Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language (...) learning experiment, we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language (...) learning experiment, we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

It is characteristic that in consideration of the issues related to feeling, one encounters a problem of its definition; it is not only about determining the essence of feeling itself but first it must be explained how we understand and use the word ’feeling’. We could give examples from Polish, German, French, English and Latin as well as Ancient Greek to look into the issue of determining ’feeling’ as a language category. Feeling is described by words that are not cognates (...) in these languages; also, the terms function in ways that overlap only partially, so they are only partial counterparts. Does it mean that the very essence of feeling is different or appears as something different to the speakers of the many languages? Or is it that some languages create the word ’feeling’ more skillfully than others, some rendering it more aptly than others? Or maybe giving a name to feeling exceeds the capacity of language? Does the lack of the equivalent of the Polish word uczucie in the Greek language mean, as is often presupposed, that feeling was beyond the ancient philosophers’, psychologists’ or poets’ perception? (shrink)

Even though hesitations (e.g., um/uh) were historically perceived as involuntary non-linguistic items (e.g., Maclay & Osgood 1959), more recently, a number of scholars have suggested that hesitations can behave like (a) lexical items (e.g., Clark & Fox Tree 2002), and (b) at least in some contexts and with some functions as grammatical items like suffixes/clitics (Kirjavainen, Crible & Beeching 2022; Tottie 2017). The current study contributes to this body of work and presents two spoken language corpus analyses (frequency analysis; (...) network analysis) investigating the nature of the Finnish planning particle tota. Our results suggest that tota is more similar to grammatical items than lexical items. (shrink)

General extenders are phrases like 'or something', 'and everything', 'and things ', 'and stuff ', and 'and so on'. Although they are an everyday feature of spoken language, are crucial in successful interpersonal communication, and have multiple functions in discourse, they have so far gone virtually unnoticed in linguistics. This pioneering work provides a comprehensive description of this new linguistic category. It offers new insights into ongoing changes in contemporary English, the effect of grammaticalization, novel uses as associative plural (...) markers and indicators of intertextuality, and the metapragmatic role of extenders in interaction. The forms and functions of general extenders are presented clearly and accessibly, enabling students to understand a number of different frameworks of analysis in discourse-pragmatic studies. From an applied perspective, the book presents a description of translation equivalents, an analysis of second language variation, and practical exercises for teaching second language learners of English. (shrink)

The human conceptual system comprises simulated information of sensorimotor experience and linguistic distributional information of how words are used in language. Moreover, the linguistic shortcut hypothesis predicts that people will use computationally cheaper linguistic distributional information where it is sufficient to inform a task response. In a pre‐registered category production study, we asked participants to verbally name members of concrete and abstract categories and tested whether performance could be predicted by a novel measure of sensorimotor similarity (...) (based on an 11‐dimensional representation of sensorimotor strength) and linguistic proximity (based on word co‐occurrence derived from a large corpus). As predicted, both measures predicted the order and frequency of category production but, critically, linguistic proximity had an effect above and beyond sensorimotor similarity. A follow‐up study using typicality ratings as an additional predictor found that typicality was often the strongest predictor of category production variables, but it did not subsume sensorimotor and linguistic effects. Finally, we created a novel, fully grounded computational model of conceptual activation during category production, which best approximated typical human performance when conceptual activation was allowed to spread indirectly between concepts, and when candidate category members came from both sensorimotor and linguistic distributional representations. Critically, model performance was indistinguishable from typical human performance. Results support the linguistic shortcut hypothesis in semantic processing and provide strong evidence that both linguistic and grounded representations are inherent to the functioning of the conceptual system. All materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/vaq56/. (shrink)

We provide an algorithm for determining a categorial grammar from linguistic data that essentially uses unification of type-schemes assigned to atoms. The algorithm presented here extends an earlier one restricted to rigid categorial grammars, introduced in [4] and [5], by admitting non-rigid outputs. The key innovation is the notion of an optimal unifier, a natural generalization of that of a most general unifier.

The distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. This distinction is commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What is often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization is that ratings are attributed to words, not to concepts directly. In this paper we explore the relationship between the linguistic properties of English words and conceptual abstractness/concreteness. Based on hypotheses stated in the existing linguistic literature we (...) select a set of variables and verify whether they are statistically associated with concreteness ratings. We show that English nouns are rated as more concrete compared to other parts of speech, but mass nouns are rated as less concrete than count nouns. Furthermore, a more complex morphological structure is associated with abstractness, and as for etymology, French- and Latin-derived words are more abstract than words of other origin. This shows that linguistic properties of words are indeed associated with the degree of concreteness that we attribute to the underlying concepts, and we discuss the implications that these findings have for linguistic theory and for empirical investigations in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The relevance of the research is defined by the need to create a set of linguistic means, which would contribute to effective communication with the general public, and the need to study different functional-semantic categories, including appeals, for the competent formation of public opinion in the political context. The research aims to comprehend the functioning of linguistic means used as appeals in the example of political propaganda texts in the English media field. The methodology is based on (...) the theoretical study of the works of modern linguists, linguistic, structural, and communicative analysis of appeal linguistic units and contexts. The research considered the linguistic means that form the functional-semantic category of the appeal, examples of political contexts from the British and American media were presented, the functions of appeal were presented using specific examples, an idea of the communicative side of political propaganda texts and audience participation in this process was formed, emphasis was placed on different types of propaganda (white, black, gray), the following groups of appeals were characterized: imperatives (volitional and involuntary). The materials presented in this research can be used to form an idea of the functional-semantic category of appeal, the choice of linguistic means for the purpose of information promotion in the media or social networks, the study of communicative strategies in linguistics and their successful implementation, consideration of political propaganda texts, increasing efficiency when influencing the audience, further implementation of means of appeal in machine learning. (shrink)

In two eye-tracking studies we investigated the influence of Mandarin numeral classifiers – a grammatical category in the language – on online overt attention. Mandarin speakers were presented with simple sentences through headphones while their eye-movements to objects presented on a computer screen were monitored. The crucial question is what participants look at while listening to a pre-specified target noun. If classifier categories influence Mandarin speakers' general conceptual processing, then on hearing the target noun they should look at objects (...) that are members of the same classifier category – even when the classifier is not explicitly present. The data show that when participants heard a classifier they shifted overt attention significantly more to classifiermatch objects than to distractor objects, but when the classifier was not explicitly presented in speech, overt attention to classifier-match objects and distractor objects did not differ. This suggests that although classifier distinctions do influence eye-gaze behavior, they do so only during linguistic processing of that distinction and not in moment-to-moment general conceptual processing. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to address a longstanding concern about the linguistic ‘relativ- ity’ of ontological categories, and resulting limitations in the scope of ontological theo- ries. Given recent evidence on the influence of language on cognitive dispositions, do we have empirical reasons to doubt that there are ontological categories that have uni- versal scope across languages? I argue that this is the case, at least if we retain the stan- dard ‘inferential’ approach within analytical (...) ontology, i.e., if we evaluate ontological interpretations of L-sentences relative to certain material inferences in L. Research in linguistic typology suggests that types of entities postulated for the domain of Indo- European languages cannot capture the ontological commitments of the (much larger group of) non-Indo-European languages. Ontological category theory thus seems to have three options. The first option is to abandon the standard ‘inferential’ approach to ontological category theory. Alternatively, if we stay with the inferential approach, we face the following choice. Either ontology must let go of its ambitions to provide general domain descriptions for any language and settle for the more modest project of reconstructing the ontological commitments of a group of natural languages. Or else analytical ontologists should turn to linguistic typology in order to accommodate the diversity of inferential structures embedded in natural languages. I recommend and ex- plore this third option, illustrating a strategy for how to construct a domain theory that can be used across languages. In a first step I show how linguistic research on the se- mantics of verbs and nouns (studies on so-called “Aktionsarten” and “Seinsarten”) can be used to identify the inferential patterns of ten basic concepts of modes of existence in time and space. In a second step I show how these inferential data can be inter- preted ontologically within General Process Theory, an ontological framework based on nonparticular individuals (“dynamics”). -/- . (shrink)

Objective. Study of the Covid-19 related quarantine concept as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. -/- Materials & Methods. The strategy of the study is based on the logical and methodological concept of inductivism. Respondents were asked to write down their own understanding of the quarantine, formulate an appropriate definition and describe the situation, which in their opinion is the exact opposite to quarantine. Respondents also assessed how much their psychological well-being, their daily lifestyle during quarantine had (...) changed, and ranked their preferences for the quarantine strategies proposed to them. A discursive analysis was applied to the obtained texts, as a result of which nine discourses were identified. These data, along with some socio-demographic characteristics were subjected to multidimensional mathematical and statistical processing. -/- Results. Covid-19 related quarantine is represented in the linguistic consciousness of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by a discursive field, which includes at least nine recognizable, semantically autonomous discourses. Empirically discovered such phenomenon as – inter-discourse semantic dissociation. Its essence is a statistically significant reduction in the probability of some discourses appearing in the texts when others are being actualized there. This feature is associated with the innate negativity of the language and determines the semantic biasing of the quarantine concept. Inter-discourse semantic dissociation, as well as the influence of non-discursive factors constitute the discursive formation of the quarantine concept, which is qualitatively characterized by the hierarchical relationship of its components. At the same time, it was revealed that part of the discourses interacting “horizontally” are indirectly associated “vertically”, which forms the stable semantic core of the quarantine concept. Partial empirical confirmation has been found of the previously put forward assumptions about: a) the existence of such a relationship between discourses and psychological defense mechanisms (as character-forming factors) that contributes to the hierarchical structure construction of discursive formations; b) the differential nature of discourses and mechanisms of psychological defenses interaction, which makes it possible to single out the discursive aspect in a characterological profile and consider a discourse as an operator of characterological semantics. -/- Conclusions. An empirical study made it possible to form a primary idea of the substantive and structural semantic features of the quarantine concept, as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. The results obtained have a potentially useful application perspective. Thus, when implementing anti-epidemiological measures, it is important to consider the studied features of the discursive formation hierarchical structure of the quarantine concept, since discursive semantics are associated with cognitive focusing, which, in turn, affects the behavior direction and its upshots. (shrink)

Perceptual learning involves an improvement in perceptual judgment with practice, which is often specific to stimulus or task factors. Perceptual learning has been shown on a range of visual tasks but very little research has explored chromatic perceptual learning. Here, we use two low level perceptual threshold tasks and a supra-threshold target detection task to assess chromatic perceptual learning and category effects. Experiment 1 investigates whether chromatic thresholds reduce as a result of training and at what level of analysis learning (...) effects occur. Experiment 2 explores the effect of category training on chromatic thresholds, whether training of this nature is category specific and whether it can induce categorical responding. Experiment 3 investigates the effect of category training on a higher level, lateralized target detection task, previously found to be sensitive to category effects. The findings indicate that performance on a perceptual threshold task improves following training but improvements do not transfer across retinal location or hue. Therefore, chromatic perceptual learning is category specific and can occur at relatively early stages of visual analysis. Additionally, category training does not induce category effects on a low level perceptual threshold task, as indicated by comparable discrimination thresholds at the newly learned hue boundary and adjacent test points. However, category training does induce category effects on a supra-threshold target detection task. Whilst chromatic perceptual learning is possible, learnt category effects appear to be a product of left hemisphere processing, and may require the input of higher level linguistic coding processes in order to manifest. (shrink)

Category mistakes are sentences such as 'Green ideas sleep furiously' or 'Saturday is in bed'. They strike us as highly infelicitous but it is hard to explain precisely why this is so. Ofra Magidor explores four approaches to category mistakes in philosophy of language and linguistics, and develops and defends an original, presuppositional account.

For more than 60 years, Jim Lambek has been a profoundly inspirational mathematician, with groundbreaking contributions to algebra, category theory, linguistics, theoretical physics, logic and proof theory. This Festschrift was put together on the occasion of his 90th birthday. The papers in it give a good picture of the multiple research areas where the impact of Jim Lambek's work can be felt. The volume includes contributions by prominent researchers and by their students, showing how Jim Lambek's ideas keep inspiring upcoming (...) generations of scholars. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the conceptual structures of two Arabic words which are used in both everyday life and science: كَهْرَبَاء (kahrabāʾ) (electricity) and ضَوْء (ḍawʾ) (light). Under a cognitive linguistics approach, the polysemy of these terms, revealed in the citations extracted from ArabiCorpus, is studied. More specifically, the analysis of the terms involves the polysemy or ‘radial category’ along with its prototypical and peripheral meanings, and the main factors in projecting the idealised cognitive models (ICMs) where the radial (...) categories are formed: conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. The results indicate that power and knowledge motivate the conceptualisations that underpin the categories كَهْرَبَاء (kahrabāʾ) (electricity) and ضَوْء (ḍawʾ) (light) respectively. Using such non-scientific conception in understanding the scientific senses of these terms leads to students’ confusion and failure to understand them. To ensure that students construe the scientific concepts correctly, they must be mindful of the inconsistency between their non-scientific and scientific meanings. (shrink)

Peirce's Law of Triviality: The Implementation of the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar. Basic Categories for Linguistics and Literature Studies from a Universal Semiotic Theory This article focuses on the aspects that refer to linguistics in the works of Charles S. Peirce. His pragmatic philosophy implemented many other sciences and among them is the traditional trivium of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, which Peirce divided into different kinds of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. While the impact of the work of (...) Peirce on theses sciences is weak, the integration of the sciences in his philosophy is interesting as a step in the history of science and his work is an example for ecclecticism and historism of science in the 19th century and the universalism of science deducted from a philosophy that uses the sign as an unitarian principle. Triple constructions are a very common feature in the writings of Peirce, and the trivium is an example of an academic construction Peirce implemented. (shrink)

Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ or ‘The theory of relativity is eating breakfast’. Such sentences are highly anomalous, and this has led a large number of linguists and philosophers to conclude that they are meaningless (call this ‘the meaninglessness view’). In this paper I argue that the meaninglessness view is incorrect and category mistakes are meaningful. I provide four arguments against the meaninglessness view: in Sect. 2, an argument concerning compositionality with respect to category (...) mistakes; in Sect. 3 an argument concerning synonymy facts of category mistakes; in Sect. 4 concerning embeddings of category mistakes in propositional attitude ascriptions; and in Sect. 5 concerning the uses of category mistakes in metaphors. Having presented these arguments, in Sect. 6 I briefly discuss some of the positive motivations for accepting the meaninglessness view and argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude that the meaninglessness view ought to be rejected. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, (...) New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology. (shrink)

The concepts of "spirit" [dukh], "spiritual," and "spirituality" have had a strange fate in philosophy. It seems that they are constantly and more widely utilized in the literature—as well as when the solution of the basic question of philosophy is formulated as the "relation of matter and spirit," when the "spiritual life of society" or "spiritual culture" is investigated, and when the issue concerns the "spirituality" of the individual as the manifestation of a high level of development of the socialist (...) personality. At the same time, the categorial status of these concepts not only is not recognized in our philosophy, but in encyclopedic dictionaries and monographs it is asserted that "spirit" is an obsolete concept, a favorite of idealistic philosophy, and that in Marxist science it is replaced by the concept of "consciousness.". (shrink)

A key figure in the history of Aristotelianism, Porphyry (AD 232/3 - c. 305) was born in Tyre and was a student of Longinus' in Athens and of Plotinus' in Rome. In his commentary on the Categories, Porphyry provided an authoritative interpretation of a notoriously controversial work. Commentators on Aristotle had disagreed fundamentally over whether the Categories was a work of logic, concerning simple terms or the simple concepts they represent, or a metaphysical work addressing the classification by (...) genera of simple entities or concepts. Approaching the Categories as the first of Aristotle's works in logic, Porphyry adopted an earlier Peripatetic view of the Categories as being concerned principally with terms or linguistic items, which he calls "predicates." He successfully defended the Categories against Plotinus, arguing that while it seemed to attack orthodox Platonism by denying the separation of forms and the ontological priority of the universal, it was in fact entirely compatible with Platonism. Because of Porphyry's intervention, the Categories came to serve as a basic textbook of logic for subsequent Neoplatonist teaching. His commentary influenced the Arabic tradition, and Boethius drew heavily on it as well. The full text of Porphyry's commentary was lost, but the extant version is available here in Steven K. Strange's new translation. Ancient philosophers, historians of philosophy, classicists, and medievalists will welcome its appearance in English. (shrink)

This paper is an essay in what Austin (_Proc Aristotel Soc_ 57: 1–30, 1956–1957) called "linguistic phenomenology". Its focus is on showing how the grammatical features of ordinary causal verbs, as revealed in the kinds of linguistic constructions they can figure in, can shed light on the nature of the processes that these verbs are used to describe. Specifically, drawing on the comprehensive classification of English verbs founds in Levin (_English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation_, University (...) of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993), I divide the forms of productive causal processes into five classes, corresponding to Aristotle's ontological categories: there are processes that cause change in location, in state, and in quantity; and that lead to the creation and destruction of substances. These broader categories are then subdivided into other ones, corresponding to different Levin classes, according to further differences in the causal processes they involve. I conclude by discussing the relevance of this argument to research in metaphysics and experimental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper assembles a unifying framework encompassing a wide variety of mathematical instruments used to compare different theories. The main theme will be the idea that theory comparison techniques are most easily grasped and organized through the lens of category theory. The paper develops a table of different equivalence relations between theories and then answers many of the questions about how those equivalence relations are themselves related to each other. We show that Morita equivalence fits into this framework and provide (...) answers to questions left open in Barrett and Halvorson [4]. We conclude by setting up a diagram of known relationships and leave open some questions for future work. (shrink)

Language acquisition may be one of the most difficult tasks that children face during development. They have to segment words from fluent speech, figure out the meanings of these words, and discover the syntactic constraints for joining them together into meaningful sentences. Over the past couple of decades, computational modeling has emerged as a new paradigm for gaining insights into the mechanisms by which children may accomplish these feats. Unfortunately, many of these models assume a computational complexity and linguistic (...) knowledge likely to be beyond the abilities of developing young children. This article shows that, using simple statistical procedures, significant correlations exist between the beginnings and endings of a word and its lexical category in English, Dutch, French, and Japanese. Therefore, phonetic information can contribute to individuating higher level structural properties of these languages. This article also presents a simple 2‐layer connectionist model that, once trained with an initial small sample of words labeled for lexical category, can infer the lexical category of a large proportion of novel words using only word‐edge phonological information, namely the first and last phoneme of a word. The results suggest that simple procedures combined with phonetic information perceptually available to children provide solid scaffolding for emerging lexical categories in language development. (shrink)

Language exists because human subjects define themselves in the circumstance they are in. This is possible because they are able to know, not directly through their senses only, but adding something new to the construct they create in their conscience. The main thing they add to the construct created is categories, something invented or fabricated by the human subject at the moment of speaking.

A comprehensive reference to category theory for students and researchers in mathematics, computer science, logic, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophy. Useful for self-study and as a course text, the book includes all basic definitions and theorems, as well as numerous examples and exercises.

Smell denomination and identification are well-known issues. Our first interest of study within this subject field is the denominative situation including names of odors. These are not real odoronyms but they are divided into two categories: on one hand, general names are functioning as the noun “odor” and on the other hand, fake names of smells are fulfilling the role of specifying odors. Secondly we will argue that particuliar and specific odors are usually identified through “odor of N”. We (...) will study its construction, specifications and we will investigate some causes of its success. (shrink)

In this paper we compare grammatical inference in the context of simple and of mixed Lambek systems. Simple Lambek systems are obtained by taking the logic of residuation for a family of multiplicative connectives /,,\, together with a package of structural postulates characterizing the resource management properties of the connective.Different choices for Associativity and Commutativity yield the familiar logics NL, L, NLP, LP. Semantically, a simple Lambek system is a unimodal logic: the connectives get a Kripke style interpretation in terms (...) of a single ternary accessibility relation modeling the notion of linguistic composition for each individual system.The simple systems earch have their virtues in linguistic analysis. But none of them in isolation provides a basis for a full theory of grammar. In the second part of the paper, we consider two types of mixed Lambek systems. (shrink)

This book presents a formal and philosophical analysis of language syntax. It refers to some ideas of E.Husserl and G. Frege, to S. Leśniewski's theory of syntactic categories and K. Ajdukiewicz's conception of formal grammar, also to Ch.S. Pierces's distinction between tokens (concrete linguistic entities) and types (ideal linguistic entities) and to A.A. Markov's theory of algorithms. The central aim of the book is - in the spirit of these ideas - to provide both strict yet comprehensive (...) lectures on two axiomatic theories of languages (grammars) irrespective of specific structure of their expression and the notation used in them. The main feature of these theories are that definitions of well-formed expression allow the formulation of algorithms for the examination of syntactic correctness of expressions and that their formalizations are bi-level, in reference to opposite philosophical orientations: nominalistic and idealistic. The theoretical considerations in the book speak in favour of the former. The book contains a translation of the basic contents of the book in Polish "Teorie języków syntaktycznie kategorialnych ("Theories of syntactically categorial languages"), PWN, Warszawa-Wrocław 1985, and extensive Introduction and Final Remarks. In Introduction are discussed the main assumptions, objectives and conditionings of presented theories and intuitive foundations of these theories. Final Remarks are connected with the subject-matter of the book and the ability to build syntax theories in the opposition spirit, because of the Platonic approach to language syntax. -/- . (shrink)