Come to the Greenberg Room this afternoon from 2-5pm for talks by grad students Hsin-Chang Chen, James Collins, Judy Kroo, Dasha Popova, and Tania Rojas-Esponda. Special bonus: Social to follow hosted by the QP Fest Committee – so our first-years can just relax and enjoy the talks! Visit this link for agenda and abstracts (updated as more become available).
Come to the Greenberg Room on Monday 4/22 from 12:15-1:05 for a SymSys Forum. Jeff Shrager will be giving a talk entitled “Aspects of the Development of Commonsense Perception”.
Commonsense Perception (sometimes called View Application or Conceptual Blending) is among the most important cognitive skills. Jeff Shrager will be speaking about neuro-psychological, developmental, and computational approaches to understanding how Commonsense Perception works, and how children learn to do it.
The Structure and Evidence in Linguistics workshop, better known as Ivan Fest, will be happening next weekend at Cordura 100. Come on out to hear some great talks!
We extend our heartiest Sesquikudos to:
Stanford linguists around the country this week:
Join us in welcoming Dana Green to Linguistics and Symbolic Systems. Dana will be taking over as Student Services Officer while Ann Marie is on maternity leave.
Dana will be here April 16 through October 15. Ann Marie’s last day before her leave will be May 1, and she will return on October 1, so Dana and Ann Marie will have some overlap at both ends of the leave period.
Stolen shamelessly from Beatrice Santorini:
Lexical Ambiguity
Q: River Ravi flows in which state?
A: Liquid.Q: How can a man go eight days without sleeping?
A: By sleeping at night.Structural ambiguity
Q: How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A: You will never find an elephant that has only one hand.Referential ambiguity
Q: Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
A: At the bottom of the page.
Q: What can you never eat for breakfast?
A: Lunch or dinner.Q: If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A: No time at all, the wall is already built.Q: How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A: Any way you want, concrete floors are very hard to crack.Violations of Cooperative Principle
Q: What looks like half an apple?
A: The other half.Q: If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what will it become?
A: Wet.Q: If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
A: Very large hands.Q: In which battle did Napoleon die?
A: His last battle.Q: What is the main reason for divorce?
A: Marriage.Q: What is the main reason for failure?
A: Exams.