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Silas John's "Prayer for life". The figure shows a pictographic notation devised by Silas John, an Apache visionary, to encode a prayer. Each pictograph stands for one stanza. Characters 4 to 7 correspond to the verses: "4. God's sacred pollen / 5. A cross of sacred pollen / 6. Living sacred pollen / 7. A cross of sacred pollen breathing in four directions" (Basso, 1990).
Source publication
We present a theoretical framework bearing on the evolution of written communication. We analyze writing as a special kind of graphic code. Like languages, graphic codes consist of stable, conventional mappings between symbols and meanings, but (unlike spoken or signed languages) their symbols consist of enduring images. This gives them the unique...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... Since most shamanic chants are formulaic constructions built around repetitive formulas, pictographic notations can use icons to depict the variable parts of these predictable structures, leaving other elements to the shaman's memory (Déléage, 2012;Severi, 2007). Such pictographic notations are ubiquitous in spiritual Amerindian practices (Fig. 3). They are usually purely semantic: they do not encode morphological or phonetic information. They are nevertheless language-dependent in the important sense that they are not used cross-linguistically, and are tied to recitations in one particular idiom. Their symbols are usually poorly standardized, with a great deal of inter- ...
Citations
... Together, these two effects allowed for coding of conversation and the separation of the visual marking from the act of communication. These elements were essential to the development of writing systems (Morin, Kelly, Winters, 2020). ...
I began my career in archaeology with little enthusiasm for art, but
my experience in Iberia convinced me that an archaeology of art could be
of interest. Little did I know that Manuel Gonzalez Morales was beginning
his career at much the same time in Cantabria.
In this paper I review my own engagement with Iberian cave art, especially
Cueva del Niño and Parpalló, in the context of some of Manolo’s publications,
especially from the Cueva Mirón. I then move on to consider insights
I have gained from a career engaged with Australian archaeohistory of art
and how that might inform understanding of Iberian art.
My conclusion is that it is impossible to understand cave and rock art without
understanding its context, and that, in Iberia this highlights the importance
of the work of Manolo with Lawrence Straus at Mirón.
... Asinkron adalah sebuah situasi di mana entitas yang terlibat dalam pertukaran data tidak perlu melakukan interaksi secara langsung atau secara real-time [5]. Data dapat disimpan atau dikirimkan secara asinkron, yang berarti mereka dapat diproses pada waktu yang berbeda atau dalam urutan yang berbeda tanpa mempengaruhi ketersediaan atau integritas data. ...
Dalam era digital yang semakin maju, tantangan pengumpulan data di daerah dengan keterbatasan sinyal internet menjadi semakin mendesak. Infrastruktur yang minim di daerah-daerah terpencil atau terpinggirkan membatasi akses yang konsisten ke internet, mengakibatkan masalah serius dalam efisiensi pengumpulan dan pengiriman data. Ketika sinyal lemah atau tidak ada sama sekali, pengguna rentan kehilangan data, menimbulkan risiko pengulangan pekerjaan, atau mengalami penundaan informasi yang krusial. Untuk mengatasi tantangan ini, aplikasi yang memanfaatkan metode Sinkron-Asinkron telah dikembangkan. Ketika pengguna beroperasi dalam kondisi sinyal terbatas, data yang diinput disimpan secara lokal di perangkat. Hal ini memungkinkan kelancaran pekerjaan tanpa risiko kehilangan data. Namun, penggunaan metode sinkronisasi saja memiliki kelemahan yang perlu diperhatikan. Gangguan pada proses sinkronisasi, baik karena putusnya koneksi internet atau kegagalan server, dapat menyebabkan kehilangan data yang telah disimpan secara lokal. Selain itu, proses sinkronisasi yang lambat juga bisa mengakibatkan penundaan dalam mengakses atau memperbarui informasi terbaru, mengganggu produktivitas dan efisiensi kerja secara keseluruhan. Oleh karena itu, penggunaan kombinasi metode sinkron-asinkron menjadi solusi yang lebih holistik. Dengan memanfaatkan kedua metode secara bersamaan, aplikasi dapat memberikan pengguna pengalaman yang lebih baik dalam mengumpulkan dan mengelola data, terutama di daerah dengan keterbatasan sinyal internet.
... Thus, this perception assumes that the communicative intention arises from the literal meaning of the discourse and can be recognised by means of various grammars and language conventions. Communication is considered possible because the communicative intention is encoded in the message according to conventions [9]. In the initial theories of communication, language was seen as an object with a coherent internal structure that can be studied independently of its use [10]. ...
The relationship between linguistics and artificial intelligence is still controversial. The relevance of this paper lies in the interpretation of technological progress as promising for the field of linguistics, since the synergy between artificial intelligence and linguistics can lead to a rethinking of linguistic paradigms. This paper is methodologically based on a detailed study of the related literature on the recent history of these two fields. As a result, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the related scientific literature and revises the relationship between linguistics and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is seen as a branch of human science, and models have emerged in the intermediate period between the two fields, which were not always understood, but acted as buffers against the interaction of one field with the other; if artificial intelligence is a branch of human science, then linguistics can also adopt this heritage, which may lead to a rethinking of the paradigms of linguistics and challenge the opposition between the exact and experimental sciences. The evolution of the ways of thinking about automatic language processing from the cognitive science point of view of artificial intelligence is traced, and different types of knowledge considered in linguistic computing are discussed. The importance of language both in human-machine communication and in the development of reasoning and intelligence is emphasised. Ideas that can overcome the internal contradiction of artificial intelligence are put forward. The practical significance of the paper is that it highlights how, with the help of automatic language processing, humanity has gradually realised the need to use technological knowledge to understand language. This combination opens up not only knowledge about the language itself, but also general knowledge about the world, about the speaker’s culture, about the communication situation, and about the practice of human relations. The conclusions of the study point to the great potential of interaction between linguistics and artificial intelligence for the further development of both fields.
... However, research on language and writing systems remains divorced from one another. For anthropologists and psychologists, writing has been fruitful for investigating cultural forms as they evolve, giving insights into key cognitive biases and visual preferences (Morin, 2018;Morin, Kelly, & Winters, 2020;Miton & Morin, 2021). But interest lies firmly in the visual properties of the letter shapes themselves, and less so in the linguistic information they encode. ...
This letter addresses two issues in language research that are important to cognitive science: the comparability of word meanings across languages and the neglect of an integrated approach to writing systems. The first issue challenges generativist claims by emphasizing the importance of comparability of data, drawing on typologists' findings about different languages. The second issue addresses the exclusion of diverse writing systems from linguistic investigation and argues for a more extensive study of their effects on language and cognition. We argue for a refocusing of cognitive science research on linguistic diversity in all modalities to develop the most robust understanding of language and its role in human cognition more broadly.
... Para la ilustración de sus argumentos, Agnese Sampietro recupera múltiples ejemplos obtenidos de un corpus propio (con testimonios como las conversaciones extraídas de aplicaciones de mensajería), que sirven para explicar al lector las diferentes funciones que pueden adoptar las imágenes y los vídeos, como el refuerzo de los vínculos sociales en las redes o la aportación de detalles visuales, entre otras. Así pues, aunque no puede negarse el valor que adquieren los recursos de carácter visual en la red, la autora recuerda que estos elementos presentan también algunas limitaciones respecto a la escritura (Morin, Kelly y Winters, 2018), como, por ejemplo, la dificultad que muestra su uso para indicar el tiempo. Antes de finalizar el presente apartado, se expone un paralelismo entre la coherencia y la cohesión textuales con las conexiones que se establecen entre las imágenes y los textos a la hora de construir y transmitir un mensaje multimodal. ...
... The causes of character amnesia states are the subject of frequent speculation, often invoking the fact that people use handwriting less and less due to the dominance of digital typing (Guangming Wang Public Opinion Center, 2019;Xu & Zhou, 2013). However, an understanding of handwriting failures is also part the broader study of writing systems more generally (Morin et al., 2020). The work presented above provides one part of the toolkit needed to answer such questions, by supplying a quick and easily-administered test of character amnesia rate calibrated for adult native speakers of Mandarin. ...
In the digital age, handwriting literacy has declined to a worrying degree, especially in non-alphabetic writing systems. In particular, Chinese (and also Japanese) handwriters have suffered from character amnesia (提笔忘字), where people cannot correctly produce a character though they can recognize it. Though character amnesia is widespread, there is no diagnostic test for it. In this study, we developed a fast and practical test for an individual’s character amnesia rate calibrated for adult native speakers of Mandarin. We made use of a large-scale handwriting database, where 42 native Mandarin speakers each handwrote 1200 characters from dictation prompts (e.g., 水稻的稻, read shui3 dao4 de1dao4 meaning “rice from the word rice-plant”). After handwriting, participants were presented with the target character and reported whether their handwriting was correct, they knew the character but could not fully handwrite it (i.e., character amnesia), or they did not understand the dictation phrase. We used a two-parameter Item Response Theory to model correct handwriting and character amnesia responses, after excluding the don’t-know responses. Using item characteristics estimated from this model, we investigate the performance of short-form tests constructed with random, maximum discrimination, and diverse difficulty subsetting strategies. We construct a 30-item test that can be completed in about 15 min, and by repeatedly holding out subsets of participants, estimate that the character amnesia assessments from it can be expected to correlate between r = 0.82 and r = 0.89 with amnesia rates in a comprehensive 1200 item test. We suggest that our short test can be used to provide quick assessment of character amnesia for adult Chinese handwriters and can be straightforwardly re-calibrated to prescreen for developmental dysgraphia in children and neurodegenerative diseases in elderly people.
... depictions of lightning or nine men's morris) 61 whose diffusion across Europe attests to the persistence of certain signs that, rather than representing a single vector of content have different referents depending on the specific socio-cultural context in which they were used. || 55 Morin et al. 2020. 56 Fleming 2020Sarti 2020, 16. 57 Trentin 2021, 16-18. ...
... 56 Fleming 2020Sarti 2020, 16. 57 Trentin 2021, 16-18. 58 Eco 2016, 17. 59 Eco 2016, 95. 60 Eco 2016Morin et al. 2020, 736-739. 61 Trentin 2021 The third constitutive element identified is space. ...
... Cattle branding, or the use of hot irons to leave marks on animals, is a common practice that dates back to at least ~1,500 BCE (Insoll et al., 2015;van der Moezel, 2016;Wolfenstine, 1970). Cattle brands are emblems-simple graphic codes that do not encode language (Morin et al., 2020). In North America, cattle brands were introduced by the Spanish in the 16 th century (Brand, 1961) and are applied to one part of the animals' body to denote ownership and deter theft. ...
Cattle brands (ownership marks left on animals) are subject to forces influencing other graphic codes: the copying of constituent parts, pressure for distinctiveness, and pressure for complexity. The historical record of cattle brands in some US states is complete due to legal registration, providing a unique opportunity to assess how sampling processes leading to time- and space-averaging influence our ability to make inferences from limited datasets in fields like archaeology. In this preregistered study, we used a dataset of ~81,000 Kansas cattle brands (1990-2016) to explore two questions: (1) the relative influence of copying, pressure for distinctiveness, and pressure for complexity on the creation and diffusion of brand components, and (2) the effects of time- and space- averaging on statistical signals. By conducting generative inference with an agent-based model, we found that the patterns in our data are consistent with copying and pressure for intermediate complexity. In addition, by comparing mixed and structured datasets, we found that these statistical signals of copying are robust to, and possibly boosted by, time- and space-averaging.
... We define these concepts, situate them within a social constructivist framework, and examine the Intersubjectivity Repair Dyad (IRD) as a new tool for measuring these concepts within asynchronous online learning discussions. During conversations, interlocutors need to possess information about each other's states of mind for successful communication to take place (Morin et al., 2020). We know that knowledge construction happens when students read and comment on their peers' discussion posts, partly through a process of integrating external information into their own understanding (Ye & Pennisi, 2022). ...
... This section examines intersubjectivity and conversational repair within the theoretical framework of social constructivism. Human cognition is a collective, distributed, cultural process involving the interpretation of linguistically encoded utterances (Morin et al., 2020). Mead and Schubert (1934) argued that there is no thinking outside of social processes. ...
... Repair initiation is a response to a possible disjunction that immediately precedes a response, and repair outcome is a solution or abandonment of the problem (Sidnell, 2010). Due to the nature of asynchronous communication, it is intrinsically inefficient due to the constraints put on the amount of information in which interlocutors can share, and in turn limits the possibility for repair (Morin et al., 2020). This limited opportunity to use traditional repair sequences within asynchronous communication supports the need for further research in understanding how interactants fix problems in understanding. ...
... Concerning the influence of a first written language, one has to emphasize again that an established orthography does not simply reproduce oral speech in the visual medium. It also represents language structures that enable the reader to have a better cognitive decoding process of the graphic symbols (Saenger 1998;Morin et al. 2018). This applies to, for example, the separation of the word unit, morphological constancy, and graphotactic regularities in a given writing system. ...
Growing up multilingually and in a multilingual social environment affects the acquisition of literacy. Many multilingual children learn to read and write in the language required by the institutional context. This is often a second, sometimes unfamiliar, language for them and it is the dominant language of the society they live in. However, these children might also learn, or be in contact with, other written languages used in their families and communities. The practices in all written languages vary, and family or community languages and literacies might be typologically close or distant from the language and literacy practices expected at school, which is the main institution for literacy acquisition. Unfolding the resources and needs of multilingual children’s literacy acquisition is at the center of this chapter. The contexts of literacy acquisition in multilingual societies is presented on three different levels: by defining literacy and literacies, by presenting different multilingual and multiliterate contexts, and by zooming in on one aspect of literacy, that is, spelling.
