#function words

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

the FBI would be so much more powerful if they were called FBoI

[snowgall]

When most people tell you they think words are so fascinating, they have in mind items like "canoodle" and "serendipity." When linguists say it, they have in mind, like, "the."

Geoffrey Nunberg on twitter, January 3, 2018

[tradutora]

Technique used to identify autorship: not traditional editorial insight, but computational analysis (...) With mutual influence muddying the picture, how can computers tell the difference between Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Marlowe and Shakespeare drawing on one another? According to the editors of the “New Oxford”, the answer lies in “function words”. These are words like “to” or “a” that supply the grammatical mechanics of a sentence. The theory goes that all writers unconsciously use these words in distinctive ways. (...) As a result, function words supposedly betray a writer’s identity, even when they’re trying to write like someone else. By analysing how a writer uses function words, computers can ostensibly identify their unique linguistic fingerprint.

The Economist (Why literature is the ultimate big data challenge)

@linguisten @allthingslinguistic

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

function words after getting kicked out of the acronym

[nakiyingi]

Function words help shape and shortcut language. People require social skills to use and understand function words, and they’re processed in the brain differently. They are the key to understanding relationships between speakers, objects, and other people. When we analyze people’s use of function words, we can get a sense of their emotional state and personality, and their age and social class.

James W. Pennebaker: Harvard Business Review; Communication & Pyscology

[isioma-thesis-blog]

Language and Meaning Making

01.11.16

Language and Meaning Making

Language, the words we use–the things we say, serve as a framework for our perceptions of reality. We need to frame things in order to make them “true”, or real. This is similar to the notion of mental models, where we develop ideas about the world around us based on experience, and  are thus able to have expectations. A part of our cognitive make up, we need to label and categorize things in order to make sense of the word. Meaning necessitates framing. We like rules, language is rules. In this respect, we categorize ourselves.

Broadly speaking, things like nature and nurture dictate our behaviors and personalities, the impressions we make on the spaces we occupy. In discerning between different speakers (if unseen), we can learn a lot from both content words and style of language, written or otherwise. Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning (James W. Pennebaker. “The Secret Life of Pronouns”) Examples of these are nouns, regular and action verbs, and modifiers such as adjectives. Those are the basics. Style or function words are what we use to connect and organize content words. Without these, sentences and phrases make no sense. The interesting thing about this is that function words are innocuous “stealth words” (James W. Pennebaker) like “of”, “that”, “in”, and “for”. Based on neurological studies, especualy following injury to parts of the linguistic brain called Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area, style words are help frame our social worlds. Style (or function words) are referential–they only make sense if listeners or readers are able to understand the context being communicated.  

[therakyatpost]

New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/lifestyle/2014/03/04/speech-similarities-may-help-predict-love-match/

Speech likeness may predict love match

A RESEARCHER from Texas Tech University has found that people who use the same kind of “function words” are more likely to get together.

Molly Ireland, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Psychology specialising in human dialogue, and her associates analysed speed dating results and discovered a link between function-word similarity and the likelihood of second dates.

Examples of function words are personal pronouns such as ‘he,’ ‘she’ and ‘it,’ conjunctions such as ‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘nor’ ‘and ‘or,’ and articles such as ‘a,’ ‘an’ and ‘the.’

“Romantic relationships have a huge influence on our health and well-being, and I think that conversation is a big part of what makes those relationships succeed or fail at every stage — from first dates to marriages,’ Ireland said.

Ireland and fellow researchers Rich Slatcher of Wayne State University and James Pennebaker and Paul Eastwick of University of Texas at Austin reviewed 40 heterosexual speed dates and used special computers to analyse participants’ language.

In addition to discovering a connection between similar function words and love matches, Ireland and her team also found language similarity to be a an “even better predictor of relationship stability” than variables, including perceived similarity and relationship quality, and how many words were spoken throughout each conversation.

“People… aren’t very good at predicting ahead of time what they’ll find attractive on a date,” Ireland noted.

“So in a way, language predicts what people want in a partner better than they do themselves.”

Ireland also remarked that conversation content may not be as important as language and language style.

She and her team believe language-style matching indicates that people are focusing on their date/conversation partner rather than on themselves or their surroundings.

This research builds on previous studies by Ireland, including one measuring behaviour-matching with language-style matching, or how people benefit when “matching each other’s language use or non-verbal behaviour” during a conversation.

Ireland has also looked at language-style matching as a predictor of “relationship initiation and stability” and found, much like her current research, that “interpersonal similarity plays an important role in the development of romantic relationships”.

[batonrougebusinessjournalne-blog]

How Do You Use Function Words?

How Do You Use Function Words?

The finding: A person’s use of function words—the pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs that are the connective tissue of language—offers deep insights into his or her honesty, stability, and sense of self.

via Your Use of Pronouns Reveals Your Personality – Harvard Business Review.

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