likely non-V-initial, but most of its descendants are.
May 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
pre-Ancient Irish is assumed to have been xVx or xxV on the basis of its descent from Proto-Indo-European, but at least as early as the 700s it was clearly Verb-initial. Ancient Mayan was also likely non-V-initial, but most of its descendants are.
v. concerning. was asked by a linguistics asst prof the other day why i’m not interested in researching how llms do things with language & basically told them there’s nothing to learn from llms about human language. people just don’t think logically anymore.
May 24, 2025 at 7:32 AM
v. concerning. was asked by a linguistics asst prof the other day why i’m not interested in researching how llms do things with language & basically told them there’s nothing to learn from llms about human language. people just don’t think logically anymore.
Python code to extract the stats and re-run the analyses are all at the linked repo. Feel free to investigate the data on your own and I appreciate any/all feedback or contributions! 6/6
May 23, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Python code to extract the stats and re-run the analyses are all at the linked repo. Feel free to investigate the data on your own and I appreciate any/all feedback or contributions! 6/6
research I propose a “Min-Max” theory of language behavior that can account for a variety of linguistic patterns crosslinguistically. #languagechange #processing #efficiency #evolution #historical #linguistics #nlp 5/6
May 23, 2025 at 7:09 AM
research I propose a “Min-Max” theory of language behavior that can account for a variety of linguistic patterns crosslinguistically. #languagechange #processing #efficiency #evolution #historical #linguistics #nlp 5/6
predict basic word order of the variety based on lengths of nouns & verbs in the corpus! This indicates that noun/verb length is not an artifact of language but is a major factor in how languages change over time. In light of this and other 4/6
May 23, 2025 at 7:09 AM
predict basic word order of the variety based on lengths of nouns & verbs in the corpus! This indicates that noun/verb length is not an artifact of language but is a major factor in how languages change over time. In light of this and other 4/6
I chose two historical languages with tagged corpora: Classical Arabic & Ancient Hebrew, both Semitic languages with VS order, and two modern descendants of these languages: Egyptian Arabic & Modern Hebrew, which have SV order. In all 4 cases, a GNB classifier was able to 3/6
May 23, 2025 at 7:09 AM
I chose two historical languages with tagged corpora: Classical Arabic & Ancient Hebrew, both Semitic languages with VS order, and two modern descendants of these languages: Egyptian Arabic & Modern Hebrew, which have SV order. In all 4 cases, a GNB classifier was able to 3/6
This is only observable in corpora because of frequency effects, but is very robust. I used the “taggedPBC” (github.com/lingdoc/tagged…) to identify the correlations (1500+ lgs), and then tested against additional hand-tagged corpora for specific languages. 2/6
https://github.com/lingdoc/tagged…
May 23, 2025 at 7:09 AM
This is only observable in corpora because of frequency effects, but is very robust. I used the “taggedPBC” (github.com/lingdoc/tagged…) to identify the correlations (1500+ lgs), and then tested against additional hand-tagged corpora for specific languages. 2/6
References to hill tribes of this area actually go back to Ptolemy, and there’s support from iron manufacturing sites for very early settlement of the plateau, so it’s possible the time depth of contact is much greater than generally understood.
March 22, 2025 at 11:43 PM
References to hill tribes of this area actually go back to Ptolemy, and there’s support from iron manufacturing sites for very early settlement of the plateau, so it’s possible the time depth of contact is much greater than generally understood.