Definition and Examples of Information Content

In linguistics and information theory, the term information content refers to the amount of information conveyed by a particular unit of language in a particular context. An example of information content, suggests  Martin H.  Weik, is the meaning assigned to the data in a message (Communications Standard Dictionary, 1996). As Chalker and Weiner point out in the Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (1994), The notion of information content is related to statistical probability. If a unit is totally predictable then, according to information theory, it is informationally redundant and its information content is nil. This is actually true of the to particle in most contexts (e.g. What are you going . . . do?). The concept of information content was first systematically examined in Information, Mechanism, and Meaning  (1969)  by British  physicist and information theorist  Donald M. MacKay. Greetings One of the essential functions of language is to enable members of a speech community to maintain social relations with one another, and greetings are a very straightforward way of doing this. Indeed, an appropriate social interchange may well consist entirely of greetings, without any communication of information content. (Bernard Comrie, On Explaining Language Universals. The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structures, ed. by Michael Tomasello. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003) Functionalism Functionalism . . . dates back to the early twentieth century and has its roots in the Prague School of Eastern Europe. [Functional frameworks] differ from the Chomskyan frameworks in emphasizing the information content of utterances, and in considering language primarily as a system of communication. . . . Approaches based on functional frameworks have dominated European study of SLA [Second Language Acquisition] and are widely followed elsewhere in the world. (Muriel Saville-Troike, Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press, 2006) Propositions For our purposes here, the focus will be on declarative sentences such as (1) Socrates is talkative. Plainly, utterances of sentences of this type are a direct way of conveying information. We shall call such utterances statements and the information-content conveyed by them propositions. The proposition expressed by an utterance of (1) is (2) That Socrates is talkative. Provided the speaker is sincere and competent, her utterance of (1) could also be taken to express a belief with the content that Socrates is talkative. That belief then has exactly the same information content as the speakers statement: it represents Socrates as being in a certain way (namely, talkative). (Names, Descriptions, and Demonstratives. Philosophy of Language: The Central Topics, ed. by Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay. Rowman Littlefield, 2008) The Information Content of Childrens Speech [T]he linguistic utterances of very young children are limited in both length and information content (Piaget, 1955). Children whose sentences are limited to one to two words may request food, toys or other objects, attention, and help. They may also spontaneously note or name objects in their environment and ask or answer questions of who, what or where (Brown, 1980). The information content of these communications, however, is sparse and limited to actions experienced by both listener and speaker and to objects known to both. Usually, only one object or action is requested at a time. As linguistic lexicon and sentence length increase, so too does information content (Piaget, 1955). By four to five years, children may request explanations about causality, with the proverbial why questions. They may also describe their own actions verbally, give others brief instructions in sentence format, or describe objects with a series of words. Even at this stage, however, children have difficulty making themselves understood unless the actions, objects, and events are known to both speaker and hearer. . . . Not until the elementary school years of seven to nine can children fully describe events to listeners unfamiliar with them by incorporating large amounts of information in appropriately structured series of sentences. It is also at this time that children become capable of debating and absorbing factual knowledge transmitted by formal education or other non-experiential means. (Kathleen R. Gibson, Tool Use, Language and Social Behavior in Relationship to Information Processing Abilities. Tools, Language, and Cognition in Human Evolution, ed. by Kathleen R. Gibson and Tim Ingold. Cambridge University Press, 1993) Input-Output Models of Information Content Most any empirical belief . . . will be richer in information content than the experience that led to its acquisition--and this on any plausible account of the appropriate information measures. This is a consequence of the philosophical commonplace that the evidence a person has for an empirical belief rarely entails the belief. While we may come to believe that all armadillos are omnivorous by observing the eating habits of a fair sample of armadillos, the generalization is not implied by any number of propositions attributing various tastes to particular armadillos. In the case of mathematical or logical beliefs, it is rather harder to specify the relevant experiential input. But again it seems that on any appropriate measure of information content the information contained within our mathematical and logical beliefs outruns that contained in our total sensory history. (Stephen Stich, The Idea of Innateness. Collected Papers, Volume 1: Mind and Language, 1972-2010. Oxford University Press, 2011) Also  See MeaningCommunication  and  Communication ProcessConversational ImplicatureIllocutionary ForceLanguage Acquisition

Internet Crime and Moral Responsibility - 3336 Words

Internet Crime and Moral Responsibility Internet Crime and Moral Responsibility 3 Introduction 3 What is Internet Crime? 3 Types of Crimes 3 Phishing 3 Child Pornography 4 Cyber Stalking 5 Computer Intrusion 5 Denial of Service Attacks and Cyber War 5 Identity Theft 6 Whose responsibility is it to report these crimes? 7 Reporting agencies 8 Conclusion 8 References 9 Internet Crime and Moral Responsibility Introduction The Internet is the technological genius of the computer age. Although the Internet is a phenomenal tool, providing access to the world, it has also become a Shangri-La for criminals. The Internet because of the ability to remain anonymous is the perfect playground for this type of mayhem. This†¦show more content†¦Users need to be informed that if they receive an email that appears to be from the institution or business, they need to contact the company in regards to the validity of the email. This should be reiterated to users monthly to help insure the reduction of personal information being gathered unlawfully. Child Pornography Child Pornography is the abuse of innocent children that has been put on display and oftentimes sold for a profit. It is used largely by pedophiles to help lure other children into illicit relationship situations that no child should ever have to endure. Because the Internet provides global access, the number of sex offenders using this avenue has dramatically increased, allowing them greater access to innocent victims. Child pornography is illegal in the United States regardless of whether it is being sold, viewed, saved on a computer or copied. Other countries have varying laws regarding child pornography where it is illegal to produce it but not to have it stored on a computer that you own. Although laws may be in place to protect against child pornography across the global community, those laws are not always enforced. 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Ballet The Ultimate Expression Of Romantic Imagination Free Essays

Imagine your legs in rotation from the thin castle of hips to the small tarsal bones of the foot, tracing the path of a man lost in the paradise of love; they revolve around the tiny space underneath the straightened tip of hallux to reinstate the eternal truth: to love is all, to love is supreme. From the abdomen to the cradle of the neck, all muscles are contracted to give support to the flexible rotating limbs. You squeeze some ‘fluid’ off the buttock until it flattens to the dance of romance and strays away†¦ Away? Oh! Not in the hands of ignoble men belonging to the immoral club but carried by the wind of romance with steps similar to heroic ballerinas like Taglioni and Cerrito. We will write a custom essay sample on Ballet: The Ultimate Expression Of Romantic Imagination or any similar topic only for you Order Now No one can describe that feeling better. No one can depict the imagination and express it in terms easy to understand than the excellent flexible and portable ballerina with graceful moves, steps and turns that drive the heart of the audience to the land of eternal bliss where romance reigns supreme. With the solo production of gracious music and the body movements on the heroic stage of wonders, from simple demi-plie to complex enchainement, one is swept off the feet, and fallen to the ground only to open one’s eyes to the reality of the imagination. This is what ballet can. Indeed, it is the ultimate expression of the romantic imagination. If you check out the message on display, the music that dictates and the serene environment that fills the hall, one comes to the conclusion that if grand opera were a god, it would bow when it sees ‘ballet’ and exclaims: ‘I am great and gracious. I bring music in its serenity and divinity. I fill the atmosphere with the grand performance of musicians, their notes and instruments. I do capture the imagination of romance in words and music lines but lack one thing: the calculated moves and accurate body characters of the ballet dancer; the language it speaks is far more reaching than words; it creates the imagination in acts eyes can behold, and sends the mind into the scene with a leader’ Is anything left to say? MATERIALS: Fiero, Gloria K. ; The Humanistic Tradition, Fifth Edition; Volume 5, Chapter 29. Fonteyn, M. (1980). The magic of dance. BBC Books, London How to cite Ballet: The Ultimate Expression Of Romantic Imagination, Papers

Oliver bacon(the duchess and the jeweller) Essay Example For Students

Oliver bacon(the duchess and the jeweller) Essay THE DUCHESS AND THE JEWELLEROliver Bacon, the jeweller, is really the only developed character in the short story The Duchess and the Jeweller by Virginia Woolf. The author uses the indirect stream-of consciousness technique as well as her own words to depicts the enterprising merchant as a many-sided man: He is both ambitious and sympathetic. The jeweller is highly arrogant and ambitious. His strutting smugness is evident through the animal metaphors used to portray him-from his physical bearing (his nose was long and flexible, like an elephantstrunk), to his ambition compared to a giant hog snuffing for truffles or a camel sees the blue lake.He reveals his hearts deepest passion for cold stones rather than other human beings, especially since he does not have any real friends in the story. When Bacon opens his safe to relish his treasures, the jewels-shining, cool, yet burning eternally, with their own compressed light-his excitement is clear as he gives human attributes to the germs. Tears! said Oliver, looking at the pearls. Hearts blood! he said, looking at the rubies. But then, he exclaims Gunpowder! at the blazing light from the diamonds, Gunpowder enough to blow Mayfair-sky high, high, high! At this point, Bacon becomes not just the mercantile manipulator, but a man of the British ruling structure, an edifice so massive that much of the population remained flattened by its pressures. However, our sympathies are with the man who recalls his youthful self, you who began life in a filthy, little alley and who still incarnates the spirit of the wily astute little boy; the man who still works in the dark little shop in the street off Bond Street rather than in the world of the Duchess who, for all her dissipation, still covers the jeweller with sparkling bright colours; the man who worships the memory of his mother and apologizes to her for paying the Duchess 20,000 pounds for junk, trading his self-respect and honor for the opportunity to consort with royalty. It is this conflict that gives Bacon a degree of integrity, since he is aware of his failure and it is his very human decision to waste some of his wealth to achieve what he wants that makes him at least moderately appealing: He dreams of a long week-end with Diana, the Duchesss daughter. At the end of the story, when again he was a little boy in the alley where they sold dogs on Sunday we recognize the fundame ntal human nature of need and desires, and grant Bacon absolution for his failings. In a nutshell, Oliver Bacons character is described vividly by the stream-of-consciousness technique together with Woolfs words. From a little boy to a successful jeweller, his life can be regarded as a mixture of ambition sentimentality.