Browsing by Author "Ferrer Cancho, Ramon"
Now showing items 1-20 of 52
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A commentary on “The now-or-never bottleneck: a fundamental constraint on language”, by Christiansen and Chater (2016)
(RAM-Verlag, 2017-07-02)
Article
Open AccessIn a recent article, Christiansen and Chater (2016) present a fundamental constraint on language, i.e. a now-or-never bottleneck that arises from our fleeting memory, and explore its implications, e.g., chunk-and-pass ... -
A correction on Shiloach's algorithm for minimum linear arrangement of trees
(2017-06-29)
Article
Open AccessMore than 30 years ago, Shiloach published an algorithm to solve the minimum linear arrangement problem for undirected trees. Here we fix a small error in the original version of the algorithm and discuss its effect on ... -
Acoustic sequences in non-human animals: a tutorial review and prospectus
(2016-02)
Article
Open AccessAnimal acoustic communication often takes the form of complex sequences, made up of multiple distinct acoustic units. Apart from the well-known example of birdsong, other animals such as insects, amphibians, and mammals ... -
A dependency look at the reality of constituency
(RAM-Verlag, 2018)
Article
Open AccessA comment on “Neurophysiological dynamics of phrase-structure building during sentence processing” by Nelson et al (2017), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 114(18), E3669-E3678. -
A law of word meaning in dolphin whistle types
(2009-10-30)
Article
Open AccessWe show that dolphin whistle types tend to be used in specific behavioral contexts, which is consistent with the hypothesis that dolphin whistle have some sort of “meaning”. Besides, in some cases, it can be shown that the ... -
Are crossing dependencies really scarce?
(2018-03-01)
Article
Restricted access - publisher's policyThe syntactic structure of a sentence can be modelled as a tree, where vertices correspond to words and edges indicate syntactic dependencies. It has been claimed recurrently that the number of edge crossings in real ... -
Beyond description: Comment on “Approaching human language with complex networks” by Cong and Liu
(2014-12-01)
Article
Restricted access - publisher's policy -
Compression and the origins of Zipf's law for word frequencies
(2016-11-01)
Article
Open AccessHere we sketch a new derivation of Zipf's law for word frequencies based on optimal coding. The structure of the derivation is reminiscent of Mandelbrot's random typing model but it has multiple advantages over random ... -
Compression as a universal principle of animal behavior
(2013)
Article
Restricted access - publisher's policyA key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have ... -
Crossings as a side effect of dependency lengths
(2016-11-01)
Article
Open AccessThe syntactic structure of sentences exhibits a striking regularity: dependencies tend to not cross when drawn above the sentence. We investigate two competing explanations. The traditional hypothesis is that this trend ... -
Does like seek like? The formation of working groups in a programming project
(Omnia Publisher SL (OmniaScience), 2017-02)
Article
Open AccessIn a course of the degree of computer science, the programming project has changed from individual to teamed work, tentatively in couples (pair programming). Students have full freedom to team up with minimum intervention ... -
El bajo rendimiento teórico de los alumnos en asignaturas teórico-prácticas: posibles soluciones
(2010)
Conference lecture
Open AccessEn este trabajo analizamos el rendimiento de los alumnos a lo largo de tres cuatrimestres en la asignatura compiladores de la ingeniería informática. Esta asignatura combina conocimientos teóricos sobre compilación con el ... -
Estalvi energètic a les llengües
(Arts Santa Mònica, 2009)
Part of book or chapter of book
Open Access -
Estrategias de mejora del rendimiento en una asignatura teórica difícil de la fase selectiva
(2010)
Conference lecture
Open AccessLa asignatura de Introducción a la Lógica es una asignatura del primer año de Ingeniería en Informática impartida en la Facultad de Informática de Barcelona (UPC). La asignatura fue rediseñada en el curso 06-07 y pasó a ... -
Fast calculation of entropy with Zhang's estimator
(RAM - Verlag, 2016-12-01)
Part of book or chapter of book
Restricted access - publisher's policyEntropy is a fundamental property of a repertoire. Here, we present an efficient algorithm to estimate the entropy of types with the help of Zhang’s estimator. The algorithm takes advantage of the fact that the number of ... -
Gelada vocal sequences follow Menzerath's linguistic law
(2016-03-04)
Article
Open AccessIdentifying universal principles underpinning diverse natural systems is a key goal of the life sciences. A powerful approach in addressing this goal has been to test whether patterns consistent with linguistic laws are ... -
José María de Oleza Arredondo, S.J. (1887-1975)
(RAM-Verlag, 2018-05)
Article
Open AccessA short piece on the life of José María de Oleza Arredondo S.J., one of the founders of Quantitative Linguistics in Catalonia -
Kauffman's adjacent possible in word order evolution
(2016)
Conference report
Open AccessWord order evolution has been hypothesized to be constrained by a word order permutation ring: transitions involving orders that are closer in the permutation ring are more likely. The hypothesis can be seen as a particular ... -
Liberating language research from dogmas of the 20th century
(2016-02-25)
Article
Open AccessA commentary on the article “Large-scale evidence of dependency length minimization in 37 languages” by Futrell, Mahowald & Gibson (PNAS 2015 112 (33) 10336-10341). -
Linguistic laws in chimpanzee gestural communication
(2019-02-13)
Article
Open AccessStudies testing linguistic laws outside language have provided important insights into the organization of biological systems. For example, patterns consistent with Zipf's law of abbreviation (which predicts a negative ...
