We investigated the neural correlates of idiomatic sentence processing using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-two healthy subjects were presented with 62 literal sentences and 62 idiomatic sentences, each followed by a picture and were required to judge whether the sentence matched the picture or not. A common network of cortical activity was engaged by both condition...

The internal and often iconic structure of the signs in a signed language (SL)—the rough equivalent of words in spoken languages—present interesting challenges for linguistic theory. Specifically, lexicalisation in SLs occurs when a signed unit acquires a clearly identifiable and replicable citation form which is regularly and strongly associated with a meaning. The meaning is unpredictable and...

A theory of idiomaticism is developed and illustrated using music for Bflat valve trumpet. Physical measures were collected from two trumpet performers and used to construct a computer model of the instrument/performer. Using this model, several works composed by both trumpet virtuosi and non-trumpet players were analyzed. A conceptual distinction is made between measures of performance difficu...

The rhetorical distinction between literal and metaphorical meanings and so semantic and discoursal opacity often associated with idioms is universal. But the format of idioms can stand out, and the means by which the expressions are formed, often drawing on the use of notable objects or events relevant to the native society concerned are often culture bound. These objects and events can often ...

We propose a long-term memory design for artificial general intelligence based on Solomonoff’s incremental machine learning methods. We use R5RS Scheme and its standard library with a few omissions as the reference machine. We introduce a Levin Search variant based on stochastic Context Free Grammar together with four synergistic update algorithms that use the same grammar as a guiding probabil...