ACT2022 conference notes: Linguistics
In the previous post, I introduced my submission to the 2022 Applied Category Theory conference (ACT2022). Now that the conference is over, I’d like to share...
Posts by Year
2022
Another application of category theory in linguistics (Part 2)
[Link to Part 1 of this post]
Another application of category theory in linguistics (Part 1)
This post is part of my portfolio for the poster session at the Applied Category Theory 2022 conference (ACT2022). It is a gentle introduction to my applicat...
Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022!
The last two months of 2021 have been all kinds of tough, but luckily we are now finally in 2022. Happy New Year, everyone! I hope whatever unhappiness of yo...
2021
Classical Chinese and programming
I like writing about Classical Chinese, and I’m keen on formal languages too. So, every time I see the two concepts show up together, I know I have to write ...
Unusual pronunciations in pop songs
It’s been a long while since I last updated my blog, but here I am! I remember last time it was still in winter, but now it’s already halfway through summer....
Some 1000-year-old doodles… and some thoughts on Classical Chinese teaching in the 21st century (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this post I wrote about an interesting Weibo hashtag I had seen, which was about some animal doodles on a 9th-century Chinese manuscript. Then I...
Some 1000-year-old doodles… and some thoughts on Classical Chinese teaching in the 21st century (Part 1)
Yesterday I saw a trending hashtag on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter): #一千年前小朋友写的字, which translates as “characters written by kids from 1000 years ago.” I click...
Happy “Niu” Year and semi-loan neologisms in Chinese Internet slang
This is my first post of 2021, so first of all Happy New Year! And Happy “Niu” Year in advance to my Chinese-speaking friends too, since 2021 is a Year of th...
2020
The syntax of emoji? (originally published on CamLangSci)
This post was originally published on CamLangSci in May 2016. I repost it here (with some reformatting and slight modification) because CamLangSci seems to b...
“By the media criticizes you”?! Bei, ba, and light verbs in Chinese (originally published on CamLangSci)
This post was originally published on CamLangSci in July 2016. I repost it here (with some reformatting and slight modification) because CamLangSci seems to ...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 6)
In Part 5 I finished reviewing the pronunciation and character parts of von der Gabelentz’s textbook. In this final part I’ll continue to review its syntax p...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 5)
In Part 4 I finished my review of Wade’s textbook and gave it the highest rating among all the 19th-century textbooks I’ve reviewed so far. In this part I’ll...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 4)
In Part 3 I finished reviewing Morrison’s textbook and also began reviewing Wade’s textbook. In this part I’ll continue to comment on the character and the s...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 3)
This is the third part of this long post. In this part I’ll present my remaining review for Morrison’s book and then turn to Wade’s seminal work.
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 2)
In this part I continue to share my personal impressions of 19th-century Chinese language textbooks. I’ll finish off my review of Marshman’s book and then st...
What did Chinese textbooks look like in the 19th century? (Part 1)
Recently I was having this conversation with a (hyper)polyglot friend—who had already inspired a post on this blog by the way—where we exchanged ideas on var...
Carving civilization into stone…and the “Chinese Rosetta Stone” (Part 3)
In my previous post Carving civilization into stone…and the “Chinese Rosetta Stone” (Part 2) I introduced an inscribed stone tablet in Chinese history, calle...
Carving civilization into stone…and the “Chinese Rosetta Stone” (Part 2)
In my previous post Carving civilization into stone…and the “Chinese Rosetta Stone” (Part 1) I wrote about my recent discovery of a roadside stone carved wit...
Carving civilization into stone…and the “Chinese Rosetta Stone” (Part 1)
Civilizations in the universe come and go just like leaves on a tree grow and fall; neither ultimately leaves behind any trace. In Book III of the sci-fi nov...
CamCoS 9 conference notes: Day 4
Link to my notes from Day 3
CamCoS 9 conference notes: Day 3
Link to my notes from Day 2
CamCoS 9 conference notes: Day 2
Link to my notes from Day 1
CamCoS 9 conference notes: Day 1
So I’m attending this year’s Cambridge Comparative Syntax conference (CamCoS 9), not as a speaker or student helper this time but only as an audience member....
Dobby’s pronominal system
Recently I rewatched the Harry Potter movies on a whim. Then, I also began relistening to the audiobooks to fill in the missing plots from the cinematographi...
My blog is one year old!
I started blogging last August. Now it’s August again and I can proudly announce that my blog is one year old 🥳! In the past year I wrote fifty-four blog pos...
ACT2020 conference notes: Main sessions
In the previous four posts I organized my notes from the ACT2020 Tutorial Day. In this post I’ll continue to note down things I’ve learned from the main sess...
ACT2020 conference notes: Tutorial Day Lecture 1 (David Spivak)
So I’m participating in this year’s Applied Category Theory conference (with a virtual poster—check it out here!), and the preconference Tutorial Day has jus...
A new application of category theory in linguistics (part 2)
In the previous post I laid out the disciplinary background of my application of category theory in linguistics in more detail (than I had done in my explain...
A new application of category theory in linguistics (part 1)
This is the second part of my “portfolio” prepared for the virtual poster session at ACT2020. It introduces my category-theoretic modeling of the human langu...
“Verbs are verbing” and nonlinguistic uses of part-of-speech terms
Some time ago I came across a short video on YouTube featuring the TV celebrity Jason Silva, who passionately talked about the underlying dynamicity of the u...
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 6): Linguistics II
(link to part 5)
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 5): Linguistics I
The original motivation for this article was an occasional idea about the similarity between I Ching divination and transformational-generative grammar. I en...
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 4): Meaning II
(link to part 3)
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 3): Meaning I
In the previous post I introduced the structural components of I Ching divination, including lines (or monograms), trigrams, and hexagrams. In this and the n...
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 2): Structure
In the previous post I introduced the historical and cultural background of the ancient Chinese divination book I Ching ‘the Classic of Changes’. In this pos...
Generative grammar for I Ching divination (Part 1): What’s I Ching?
Sometimes our brains make connections in unexpected ways. For instance, the other day I was thinking about I Ching (can’t remember why), the ancient Chinese ...
Where is language from? (Part 2)
I began my previous post “Where is language from? (Part 1)” by commenting on a recent online article about the origin of language. Then I went on to compare ...
Where is language from? (Part 1)
A while ago I came across a website for a Genetic Literacy Project. The slogan of the Project is “science not ideology,” and its goal is to promote science l...
“Can I copy your ppt to my mp3?” On letter words in contemporary Chinese (Part 2)
In my previous post I wrote about the letter word phenomenon prevalent in contemporary Chinese. I discussed their classification and semantics with some comm...
“Can I copy your ppt to my mp3?” On letter words in contemporary Chinese (Part 1)
The sentence in the title of this post may sound awkward to an English speaker’s ears—How can one copy a filename extension to another?—but it turns out to b...
Bilingualism helps prevent dementia? And a remark on “scholarly longevity” (Part 2)
In my previous post I wrote about the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia. I also mentioned that formal education was listed among the Alzheim...
Bilingualism helps prevent dementia? And a remark on “scholarly longevity” (Part 1)
Today I came across an article online (via Facebook) entitled “More evidence that bilingualism delays symptoms of Alzheimer’s.” It introduces a recent paper ...
First post of 2020
It’s been quite a while since I last updated my blog, and we’re now already two months into 2020 and one month into the Year of the Rat (kung hei fat choy!)....
2019
Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020!
Today is Dec 31, the last day of 2019 as well as the last day of the past decade. Tomorrow we’ll be entering a new era, at least physically, and I hope many ...
Learning programming languages like natural languages: Is it a good idea?
Recently I came across a short article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences entitled “The language of programming: a cognitive perspective” (Fedorenko et al. 2019...
My science communication experiences
“So what is linguistics?” This is a question I have been asked many times, both by academics from other disciplines and by friends and relatives outside acad...
Why are apples so beloved (linguistically)?
Many years ago, probably when I was in grade six or seven, I accidentally overheard the following snippet from a family conversation. The speaker was the wif...
Language in a Qing-Dynasty polyglot’s eyes: A review of GU Hongming’s “The Chinese language”
Lately I’ve been reading a book entitled The Spirit of the Chinese People (Chinese title: 春秋大義). It’s a collection of essays written by the famous Chinese sc...
“Country of visual language” and “ghost script”: Unusual stories about language in Chinese historical documents and folklore
Recently I randomly came across a passage about language in a historical Chinese document. It’s in a short essay written by the famous writer and poet SU Shi...
Category theory notes 20: Category theory for posets (Part 2)
In my previous post “Category theory notes 19: Category theory for posets (Part 1)” I began writing about the “poset versions” of some category-theoretic res...
Category theory notes 19: Category theory for posets (Part 1)
Throughout this blog series I’ve been writing about category-theoretic results in their fully general forms, which are applicable to all categories from all ...
Category theory notes 18: Reflective subcategory (Part 2)
In my previous post “Category theory notes 17: Reflective subcategory (Part 1)” I discussed the similarity and distinction between linguistic and mathematica...
Category theory notes 17: Reflective subcategory (Part 1)
So far in this series I’ve viewed a category as an individual and independent entity. Two categories may be related by functors or even better connected by a...
Category theory notes 16: Yoneda lemma (Part 3)
In the previous two posts, “Category theory notes 14: Yoneda lemma (Part 1)” and “Category theory notes 15: Yoneda lemma (Part 2),” I started a task of decip...
Category theory notes 15: Yoneda lemma (Part 2)
In the previous post “Category theory notes 14: Yoneda lemma (Part 1)” I began writing about IMHO the most challenging part in basic category theory, the Yon...
Category theory notes 14: Yoneda lemma (Part 1)
Awodey calls it “the single most used result” of category theory (Category Theory, p. 185), Crole regards it as “an indispensable tool which every category t...
Category theory notes 13: Adjunction (Part 2)
In the previous post “Category theory notes 12: Adjunction (Part 1)” I wrote about my thoughts on adjunction, an extremely important component of category th...
Category theory notes 12: Adjunction (Part 1)
So, after reading many textbooks, watching many video tutorials, and attending two guided courses, I finally understood adjunction. That was a real “Eureka!”...
Category theory notes 11: Composite naturality (Part 2)
In my previous post “Category theory notes 10: Composite naturality (Part 1)” I illustrated the vertical and horizontal compositions of natural transformatio...
Category theory notes 10: Composite naturality (Part 1)
The notion of natural transformation is surprisingly easy to follow. If you know what an arrow is and what a functor is, then you automatically know what a n...
Category theory notes 9: Full and half inverses
Category theory textbooks often warn learners that categorical objects and arrows shouldn’t be tied to sets and functions. A poset category, for example, has...
Category theory notes 8: Functoriality
Fong & Spivak refer to category, functor, and natural transformation as the “big three” of category theory in their newly published textbook An Invitatio...
Category theory notes 7: Categorical idioms
Idioms and slangs are an important part of human language. They are short, expressive, and vividly reflect regional/historical mind-sets. And they are usuall...
Category theory notes 6: Think big
Category theory is spectacularly big. But exactly how big is it? Consider a set $A$. It can hold a huge number of elements, say, all grains of sand on Earth....
Category theory notes 5: Arrows and diagrams
Arrows are so vital to category theory that Awodey jokingly refers to the theory as “archery” (Category Theory, p. 2). Given two objects in a category, an ar...
Category theory notes 4: Monoid
Monoid is one of those concepts that are extremely simple, extremely useful, and can at the same time be extremely confusing. It was one of the first concept...
Category theory notes 3: Categorial or categorical?
Category in category theory is a noun, but we often need to use the term in other parts of speech (notably adjective and verb). Try the following quiz for ex...
Category theory notes 2: What’s a category?
The term category is anything but unfamiliar to linguisticians. Human language is all about categories. For example, speech sounds are grouped into various n...
Category theory notes 1: A linguistician’s babble
So I ended up using category theory in my linguistics dissertation. How this happened is a long story. Basically I stumbled into a promising-looking toolkit ...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 3)
In “The linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 2)” I wrote about my thoughts on some language-related settings and descriptions in my recent favorite sci-fi no...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 2)
In “The linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 1)” I briefly introduced the phenomenal sci-fi trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, aka “Three-Body,” written by ...
Fictional languages and the linguistic view in Three-Body (Part 1)
I’m a sci-fi lover, and in the past few years I’ve been deeply impressed by the trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past written by the Chinese author Cixin Liu. ...
Learning a third language via a second… and how linguistics helps along the way
Language learning is a lifelong journey. In particular, if a person speaks multiple languages and hasn’t acquired them all as mother tongues, then he must ha...
Vowel harmony… and why linguistics matters in language learning (Part 2)
In my previous post “Vowel harmony… and why linguistics matters in language learning (Part 1)” I wrote about my recent chat with a polyglot friend about vowe...
Vowel harmony… and why linguistics matters in language learning (Part 1)
Yesterday a friend of mine mentioned in a Facebook chat that he had started learning Turkish seriously. He went on to tell me about the striking similarity i...
My first post: Why blogging?
I had mulled over the idea of opening a blog for a long time before finally taking action. The problem was that every time I had got very close to actually d...