![]() ![]() This means that equivalency (weak or strong) can only be understood as relative to a particular collection of phenomena (i.e., relative to the data that the theory is here to explain). They cared about which one covered the larger range of relevant phenomena. Astronomers, it turns out, did not care whether geocentric models are weakly equivalent to heliocentric ones. But only if they were to also assign them the same movement in the heavens (3D) would we call them strongly equivalent. Now, we may say that two models for the movement of celestial bodies are weakly equivalent if they generate the same movement of bright spots across the sky (2D). This was the new kind of data that made the heliocentric models win out But only for one model were these predictions actually in line with the newly observable data, the phases of Venus. ![]() Both models also made predictions about the phases of celestial bodies, again based on the same assumptions about orbits. Both models could derive the movements of bodies in the sky (observable) as a projection from one onto the other. To sum up, before we finally return to linguistics: Both models made assumptions about the way bodies move in the heavens (unobservable at the time). They then turn to linguistics (and for some reason avoid any pun centered around linguistic invisible ‘movement’) to explore the analogy between the weak equivalence of physics theories and what that concept usually means in linguistics. They start out with a discussion of theories of the movement of celestial bodies (they comment: “an arena where nobody never quarreled ever, so safe travels!”), pointing out that at least for some time, both geo- and heliocentric approaches could explain the same data, so in a sense they were “weakly equivalent” (ignoring the phases of Venus for now). There is a guest post over at NYU morphlab on Phases and Phrases: Some thoughts on Weak Equivalence, Strong Equivalence, and Empirical Coverage by Hagen Blix and Adina Williams that I highly recommend everyone to read. (Inappropriately and egoistically, I of course hope that this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of his blogging stops for good, but that’s beside the point.) The decision can’t have been an easy one, so I hope everything works out well for him in the future. I wish Omer all the best for the next step. ![]() The reason is unfortunately not very uncommon: the inability to live together with your partner if one or both of you are in academia. The other blog post is a sad one, Omer Preminger posting about leaving academia. Go over there to read about gems such as “Quadruplicity drinks procrastination.” One is a blog post on History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences, about predecessors to the famous sentence “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”, showing that authors such as Russell, Carnap and Tesnière made similar points before Chomsky. Here are just two blog posts I want to give more visibility to (which makes no sense because I have less readers than both blogs negatively combined, but anyway): about typological gaps or case and agreement in ditransitives. In any case, if you know of any blogs that are not listed on my overview post, let me know!Įdit: András Bárány also has a blog, with post e.g. Let’s hope that we will see new posts on these blogs now □ Sadly, he has only one post, on the upper and lower bounds of human language. Unfortunately, the last post is from 2014.Īlexander Clark has a blog called Rational Empiricism. Makoto Kanazawa (whose name I’ve incidentally seen pop up at shtetl optimized) writes on Lambda Calculus and Formal Grammar, basically about what you would expect from a blog of this name. ![]() basically multiple context-free grammars (MCFG). She has a nice blog post where she explains linear context-free rewriting systems (LCFRS), i.e. In my mission to discover and present every place in the universe (besides professional journals) where theoretical linguistics is discussed (minus fb posts), I have found another three blogs: ![]()
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