Terry Regier
Biographic Data
| ID | 751875 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Terry Regier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Terry |
| FAMILY NAME | Regier |
| SIGNATURE | REGIER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0808-5208 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Numeral Systems Across Languages Support Efficient Communication
Languages differ qualitatively in their numeral systems. At one extreme, some languages have a small set of number terms, which denote approximate or inexact numerosities; at the other extreme, many languages have forms for exact numerosities over a very large range, through a recursively defined counting system. Why do numeral systems vary as they do? Here, we use computational analyses to explore the numeral systems of 30 languages that span th…
Semantic Typology and Efficient Communication
Crosslinguistic research on domains including kinship, color, folk biology, number, and spatial relations has documented the different ways in which languages carve up the world into named categories. Although word meanings vary widely across languages, unrelated languages often have words with similar or identical meanings, and many logically possible meanings are never observed. We review research suggesting that this pattern of constrained var…
Perceptions of Palestine
Cultural norms and trends are often reflected in patterns of language use. This article explores cultural perceptions of Palestine and Palestinians in the English-speaking world, through two analyses of large linguistic datasets. The first analysis seeks to uncover current conceptions of participants in the Israel-Palestine conflict, by identifying words that are distinctively associated with those participants in modern English usage. The second…
Kinship Categories Across Languages Reflect General Communicative Principles
Who's Who Different languages rely on distinct sets of terminology to classify relatives, such as maternal grandfather in English, and precision in language usage is a key component for successful communication (see the Perspective by Levinson ). Kemp and Regier (p. 1049 ) propose an organizing framework whereby kinship classification systems can all be seen to optimize or nearly optimize both simplicity and precision. The labels applied to kin a…
Language, thought, and color
The Arab Street
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
Color naming and the shape of color space
Color naming in the world's languages has traditionally been viewed as reflecting either a universal set of focal colors, or linguistic relativity. Recently, a different view has gained support: color naming may be accounted for in terms of the overall shape of perceptual color space. Here, we show that the new shape-based perspective can clarify which languages have color-naming systems that deviate from what universal forces would predict. Spec…
Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space
The nature of color categories in the world's languages is contested. One major view holds that color categories are organized around universal focal colors, whereas an opposing view holds instead that categories are defined at their boundaries by linguistic convention. Both of these standardly opposed views are challenged by existing data. Here, we argue for a third view based on a proposal by Jameson and D'Andrade [Jameson KA, D'Andrade RG (199…
The Human Semantic Potential
How do we tell an association from a rule? Comment on Sloman (1996)
S.A. Sloman's (1996) intriguing argument for separate associative and rule-based reasoning systems is unfortunately damaged by a certain amount of slack in the distinction he makes between these two posited mental mechanisms.The authors suggest that the distinction could be sharpened by overt reference to explicit models of associative and rule-based processing.They also point out that "simultaneous contradictory belief," which Sloman takes as ev…
How do we tell an association from a rule? Comment on Sloman (1996)
S. A. Sloman's (1996) intriguing argument for separate associative and rule-based reasoning systems is unfortunately damaged by a certain amount of slack in the distinction he makes between these two posited mental mechanisms. The authors suggest that the distinction could be sharpened by overt reference to explicit models of associative and rule-based processing. They also point out that "simultaneous contradictory belief, " which Sloman takes a…
A model of the human capacity for categorizing spatial relations
Languages vary dramatically in their structuring of space. Despite this wide variation, however, the search for universals in spatial semantics is well motivated by the fact that all linguistic spatial systems are based on human experience of space, which is in turn constrained by the nature of the human perceptual system. I present a connectionist model which contributes to the search for universals in this domain. Its design incorporates a numb…
Two Predicted Universals in the Semantics of Space
Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Semantic Typology and Semantic Universals (1993)
Semantic Typology and Efficient Communication
Crosslinguistic research on domains including kinship, color, folk biology, number, and spatial relations has documented the different ways in which languages carve up the world into named categories. Although word meanings vary widely across languages, unrelated languages often have words with similar or identical meanings, and many logically possible meanings are never observed. We review research suggesting that this pattern of constrained var…
The Arab Street
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
A model of the human capacity for categorizing spatial relations
Languages vary dramatically in their structuring of space. Despite this wide variation, however, the search for universals in spatial semantics is well motivated by the fact that all linguistic spatial systems are based on human experience of space, which is in turn constrained by the nature of the human perceptual system. I present a connectionist model which contributes to the search for universals in this domain. Its design incorporates a numb…
How do we tell an association from a rule? Comment on Sloman (1996)
S. A. Sloman's (1996) intriguing argument for separate associative and rule-based reasoning systems is unfortunately damaged by a certain amount of slack in the distinction he makes between these two posited mental mechanisms. The authors suggest that the distinction could be sharpened by overt reference to explicit models of associative and rule-based processing. They also point out that "simultaneous contradictory belief, " which Sloman takes a…
Color naming and the shape of color space
Color naming in the world's languages has traditionally been viewed as reflecting either a universal set of focal colors, or linguistic relativity. Recently, a different view has gained support: color naming may be accounted for in terms of the overall shape of perceptual color space. Here, we show that the new shape-based perspective can clarify which languages have color-naming systems that deviate from what universal forces would predict. Spec…
Two Predicted Universals in the Semantics of Space
Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Semantic Typology and Semantic Universals (1993)
A model of the human capacity for categorizing spatial relations
Languages vary dramatically in their structuring of space. Despite this wide variation, however, the search for universals in spatial semantics is well motivated by the fact that all linguistic spatial systems are based on human experience of space, which is in turn constrained by the nature of the human perceptual system. I present a connectionist model which contributes to the search for universals in this domain. Its design incorporates a numb…
How do we tell an association from a rule? Comment on Sloman (1996)
S.A. Sloman's (1996) intriguing argument for separate associative and rule-based reasoning systems is unfortunately damaged by a certain amount of slack in the distinction he makes between these two posited mental mechanisms.The authors suggest that the distinction could be sharpened by overt reference to explicit models of associative and rule-based processing.They also point out that "simultaneous contradictory belief," which Sloman takes as ev…
How do we tell an association from a rule? Comment on Sloman (1996)
S. A. Sloman's (1996) intriguing argument for separate associative and rule-based reasoning systems is unfortunately damaged by a certain amount of slack in the distinction he makes between these two posited mental mechanisms. The authors suggest that the distinction could be sharpened by overt reference to explicit models of associative and rule-based processing. They also point out that "simultaneous contradictory belief, " which Sloman takes a…
The Human Semantic Potential
Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space
The nature of color categories in the world's languages is contested. One major view holds that color categories are organized around universal focal colors, whereas an opposing view holds instead that categories are defined at their boundaries by linguistic convention. Both of these standardly opposed views are challenged by existing data. Here, we argue for a third view based on a proposal by Jameson and D'Andrade [Jameson KA, D'Andrade RG (199…
Language, thought, and color
The Arab Street
Understanding Arab public opinion is central to the search for sustainable political solutions in the Middle East.The way Westerners think about Arab public opinion may be affected by how it is referred to in their news media.Here, we show that Arab public opinion is rarely referred to as such in the US media.Instead, it is usually referred to as the Arab street, a metaphor that casts Arab public opinion as irrational and volatile.We trace the or…
Color naming and the shape of color space
Color naming in the world's languages has traditionally been viewed as reflecting either a universal set of focal colors, or linguistic relativity. Recently, a different view has gained support: color naming may be accounted for in terms of the overall shape of perceptual color space. Here, we show that the new shape-based perspective can clarify which languages have color-naming systems that deviate from what universal forces would predict. Spec…
Kinship Categories Across Languages Reflect General Communicative Principles
Who's Who Different languages rely on distinct sets of terminology to classify relatives, such as maternal grandfather in English, and precision in language usage is a key component for successful communication (see the Perspective by Levinson ). Kemp and Regier (p. 1049 ) propose an organizing framework whereby kinship classification systems can all be seen to optimize or nearly optimize both simplicity and precision. The labels applied to kin a…
Perceptions of Palestine
Cultural norms and trends are often reflected in patterns of language use. This article explores cultural perceptions of Palestine and Palestinians in the English-speaking world, through two analyses of large linguistic datasets. The first analysis seeks to uncover current conceptions of participants in the Israel-Palestine conflict, by identifying words that are distinctively associated with those participants in modern English usage. The second…
Semantic Typology and Efficient Communication
Crosslinguistic research on domains including kinship, color, folk biology, number, and spatial relations has documented the different ways in which languages carve up the world into named categories. Although word meanings vary widely across languages, unrelated languages often have words with similar or identical meanings, and many logically possible meanings are never observed. We review research suggesting that this pattern of constrained var…
Numeral Systems Across Languages Support Efficient Communication
Languages differ qualitatively in their numeral systems. At one extreme, some languages have a small set of number terms, which denote approximate or inexact numerosities; at the other extreme, many languages have forms for exact numerosities over a very large range, through a recursively defined counting system. Why do numeral systems vary as they do? Here, we use computational analyses to explore the numeral systems of 30 languages that span th…
Computer Science (10 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works) · Cognitive science (4 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (4 works) · Perception (4 works)