Light for brevity

Context, Compositionality, and Brevity

Because of “arguments from the infinity of language”, compositionality is often seen as a ‘non-negotiable’ feature of any theory of the semantics of natural language. But there are a number of features of “ordinary language discourse” that make it seem that compositionality is not true of natural language semantics. Some of these features are lumped together under the rubric of ‘context’, and i...

The value of brevity.

Measuring Brevity and Violence: A Comparison of Approaches

Brevity of the Ca2+ microdomain and active zone geometry prevent Ca2+-sensor saturation for neurotransmitter release.

The brief time course of the calcium (Ca2+) channel opening combined with the molecular-level colocalization of Ca2+ channels and synaptic vesicles in presynaptic terminals predict sub-millisecond calcium concentration ([Ca2+]) transients of > or = 100 microM in the immediate vicinity of the vesicle. This [Ca2+] is much higher than some of the recent estimates for the equilibrium dissociation c...

The Clarity-Brevity Trade-off in Generating Referring Expressions

Existing algorithms for the Generation of Referring Expressions (GRE) aim at generating descriptions that allow a hearer to identify its intended referent uniquely; the length of the expression is also considered, usually as a secondary issue. We explore the possibility of making the trade-off between these two factors more explicit, via a general cost function which scores these two aspects se...