Updated Jan. 1, 2011

AI-C

AI-Cortex
Knowledge Base

Purpose of AI-C

In addition to being the documentation for the AI-C Lookup program, this document explains the background and design of the AI-C database. It also helps keep me on track, which is its main purpose; I refer back here often to refresh my memory on how and why things are done in the AI-C Lookup program. It also contains the documentation for the AI-C Lookup program and an analysis of its Visual Basic 6 program code.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the foundation of general Artificial Intelligence (AI). For purposes of this document and project, NLP-AI (or usually just AI) refers to the ability of a computer program to at least match the human brain's ability to reason and communicate. This is sometimes referred to as Natural Language Understanding rather than just Natural Language Processing, but when I use NLP in this document, I mean it to refer to understanding text, not just processing it.

The ultimate goal of a general AI would include all the senses (sight, hearing, even touch, smell and taste), but that goes beyond the current scope of this project.

Due to the success of IBM's Watson program beating the top players in TV's Jeopardy, some people think that NLP is off and running, but the problem is that what Watson was doing had little in common with natural (conversational) language. It was not maintaining a dialogue, it was translating input into key words which would allow it to look up data in its massively extensive database of mostly trivia.

AI-C is a long, long way from completion, but some of the already-existing ideas and data may be of use to others who are working on their own programs, even for those who may not agree with my overall approach. The current version of the program also contains many tools for working with words, as described herein.

The AI-C Lookup program is just a tool for working on the AI-C database. The program is NOT the point nor purpose of AI-C, although the routines in the program should eventually be helpful in writing code for using AI-C as an NLP-AI program.

No copyrights are attached to anything by me on the AeyeC web site. Any of this can be adapted in any way you wish. If anyone wants to adopt the AI-C database and approach, that is great too. Either way, I am more than happy to cooperate with others on AI/NLP.

There is NOT just one way of doing anything in AI-C. I have found myself constantly wanting to add this disclaimer to this documentation and to the program code, but I have instead displayed it prominently here and hope that serves for the whole docs/code. The structure of the databases lends itself to an almost endless variety of approaches. This document and the source code show how I am doing things, so naturally these are the methods I think are best, but because the databases are so flexibly designed, there are an almost endless number of different approaches and techniques which could be used. Feel free.

Designing A NLP System

Who's to say what the best approach to NLP is? If you want to debate what the best word processor or best database program or best web browser is, you can run, test, and compare competing programs to see which ones accomplish their goals the best, but when it comes to full, general AI, there are not any programs which have achieved that goal, so how can anyone say for sure which approach, if any, will ultimately achieve the best results?

Designing an AI/NLP system is relatively easy. The biggest problem facing AI/NLP developers is capturing real-world data. Even if we do not worry about capturing specialized data, such as every detail of medical science, or even every detail of human anatomy, just capturing the majority of common real world data known by, say, the average 20-year-old, is an enormous task.

Most, maybe nearly all, NLP projects to date have tried to acquire real-world knowledge (often called "common sense data") by getting people to enter facts either as sentences or into forms. (A more recent project by the name of NELL, and probably some others unknown to me, acquire data by reading pages on the Internet. NELL appears to be focused on gathering facts about known entities, such as people and places, so their efforts are only marginally applicable to working on full AI/NLP.)

If the approach of using random web surfers to build a knowledge base were applied to building a tall office building, it would start with the architects coming up with a plan for the building, then sending into the building site passersby to work on whatever suits their fancy. Most passersby are not expert builders, plus most of them already have jobs and cannot dedicate a lot of time to the new building. Most will do a little sloppy work and then move on. It is unlikely that few, if any, will have time, expertise, and willingness to do a proper job over the long period of time required to complete the building.

Worse yet, since the people can work on whatever they want, some may try to put up walls and ceilings while others are painting, laying carpet, etc., all the while, no proper foundation has been laid for them to build upon. And many people will make errors which will weaken the overall structure.

Here is a more sensible way to use volunteers to start from an extensive list of words (assuming English, in this example). Get volunteers to sign up, including email address and screen name.

For each word show:

entries based on definition of word (provide link to Wiktionary's entry for word)
entries based on expanded description of word (provide link to Wikipedia's entry)
entries based on other sources, including "self".
entries based on "common sense" or "common knowledge" (presumably, mostly "self")
above entries grouped by POS, type-of/part-of, and LinkType (as done in AI-C Lookup)
for each entry, show source, date and screen name of person making entry

Show guidelines:

Request definition and expanded description entries before common sense entries.
Show examples of converting sentence-based definitions to multiple links.
Show list of Link Types and ability to add new Link Type if absolutely necessary.
How to enter numeric data. (See Numbers in this document.)

Most NLP projects do attempt to define words by linking them to classes and to other words. The problem is that I have never seen a project which assigns an ID# to every entry and links the ID numbers rather than linking the actual words. The problem with having long links of words is reusing parts of the links with other words. If entry ID#s are used, then a single number can be used to refer to a long list of interlinked words, but without ID#s, the entire list may have to be used each time you want to refer to it.

AI/NLP Textbooks

AI/NLP textbooks are attempting to teach how to do something which has never been done. How can any textbook say with certainty "this is the best way to do such-and-such" when there is no possible proof of the claim? The book Natural Language Understanding often discusses some approach to NLP at length and concludes by saying something like: given the current state of research in this area, we can't say if this will work.

Another problem with NLP textbooks is that they are usually not based on original research; that is, the author is not someone who has an active NLP project which is well under way. Textbooks are expected to have a lot of references to other people's research, which results in textbooks which espouse the same theories that everyone else is putting forward. (In contrast, the book The Psychology of Reading is full of references to research done by the authors.)

For example, as pointed out above, most NLP projects seem to use the same basic concepts in their knowledge base design, so NLP textbooks use that standard design as the basis for analyzing and discussing NLP approaches. But if the standard design is flawed, then that means all the NLP analysis and discussion which is based on that design is equally flawed, and I believe that to be the case.

An often stated assertion in English AI/NLP texts is that it is inefficient to store the whole forms for different part of speech ("POS") forms such as (verbs:) walk, walks, walked, walking, (nouns:) car, cars, (adjectives:) hot, hotter, hottest, etc. Instead, they insist that it is more efficient to store the root of a word and add the suffixes as needed.

The flaw in this argument is that it values disk space (needed to store the various forms) more highly than it values the time it takes to analyze words to see if they may be suffixed forms of some other words. In reality, disk space is cheap and processing time is very "expensive" when analyzing deep into branches of possible meanings. Time not spent figuring out if a word is a suffixed form of some other word is time that can be better spent trying to best determine the meanings of the words.

Another problem with not storing whole forms of suffixed words is that the Words table also links to the Syllables and Pronunciation tables, which it cannot do for suffixed forms if the suffixed words are not in the Words table. And the Words table also stores for each word its Soundex code, its letters in alphabetical order (though this is presently only being used to unscramble scrambled words and might be removed if no other purpose is found), and with letters in reverse order, which is used for finding specified word endings (including suffixes) without having to go through the entire Words table to look for matching endings. Obviously, you cannot find pronunciations, syllabification, or any of the other special formats for word forms which are not in the Words table. It's also hard to understand how you would link, say, plural words in the Cortex when the plural words aren't in there, such as trying to express "pack of dogs". The proponents of not storing whole forms may have a way around these proble ms, but it is highly unlikely that the way is anywhere near as efficient as having the whole forms to work with.

The bottom line is that the cost in disk space of storing all word forms is nothing compared to the loss of efficiency from NOT having all word forms stored.

The fact is that I have never seen a book on NLP which analyzes how knowledge bases should best be designed, yet knowledge bases are the very foundation of NLP! It is pointless to talk about how something in NLP should be done when you have not established the design of the most important tool to be used in doing it.

NLP Tools

Books and classes on NLP tend to focus on tools for analyzing text in order to extract information from the text,

AI-C's Design

The design idea behind AI-C is to have a Cortex (table) which has no text in it, just pointers linking entries to each other along with numeric codes indicating the type of links. Text in AI-C is stored in tables and linked into the Cortex via pointers. Entries point to text and numbers in other tables will make up only a very small percentage of the Cortex; the vast majority of entries will be linking entries within the Cortex.

Example:

Enter 3 words into the Words table: big, red and ball
Make 3 entries in the Cortex table linking to these words in the Words table:
Link the first two entries together as entry
Link entry #4 (big & red) to entry #3, ball:

Note that entry #5 does not point directly to any words. It points to other entries which (eventually) point to words.

This allows you to reuse the entry for big - red with other words or linked sets of words, such as:

As you can see, the last entry combines 6 words with only two pointers. In addition, this approach allows you to search for any combination of these words, such as finding all things which are big-and-red:

Look up big and red in the Words table to get their WordID#s (1 and 2).
Look up WordID#s 1 and 2 in the Cortex table (also entries 1 and 2).
Look up a Cortex entry which links Cortex entries #1 and #2, which is entry #4.
Look up Cortex entries which link #4 to another entry, which includes #5 and #9. Mission accomplished.

It should be noted that the way we look up entries is that the fields in the Words table and the Cortex table are indexed so that retrieval of specific entries is virtually instantaneous.

Compare this to a knowledge base made up of "facts" in sentences, such as:

A child plays with a big red ball.
A fireman rides in a big red fire engine.

Because the individual words are not indexed, the only way to find "things which are big and red" is to look through each entry in the database.

For an example of a variety of linked entries, look up aardvark in the AI-C Lookup program. One entry, #126141: aardvark's excellent (sense of) hearing and good (sense of) smell locate prey links 20 different Cortex entries.

AI-C Project Phases

I have been working on this project in one form or another since the late 1980's, starting over again and again. One time I actually completed the addition of my list of 120,000+ words to a database, but I decided that the approach (using syllables instead of words as the basic unit of text) was not right, so I started over from scratch using words as the basic unit of text storage. That was the point where I started the first phase of the current design. Obviously, I'm not pressured by any kind of timetable nor profit motive. I just do this for the challenge and the fun of it.

The first phase was creating the vocabulary database described below where words are linked to parts of speech, to pronunciations and to their syllabifications. On Oct.1, 2009, this phase was completed to the extent of the word lists available to me at the time. Of course, the addition of new words will be an unending process.

At Oct.1, 2009, the Words table had over 136,000 entries in it, although a significant percentage of these are forms of root words; that is, the table includes multiple forms of verbs, adjectives, etc. For example, while the verb "to play" may have one basic meaning, its forms in the Words table include "play, played, playing, plays". And of course you also have "play, plays" - noun and noun plural - and "play" as an adjective (e.g.: "play money").

The second phase started with parsing definitions from dictionaries and linking the results in the Cortex. When all the definitions are done, the plan at this time for the next phase is to parse entries from Wikipedia and add that information to the database via linking. While a dictionary provides a very brief definition of a word, an encyclopedia gets into much greater detail, which is what we want in AI-C.

The third phase, having created a solid foundation of language data, would be to have AI-C read text from various sources (mainly the Internet) and integrate the data into its Cortex (and related tables).

The next phases would be to put AI-C to whatever use is possible after having completed the other phases. I am 64 and would be pleasantly surprised to live long enough to see this phase (or even the third phase) in gear.

Downloads

The files linked below are not there (other than the VB6 runtimes) because I work on this project every day (at times) and it is too hard to keep everything cleaned up, archived, and uploaded on a regular basis.

Contact me (see next section) and I will upload the latest files. When asking for the files, it would be appreciated if you would provide some information about your interest, what you plan on doing with the files, and how you learned about this web site.

AI-C Database in Access 2007 format.
The data can be made available in comma-delimited text files, if necessary.
Both this file and the software are in ZIP format and require an unzipping program.

AI-C Lookup program VB6 source code and executable.
The file AIC_Lookup.frm contains all the routines for accessing the database.
It is straight text and can be viewed with any text editor or word processor.
See the program documentation in the latter part of this document.
Please note that the program is very much a work in progress and parts being worked on may have not run.

If you do not have VB6, you may need to install the VB6 runtime modules to get the
executable (AIC_Lookup.EXE) to run.

This file you are reading serves as the documentation. It is included with the files above.
If you are viewing it online, it can be saved to disk by your web browser.

FordSoft File Viewer
...is a program for creating and/or viewing files such as this one in HTML format
or plain text format, although it's primary focus is HTML. It is a two-window
editor with a rich-text editor window on the right and a browser window on the
left for viewing the results. It can also be used just as a viewer with file(s)
displayed in the left and/or right window (in a 2nd browser window).

The reason for listing it here is that it contains the AI-C spelling corrector
with additional routines for extracting each word from the text, looking it
up in the dictionary, finding the suggestions, etc. In addition to spell-checking
a selected word or the whole document, it also does spell-checking as you type.

The zip file includes the VB6 source code and executable, though to run it,
you will need the VB6 runtime modules mentioned above. To use the spelling
corrector, you will need the database file (in Access 2007 format) shown above.
You may need to edit the source code for the location of the database file.

Contact me regarding AI-C

My name is Nelson Ford. You can contact me via the email form linked below.

Click here to bring up a form for contacting Nelson Ford.

Brains vs. AI

The Brain's Cortex

In the brain, the Cortex (or neo-Cortex) is a 6-layer sheathing that encases the rest of the brain and is responsible for higher level brain functions. It is essentially an enormous collection of memory locations (sort of) with a massive amount of parallel interconnection between them. From this comes everything that we are and that we know and think -- our non-artificial intelligence.

Brainiacs seem to agree that the Cortex is in the business of searching for patterns in its memory network with which to respond to input, and creating new patterns when appropriate ones are not found. When patterns are found, they are used to predict what is coming. This is what allows us humans to react to things in a timely manner.

However, nobody knows exactly how all of this works, which is what makes trying to create Artificial Intelligence which mimics it so difficult.

"Programs" in the brain.

Even if we could create a huge database which resembles the brain's Cortex, it would not do anything unless we wrote a program to drive it. The program driving our Cortex is in our DNA. (This is not to be confused with "programs", such as for playing chess, which must somehow be stored in our brains as a very complex set of interconnected memory locations.)

This DNA Brain program is not trivial. Scientists believe that the compressed version of the code (removing redundancy) is 30MB-100MB. This seems extremely large, given that the code only governs the framework for how the brain stores and processes data; that is, it does not contain programs for performing specific real-world tasks (such as playing chess).

When I started this project, I certainly didn't anticipate having 30MB-100MB of compressed code with which to manage the Cortex data. I was under the impression that essentially all of the work of the Cortex was done in the Cortex itself.

Like the brain, AI-C is made up of two parts -- the database which contains all the knowledge and the programs which work with the knowledge, but we have the advantage of being able to write programs for specific, complex tasks in stand-alone apps rather than by wiring together data points the way the brain does. Again I refer to the example of a chess program.

Should AI work like our brains?

No. The brain, for all its wondrousness, has also been the generator of unspeakable horrors. The brain is the seat of insanity, degeneracy, irresponsibility, self-destructiveness, and on and on. It would be folly to manufacture an AI which works exactly as does the brain and not expect the same types of problems.

And yet, a lot of attention is currently (Dec.2009) being given to "reverse engineering" the brain for AI, including IBM's supposed emulation of a cat's brain.

What really matters is to meet and exceed the output of the brain without the deficiencies of the brain. An analogy would be the manufacture of synthetic lumber for building decks, among other things. The goal is not to manufacture boards which are identical in all respects to lumber from trees, but to create artificial boards which serve the same purpose in deck building as lumber from trees, but not rot, splinter, warp, need to be resealed regularly, etc., the way "natural" boards do.

The computer has numerous and very large advantages, so if it can be made to do the same thing as the brain, but with the advantages of the computer, it will be vastly better than the brain.

The brain receives data input (externally or internally), looks for patterns which relate to the input, analyzes those patterns to try to predict what's coming next, stores and retrieves data, and generates output. These are all tasks at which the computer can excel.

Advantages of the computer over the brain.

Speed.

The brain absorbs spoken input at about the same speed as it absorbs printed input, whereas a computer can absorb printed input (by "printed", I mean electronic text in ASCII format) many, many times faster than spoken input.

A single communication within a computer is millions of times faster than within the brain. And although the brain has the advantage of its communication being massively parallel, we may not be far from achieving that in computers.

Larger basic unit of storage.

When it comes to storing data, the basic unit of text storage which AI-C must handle is the word, or in special cases, a word fragment. Of course, the computer software below the database level does keep track of individual characters and somewhere in the computer hardware, code is even required to draw a character on the screen, but that is not something that the AI normally must worry about.

The brain's cortex does not have the ability to store a word as a single unit. It is not even able to store individual letters. Neural coding is not completely understood, much less how the cortex stores information which it assembles into letters and words.

The fact that the cortex stores small elements of letters is what allows the brain to recognize a letter in any font in which the elements are recognizable. Web sites use this ability as a security measure, distorting text so that computers cannot make out the letters, but the brain can, so a human user can enter the text to pass the security test.

So it is possible that the brain's basic unit of word storage (for the printed form of a word) is the linked-together general features of each letter making up the word (though not necessarily the correct set of letters, when dealing with a word which was only heard and not seen spelled out). On the other hand, because the brain can store data using parallel connections, it does not have to recall letters (or letter fragments) one unit at a time. Instead, it probably has words stored like this:

In addition to the printed form of a word, the cortex links together neurons in a way that stores the auditory form of words. In fact, as children, this is obviously what we learn and the brain stores before we learn to read.

While parallel linking to each letter in a word may seem to be the equivalent of a single link to the whole word (as we do in AI-C), the problem with the former is that the brain's links for any of the individual letters may weaken and some or all of what makes the word may be forgotten. That brings up the next point:

Perfect memory of virtually infinite duration

The brain's ability to remember data is dependent upon the number of times its related links are reinforced by repeating the data (and possibly by brain functions which take place while we sleep), and those links will still weaken over time if not reinforced in the future (although some evidence suggests that lifelong memories may be linked differently). In extreme contrast, if a link is created a single time to a piece of datum in the computer, AI-C will remember it forever.

This leads to a significant difference in the superior way to store data in the brain and in the computer. The brain must get around the fact that it will gradually lose data whose links are not sufficiently reinforced and/or when it must make room for new data. For example, most scientists believe that rather than store every possible verb form, the cortex uses "rules" to create regular verb forms and stores only the irregular forms. Likewise, rather than storing every "pixel" in a visual image, it stores only key elements of images. One reason it does these things is that the more it must remember, the more it will eventually forget. Another issue is that the brain has a limited amount of data storage space, as discussed below.

In contrast, the computer never forgets anything, so it can store ALL verb forms and only has to use rules to create verb forms for new verbs before storing them for the new verb. The advantage is that it is much faster to recall stored verb forms than to recalculate them each time, particularly since the words are indexed for immediate retrieval the first time they are stored. Recalling stored data is also more reliable than recomputing verb forms, reassembling whole pictures from parts, etc.

Computer memory can be backed up, both locally and in distant locations away from local disasters, and restored if the computer's memory is damaged and/or must be replaced. In contrast, data in the brain can be lost forever due to brain damage either from outside trauma or internal disease, strokes, tumors, aneurisms, etc.

Unlimited memory capacity.

The ability of the brain to forget data (due to weakening links) can be viewed as a necessity for a brain with limited (albeit huge) room to store and recall data -- it cannot keep adding data to the cortex indefinitely. (See http://www.physorg.com/news185720165.html.)

The computer has no such limitation, so it has no great need to let data fade in order to make room for new data. Still, it is easy enough to mimic the strengthening and weakening of links in AI-C, if need be, by linking to usage frequency counters within AI-C.

Capacity for work.

The brain must be put into a sleep state for about 6-8 hours a day. Less sleep can cause reduced brain performance. Total sleep deprivation can cause even more extreme mental problems and even death. We don't really know why this is or exactly what the brain is doing during this down time. Current theory is that functions take place which strengthen new data links formed during the day.

Even with the 8 hours sleep, the brain cannot work on problems non-stop the other 16 hours a day, yet a computer's AI can run 24/7, non-stop, on a single problem if necessary. With multiple processors, it can work on many problems, as well as routine chores, at the same time, and do so continually at its highest level of performance, never getting tired, sick, or distracted.

More efficient "programs"

As previously mentioned, the greatest advantage of the computer may be that we (and in the future, AI-C) have the ability to write programs to accomplish tasks which our brains can only mimic by wiring together data points (similar to circa 1950's machine coding before the first programming language was invented).

While the overall functioning of the brain is controlled by our DNA, a "program" in our brains to, say, play chess, is not a program but an extremely complex set of interconnected neurons. It boggles my mind to even think of such an approach. In contrast, a program for a computer to play chess can be written for that specific purpose. At one time, a disadvantage of computer game programs was that they did not allow the computer to learn by experience and adapt, but we are seeing more adaptive game programs being written these days, though even without that ability, IBM was able to develop a program which could beat top chess international grandmaster.

Before I started working on AI-C, I was working on a bridge-playing program which stored all of the data for its decision making in data files rather than being hard-coded into a program. A major advantage of this approach is that the program can modify its own decision-making parameters. I finished the bidding part before deciding that AI-C was a more beneficial use of my time.

In the 1980's, I wrote CardShark Hearts and CardShark Spades, but they used hard-coded algorithms. I had intended to make their algorithms self-modifiable, but they began to win at a high enough rate without doing so. And after all, nobody really wants to play against a program they can never beat.

Some people may argue that humans can also run specialized programs, use calculators, etc., but that is not at all comparable. For the computer, specialized programs are, for all practical purposes, part of the computer's "brain" in that they are instantly accessible and can be directly integrated into the AI's "thought processes".

AI-C's Database Structure

Microsoft Access

The current general design of AI-C's database was created with Microsoft Access97 and later updated to Access 2007 and is no longer readable by Access97. (Even earlier versions were written with Btrieve.) Any further references to Access refer to the 2007 version. AI-C can be viewed and edited with Access, although using computer software written specifically for viewing and editing the AI-C data, such as the AI-C Lookup program documented below, is a much more efficient method.

I am presently converting the database to SQLite for use on portable Android devices.

If needed, the data could be provided in comma-delimited text files which could easily be imported into any database, including older versions of Access. Either way, others should be able to use their choice of programming languages with the data.

The maximum size of an Access 2007 database is 2GB. As this is being written, the Cortex has about 120,000 entries and the total size of the database is about 80MB. Other tables make up some of that 80MB, but even so, it seems likely that the database will hold only about 2,500,000 entries before it hits 2GB.

Dec.2010 note: the Cortex has only gone up by about 8000 entries, but the database has increased in size to over 1.1GB. When I noticed the database getting big, I split the Words table, the Syllables table, and the Pronunciation table and a bunch of other tables off to a new database called AIC Words, which is 88.6MB, leaving just the Cortex, LinkTypes, Numbers, and Shapes tables in AIC Cortex, which is now only 14MB. The Words tables (those with text in them) should not get a whole lot larger (although they could if other languages are added to thenm). Most important at this point is that 128,000 Cortex entries is only taking 14MB, meaning that about 18.3 million Cortex entries could fit in one 2GB database.

Another limit to be faced some day is that the fields in the Cortex are all long integers, which can only be numbers up to just over 2 billion, so even if the 2GB database limit problem is solved somehow, at some point the fields would then need to be changed to double precision and the database would then double in size, allowing only half as many entries in the same size data file..

IBM's cat brain emulator took over 147 thousand CPUs and 144 TB of main memory, which for the human brain could translate to over 3000 TB. So 2GB looks pretty skimpy for the long run, but it gives me a lot of room to work for now and I'll worry about what to do next when I run out of that space. It is highly unlikely that I could ever make 2.5 million entries manually, so the 2GB limit is safe at least until I can automate the importing of text into linked entries in the database.

IBM's Watson program (for playing "Jeopardy") has at its beck and call ninety IBM POWER 750 servers, 16 Terabytes of memory, and 4 Terabytes of of clustered storage. This is enclosed in ten racks including the servers, networking, shared disk system, and cluster controllers. These ninety POWER 750 servers have four POWER7 processors, each with eight cores. IBM Watson has a total of 2880 POWER7 cores. IBM�s POWER 750�s scalable design is capable of filling execution pipelines with instructions and data, keeping all the POWER7 processor cores busy. At 3.55 GHz, each of Watson�s POWER7 on-chip bandwidth is 500 Gigabytes per second. The total on-chip bandwidth for Watson�s 360 POWER7 processors is an astounding 180,000 Gigabytes per second

Not your daddy's IBM-PC, eh?

Finally, even if I am unable to crack the 2GB barrier, that should be enough room for me to complete enough of a Cortex database to be able to determine if the approach I'm using will work as an NLP-AI. If it does work and nobody has come up with anything better by then, perhaps someone else will be able to take it beyond 2GB.

The Cortex table

The Cortex table's fields

The Cortex table's data structure was designed to be as simple (and thus as flexible) as possible. A record consists of the following numeric fields:

Record ID# - Each record in the Cortex has a unique ID#.
Word ID# - Links to the ID# of a word/text in the Words table.
Start ID# - The ID# of any entry in the Cortex.
LinkType ID# - The ID# indicating the relationship of Start to Next.
Next ID# - The ID# of any other entry in the Cortex (usually).

The five fields in the Cortex are all numeric (long integers, at this time). Text is stored in other tables, such as Words, Syllables, and Pronunciation, which are discussed in more detail further down. Numbers and dates can be stored in the Numbers table.

The StartID# and NextID# are usually pointers to a pair of entries which are related in some way, and each (or neither) of which may, in turn, point to other related entries.

The LinkType normally indicates the type of relationship between the two entries, and in some cases, the data table in which the source of the link resides or the type of data being entered, etc. However, LinkTypes are meaningless unless software has been written to recognize the LinkTypes and take appropriate action, hence all the usually's and normally's above. This will be discussed in more detail later.

In March 2010, I added a Date Entered field. I didn't list it above because it is an automatic field and not essential to the Cortex. It may be handy to be able to see when entries were made, but because database space may become an issue at some point, it is a field that could be dropped in the future or moved into its own database.

In August 2010, I added a Freq field. Again, I have not shown it above because it is not an essential field. It is designed to aid in selecting the most likely correction when a word is entered which is not in the database. Because the usage frequency is based on the part of speech for each word, When parsing input, it will also help in deciding which part of speech a word is most likely being used for.

See Spell Corrector under Using the AI-C Lookup Program: Look-Up buttons for more information.

Referencing text in the Cortex.

Each word in the Words table has a unique ID#. For a word to be usable in the Cortex data table, its WordID# must be entered along with its Part Of Speech (POS) in the LinkType field. Many, if not most, words have multiple parts of speech. An entry must be made in the Cortex for each WordID-POS combination, such as mail - noun and mail - verb.

When entering a different form of a verb, adjective, adverb, or noun plural, the CortexID# of the root word is entered in the StartID field. (It may be useful to link a different POS as the root of a word, such as prince, noun, being the root of princely, adjective, and princely, adverb. I didn't think of this until Phase 1 was completed, so only a few such entries made after Phase 1 have links to roots with different POS's.)

CorID	WordID	StartID	NextID	LinkID
62781	52252 ("kind")			30090 (adj.)
62782	52255 ("kinder")	62781		30091
62783	52262 ("kindest")	62781		30092

When adding a WordID to the Cortex, syllabification and pronunciation entries are made in their respective tables.

The Cortex does not use a word without a POS. A word cannot be defined or used without knowing its POS, so there is no point in adding it to the Cortex without the POS, though I use POS loosely because it could be an abbreviation, a prefix, etc. (See the LinksType table.)

The Words table contains my initial, cleaned-up list of words from different sources, but not all words in the Words table were added to the Cortex. In some cases, it is because a word was a misspelling or not found in dictionaries. Most noun plurals were not entered into the Cortex if they are just formed by adding an s to the root. But there could also be some perfectly good words which just didn't get added for whatever reason.

A WordID-POS entry will, in most cases, be linked as an element of (or type of) a broad category (set) which helps further differentiate it from other uses of the same word because a word inherits all the characteristics of the set to which it belongs.

For example, abacus - noun can be a type of slab (one at the top of a column) or it can be a hand-held computing device. When linking other entries to abacus which further define it, you would not want to link them to the abacus - noun entry because they would be unlikely to apply to both meanings.

Instead, you would create an entry linking the WordID-POS entry as an element of the set (or: a type of) slab - noun and another entry linking the same WordID-POS entry to the set device - noun, then link other entries to the appropriate one of those two entries.

(Note: I have found that when I refer to a word as being an element of another word/set, I lose track of what that means. Example: I first linked eye as an element of face. In general, that is what element means: a constituent or part of a whole, but in set theory, it means a part of a given thing, similar in nature to it. I later realized that an eye does not inherit all the characteristics of a face, so it could not be a true element of it, for our purposes. When you think type of, it makes the process easier. An eye is a type of organ - or more precisely, a sense organ - and is a part of the face. For the record, an organ is a type of tissue and face is a type of forward, external part of a system which has an internal structure. Side note: as you can see, the set can be more than a single word.)

(I have created a little problem for right now. It is very helpful to have an entry in the Type Of list, but it is not always easy to come up with something relevant which a word is a Type Of, but saying that it is a Part Of something serves much the same purpose, so when I re-linked words from Type Of links, I made them Part Of links. The problem is that a LinkType of component of already existed -- see abacus -- and component of seems logically the same as part of. I need to give this some more thought, but I may have to change all the component of entries to part of.)

Maintenance fields.

Tables in AI-C have a Tag field which can be used by software to mark fields for later review, normally by a human. For example, run the subroutine FindDiffPrns to tag different pronunciations of the same word and the Tag will be used to mark such entries.

Another maintenance field in the Pronunciation table is Ver which is used to indicate that a pronunciation has been verified. Computed pronunciations can be wrong because rules are not guaranteed to apply to all words, so knowing that a pronunciation has been verified is helpful in choosing between two pronunciations, computing new pronunciations, etc.

You can delete those fields (or add others) if you wish, because...

Cortex flexibility.

There is NOT just one way of doing things in the Cortex. Normally, the Cortex does not use a word without a POS, but that's just the way I am doing it now. A programmer could write a routine using particular LinkTypes which link to text without POS's. Likewise, there may be many different ways to link related Cortex entries together. When linking two entries, many times it does not matter significantly which entry is in the Start and which is in the Next. And in the long run, the AI-C itself will likely reorganize links for optimum efficiency anyway.

AI-C has what is probably the simplest possible database design (just five essential fields in the main table) and is available in the simplest possible formats (Access2007 or straight ASCII) with which you (assuming you program) can do anything you want using any programming language you want. Even building off the existing database and software, it should easily be possible to add fields to tables, add tables to the database, and even add new databases to the project, then incorporate them into AI-C by adding new LinkTypes which let you write code for dealing with them.

Words table

Words table structure

Each record in the Words table consists of an entry ID#, a text field which can be up to 50 characters, and a Soundex field (and currently, a word frequency field). Since the Words table was designed to hold only single words (i.e.: not phrases), it seemed like 50 characters should be plenty, but it can be easily changed.

There are no duplicate entries in the Text field, although capitalization counts so that Ford (brand of a car) and ford (crossing a river) are NOT considered duplicates.

However, I cannot set the index of text in the Words table to "no duplicates", because with that setting, Access ignores case and would not allow the two entries. I tried following Access' instructions for making the database software ignore case, but their suggestions did not work for me. Therefore, before adding a word to the Words table, it is necessary to check to make sure it is not already there, since the database is set to allow duplicates even though we don't want them.

Similarly, if you check to see if a word is already in the Words table and the database engine says it is, check to make sure that the capitalization is the same. That is, if you search for "ford" and the Words table finds "Ford", it will tell you that a match has been found. If the case does not match, continue searching to see if it finds the word with matching case.

Source of words.

Many years ago I was writing an HTML editor (which, in fact, I am using to write this document) and wanted to add spell-checking. To do this, I searched the Web for word lists. I found a bunch, but they were all pretty junky. I compiled them, cleaned them up, ran them through other spell checkers, and ended up with a list of about 100,000 words.

When I (re)started this A.I. project, I began with that list for the Words table, adding to it when needed and creating entries in the Syllables, Pronunciation, and Cortex POS tables. Not every word in the Words table was linked into the Cortex. Words (in the Words table) without such entries should be considered suspect -- either misspellings or made up; however, they could be obscure, but legitimate words. Unused words were left in the table because they don't take up much room.

Common misspellings can be included in the database and linked to the proper spellings with a LinkType of misspelling. A spelling corrector added to the AI-C Lookup program in mid-2010 has proven to be so accurate that it almost always can find the intended word from any normal types of misspellings, so the entries for misspellings are probably not necessary.

Spanish words:

In the late 1980's, I wrote an English-Spanish dictionary by the name of Ventanas: Spanish For Windows. (I guess that was my attempt at being clever since for you non-Spanish speakers, the word ventanas is literally the Spanish word for windows. And at the time the program was written, many Windows programs were identified as being for Windows since Windows was still relatively new.)

As of March 22, 2010, I had not looked at it for a long time, so I tried running it under Windows 7 and the program still runs (in Visual Basic 3). Looking at it again was funny because I had absolutely no recollection of how it was designed, so it was like looking at someone else's program. In the late 1990's, I wrote an updated version of the software (using the same basic database of words) that listed categories, synonyms, and more.

The programs have some interesting features, such as showing POSs, style, synonyms for both the English and Spanish words, other translations of the word in each language, words/phrases with the word's root, and full conjugations of verbs. But the most interesting feature of all at this time is the ability to export all the data to a text file, which will allow me to import it into AI-C at some point (but not right now). It was also of interest to be able to see where I was with this kind of project almost 20 years ago.

The fact that Ventana's database has a pretty long list of English words in it makes me think that this may have been the actual starting prior database of words for AI-C, contrary to what I said above, though I have no memory of it. Ah, well. Not having a memory is what keeps things fresh! (In case it's not obvious, I'm kinda old.)

If interested, you can download Ventanas by right-clicking on the preceding link and saving to disk. This is the first version. I never finished and circulated the second version, though the program runs. I'll upload it and its later database when I get the chance. I'll also upload all the source code. If you Google, you may still be able to find places where you can download the actual VB3 programming language, though I don't know if you can compile with it under Win7, nor why you would want to do so.

Errors, ambiguities, and vagueness.

Even large, big-name dictionaries have errors, inaccuracies, ambiguities (see the Random House definition at the end of this document), and inconsistencies in them. In the course of this project, I have found dozens and dozens of basic errors (i.e.: typos, circular references, etc.) in such sources. This is understandable as these are very large works assembled by humans, and we all make mistakes. Unlike a computer database, dictionary publishers have no automatic way to enforce consistency or to verify accuracy.

The Cortex database may also have errors in it, having been created by humans (giving myself the benefit of the doubt), but with the difference that unlike printed dictionaries, the database can easily be corrected and over time, errors winnowed out. I have also written numerous routines which the computer can run to look for and correct some types of errors.

But even if errors get into the Cortex, it doesn't mean that they will be used. Before the Cortex can be used for A.I., software will have to parse documents, wiki's, etc., and translate such text into linked concepts in the Cortex. Once the Cortex hits a critical mass, new text will be understandable to AI-C by examining links in the Cortex. If a word or link is incorrect, it will probably never become interlinked with the rest of the Cortex, so it will never be used; or if used and is recognized by a human as wrong, it can easily be corrected.

Finally, as mentioned elsewhere, a significant percentage of what people communicate is incorrect -- either wrong words, misspelled words, improper grammar, redundant words, or excluded words. On top of that you can add faulty logic and incorrect "facts", either by accident or on purpose. It is not enough that AI-C can understand proper English (or other language); like humans, it must understand what humans are trying to say.

Prefixes and suffixes.

Entries for major Prefixes and Suffixes are included in the Words list and are given a prefix or suffix POS link entry in the Cortex. I debated doing this, but decided it might prove useful and couldn't really hurt, particularly for prefixes like un- and non-, which can be used with hundreds (if not thousands) of words to make new words. Actually, any kind of bits of text (such as other parts of words) can be stored in the Words table for use by the Cortex.

Verb forms.

Verb forms, such as past tense, present participles/gerund, and 3rd-person singular, have been included in the Words table, even though the book Speech and Language Processing, considered by many to be the Bible of NLP, says: the idea of listing every noun and verb [form] can be quite inefficient.

While it is true that space could have been saved by using rules for regular word forms instead of entering all the forms, the Words table is very small relative to what the Cortex will ultimately become.

Having all noun, adjective, and verb forms in the Words table should simplify (and thus speed up) parsing sentences and finding words, which is far more important saving a little disk space.

Here's an example: What is the present tense word for the past tense word: indebted? (Click for answer.)

Noun plurals.

Noun plurals have also been included, but mostly when the plural is formed by some means other than simply adding an s, or when the plural form is very common and/or has its own meaning. Noun plurals are linked to the singular form in the Cortex.

In some cases, a noun may only have a plural form; if so, there would obviously be no link to a singular form in the Cortex. It would link only to the WordID in the Words table with a LinkType of Plural Noun.

Another case is that a noun may have two (or more) different plural forms. Some nouns may appear to be plural (ending in "s", for example) but use singular verbs and vice versa. And finally, some singular nouns may take either a singular or plural verb.

Since most simple noun plurals (just adding an s) are not included in the Words or Cortex table, when parsing, if an entry is not found for a word and it has an s on the end, try leaving off the s and searching for the singular form. If the word is the subject with a verb, then if the verb is plural, the word is very likely plural as well.

Frequency

When a word is entered (in the Lookup program or in text being imported/read) and it cannot be found in the Words table, the Spell Corrector routine is called to find the most likely correction. When multiple suggestions get the same (or a close) rating, we can use the frequency of usage of the words as an indicator of which to use.

In addition to the frequency ranking in the Words table, there is a frequency ranking field in the Cortex table with which the frequency ranking of different parts of speech can be recorded. Take the word bound for example:

common: past participle of bind - "they had bound them together"
common: adjective - "they were bound to arrive soon"
less common: past tense of bind - "they bound them together"
rare: verb (bound, bounds, bounding, bounded) - "we saw the rabbit bound over the fence"
rare: noun - "upper bound of a range of numbers"

When bound is seen when parsing a sentence, it is most likely to be one of the first two parts of speech.

Phrases

Dictionaries have entries for common word phrases/idioms, such as hot dog. (Technically, this is called a spaced compound noun.) At first, I added such phrases to the Words table, but then felt that it would be more correct to put the individual words in the Words table and then link them in the Cortex table to create phrases.

One reason is that if the computer is parsing a sentence, it can use the same routines to look for hot dog as it does for green apple, which is to look for two+ words being linked in the Cortex, as opposed to looking for two+ words in the same entry in the Words table and then if they are not found, having to look for the same two words linked in the Cortex.

Another reason for linking words together in the Cortex to form a phrase is that if someone uses a phrase in speech with slight wording differences, it is still easy to match up their input to a phrase stored in the Cortex while a search in the Words table will be very difficult to match if the input does not exactly match the stored phrase. For example, if the input phrase is hot diggity dog and that phrase is not in the database, hot dog would be returned as the closest match, even though diggity may not even be in the database.

Dictionaries include entries for word phrases because it would be a major inconvenience for users to have to look up two or three different words, note the meaning of each, and then try to put them together and discern the correct combined meaning (which could be difficult for hot dog). But we can link the words in the Cortex and create a definition for the linked set, so there is no reason to combine multiple words in the Words table.

The program code later on in this document shows precisely how to save and look up phrases, but here is an overview:

Here is how hot dog is stored in the Cortex:
(StartID and NextID are the ID#'s of other Cortex entries.)

CorID	WordID	StartID	NextID	LinkID
209110		2		30910 (phrase)
209111	45018 ("hot")	55210 ("hot" = adj.)	209110	30911
209112	27858 ("dog")	35609 ("dog" = noun)	209110	30911
209113		209110 ("hot dog")		30010 (noun)
209114		209110 ("hot dog")		30090 (adj)

Here is how to find the phrase hot dog in the Cortex.

Look up the WordID# for hot in the Words table (#45018).
Look for a Cortex entry with a WordID of 45018 with a LinkID# of 30911 (link to phrase).
See if the number in the phrase's StartID ("2", in the example above) matches the number of words in the phrase for which you are searching. If not, then return to Step 2 to look for more entries.
The NextID# in that entry will be the Cortex ID# of the phrase to which hot is linked.
Look up the WordID# for dog (#27858).
Look for a Cortex entry with a WordID of 27858 with a NextID found in the other entry (209100, in this example).

The above is just a rough outline of the steps involved. See the software code later in this document for a complete routine for looking up phrases.

Because "hot dog" is a phrase which is the name of a single item, we can make defining entries for the phrase's entry, #209110, just as we would for "dog". Shown are entries which classify "hot dog" as a noun and as an adjective (i.e.: "showoff"). You could also link 209110 (hot dog) as a subset of fast food, or to frankfurter as a synonym, etc.

The phrase entry (#209110) has no links in it. Its only purpose is to provide a point to which all words in the phrase can link in parallel. For a 2-word phrase, this is no big deal, but let's say that entry #217324 (made up) is: "No use crying over spilt milk", where some of the words in the phrase may vary (e.g.: "No sense crying...").

#217324
| | | | | |
no use crying over spilt milk

The alternative is to link the words in series; i.e.:

no - use - crying - over - spilt - milk

use

crying

If you searched for "no sense crying over spilt milk", you would not find this phrase if all the words were linked to each other in series, just as one bad bulb can put out a whole string of Christmas lights connected in series rather than in parallel.

With the words connected in parallel to one entry, as diagrammed above, you can still locate the phrase if one or more words are different. In this example, the main words (verbs, nouns, adjectives), which in this case would be crying, spilt, milk, should all point to phrase #217324, which in turn gives you entry numbers for the other words in the phrase.

If the text you were looking for used spilled instead of spilt, when you looked for phrases for crying, spilled, milk, only crying and milk would point to #217324. However, in that phrase you would see the word spilt and could look it up to find that it is a synonym of spilled.

The first example was a phrase which is synonymous with single words and which can be classified as a noun or adjective. This does not apply to the "spilt milk" phrase. It is only synonymous with other phrases which express the same concept, such as "that's water under the bridge", "what's done is done", or even phrases in other languages such as "a lo hecho pecho" (Spanish).

This may sound a little complicated, but that's the tradeoff you make for flexibility. Also, all of this is handled in the background by software, so though I say "you" have to do such-and-such, it is really the software that has to do it. You never see the complications once the software is working, and I have already written the code for tracing a word back to a phrase.

Entries linking words to a phrase are normally entered in the order they appear in the phrase. While this can be useful in recreating the standard phrase, it is still possible to look up the phrase when the words are jumbled, such as: no use crying after the milk has been spilled. Looking up each word's WordID-POS Cortex ID# matched with the 30911 (link to phrase) LinkID# will still lead to phrase #217324.

The case of letters can throw off a search for a phrase. If you searched for "No use crying...", AI-C would not find "No" because the phrase has been entered using the ID# for "no". It is possible to have a program search for each word as the opposite case when the original case cannot be found, but it is more efficient to correct the case before searching.

The shorter the phrase, the more difficult it may be for a program to find it when some words don't match, even if just the case of letters is different. If you anticipate this being a problem, you could enter the phrase with the case of the problem word reversed, then link that phrase to the correct one with a LinkID of 31015 - misspelling.

Idioms:

Generally, phrases are entered because they are idiomatic; that is - the meaning of the phrase cannot be inferred from the meaning of the words in it. Example: happy person should not be entered as a phrase, but by linking {happy} <modifier of> {person} because both words have their normal meaning, but happy camper should be entered as a phrase because the word camper is not meant literally.

A very simple example of an idiomatic phrase is kind of, an adverbial phrase which is synonymous with rather, as in: I'm kind of hungry. If you look up the word kind, not only will you not find a definition which is synonymous with rather, but you will not find any definition which is adverbial, thus to parse a sentence with kind of in it and correctly label the word as adverbial, you must not only have an entry for kind of, but a second entry is required to label it as being an adverb.

While it may seem simpler to enter a phrase than to build it

Nested phrases:

An example of nested (or combined) phrases: birds of a feather is an idiomatic phrase which is also part of the longer phrase: birds of a feather flock together.

It seems best not to link a phrase into another phrase. While it may save a few entries to do so (rather than entering all the words of the phrase again), it will make searching for phrases by words more difficult.

Linking to phrases:

Like any other entry in the Cortex, it is possible to link to phrases. For example: entry 125867 links birds of a feather flock together as an idiom meaning like minded people associate.

LinkTypes Table

LinkType - The Magic Key

The LinkID field of the Cortex is like the magic key to the kingdom. The StartID and NextID fields are usually the ID#'s of entries in the Cortex and the LinkType identifies the relationship between those entries. For example, if you have an entry for radio and another entry for device, you could use the type of link to say that a radio is a type of device.

But a LinkType can also be recognized by software, causing it to use the numbers in the StartID/NextID fields as something other than entry ID#'s, such as (1) data, (2) pointers to records in other tables, such as the Numbers table or a table whose records are pointer to external files (e.g.: pictures, text files, etc.), or even (3) pointers to external programs to be run, like statistics programs, games, etc.

LinkTypes are stored in the LinkTypes table and can be easily added to or modified. The AI-C Lookup program barely scratches the surface, but does give a small taste, of how software can use the LinkTypes.

LinkID's 29000-29999 are descriptive. Here are some of the more important ones:

29010 - Type of
29020 - Subset of
29110 - Part of

The next are Links which describe things:

29100 - characteristic of
29050 - descriptor of
29051 - modifier of

Nocturnal

aardvark

normally

A descriptor is a characteristic of some, but not all, members of a broader class. Red is a descriptor of some types of apple, but some apples are not red.

A modifier is a temporary condition or feature of something. Examples: hot coffee, red sky in the morning, a happy baby.

ConceptNet's Relational Ontology - I have just (Sept. 28, 2009) come across ConceptNet which has some similarities to what I am doing. While AI-C's LinkTypes table allows you to input any kind of linkage, ConceptNet uses predefined types of links:

Things

Spatial

Events

Causal

Affective

Functional

Agents

ConceptNet has a discussion forum in the Google pages.

LinkTypes Classes

Classes are a way to group link types so that the program can easily refer to a whole set of different links at once. For example, link ID#'s 3000-30035 all belong to the nouns class.

Programming Note: A separate table for classes was originally used to hold the class names and the class field in the LinkTypes table was used to link each link type to a class in the LinkClasses table; however, this meant first looking up a LinkID# in the LinkTypes table, then looking up the class for that entry. Since the program frequently has to look up class names, it is easier to have the class names in the LinkTypes table and save having to look up the class name. Since there are relatively few LinkTypes entries, any space wasted by repeating the class names instead of using a numeric pointer is small.

One advantage of putting classes in a separate table and using their class entry ID#'s is that the program could reference those ID#'s and any changes to the class names would not affect the program code. With the names in the LinkTypes table, if a class name is changed, the program code (and possibly the documentation) must be checked to see if they are affected. On the plus side, class names are pretty basic and should rarely have to be changed.

Parts Of Speech

In Phase One, the primary use of LinkTypes was to indicate the Part Of Speech ("POS") for each word linked into the Cortex.

Adverbs, conjunctions, articles, interjections, etc., normally just have one POS entry related to them. Nouns can have two -- singular and plural. (A plural noun is treated as a separate entry with no singular form.) Adjectives (and sometimes adverbs) can have three forms -- regular, comparative, and superlative (e.g.: high, higher, highest)

Most English verb entries have four forms -- present, past, gerund (or present participle), and third-person singular (run-runs, do-does). When entries are made for the words for the past, gerund, and 3rd-person forms, the entries contain a link to the entry for the present tense, which is considered the root. Some verbs also have an entry for a past participle form, which is also linked to the entry for the present. Irregular verbs, like to be have a relatively large number of forms and must be treated differently than other verbs.

Word Usage Frequency

Word Usage Frequency keeps track of the frequency with which links are used in various sources. This can help estimate which of similar word uses/meanings is most likely. Frequency should be linked to the date of usage when possible, perhaps by decade, so that it is possible to know which words are new, obsolete, etc.

The best way to keep track of word usage frequency is for AI-C to read documents, parse the sentences, figure out the meaning of each word, then increment a counter for each word's meaning in the Cortex. Since I have not reached the project phase of reading documents, the Cortex does not contain any word usage frequency data at this time (January 2010).

Here is an example of how the data could be recorded. The WordID-POS entry # in the Cortex for the word from is 46880. The LinkType code for word usage count is 3. An entry in the Cortex to keep track of the number of times #46880 is seen (9876543, in this example) would look like this:

Entry ID	StartID	NextID	LinkType
2323230	46880	9876543	3 (usage count)
2323231	46880	[source ID#]	600 (usage source)
2323232	2323231	[date ID#]	100 (usage date)
2323233	2323232	23456	3 (usage count)

Entry 2323230 has in its NextID field the actual total number of times AI-C has seen this word. This is the total of all sources of input, such as magazines, web blogs, WikiPedia entries, "conversation" with a user, etc.

#2323231 would have in its NextID field a number which would point to an entry in the Sources table. This entry is not linked to the previous entry, it is linked to the word's entry (whether WordID-POS or word-set entry, #46880. This entry doesn't tell us anything by itself, but it does in linkage with the next entry.

#2323232 has the previous entry # in its StartID field and a pointer in its NextID field to an entry in the Numbers table which contains the date of usage. Again, these last two entries are incomplete without the next one:

#2323233 has the date-source entries link in the StartID field and in the NextID, it has the actual number of times the word has appeared in the Source given for the date specified. This could be an actual date, but more likely it would be a range of dates or a year or decade, etc. A similar entry would probably be useful for the "total" entry, #2323230.

When a source is first entered into the table, it should be rated for reliability. A scientific journal might be assigned a reliability rating of 5, while Popular Science and Psychology Today may be rated 4, Wikipedia : 3, random blogs : 2, and National Enquirer : 1 (or perhaps a zero).

It is important to incorporate even unreliable "facts" into AI-C because, at worst, they help make up popular culture and urban myths. Is Earth frequently visited by aliens from other planets? Is Elvis still alive? If only the sources with a reliability of 0-2 say definitely yes, then AI-C would not accept it as fact, but it would be aware of the claims from unreliable sources.

As of this date (March 10, 2010), no entries like these have been made in the Cortex because we are not to that point in the project, but the above is how it could be done.

Contractions

One-word contractions include o'er, 'bout, 'cause, 'em, 'n', 'neath, 'til, ma'am, and e'en (which can be even or evening), but in informal conversation as well as in writing done for effect (i.e.: eye dialect), almost any word can be contracted. One of my favorites is a countrified response to Are you done yet?, which is Not plumb, but p'ert' near, where p'ert' is a mangled contraction of pretty, which in this context means very. I recently saw in print the word 'stache as a contraction of mustache

Two-word contractions include pronoun-verb (e.g.: they've) and verb negation (n't on the end: aren't).

The third type is not not formally considered a contraction, though it does meet the definition of a shortened form of a word or group of words. Examples: sorta (sort of), kinda and lotta. When eye dialect is being used, the number of such contractions is virtually unlimited (e.g.: Howzit going?) Whether or not these are genuine contractions, they are entered in the Cortex the same as above.

A contraction of 3+ words is not common. O'clock is one, but nobody ever says of the clock, so o'clock is more a word of its own rather than a true contraction. Likewise, shoot-'em-up is classified as a contraction in dictionaries, but a contraction of what? Nobody EVER refers to a Western (movie or TV show) as a shoot-them-up, so as a phrase, shoot-'em-up is not a contraction, and just because the phrase contains a contraction in it does not make the phrase itself a contraction, since, again, its non-contracted form is never used.

Nested contractions are rare, but possible. One example is 'tain't, which is a contraction of it ain't, which in turn is a contraction of it is not. A more modern example is sup for what's up and for which the apostrophe is usually not used.

Word insertions:

A word insertion is when one word, usually an exclamation or expletive, is inserted between the syllables of another word. Even multiple words can be inserted. This is actually common in German.

Example, sung by Liza in My Fair Lady: "Oh how loverly sitting abso-bloomin'-lutely still."

In America we lean more towards: "Abso-friggin'-lutely."

I haven't figured the best way to handle this, but thought I would mention it.

Affixes:

Affixes are another way to combine text with existing words to make new words, except that instead of combining two words, we combine all or part of an existing word with a prefix or (more commonly) a suffix. For example, to refer to a dog not on a leash, you may say that it is "leashless".

If you enter a word with some common extension (such as "leashless") and that form is not in the Words table, the spelling corrector will suggest that it may be a combination of "leash" and "-less".

Links to data in other tables

Most of the links in the Cortex will be for describing the relationship between two Cortex entries specified in the StartID and NextID fields, but some LinkID's can identify numbers in the fields (the NextID field, usually) as pointers to entries in other tables or files, such as a Source table, Numbers/Dates table, Shapes table, etc.

LinkTypes which point outside the Cortex table or which call for data in a StartID or NextID field rather than CortexID#'s should be given LinkID#'s less than 1000. This will allow software searching for CortexID#'s in those fields to ignore those LinkID#'s.

How Cortex entries link to other tables is discussed in depth in the sections for the other tables.

synonym vs alternative vs definition

Synonyms are different words with very similar meanings, but which may have different shades of meaning. A word may have several different meanings, in which case it is likely that it is synonymous with another word only for a specific meaning which they both share.

For example, the word abstract can mean remove, steal, summarize, generalize and more. We cannot say that steal is a synonym of abstract because abstract has all those other possible meanings with which steal is not synonymous. The next question is: what is abstract a type of which steal is also a type of? How about taking. If that is acceptable, we can link steal <type of> taking as a synonym of abstract <type of> taking. Sometimes I cannot think of a good type-of category. In that case, I use the a definition is link, such as abstract <a definition is> steal.

An alternative link for main entries indicates an alternative spelling of two words which have precisely the same meaning. Usually, the two words have very similar spellings, such as buses and busses, though rarely, they may be two completely different words with identical meanings, such as abattoir and slaughterhouse. Because it is only a different spelling, all shades of meaning and usage meanings for the two words are normally identical.

However, buses and busses are alternative spellings only as they apply to the plural form of bus, which is a type of vehicle. The spelling busses is also the sole plural form of the word buss, which itself is a synonym of kiss. So we must link: buses <type of> vehicle as an alternative of busses <type of> vehicle

So neither synonyms nor alternatives can simply be linked to Word-POS entries because most words have more than one meaning and another word may only be synonymous with a particular meaning. However, as a starting point, Word-POS entries may be linked to each other and then as more (defining) links are added, the links changed to the actual meanings (where meanings are actually the links from a Word-POS defining its characteristics, etc.).

It is worth noting that words from different languages have the same relationship that alternatives and synonyms do within the same language. For example, adios has the identical meaning in Spanish that goodbye has in English, so they are essentially just alternative spellings of each other, although instead of linking them as alternatives, we might want to link them as Spanish-English.

Example of usage of Links

The verb bind (e.g.: to tie up) has a past tense of bound. But bound is also the present tense of a verb meaning to jump, etc. The present-tense verbs bind and bound can also be transitive (LinkID #30060), intransitive (#30050), or both (#30065).

The verb forms for bound are bounded, bounding, bounds. Bound can also be a noun (#30010) or an adjective (#30090). Here is how the POS entries for all of this look. The dashes separate the entries for bind from the entries related to the present tense form of bound. (Text in the table below is not in the Cortex table; it is shown here for convenience.)

Note that entries with links for "verb trans.", "verb intrans." and "trans & intrans." are always present tense, then the other verb forms are linked to these entries.

Words Table ID WordID Start Next LinkType

-------- --------- ------- --------- ------- ------- ------- -------------------

8706 bind 13581   8706 30060 - verb trans.

10406 bound 13582 10406 13581 30070 - past tense

8712 binding 13583   8712 13581 30080 - gerund

8716 binds 13584   8716 13581 30045 - verb 3rd-prs.sing.

------- --------- ------- --------- ------- ------- ------- -------------------

10406 bound 15571 10406 30065 - trans & intrans.

10409 bounded 15772 10409 15571 30070 - past tense

10413 bounding 15773 10413 15771 30080 - gerund

10418 bounds 15774 10418; 15771 30045 - verb 3rd-prs.sing.

------- --------- ------- --------- ------- ------- ------- -------------------

10406 bound 15775 10406 30010 - noun

10407 bounds 15776 10407 15775 30015 - noun plural

------- --------- ------- --------- ------- ------- ------- -------------------

10406 bound 15777 10406 30090 - adjective

Notice that in the Start column, entries for verb tenses other than the present link back to the entry for the present tense. Code in the AI-C Lookup program, given later in this document, show how descriptive links made to different word forms can be found when looking for just one of the verb forms. That is, if you look for the word ran, the code will look for all links not only to ran but to run, running, runs, etc.

Adjectives (and a very few adverbs such as far, farther, farthest) are entered in a similar manner where the comparative (-er) and superlative (-est) forms, if any, link back to the original adjective.

The word cannot presents a problem because it has to be categorized as a verb, but its only form is the present tense. It should be linked to the entry for can as its negative, but which entry for can? Well, it must be a verb entry, but the verb form has more than meaning ("is able to" and "to store food in an airtight container"). So it must be linked to the entry which links can to the meaning is able to. This illustrates why linking words without definitions is futile.

Pronunciation Table

Introduction to pronunciation

AI-C has a pronunciation table in addition to a table of syllables.

The formal division of words into syllables frequently does not indicate how the word should be pronounced. Instead, it seems to be a device for indicating how a word should be hyphenated when at the end of a printed line of text. For example, quickly is syllabified as quick-ly, but its pronunciation is qui-klee, with the k moving from the first syllable to the second.

AI-C's pronunciation spelling

Here are examples of some other source's phonetic representations of the word pronunciation:

www.Dictionary.com (alpha)
www.Dictionary.com (IPA)
www.YourDictionary.com
www.Wiktionary.org

From this, it is easy to see why we created for AI-C a new means of showing pronunciation:

Most dictionaries do not use a standardized set of pronunciation symbols. The u in cure, cute, and music is shown as yoo in Webster's and yoo with a cup over it in American Heritage. A desktop version of Merriam-Webster's shows it as yu with a diacritic over the u. And even using IPA, there are differences in the examples above between Dictionary.Com and Wiktionary.org (upside-down 'r' in IPA and a space before the 's' in Dictionary.com's version).
It is virtually impossible to figure out without a guide how to pronounce some of the symbols used.
The major standardized set, the IPA, is very difficult and/or time-consuming for the non-expert to figure out even with a guide.
The symbols used by other sources, and especially the IPA, cannot be displayed onscreen without installing special fonts, which is why graphical screen captures are used for the above examples.

The Dictionary.com's alpha spelling comes closest to being usable, and had I found Dictionary.com in time I might have used its system, but it still has problems:

Two-letter combinations are sometimes used for a single letter, but because they are in lowercase like the other letters, if you wanted to convert Dictionary.com pronunciations to a different format, it would be difficult to distinguish such letter combos from normal (non-combo) uses of the letters.
The pronunciation of some combos, such as ey, can still be in doubt.
Some combos are in italics, which creates extra steps in encoding/decoding pronunciation spellings. In the listing above, Dictionary.com shows [pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn], following an italicized uh with an unitalicized uh and then ey in bold instead of using an accent mark.

A pronunciation guide is displayed in the bottom-right corner of the AI-C Lookup program. The long vowels (those which sound the way the letter is named and which are often displayed as the letter with a horizontal bar over it) come first: AE, EE, IE, OH, EW/YEW/YOO. Next are the short vowels: a, e, i, o, u. The upside-down e used in most systems (called schwa in phonetics) is pronounced eh, so AI-C uses EH for it.

AI-C's version of pronunciation is prEH- nun' sEE- AE� shEHn.

All uppercase letter combos are pronounced just as they are spelled (EH = the interjection: eh), as are all lowercase letters.
If you want to convert AI-C's pronunciation table to a different format, the letter combos could be easily swapped out for other letters or symbols because they are uppercased and thus easily distinguishable from other letters in a word.
All letters are from the English alphabet and can be displayed without special fonts.

Notice that two accent marks are needed - the main accent ( � ) and the secondary accent ( ' ). Because there is not a key for the main accent, AI-C generates it when the backward accent ( ` ) is hit. (This is the key normally to the left of the 1 key.)

For a complete discussion of ways of showing pronunciation, see Cortex Pronunciation Guide.txt.

Linking to pronunciations

It would be easiest if the pronunciation of a word could just be linked to entries in the Words table, but the fact is that the same word can have more than one pronunciation, so the Pronunciation table has a field to link an entry to the word in the Words table and to the WordID-POS entry in the Cortex. However, this means that when the same word can be used as several different Parts Of Speech, a separate Pronunciation table entry must be made for each one. This is usually redundant because different POSs for a word normally have the same pronunciation, but it is necessary and appears to be less redundant than other approaches.

In rare instances, pronunciation has to be linked to the entry for one of the specific meanings of a word. For example, address is pronounced EH-dres' in its verb forms and some of the time in its noun form (such as in the phrase: polite forms of address), but for most of its noun usage (it was mailed to his address), it is pronounced ad'res.

Since an entry in the pronunciation table can link to any type of entry in the Cortex table, it does not have to link just to a POS entry; it can link to entries for different meanings of the same word. In this situation, you would not have an entry in the pronunciation table linked to the WordID-POS entry for address - noun as you normally would, in which case the next step would be to search the pronunciation table for the word's WordID and get the CortexID numbers for those entries to use in tracking back to the Cortex.

ha'rass and ha-rass' are two pronunciations of the same word with the same POS and same meaning. In a case like this, two entries can be made in the pronunciation table which link to the same WordID-POS Cortex entry.

Different pronunciations of the same word

addict is pronounced ad'ikt as a noun and eh-dikt' as a verb.
bass is bas when it means fish and bAEs when it means a low range of sound.
read is rEEd in the present tense and as a noun ("the book was a good read"), but red in the past tense and as an adjective ("he is well read").
lead is lEEd when it means "guiding someone" but led when it refers to the mineral.
buffet is bu-fAE' in its noun form and buf 'it in its verb form ("to hit")
ally is AL'IE as a noun and EH-LIE' as a verb.
alum is a problem because its pronunciation determines the meaning.
If pronounced al'EHm, it is a mineral, but as EH-lum', it is a shortened variation of alumnus, but unlike the other examples, it is a noun in either case.
chassis is both singular and plural, but it is pronounced shas'EE in the singular, shas'EEz in the plural.
desert is des*ert - dez�EHrt as a large, arid, sandy area and de*sert - de-zEUrt� as abandon or as "just deserts".
project is prAH'ject as a noun and prEH-ject' as a verb. Its syllabification also changes from proj-ect to pro-ject.
duplicate is dEW'pli-kit as an adjective or noun, but dEW'pli-kAEt as a verb.
salve is sav (as in "savage") when the meaning is "ointment" but sAOlv (as in "salvage") when the meaning is "salvage". It is interesting that both Random House and American Heritage (according to www.dictionary.com) show the same pronunciation for both meanings, but when you click on the recorded pronunciation for each meaning, you can easily hear the difference in the tonal quality of the "a".

The words the and a introduce a problem which has not been addressed yet in AI-C. The problem is that before a vowel, the is pronounced thEE while before a consonant, it is thuh, and there is presently no way in AI-C to indicate that.

Sadly, the list above makes it seem unlikely that there could be any hard and fast rules for computing pronunciation based solely on spelling. (Saying "unlikely" is giving the benefit of the doubt, because it is barely possible that there could be rules which 99% of the words follow, and we are looking at some of the exceptions.)

Computing pronunciations.

Since it appears unlikely that rules can be used to compute the pronunciation of words, I use analysis of the pronunciation table to do that.

When adding a new word to AI-C for which you do not have the pronunciation, it is possible to compute it from the Pronunciation table. First drop one letter at a time from the end at a time until you can find a word (preferably many words) in the Words table with the same starting letters. Look up the pronunciation for those words and extract the part which applies to the starting segment you are using.

For example, say you have a new word, telespiel (a made-up word: the prepared script used by telephone sales people), for which you have no pronunciation. You would write code to look for telespie, telespi, telesp, teles and get a match with telescope. The matching text in syllables is tel*e with the s being part of the next syllable. So we now have tel*e and spiel.

We go back through the Words table and look up the pronunciation for all words starting with tele and find they all have the pronunciation of tel'EH. Then we go through the Words table looking for all words (or at least the first 100 or so with the same ending when looking for more common endings) ending with spiel, such as glockenspiel and find the matching pronunciation for spiel, which is spEEl or alternatively, shpEEl.

Put the two pieces together and you have tel'EH-spEEl -- a completely made-up word, but for which we now have a legitimate pronunciation and syllabification.

This procedure is very reliable when you get 100 matches from the Words table and all 100 have the same pronunciation, but it is less reliable when there are only a few matches in the Words table or if there are several different pronunciations found, more than one of which is in significant quantities. For example, ough is sounded as OH in though, but as EW in through and AOf in cough, but uf in rough. Thankfully, ough is a very unusual example.

But when there are few word matches and/or no predominant pronunciation among several alternatives, it is best to try other means of computing the pronunciation, or just taking a stab at manually entering it. Even if the pronunciation is wrong, it isn't the end of the world. Worst case scenario is that someone notices it is wrong in the future and corrects it.

Naturally, you do not want to manually perform the steps listed above. I have Visual Basic code (available by request) to do the steps, but it is fairly complex, and I can't guarantee that anyone can follow it despite ample comments and examples given.

The problem is that letters in actual words rarely match up one-for-one with letters in the pronunciations. Some letters are silent, some require two letters in the pronunciation and vice-versa, some letters/sounds get reversed (such as ble at the end of a word being pronounced bel), a letter at the end of a syllable in a word may be at the beginning of the next syllable in the pronunciation, and sometimes one syllable in a word may become two in the pronunciation or vice-versa. The routine has code to adjust for such things, which is what makes it complex.

If you use Visual Basic, all you have to do is add the routine to your program and pass it some text. Otherwise, good luck translating it.

My routine normally just returns the pronunciation for the text given to it, but it has a few special codes:

> (such as >ing) -- indicates that the last character of the preceding syllable moves to the start of this syllable. For example, dat*ing has a pronunciation of dAE'ting. In some cases, two letters move, such as itch*ing = it'ching. To get the > back, you must only submit whole syllables, indicated by a starting asterisk, such as *ing; otherwise, the program assumes you are not submitting whole syllables (which is possible, but not recommended).
< (such as <zh'EHn -- indicates that the letters shown before the first pronunciation mark go with the preceding syllable, even though they are part of the sound of the word syllable submitted. Example: cian is submitted from the word ma*gi*cian. It's pronunciation is mEH-jish'EHn, where the shEHn sound of the cian syllable goes with the gi of the preceding syllable.
@ (such as @OH for ough) -- indicates that the returned text is not reliable. You can choose to ignore the returned text and look for something better, or use it anyway.
#__: text1, #__: text2 shows alternative pronunciations where the blanks contain the number of matches found for each.

Numbers table

The StartID and NextID fields in the Cortex table are 4-byte long integers. They can store whole numbers with up to 7 digits of precision, but they cannot, individually, handle very large numbers nor decimal numbers.

If we made these fields double precision, the cost would be a large increase in the size of the database in order to handle a relatively few entries with large numeric data. So instead, we use the NextID as a pointer to a record in the Numbers table which has two double-precision fields, Num1 and Num2, with a combined precision of up to 30 digits.

Such large numbers are entered as text, such as 123456789000987654321. The text is split into two parts of no more than 15 digits each, like 123456789000 and 987654321, and each part is stored as numeric data in the double-precision fields, Num1 and Num2. To extract the original number, the process is simply reversed.

In addition to the numeric input, 1 or 2 codes can be added which indicate the precision and/or format of numbers, as well as other things. Also, two numbers can be entered, separated by a comma, with a code which describes them, such as being the bottom and top of a range or some number plus-or-minus another number.

Not too often will anyone need to store numbers with greater than 7 digits of precision, but it does happen. But the real advantage of putting numeric data in the Numbers table is being able to use the precision/format codes to define the numbers being entered.

The Numbers table can also be used to store dates and/or time and anything else which can be reduced to numeric input.

For more information, see Creating a Cortex entry in the program documentation below.

Side note:

The maximum size of the Text field in the Words table is 50 characters. Frankly, I do not know if that means that each text entry in the Words table is allocated 50 characters regardless of the text entered, which if so is a lot of wasted space, or if the space used in storing an entry is only the actual length of the text entered. If the latter, then it might be more economical to store numbers in text fields. Even though double-precision numeric fields are compressed, there may not be enough really big numbers for that to matter. It may be that more, smaller numbers are entered in order to take advantage of the Precision codes.

Shapes Table

The best way to understand the Shapes table is to look at in Access.

The Shapes table is a way to make rough drawings of things in the Cortex by using LinkID# 900 to link to various elements in the Shapes table. Each entry in the Shapes table is a different shape element, such as line(s), curve, ovals, rectangles, etc.

While each general shape can be linked to a numeric entry indicating how the shape is angled, each shape also comes with entries for standard angles, such as vertical and horizontal to save time and entries to record numbers.

Shapes can be combined (linked) in the Cortex.

Sources Table

The Sources table provides a means to reference external sources of Cortex data. Sources could include publications, web URLs, text files, or even a person's name. A source can be anything you wish to reference, although the table is not intended so much for obvious sources such as dictionaries or WikiPedia.

One use of sources is to document where conflicting data comes from, and the correctness of neither source can be established with certainty. Simply make two (or more) entries with the different data and reference the different sources, then link the two entries with a LinkType of contradicts.

The Sources table has four fields: (1) record ID#, (2) Filename? checkbox, (3) reliability score, and the name of the source.

If a source is a file, include the full drive and path name. If the file is on removable media, enter a description of the media (e.g.: CD-ROM #1035 or DVD "ScienceBlog Downloads" or FlashDrive #3) followed by a comma and then (optionally) the full path and file name.

Obviously, linking to a file or even to a Web URL is iffy because either of them could disappear in the future. And a file link to your hard drive will not work if your database is given to someone else or simply moved to another computer. A rewritable DVD is preferable for storing referenced files because copies of the DVD can be made to go along with the database if it is moved or shared, plus software can be made to prompt for the insertion of the named DVD when needed.

"z" Tables

Several tables are in the database with names starting with "z_". These are not essential parts of the database.

For example, the Brown Corpus table and the Internet table show the word frequencies in their respective sources. However, such lists do not indicate what definition of a word is being used, and capitalization cannot be trusted in most such lists.

E.g.: China is in the Brown Corpus list, but is it China the country or the dinnerware? (Remember: caps cannot be trusted.) Unfortunately, for the two lists mentioned, the numbers are for the combined usage of all possible meanings of each word, such as fire, which can be a noun, verb, or adjective, each with more than one meaning. (Example: fire an employee does not have the same sense as fire someone up or fire a weapon.) Therefore, these lists are only marginally meaningful. Nevertheless, the tables have been included in the database, though relegated to "z_" tables.

Using the AI-C Lookup Program

Introduction

The ultimate goal of AI-C is to be able to understand text, reason, and communicate, but that is a long way off.

The purpose of the current AI-C Lookup program is to make it easy to examine, edit, and add new entries in the database.

AI-C Lookup can look up a word and display all links for it, including phrases with the word in it. AI-C Lookup can also search for a Cortex entry ID# and display it and all of its related entries. Likewise, you can enter a phrase and search for it (or the closest match) or search for a phrase ID#.

So although AI-C Lookup is a long way from being a full NLP/AI program, it can be useful for some things. Because I usually have it up on my system working on it, I often use it to check on the spelling or pronunciation of a word.

AI-C can also be used to store information about a particular subject, including source, reliability, date, links to pictures and other data on the Web, as well as linking the new data to existing AI-C data or other new data, adding your own thoughts, and so on, and then use AI-C Lookup to access all that information.

For example, I recently took a Master Gardener's course. I was still working on the program at that time, but if it had been functioning as it is now, I could have entered the information from that course into the program as I was reading the books and listening to classes, then had an easy way to look things up rather than having to thumb through the manuals as I actually did.

Another example: I have used some of the early words in the dictionary to test data storage, linking, and display methods. To see the results, look up "a", "aardvark", and "abacus".

Set-up

Just make a directory/folder anywhere you wish and put all the AI-C files in it.

A monitor with at least 900-pixel vertical resolution is preferable, though more is better (e.g.: 1680 x 1050 or more which, in March 2010, can be had at Amazon.com for well under $200). The width is not critical. The bottom of the AI-C program window can be dragged down to make it larger so that you can see more of the Links table.

Word look-up's

To look up a word, put it in the Enter word(s) box and press Enter or click Look up word.

If the text entered is not found in the Words table, the program will display a list of suggested corrections, including splitting up run-on words (for more info, see Spell corrector under Look-up buttons, below); otherwise...
All Parts Of Speech ("POS") for the word will be displayed in the POS box.
All Type-of/Part-of entries for the first POS entry will be displayed in the Type of or Part of box.
All links to the first POS entry its first Type-of/Part-of entry (if any) will be displayed in the Links box.
Double-clicking an entry in the POS list box will cause all Type-Of links to it (if any) to be displayed in the Type-Of list, and all links to the first Type-Of link in the list box, if any, to be displayed in the Links list.
Double-clicking a line in the Type-Of list box will cause all links to it to be displayed in the Links list.

To look up the text a Cortex entry represents, enter its ID# in the box to the right of the Find cID button and press Enter or click the button.

Look up any series of linked entries by entering up to ten words (or other text entries, so long as they are in the Words table) separated by a comma in the Enter word(s) input box and clicking Look up word. If all the words entered are linked in a series of entries, those entries will be displayed in the Links list.

Example: entering plant, seed would cause the following line to be displayed:

sexual_reproductive_component [ monocotyledon [ flowering_plant]]

plant, seed, growing

growing

You can find the same entries by entering any one of the words and looking through the Links listing for sets of linked entries which contain the other words, but the previous method saves you having to look through such a list.

Phrases

Normally in AI-C, phrases are entered by linking two words together, then linking that entry to one or more other entries, etc. The advantage of this approach is that you end up with a lot of entries in which two or more related words are linked to each other with a LinkType which indicates how they are related. Then these individual entries can be linked with other entries or sets of linked entries to create a new phrase or concept without having to reenter all the same words.

When a phrase is entered simply by linking all the words in it to a single placeholder entry for the phrase, no relationship is established among the individual words to be reused in other phrases.

One time when it is appropriate to enter a phrase is when it is idiomatic -- the phrase has a meaning which cannot be derived from the meanings of the individual words which make it up. However, you can enter any kind of phrases you wish, not just idioms.

To look up a phrase, enter it in the Phrase box and press Enter or click Find Phr.ID.

To look up a phrase by ID#, enter the number to the right of the caption cID#: and press Enter or click the button Find Phrase (which now appears to the number's left).

To edit a found phrase, make the changes and press Enter or click the Save button.

To add a new phrase, click Clear Phrase, enter the phrase and press Enter or click the Save button.
Be sure to read Phrase in the previous section first.

The Links List Box

The purpose of the Links list is to display the links found for a specified word or words. First the links to the selected type of or part of entry for the word are displayed, followed by links to the word's POS entry.

As explained in detail elsewhere, there are two types of Cortex entries: (1) a WordID-POS entry in which text from the Words table in linked in the Cortex to its POS, and (2) a standard linking entry (see below) in which one Cortex entry is linked to another one, which is called a series or set of linked entries.

When looking up a word, when an entry is found which is linked to the word's entry, the program looks to see if another entry is linked to that entry, and if another entry is linked to that one, etc., until the complete series of linking entries is found.

A series of linked entries can be shown on a single line, or by clicking Show detail, the entry ID# for each entry in the series of linked entries can be displayed. The best way to see an example of this is to look up a word like aardvark in the program and try it with Show detail checked and unchecked.

Other display options include:

Show the date of the main entry at the end of the line.
cIDs - show the ID# of the main entry.
Sets - the sets to which each word in an entry is a part-of/type-of.
Usually, showing the sets can make the result needlessly verbose.
Example:
If an entry contains a number, a check box appears to allow toggling the display of the number between metric and American units of measure.

The Max... check boxes limit the number of various types of entries to be shown. They are not needed right now, but when the Cortex gets larger, a chain of entries linking one word as a type of another word which is a type of yet another word, etc., could get long.

The Links Table Window

The Links table is called up under the Tools menu. It lists all the entries in the LinksType table.

To add a new entry, enter an ID#, link name/description, and class, then click the Add button.

To edit an entry, double-click on the entry in the list or single-click and then click Edit.

After adding/editing an entry, click Save to store it.

LinkTypes are meaningless unless software is written to recognize them. The program code takes action based on the LinkType ID#'s, not the text, so changing the text and not the ID# will have no affect on how the program treats that entry.

For example, changing the text for LinkID# 29010 from "type of" to, say, "element of". will have no affect on the program and any entries with a LinkID# of 29010 will still be listed in the Type-Of/Part-Of list box. However, if you change 29010 to 39010, existing entries with a LinkID# of 29010 will no longer be displayed in the Type-of/Part-Of list.

So when you change a link type entry's ID#, the program checks the software's source code and the documentation file (Index.htm) to see if the entry's ID# is used and if so, warns you. This does not assure catching every use of the ID#, though. The number you are changing may be part of a range of numbers. You still need to examine the files to catch those. To help solve this problem, the program code has been changed wherever possible to use LinkType Classes instead of ID#'s to cover ranges of LinkType entries; however, at this time there are still some link type ID# ranges used in the program which could not be replaced by Classes, so it is still necessary to manually search for them.

See the Declarations section of the frm_Lookup.frm code for constants used to store these Class names. The values for these constants are store in the Form_Load subroutine.

The program does search the Cortex for the LinkID number being changed and changes those entries.

The purpose of all link types may not be 100% intuitive. Select a link by clicking on it and then click "Show Examples" to see a list of Cortex entries which use the selected link type. The examples are listed in the Links list box in the main program window.

Creating new Cortex entries

Creating a new Word and/or WordID-POS entry

Enter the following data in the boxes under the caption, New Entry:

1. Enter the word in the Word box, or if you know the word's ID# from the Words table, you can enter that. If the word entered is not in the Words table, you will be asked if you want to add it.

2. If the word is a form of another word, such as past tense or noun plural, enter in the Start box either the root word, such as the present tense or noun singular, and its POS (below it) or its WordID-POS entry number (and no POS entry is needed).

3. Look up the Part Of Speech in the Link drop-down list box.

4. Leave the Next box blank.

5. When something is entered in the Word or WordID box, boxes open up for entering the syllabification and pronunciation. You can look them up at www.dictionary.com. The pronunciation there will need to be converted to AI-C format. The Pronunciation Guide at the bottom-right of AI-C Lookup should help, or if there is a similar word already in the Cortex, look it up and double-click its Syllables and Pronunciation to put them into the New Entry boxes as starting points. For example, if you were entering unthinkable, you could look up think to get that part of the word and something like capable to get the -able part.
A primary accent mark looks like this: _� while a secondary accent mark is a single quote mark: '.
Since the primary accent mark is not on the keyboard, the programs accepts the backward single-quote key _` (on the ~ key) and converts it to the primary accent.

6. Click the Save new entry button. The word's Soundex code and sorted-letters form are computed for it automatically and saved with the word.

Entering different pronunciations or syllabifications of the same word and POS:

If a word has different pronunciations or syllabifications ("prn/syl") for different parts of speech, just make the entries as described above. Example:

ID#	Word	Start	Link	Next	Syls	Prn
64238	53564: lead		30010: noun		lead	led
64234	53564: lead		30060: verb		lead	lEEd

When the prn/syl are different for different meanings of the same POS, we want to attach the prn/syl to the meanings, not to the POS. To do this, create a normal word-POS entry as above (*), then create an entry for each meaning with a different prn/syl. Example:

ID#	Word	Start	Link	Next	Syls	Prn
*11684	7273: bass		30010: noun
127677	7273: bass	11684: bass	29010: type of	44322: fish	bass	bas
127678	7273: bass	11684: bass	29010: type of	104200: sound	bass	bAEs

Note: The only reason for putting 7273: bass in the Word field for the last two entries is to get the boxes to open up for entering the syllables and pronunciation. This was simpler than putting another button to open them and I don't want them open all the time when they shouldn't be used.

Creating entries for related Parts of Speech

Several features are included which make it easier to create entries for related Parts Of Speech ("POS"). First bring up an entry in the Enter word(s) box, then click the Edit button.

The entry will be displayed in the New Entry boxes where you can modify the existing entry. All you have to do is click Save Entry (or press Enter) to save it. In addition, a new button appears on the far right which lets you create an entry for the next related POS.

For example, if you enter the (made up) verb fligle, the button on the right will say Make entry for: past tense Click the button and an entry will be created for fligled (including the syllabification and pronunciation) and the button will then say Make entry for: gerund, then for -s (verb), which is the 3rd-person singular form.

If you enter a noun, the button will offer to create an entry for the Noun Plural. Enter an adjective, and it will create the comparative form and then the superlative.

This makes it very easy to create a set of entries, but look to make sure that the computed entries are correct, particularly the syllabification and pronunciation, which can be difficult to compute.

Creating type of, subset of, and part of entries

After creating a WordID-POS entry for a word, the next step should be to link it to a larger group which helps define it. A WordID-POS can have many different meanings, and it is preferable to link descriptors and other entries to one of these major definitions.

Using the letter [a] as an example, here are some Type of classifications for each of its POS's:

indefinite article
- determiner [grammar]
- quantity
noun
- English alphabet
- tone <part of> scale <part of> music
- vowel
preposition (as in: each, every, per)
suffix

Creating a standard linking entry

Making a single entry

A standard linking entry links two other Cortex entries by entering one number in the StartID field and the other number in the NextID field and a link type in the LinkID field.

In the Start box, enter the Cortex ID# for the first entry to be linked.
If you do not know the ID#, enter the word and below it, the POS for it.
In the Link box, enter the Link name or ID#..
In the Next box, enter the Cortex ID# for the second entry to be linked.
If you do not know the ID#, enter the word and below it, the POS for it.
Click the save button.

Entering multiple StartID's

Save time and effort by entering multiple StartID's for the same LinkType and NextID, such as when entering descriptive links. The steps are the same as above, but after entering a word or entry number in the Start box, click the Plus button (or press the + key) to add it to the list.

When entering multiple StartID words, you cannot enter a POS for each word, so if you are entering words, they must all have the same POS. If you enter the WordID-POS Cortex ID#s of the words instead, the POS does not need to be entered, so the words do not have to have the same POS.

Entering multi-entry scripts

Enter a series of linked entries by typing a sequence of words (or Cortex entry ID#'s), separated by LinkTypes, into the Phrase box and clicking Save Phrase.

Example: entering a definition of aberration from www.dictionary.com:

aberration - [Optics] any disturbance of the rays of a pencil of light such that they can no longer be brought to a sharp focus or form a clear image.

Dictionary.com defines focus as the clear and sharply defined condition of an image, so by its own definitions, not only are the phrases brought to a sharp focus and form a clear image redundant, but sharp focus is too since focus has sharp in its definition. And of course clear and sharply defined is also redundant.

So here is the revised definition:

aberration is a disturbance affecting the ability of rays of a pencil of light to focus.

Here is the script format:

aberration <part of> optics <is> disturbance <affecting> ability <of> rays <of> pencil <shape of> light <noun {to} verb> focus

Note that this definition contains a single fact about aberration. Sometimes you will see multiple facts about something combined into one definition. In that case, a separate set of linked entries such as the above should be created for each fact. This will be discussed further later on.

Also note that while the above looks like a phrase or sentence, it is not entered as an AI-C Phrase in which every word in the phrase is simply linked to the phrase's entry ID#.

Linking order:

To control the order in which linking entries are made, put a number in front of the link. Do not skip any numbers. Any links without digits in front of them will be done last, starting from the end of the script.

The following defines abrade, which is a type of erosion. The "to" before abrade and wear below is for clarity here and does not need to be saved.

(to) abrade <type of> erosion <is> (to) wear <verb - adverb> down <by> scraping <or> rubbing

A type-of/part-of link comes first unless it involves multiple words. Everything after "is" belongs to abrade, so the "is" link comes last. The rest of the link order depends on your judgment in analyzing the context.
Below is one order for linking the above. It would not matter if wear and down were linked before scraping and rubbing so long as both of those linking entries were made before being linked to each other with <by>.

abrade 1<type of> erosion <is> wear 3<verb - adverb> down 4<by> scraping 2<or> rubbing

If a linking entry within the script already exists in the Cortex, the existing entry will be used instead of creating a new entry.

Any series of linked entries can be entered this way, not just definitions. Having a printed copy of the LinkTypes on hand may make the job easier, or if you have screen space, press Ctrl-L to bring up a list onscreen. Because the part of speech is needed for each word, as well as each word's type-of/part-of category, if any, the program will show you the POS's and type-of/part-of categories already set up for each word and ask you to pick.

If a word is not in the Cortex or if it is in the Cortex, but not with the POS you need, you will have to cancel the entry and make an entry to set up the word. WordID-POS linking entries may not be entered this way because the word's syllables and pronunciation must be entered, and it is just more efficient to use the New Entry input boxes for this task.

Nested entries

When one Cortex entry is linked inside another one, that is a nested entry. All standard linking entries contain nested entries, one in the StartID field and the other in the NextID field. Either or both of the nested entries may link to other nested entries, but eventually, all series of nested entries end with a link to a non-Cortex entry, such as a link to the Words table or Numbers table. This structure, while simple, has the ability to store all information known to man.

For example, the text of an entire book could be entered in a single series of linked entries:

	Start	Next
1.	it	was
2.	#1	the
3.	#2	best
4.	#3	of
5.	#4	times

it was

the

it was the

best

in series

Phrases

In the Links list, a Cortex entry looks like this (which is the first line of the block of links below):

126064: 126082 [L29100: 125674]

In the list below, each nested entry is indented to make it easier to see. Indented below it are the parts of the entry: the StartID, LinkID, and NextID. If a StartID or NextID is the ID# of a WordID-POS entry, then to the right of the ID is the word. If a StartID is to a nested entry (a non-WordID-POS entry), the new entry is indented below it and looked up before continuing with looking up the first entry's LinkID and NextID.

An easy way to see this is to look at the second line which starts with "--- 126082". As you can see, that is the StartID of the first entry. Look down in the same column until you get to "--- L29100", which is the LinkID of the first entry. Between the two are the nested entries which start with entry #126082.

At the bottom of that block of entries is the combined text of all the entries in that block. The relevant links are shown in angled brackets. If you uncheck the Show details box, all you would see is the one line of combined text.

There is usually no one right way to do things. In the first entry above, gray-brown was linked to sparse bristly fur and then that was linked to and yellow and white fringes, but we could have linked gray-brown to yellow and white fringes before linking to sparse bristly fur, or we could have linked the colors to the fur and then linked sparse and bristly to that.

Characteristics, descriptors, and modifiers

For AI-C's purposes --

A characteristic is a permanent feature which is common to all members of a class (or set). Seeds are a characteristic of apples.

A descriptor is a characteristic (permanent feature) of an individual member of a class. Green is a characteristic of Granny Smith apples, but green is not a characteristic of all apples, so we link green as a descriptor of [Granny Smith <type of> apple]

A modifier is a nonpermanent feature of something. While a red apple will always be red (under normal conditions), a raw apple is only raw unless/until it is cooked, so we link seeds as a characteristic of (all) apples, green as a descriptor of (some) apples, and raw as a modifier of (uncooked) apples.

In the real world, there are no absolutes, so phrases such as "permanent" feature should be read as "normally permanent". For example, we may say that dogs have a permanent feature (characteristic) of four legs, yet if a dog were to lose a leg, he does not stop being a dog.

Likewise, while having seeds is a normal characteristic of grapes, man has figured out how to make grapes seedless, and they have become so predominant in the marketplace that it doesn't seem right to consider seeds a characteristic of grapes any more. Instead, there are two subsets of grapes: seeded and seedless.

On the other hand, a banana starts off as green, then turns yellow when it becomes ripe, then it blackens as it becomes overripe. So while we associate the color yellow with bananas because that is their color when we use them, the fact is that a banana is not always yellow, so yellow is just a temporary modifier of banana.

Compound words

Some words are linked together by general usage such that none of the specific links are appropriate. For example, dictionaries frequently say that a word is "usually used with" some other word, such as account - to give an explanation (usually followed by "for"), such as account for the incident.

Note that account by itself is not a synonym of explain. We say explain the incident, but not account the incident. So account should be linked with for, but I cannot think of a good LinkType for this, so I just use LinkID #33000, link (generic). Then account <link> for can be entered as a synonym of explain.

Entering contractions

Entering a contraction of one word, using o'er as an example:

CortexID: 100140

WordID: 62804 (the Words table's ID# for o'er)

StartID: 78160 (the CortexID# for the word over, POS=prep.)

LinkID: 30930 (the LinkTypes table's ID# for contraction)

NextID: (--blank--)

Normally, when a WordID# appears in a Cortex entry, then the LinkType is its part of speech ("POS"). A contraction's LinkType is 30930 - Contraction, so no POS is directly linked to the contraction. Instead, the contraction inherits the POS of the word entry to which it is linked.

The Cortex table has 5 entries for over, one for each possible POS for the word. However, o'er is normally either an adverb or a preposition. The entry above points to #78160, which is over - prep.. Entry #100141 has a StartID# of 78161, which is the CortexID# for over - adv..

Entering a contraction of two words, using aren't as an example:

CortexID: 8699

WordID: 4690 (the Words table's ID# for aren't)

StartID: 8697 (the CortexID# for the word are, POS=second sing.pres)

LinkID: 30930 (the LinkTypes table's ID# for contraction)

NextID: 75323 (the CortexID# for the word not, POS=adverb)

Contractions of three (or more) words are rare, but to enter one (using a three-word contraction as an example), first make an entry linking two of the adjacent words (just using the generic link), then make the contraction entry linking the third word to the entry with the other two words.

Entering common misspellings

We don't want to try to enter every possible misspelling of words, especially since the spelling correction routine is so fast and accurate, but for very common misspellings, it is more efficient to enter them in the Cortex. Some become so commonplace that if you Google the word, it will not even suggest the correct spelling. An example is chewyness, a misspelling of chewiness.

The problem is how to link a misspelling to the correct spelling. If we link it to a WordID-POS entry, then it raises the question of if it is a misspelling only of that particular POS or of all the correct word's POS entries.

One solution is to put WordID-POS entry number for the correct spelling in the StartID field and leave the NextID field blank. Then if the misspelling applies only to a particular POS for that word, put it in the NextID field. This will result in the same ID# in both the StartID and the NextID fields. Or if the misspelled form is acceptable for a particular POS, link the original misspelling entry to that POS with a LinkType of alternative.

Entering Definitions

Definitions of words can be entered in several different ways. As an example, here is a dictionary definition of aardvark, obtained from Dictionary.com. (The numbers were added to illustrate that the definition contains 9 different facts about aardvarks in one sentence.)

An aardvark is a (1)large, (2)nocturnal (3)burrowing (4)mammal (5)of central and southern Africa, (6)feeding on ants and termites and having a (7)long, extensile tongue, (8)strong claws, and (9)long ears.

One way to enter a definition is as a phrase. (See Phrases above and in the previous section.)

ID	Start	LinkType	Next
#97453		phrase
#97454	a	link to phrase	#97453
#97455	large	link to phrase	#97453
#97456	nocturnal	link to phrase	#97453
#97457	burrowing	link to phrase	#97453
#97458	mammal...	link to phrase	#97453

The advantage is that this is very easy to do. You do not have to worry about coming up with the best LinkType to connect each pair or set of words; you simply link each word in the definition to the phrase's entry ID#. The drawback is that the usefulness of such an entry is very limited compared to the other methods which follow.

A second way is by creating a series of linking entries which connect each of the words:

ID	Start	LinkType	Next
#81201	large	[and]	nocturnal
#81202	81201	[and]	burrowing
#81203	81202	[characteristics of]	mammal...

The problem with this method is that it is unnecessarily cumbersome when you get into long definitions, which brings us to...

A third (and the preferred) method is to break long definitions down into their component facts. This is simpler and more logical. Rather than list an example here, the reader is encouraged to run the AI-C Lookup program and enter aardvark to see all the entries for it. In the resulting listing, you will also see that breaking the definition into parts allows the program to arrange those parts by category so that it is easier to see, for example, all the characteristics of the aardvark, all the actions it is capable of, etc.

And as is pointed out above, Dictionary.com's definition contains 9 separate facts about aardvarks. If you link them all together, then to be consistent, as you add more facts, you should link those together with original set of links. Pretty soon you have what looks like War And Peace combined into one sentence. So the obvious choice is to break the original 9 facts (in this example) into 9 different sets of links as we have done in AI-C.

Changing an entry

Enter the existing entry's ID# under New Entry and click Find cID# or press Enter. Then change what you wish and click on Save changes.

Changing an entry affects all other entries which are linked to the changed entry. Normally, this is what you want, but if it isn't, then you will need to take appropriate action when making such changes.

Here is an example of modifying an existing entry:

The following entry had been made:

hairy is a characteristic of aardvark

Another source said that an aardvark's fur is coarse and bristly, so a new entry was made linking coarse (adj.) and bristly (adj.).

A second entry was made linking coarse and bristly as a descriptor of fur.

Finally, the original entry was changed from hairy to coarse and bristly fur as a characteristic of aardvarks.

Deleting an entry

Under New Entry, enter the cID# of the entry to be deleted and click on Find cID#. Next to that button will appear a Delete button which you can click to delete the entry.

Before trying to delete an entry, you should enter its ID# in the Find cID box just below the Enter word(s) box and find any links to the entry. Any entries found must be changed to remove the ID# of the entry to be deleted.

Numeric and date entries

Creating numeric entries

LinkID#s under 10 (in the LinkTypes table) indicate that the number in an entry's NextID field is numeric data (rather than a Cortex entry ID#). Since the NextID field is a long integer, it is accurate up to 2,147,483,647, but it does not allow decimals.

Example (neutral pH = 7):

ID	StartID	LinkID	NextID
126473	neutral	modifier of	pH
126474	126473	1	7

LinkID#s from 10 to 899 indicate that the NextID field contains the ID# of an entry in the Numbers table. By storing numbers in the Numbers table, you can save...

larger numbers
numbers with decimals or
rounded numbers
numbers with modifiers (descriptors)

Example (acidic pH = less than 7):

ID	StartID	LinkID	NextID
126475	acidic	modifier of	pH
126472	126475	10	18 (pointer to Numbers table entry)

ID	Num1	Num2	Precision
18	7	-	<

If a LinkID between 10-899 is entered in the New Entry's Link box, then when you exit that box, two drop-down list boxes appear under the Next box. You can leave those boxes as-is, or drop down the lists and pick codes which you want to enter, then in the NextID box, enter a single number (or date/time) or two numbers separated by a comma.

Giving all such entries LinkID #'s under 900 makes it easy for the program to recognize an entry in which the NextID is not a pointer to a Cortex entry but to a Numbers table entry.

Note that more than one Cortex entry can point to the same Numbers table entry. If one of the Cortex entries subsequently changes the value of the Numbers table entry, the software making the change should check to see if other entries link to that Numbers table entry and offer to create a new entry with the changed data.

When you enter a number like 123456789000987654321, you are just entering text. It is not a number yet. This text is split (by the software) into two parts of up to 15 digits each, such as 123456789000 and 987654321, then saved as numeric data in Num1 and Num2 of the Numbers table. A number of less than 16 digits can be stored in a single field, Num1.

When you call up a Numbers entry for display, if it is a number which was split into two fields, the two fields are converted from numeric data back to text and concatenated, unless the LinkID indicates they are two separate numbers, in which case they are not concatenated.

When concatenating two numbers, the second half of the number (in Num2) cannot start with a zero because any leading zeros would be lost when converted back (e.g.: if you convert the text "003" to a number, then when you convert it back to text, you just get "3"). If you split the above number into 123456789 and 000987654321, when you converted it back from numeric data, you would get 123456789 and 987654321, which combined would be 123456789987654321, which is not the number entered. However, if the original number is 123456789.000123456789, then it can be split into 123456789 and .000123456789 because the decimal holds the zeros in place. However, when that number is converted back to text, you would actually get 0.000123456789, so the program has to remove the 0 before the decimal.

The Num1 and Num2 fields can also store two different numbers, such as a numeric range like 525 - 580 or 10150 ± 10.

Numeric data are assumed to be in metric format and software conversions are required to change to other formats. (See Sub GetNumber.) In the AIC Lookup program, a check box (which appears when numeric data is shown) allows the user to change between viewing numbers in the metric system and American units of measure.

Web sites are available for changing non-metric input data to metric. Here is one. At some point, code will probably be added to allow the entry of data in American units of measure and have the software convert it to metric for storage.

Storing Date/Time

The Numbers table can also be used to store date and date-time formats

LinkType ID# 100 indicates that the date is stored in the format YYYYMMDD. For example, June 23, 2010 would be 20100623. When the entry is displayed, the entry would be converted to a standard date display format, such as 06-23-2010.

LinkType ID# 110 indicates that the time is stored as HHMMSS, where HH is the hour portion of the time in 24-hour format and optionally, seconds can end in decimal places (HHMMSS.sss...).

LinkType ID# 120 indicates that the date and time are stored as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.sss... (optionally ending in fractions of seconds). November 3, 2009, 3:01:29 p.m. would look like this: 20091103150129. The date's number is stored in Num1 and the time, down to fractional seconds, in Num2.

Obviously, when retrieving this, a program would have to convert the numbers to a more readable form, such as 2009-11-03 15:01:29 or the 15:01 could be changed to 3:01 p.m.

Date and/or time entries should be recorded in Greenwich Mean Time, which can easily be adjusted by software to whatever time zone is needed. For example, if you are in the Central time zone and want to store the time 1:52 p.m., you would first convert it to 24-hour format: 13:52, then you would add 6 hours to get GMT of 19:52. When Daylight Savings Time is in effect, you would add 5 hours instead of 6. If you convert 2010-02-28, 22:15:00 CST to GMT, you would get 2010-03-01, 04:15:00 because adding 6 hours has moved into another day.

Numeric precision/format indicator codes

The Precision field in the Numbers table indicates the degree of precision or confidence in the numbers, or the format of the numbers. The International System of Units has an official set of prefixes which is, for the most part, what is used below.

You do not have to try to remember all of this because when you enter a LinkID of less than 900, drop-down list boxes appear which contain these codes.

^-1

^-2

^-3

^-6

^-9

^-12

^-15

^-18

^-21

^-24

⁶

⁹

¹²

¹⁵

¹⁸

²¹

²⁴

²⁷

³⁰

³³

plus or minus

Two codes can be used in one entry. For example, 525 with codes ~K means about 525K. The entry 675, 700, ~ - means approximately 675 to 700.

A numeric code such as 100G means that the number is likely rounded, though not necessarily. To make it clear that such a number is not rounded, add !, such as 100G!.

[blank] = just a normal number. Take the number at face value. The number is generally accepted as fact, but is not gospel. The ! code is used to indicate stronger belief in the accuracy of a particular number.

R is used for rounded numbers when you do not want to use one of the other codes. Examples: 10/5 would be entered as 2 with blank Precision, but 10/3 would be entered as 3.3 (any number of places you wish) with a Precision of R indicating that the .3 is rounded or it could be entered as 3.3 with & in the Precision field, indicating that the 3 after the decimal repeats infinitely, as explained next.

The & symbol indicates that the string of digits after the decimal place in the format entered repeats. For example, 1 divided by 7 is 0.142857142857... where 142857 keeps repeating. It should be entered as 0.142857 with a Precision of &.

The result of 1 divided by 14 is .0714285714285... where the 714285 keeps repeating, but not the 0 at the start. You cannot just add & to it because that repeats all digits after the decimal, including the 0, so instead enter 0.714285 d& where the d indicates that the decimal has been moved one place to the right and the &, that the 714285 repeats infinitely.

If the number were entered as 7.14285 c&, only the 14285 would be repeated because those are the digits after the decimal as originally entered, even though we want the computer to use 0.0714285714285 when performing calculations. The number should be entered as 7.142857 d& to get 0.07142857142857, where the sequence of digits is correct even though an extra 7 is on the end.

The result of 1 divided by 28 is .03571428571428... which is 3.571428 c& where the c indicates that the decimal has been moved two places to the right and & says the 571428 repeats.

Average needs no explanation, but see Standard Deviation below.

± (plus or minus) requires two numbers to be entered. In the Lookup program, the two numbers are entered in the NextID field, separated by a comma, such as 10, 2 which is 10 ± 2.

Range can use two numbers, but if only one is entered, the "-" symbol means "up to" the number entered.

The other codes are self-explanatory.

You do not have to remember these codes when using the AI-C Word Lookup program. They can be found in two drop-down list boxes. I have tried to avoid using characters which would require the installation of a particular Windows character set. The only oddball is ±, the symbol for plus or minus, and then only because I could not think of a reasonable alternative. That symbol is part of the standard font in Windows 7, but I don't know about other systems.

I would like to have added ≤ (less than or equal to) and ≥ (greater than or equal to), but I could not come up with a good one-character symbol for each, and they are not part of the standard Windows character set. So if you would have said ≤ 400, then you have to say < 401, which may not read as well, but mathematically is the same thing. Or you can use LinkIDs 40 and 45 for those.

IF YOU ADD CODES to the list above, keep in mind that all these codes relate to the accuracy and/or format of the numbers and and not to units of measure. The codes should apply to all units of measure. Units of measure, such as pounds, liters, light years, etc., are indicated in the LinkTypes table (entry ID numbers under 1000) rather than as codes in the Numbers table.

Standard deviation

This section is presented as an example of how various math functions can be added.

When an entry has a LinkID# 15 (standard deviation), its StartID points to another CortexID entry which has the average number, and its NextID points to a Numbers table entry which has the standard deviation number.

Example:

Cortex table entries:

ID StartID LinkType NextID

100001 37690 10 - number 7721

100002 100001 15 - std.dev. 7722

Numbers table entries:

ID Num1 Num2 Precision

7721 500 Average

7722 25

Entry #100001 links Cortex entry #37690 (which could be anything which can have a value associated with it) to the Numbers table entry #7721 via the LinkType ID# 10. In this example, the value in entry 7721 is 500, and the Precision code of A indicates that 500 is an average.

Entry #100002 links Cortex entry #100001 to Numbers table entry #7722 as indicated by LinkType ID# 15, which is the LinkType for standard deviation, which is 25 in this example.

The sum of all this is that when you enter text which ultimately links to entry #37690 (a made-up entry for this example), it would use the (also made up) entries above to display:

[37690's text] = an average of 500 with a standard deviation of 25

External Reference menu

The external reference menu has these options for looking up the word in the Enter word(s) box:

Dictionary.com
Google Pictures
Wikipedia
Dictionary of Urban Slang
Idioms

Click any of these menu items to look up the entered word at the specified web site and display it in a browser window. You will need to modify the code to point to your web browser of choice.

Tools menu

Spell corrector

If you enter a word and press Enter, the program will look up and display the Cortex entries for it. If the word is not in the Words table, AI-C will assume it is a misspelling and display a list of suggested corrections. You can also click Spell Corrector in the Tools menu (or press Ctrl-S) to get a list of suggested corrections for a word that is in the Words table, but was not the intended word.

The list of words is ranked first by the number of changes required to get from the entered word to each suggested correction. Example: histeria needs one change to get to hysteria and two changes to get to historic. The next ranking criterion is the usage frequency number (in parentheses).

The result is a list that may look like this when agences is entered:

1.0.1 (1) - agencies
2.1.1 (1) - agency
2.1.0 (2) - agonies

On the first line, the "1" is the number of edits needed to get from agences to agencies. After the ".", the "0" is the number of edits to get from the consonants in the entered word (agncs, keeping the first letter) to the consonants of the suggested word (also agncs). The digit after the next decimal is the difference in the length of the suggested word and entered word. The number in parentheses is the frequency ranking.

The frequency ranking was supposed to be based on the American National Corpus word usage frequency list of about 300,000 entries broken down by Parts of Speech for each word, but even after cleaning it up, the list was such a mishmash of unknown "words" intermixed with very common words, all of which supposedly have the same usage frequency, that there seemed to be no point in using it. Example: "wrod" is tagged as being a simple noun which appears 88 times in the ANC, but it does not appear in any dictionaries I've checked.

The ANC's word usage frequency list contains about 300,000 "words", with the usage frequency for each word broken down by the part of speech for which the word was used. The most frequently used word is the determiner the at 1,204,817. Usage by word and POS drops off quickly from there such that the first word:POS used less than 1000 times is ranked #2208 out of 300,000 words and the first word:POS used less than 100 times is ranked about #14500 and for fewer than 10 times, the word:POS is ranked about 61 thousand. That means that about 80% of the words in the list appear in the American National Corpus fewer than 10 times each, compared to 1.2 million times for the #1 word. Most of the "words" in the list appear only 1 time each in the ANC.

Over 121,000 entries in the ANC list (a whopping 40%) are tagged as proper nouns. The word new, tagged as a proper noun, appears 16,560 times versus 19,233 for the adjective new. We don't know if their tagging software just assumes that any word with an uppercased first letter is a proper noun, but it is hard to explain some of these tags otherwise.

When you get to words appearing less than 10 times in the ANC, there are so many non-word entries, proper nouns and words whose POS are tagged as unknown ("UNC") that that section of the list is pretty much worthless.

The word and word:POS rankings we use in AI-C are: (1) common, (2) less common, (3) rare, (4) jargon and proper nouns, (5) taboo/vulgar, (6) archaic.

The ANC does not tag words as archaic or taboo/vulgar or jargon, and we do not want to add all the words it lists as proper nouns, That leaves the question of where to draw the line in the list between common and less common and rare.

The word die (verb), which I consider to be very common, is about #2430 (I say "about" because I did delete some junk entries) and organisms and colleagues, each of which I consider to be rarely seen in ordinary text, are ranked above die in frequency of use. The verb play is ranked 2615 and apoptosis is ranked above it. (!! Really? "apoptosis" appeared 842 times in the ANC??)

I've seen at least a half-dozen word frequency lists, and sadly, ANC is actually no worse than the others, plus ANC has far more entries than the others I've seen. There may be better lists around, but none that are being freely shared, unless I have just missed them. The fact that the ANC ranks by POS is also very useful (to the extent that the list is useful at all).

Just to clean up the list enough to work with it, I deleted all entries tagged as proper nouns or as unknown, then I deleted 100,400 entries for words:POS which appeared in the ANC 4 times or less. This reduced the number of entries in the table from about 300,000 to about 56,000 -- a much less impressive number, and the table still contains a LOT of junk.

I've left the cleaned-up ANC table in the database in case anyone wants to see it, but it seems too unreliable to be worth using.

Because frequency lists are so unreliable, frequency rankings in AIC are mainly what I have manually entered based on my own judgement. Suggestions which have no frequency ranking can be given one by double-clicking on the word. A box will come up with rankings of frequency of use. Click the one you wish to enter. If you wish to change the frequency ranking of a word, follow the same procedure. These are your choices:

common - basic words for which simpler equivalents are rarely available.
less common - simpler equivalents are often available.
rarely seen - rarely seen/heard.
jargon - mostly words normally used only in writings about a specialized subject; also proper nouns (names). Can also be words used only in a specific vernacular and not seen in general writings. In fact, words which are just virtually never seen, for whatever reason, are lumped here.
taboo/vulgar - normally not used in public (except in movies, cable TV and possibly stage shows).
archaic - may be known, but are rarely, if ever, used anymore.

If you decide to rank a word, enter a code indicating how often you think the word will appear in common text. This is not a ranking of how familiar a word is to you. The purpose of all this is that when a misspelled word is found and multiple suggestions are about equally valid, then the frequency ranking tends to indicate which is most likely the intended word.

When suggestions are listed, any words ranked as taboo, archaic or jargon are not shown. This is easily changed in the GetSuggestions subroutine if you wish.

Words come from the Words table and some of them may not be in the Cortex. These are mainly simple noun plurals, and their not being in the Cortex does not reflect on their appropriateness as a correction for the entered word.

Text entered may actually be two or more words run together, so the program lists all ways the entered text can be split into smaller words. Example: grandfatherclock can be split into grandfather clock and grand father clock. At some point, grandfather clock will be linked in the Cortex and the words grand father clock will not, so we would choose the former.

Another reason that a word may not be found in the database is if someone makes up a word by adding a common affix (prefix or suffix) to an existing word. The routine FindAffixes will check for some of these affixes and if it finds an affix tacked on to a word in the database, it will let you know and will add it to the list of suggestions.

A blended word (or potmanteaus) combines all or, most often, just parts of two words to make a new word. Many now common words, such as brunch (breakfast + lunch), are actually blended words. Anyone can make up a blended word, but most of the time their meaning is not obvious, so until a word is in wide circulation, there is little point in using it since few people, if any, will get its meaning. For example, most people will not know what smaze is; even though it has seen some use for quite a while, it has not reached a critical level of usage needed to make it instantly recognizable by most people as its relative smog is. (Smaze = smoke + haze.)

Another problem is that there can be tens of thousands of words which might possibly be combined to form a particular blended word. Take brunch -- Over 1000 words in AI-C start with "b" and about 20 end with "unch". There is just no way to come up with a likely candidate for the actual combined words for most blended words, so AI-C doesn't try.

Look up Homophones

Homophones are words which are spelled the same but are pronounced differently. For an example, enter read in the Enter Word(s) box and click on Homophones.

Rhymes

Displays a list of words which rhyme with the word in Enter Word(s). When you click the button, a box drops down and displays some options for you to select, then click Get Rhymes to view the rhymes.

Click here for more information in Wikipedia about rhymes and the options presented.

Rhyming functions may not do anything for NLP, but makes it easy to put together phrases like:
I got a pleasant peasant a present of a pheasant, for whatever that's worth.

Unscramble jumbled letters

Unscramble jumbled letters to find real word(s). This is probably of no use to an NLP program, but it was a simple routine to add, so here it is.

Some newspapers have a jumbled word game, or you can try it here.

Enter word frequency

At this time, a usage frequency can be entered for each word in the Words table, as well as for each entry in the Cortex, but this routine is just for the Words table.

Because a word can have many different meanings, to say nothing of different parts of speech, the usage frequency of a word alone is of much lower significance than the usage frequency of a word based on its part of speech and meaning.

Nevertheless, this routine is available for entering the frequency for words.

Links table

Entering new links or deleting or changing old ones is a risky business because the source code and the program documentation may reference individual Link ID#'s or even worse, range of ID#'s (worse because an individual number is easy to find and change but finding ranges pretty much requires manually going through the files).

The Cortex table also must be changed when LinkID#'s change, but that is simply a matter of search and replace; nevertheless, all of these files should be backed up before making such changes.

As this is being written, Link ID#'s 30010-30035 are various forms of nouns. Say that you want to add a new noun category. If you give it the number 30000 or 30036, it will not be included in any computations in which the source code is looking for ID#'s 30010-30035 (obviously).

If a LinkID# is not used in the Cortex, deleting the LinkID# is not a problem, but if any entries are using the LinkID#, you must first either delete the entry or entries using the number, or you must either change the old number to a new one rather than deleting it or you must change the entries to a different number first.

Word endings

This option will display a list of all words in the Words table which end with the specified letters. You can also add two sets of characters which, if they come before the specified ending letters in a word, the word will not be listed.

For example, if the specified ending letters are ility, you will get a long list of words ending in those letters. You could then winnow out some of that list by entering "ility, t", which causes it to skip words ending in tility. If you entered "ility, t, ab", it will also skip any words ending in ability

The main use of this function is to manually examine common word endings to see what changes must be made to a word when removing the ending to get back to the root word. The routine FindRunOns is used to examine a user-entered word which is not in the Words table and split it into multiple words. So if the input text has veryrarely, the routine will split it into very and rarely.

Let's say we are parsing the text: "I loved the realisticity of this movie." We find that realisticity is not in the Words table, nor does it divide into multiple words which are all in the Words table. But at the end of FindRunOns, the routine has about a dozen ways to convert a word ending in ity back to its root word. In this case, all we have to do is drop the ity to come up with realistic, which IS in the Words table.

So even though realisticity is not a good word, we can derive the meaning of this non-word from the real word. And since adding "ity" to an adjective makes it into a noun, we know that the writer was using the non-word form of the adjective realistic as a noun.

Getting back to the Word endings menu option: if you examine the code at the end of FindRunOns, you will see that each method of converting a word ending in "ity" back to its root word shows an example in an attached comment. These examples and methods came from studying a list generated by the Word endings option.

AI-C Lookup Program Code

Introduction

The purpose of this section is to explain in detail how the program code works. This should make it easier for others to modify the code or write their own code.

To understand this section requires reading everything up to this section about the structure and nature of the database.

To follow along in the code, bring up the VB6 source code (frm_Lookup.frm) which should be with this file. Ideally, you should load the VB6 Project file AIC_Lookup.vbp into VB6 where you can not only read the code, but run the program and single-step through routines if you wish.

If you do not have VB6, you can read the frm file in any text editor, but then you will need to scroll down quite a ways (over 1300 lines) past where VB6 describes the controls to the line that starts ' Program: AIC_Lookup. Be sure to see the notes below that line.

If you do not have VB6, I recommend going to www.kedit.com and downloading the demo version of their text editor with which you can view frm_Lookup.frm file. I have used Kedit for over 25 years, so obviously, I really like it. One of the nice features of it is that it highlights programming source code files for easier reading.

Complexity of the code

This code has grown in size and complexity over the years and continues to grow. Much of the added complexity is related to functions not everyone will need, so it is not necessary to read and understand every routine or even every part of every routine to make use of the AI-C database. What you need depends on what you want to do with the code. All that most people may need is under Looking up a word, below.

House-keeping code

Here is some house-keeping code used in the program. The items are necessary, but having them tends to obscure the actual working code. If you write your own code, these are steps you should also follow. (This section does not apply to using the program, just to how the code should work.)

Before adding any kind of entry, see if it already exists. It's pretty easy to add an entry without realizing that you've already added it, then the database gets junked up. Text in any of the tables is NOT case sensitive. If you search for White and get a response that the word is there, it may be white that was found.
Here is what kind of duplication is allowed in the tables:
- In the Cortex table, there should be no duplication of the combination of StartID, NextID and LinkID. Example: the user enters 10021 and 54321 for the StartID and NextID fields with a LinkID of 29050. Some other entry has the same StartID and Next ID#s or has the same numbers reversed into the NextID and StartID fields, and also has a LinkID of 29050. These are duplicate entries.
- Words and LinksType tables should have no duplication in any of their fields.
- The Syllables table should have no duplication in the Text field, but the same word in the Words table can have more than one syllabification, meaning there can be duplication in the WordID field.
- The Pronunciation table can have duplication, and often does, because there must be a pronunciation link for each WordID-POS entry in the Cortex, and since the same word can have more than one POS, the same word (but not the same POS) can be in multiple Cortex entries, each requiring the same pronunciation to be entered in the Pronunciation table.
- The Numbers table should have no duplication of the combined contents of Num1, Num2, and Precision fields. Unlike Cortex entries, if the same numbers are interchanged in Num1 and Num2, it is not a duplication, since the numbers in Num1 and Num2 are each converted to text and then concatenated to form a large number.
Before adding an entry which references another entry, make sure the other entry exists. This includes references to entries in other tables, such as Words, LinkType, Numbers, etc.
Before adding a new WordID-POS entry, make sure the user has provided the syllabification and pronunciation and that the letters in the syllabification match the letters in the word.
Before deleting an entry:
- Make sure the entry exists,
- Show it to the user and get his verification,
- If the entry is linked to other Cortex entries, alert the user to change those entries before deleting.
- If the entry is a WordID-POS entry, delete the linked entries in the Pronunciation table.
- If the entry has a LinkID# less than 1000, delete its entry in the Numbers table if that entry is not linked to another Cortex entry..
- If deleting an entry from the Words table, delete its entry in the Syllables table, as well as from the Cortex (its WordID-POS entry) plus any entries linked to the WordID-POS entry.
- If a word is changed in the Words table, change its entry in the Syllables table (and vice-versa), and probably in the Pronunciation table.
Before saving a changed entry, see if any of the fields which changed were linked to other entries, either in the Cortex or in other tables. If so, take appropriate action as previously described.
If an entry is added to link a WordID-POS entry to a set, check to see if any other entries are linked to the WordID-POS entry and if so, ask the user if he wants those entries changed to the new set entry (keeping in mind that it is better to link to a set entry than to a WordID-POS entry).
A new entry to the Words table should NOT have spaces in it (i.e.: single words only) -- normally. Ask the user to verify if he is entering multi-word text.
Check for circular references in the Cortex. This could be an entry which has its own number in the StartID or NextID field, or one which references another entry which directly or through other entries, references the original entry.
Remove leading or trailing blanks from any words entered by the user.
Before changing anything in the LinksType table, check the software source code to see if the LinkID is hard-coded into the software. Since LinkTypes are meaningless without software to interpret them, there's a good chance that each LinkType is hard-coded in the software either individually or as part of a range of numbers.
Before changing an entry in the Numbers table, see if other Cortex entries reference the same Numbers entry. If so, show the user the other entries and ask if the Numbers entry should be changed for all of them, or if a new Numbers entry should be added for the current Cortex entry.

VB6 programming quirks

Following are some VB6 programming procedures (or personal quirks) used in the program. Most of these are also documented with comments in the source code.

Text searches are not case sensitive, so if you look for "White" and get a match, make sure you didn't get "white":

x = "White"
With WordsRS
    .Index = "Text"
    .Seek "=", x
    If .NoMatch = False Then
    Do While !Text <> x And LCase$(!Text) = LCase$(x)
        .MoveNext
         If .EOF Then Exit Do
    Loop
End With

The underlined code says that if the words don't match case, but match without case, keep looking.

Converting null and numeric data to strings: If x is a string variable, you may see code such as
```
    x = "" & CortexRS!StartID.
```
That is a shortcut for:
```
    If Not IsNull(CortexRS!StartID) Then
        x = Str$(CortexRS!StartID)
    Else
        x = ""
    End If
```
If StartID is Null and you just say
you will get a VB6 error message, and if it is not Null, you will get a string starting with a blank before the number. Saying
solves both problems.
If .EOF Then Exit Do is needed in loops like this:
```
    Do
        .MoveNext
        If .EOF Then Exit Do
    Loop While !ID = x
```
because if .EOF is True, then testing !ID will create a No record error.
Project-wide variables declared at the start of the code begin with the data type: long_, bln_, etc. Local (subroutine) variables are DIMed as specific data types, but do not include the prefix; e.g.: i, x, cID.
With... End With is a shorthand option in VB6. Any control or dataset named in the With statement can have its properties or fields names accessed without repeating the control/dataset name. See the block of code just above for an example. Record set features are preceded by a "." while data fields are preceded by a "!", such as !StartID instead of CortexRS!StartID.
With... End With blocks cannot be nested, so you will still see some use of the long form.
You can leave .Text off a control name when getting its text. Example: if you say x = t_Word where t_Word is a text box, it is the same as saying x = t_Word.Text. Likewise for combo list boxes, etc.
Long lines can be split onto following lines in VB6 by ending them with an underscore character. I do this so that I don't have to scroll the editor horizontally to read long lines.
Multiple record sets are used for accessing the Cortex table. Many times when searching the Cortex table, I use .MoveNext to advance to the next record in the search criteria. If I need to branch off to search for something else, I would lose my place in the .MoveNext series, so instead, I open another recordset into the Cortex to do the other search, thus leaving the original recordset undisturbed. Sometimes I even open a third recordset. These are identified as Cortex2RS and Cortex3RS. I'm not the world's leading authority on database programming, so this may not be the technically best way to do this, but it works for me.
An ampersand (&) is used for concatenating variables, numeric data, and/or string data into a string variable. The plus sign is used only for math.
I don't always use the multi-line If ... Then, End If structure for short lines such as:
If .NoMatch Then Exit Do

Looking up a word

Overview

When the brain tries to understand text that it reads or hears, it may trace the links of each word through a huge number of connections, back through your entire lifetime of memories. Links which are deemed probably not relevant are suppressed by a chemical reaction. Signals that get through create a big parallel network of information which the brain analyzes to understand what is being said and then to create a response.

Ultimately, I expect AI-C to work the same way, though without the parallel linking for now, unfortunately. Meanwhile, this program not only serves as a way to view, add, and edit entries, but as a framework for developing routines which will allow us to extract all the data we need.

When a word is entered and Look up word is clicked (Sub b_LookItUp_Click):

The word is looked up in the Words table to get its WordID# (Sub FindWordID)
The Cortex is searched for the WordID with any POS LinkID# (Sub FindPOS).
The POS list box shows all the word's POS entries
Using the first WordID-POS entry number in the POS list box,
the Cortex is searched for entries linking that number as a
type of another entry and those entries are displayed in the
Type Of list box. (Sub lb_POS_DblClick)
All links to the selected POS entry and type-of/part-of entry, if any, are displayed.
See below for details.
The syllables, pronunciation, and other boxes at the right side of the window are looked up and displayed.

Selecting POS and part-of/type-of entries

I've tried a number of different methods for displaying links and concluded that the single List box method is the simplest. Following is a brief walk-through of the code. See the comments in the source code for detailed explanations.

Sub lb_TypeOf_DblClick performs these steps:

Clears the Links list box.
Gets the ID# of the selected type-of/part-of list entry, if any.
Adds a heading for it to the Links list.
Calls the FillLinks sub to look up the links to the selected ID#.
Gets the ID# of the selected POS entry in the POS list box.
Adds a heading for it to the Links list.
Calls GetOtherWordForms to find related POS entries for the selected POS entry.
For example, if "ring - verb" is the word-POS, it will find the other verb forms,
"rang, rung, ringing, rings".
Calls FillLinks to look up the links to the selected POS.

See the next section for finding and displaying links

Sub FillLinks

FillLinks is passed a Cortex ID# and looks for all entries linked to it by searching for entries in which the ID# is the StartID and in which it is the NextID.

If the ID# is part of a series of linked entries, we track back to the start of the series.

Sub CvtEntry2Text is called to convert the entry (or series of entries) to text to be displayed. (See next section.)

After processing the first series of entries, MoveNext is used to look for another link to ID# and if found, that entry or series of entries is processed. This is repeated until no more linking entries to StartID=#ID are found.

Then we look for entries in which ID# is the NextID. If none are found, pass ID to CvtEntry2Text and exit.

If a NextID link is found, FillLinks is recursively called, passing the new entry's ID# and the above steps are repeated for it. This step is repeated until no more links are found to the original ID as NextID.

Sub CvtEntry2Text

This routine takes a Cortex entry passed to it, broken down into fields: ID#, WordID#, StartID#, LinkID#, NextID#, and entry date, and looks up each of those numbers to find the text they represent. When the text is acquired, it calls Sub AddTextLine to add the text to the Links list box.

The ID# of the original entry is stored in the variable str_EntryLinksShow and this sub checks that variable to make sure the same entry is not listed more than once.

Here is sample data passed to the Sub and further explanation from the source code:

    ' Sample data passed to this routine:             '
    '       125836 is the Cortex ID# (cID)           '
    '            0 is the WordID# (wID)               '
    '        44303 is the StartID# (sID)              '
    '        29010 is the LinkID# (lID)               '
    '        99697 is the NextID# (nID)               '
    ' This routine turns this into a Links entry like:'
    '         cID    sID     lID    nID               '
    '       125836: 44303 [L29010] 99697              '
    '                                                 '
    ' StartID and NextID may point to entries which   '
    ' point to other entries which, in turn, will     '
    ' either be WordID-POS entries or which, again,   '
    ' point to WordID-POS entries or other entries,   '
    ' and so on, but eventually, every entry must     '
    ' track back to WordID-POS entries and give us    '
    ' text to substitute for the ID#s.                '
    '                                                 '
    ' The purpose of this routine is to convert the   '
    ' submitted entry into text by tracking back the  '
    ' entry numbers to Word entries via LookUpLinks.  '
    '                                                 '
    ' When an entry links to another entry which is   '
    ' NOT a WordID-POS entry, that entry is plugged   '
    ' into the original entry where that ID# was.     '
    ' For examples, look up "aardvark" in AI-C Lookup '
    ' check Show detail, and study the longer entries.'

Treatment of several different LinkTypes are hard-coded into this routine, so if any changes are made to the LinkTypes table, this routine should be checked to see if it is affected. In some sections of this sub, calls are made to the sub LookUpLinks in which a Cortex ID# is passed and the text for it is returned. In many cases, the entry represented by the ID# is a nested entry, in which case the text returned will be for the complete set of nested entries.

Some sections of this sub result in a finished entry, ready to display, in which case the entry text is passed to the sub AddTextLine to be added to the Links list.

Some sections call the sub ChangeLink2Text which replaces an ID# in the entry with the ID#'s text. See that sub to understand why a simple text replacement will not work.

Sub LookUpLinks

A Cortex ID# and a text string with that number in it is passed to this routine. The ID# is looked up. If the entry has a WordID#, the text for the WordID is looked up in the Words table. Sub ChangeLink2Text is called to substitute the ID# in the string with the text.

If the entry is not a WordID-POS entry and if NextID is not Null, then it is a nested entry. The global variable int_Nested is incremented and Sub CvtEntry2Text is called, passing this entry to it. This is a recursive call since that Sub called this one, and it may call this sub again to find text which will be plugged into the original string and returned to CvtEntry2Text.

If NextID is Null and WordID is Null, then the entry is (may be?) a phrase. Call Sub GetPhrase to get the text of the phrase.

Find cID

Under New Entry, you can enter the Cortex ID# (cID) of an entry and press Enter or click Find cID#. This displays a single entry plus syllables and pronunciation if the entry has a WordID. The code for the button is in Sub b_FindCID_Click

The Find cID button and box (just below the Enter word(s) box) can be used to look up the text of an entry and a list of all entries linked to that ID#. The code is in Sub b_FindEntryID_Click.

Both of these routines are simple and straightforward.

Controls for the Links display

The Links display is a standard list box. On the surface, it would seem like a Treeview list box would be easier than the code in the AddTextLine subroutine, but Treeview has complications of its own.

Show detail: If not checked, only the linked text is displayed. If checked, all the entry numbers used to construct the linked text are also displayed.

Metric system: When an entry is shown which has a link to the Numbers table or numeric data stored in the NextID field, the Metric system check box appears. Numeric data is stored as metric, but if the box is unchecked, it is converted to U.S. units of measure.

Max # of supersets: the musical note "a" is a type of tone which is a part/component of the scale which is a part/component of music which is a type of sound, etc.

Supersets are important because a word inherits all the attributes of all the sets in the chain above it, which lets us avoid having to enter the same attributes over and over again for each entity of the same general type.* But the number of steps up the superset tree you go, the more generalized the attributes for each set become, so at some point the law of diminishing returns makes it unnecessary to go any higher up the list.

For each subset in the superset chain, the specified maximum number of subsets and elements will be shown.

No limit is given for the number of linked attributes, since you generally want to get as many such descriptive entries as possible, though a limit could be added if needed.

* It turns out that many, if not most, of the inherited traits must be entered separately for each set element so that they can be further described for a particular elements.

Entering a new phrase

Ordinary sentences are normally not stored in the Cortex. Idiomatic phrases (those whose meaning cannot be derived from the individual words in the phrase) and phrases very frequently used are the main candidates for saving in the Cortex.

Enter the text of a phrase, such as "birds of a feather". Do not capitalize the first letter unless it is a word which is normally capitalized within a sentence. When you click Save, the program will perform the following steps for each word in the phrase:

Look up the word in the Words table to get its WordID#.
Find the WordID-POS entry for the word in the Cortex.

If no entry is found for either of these first two steps, ask about creating one.
If more than one WordID-POS entry for the word is found, display them and ask which to use.
Find all entries linking the WordID-POS entry as a part of or type of something.

If no part-of (LinkID# 29010) or type-of (#29110) entry is found, use the WordID-POS entry.
If more than one part/type-of entry is found, display them and ask which to use.
Save the cID# to be used for each word of the phrase in an array.
Create a placeholder entry for the phrase.

Enter the number of words in the StartID field.
Enter a LinkID# of 30910.
Leave the other fields blank.
Go through the array and create an entry for each word's entry in the array:

Put the word's WordID in the WordID field.
Put the entry ID# for the word's part/type-of entry in the StartID field.
Put the placeholder entry's ID# in the NextID
Enter a LinkID of 30911.

The steps above link each word in a phrase to the phrase placeholder entry. This means that the words are linked in parallel. If each word in a phrase were linked to the next word in the phrase, they would be linked in series. The significance of this comes when looking up a phrase. If you enter a phrase such as no use crying over spilled milk and the Cortex has no sense crying over spilt milk, you would not be able to find the phrase if the words were linked in series because you would not find a link of no and use nor of over and spilled.

But when the words are linked in parallel, you just have to look for a phrase which has the most words linked to the same phrase. In this example, no, crying, over and milk would be linked to the same phrase placeholder. A program could either display this message to the user and ask if it's correct, or it could look up each of the non-matching words in the phrase to see if they are synonymous or alternatives of the words entered.

Searching for a phrase

Divide the phrase entered into an array of words and look up their WordIDs and POS's.
Get all phrases linked to the first word in the array which is not a secondary word.
(A secondary word is an interjection, preposition, conjunction, etc.
A primary word is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.)
Find one of these phrases to which all the words in the array are linked.
If a 100% match is found, exit; otherwise:
For any entries with only 1-2 non-matches, check the word in the found phrase versus
the user-entered words to see if they are synonyms, alternatives, or similar words.
If they are, exit; otherwise, tell the user that a match was not found.
If the closest match has more than 2 non-matches, then repeat steps 2-5 using the
second primary word since the first word could be the one non-matching word.
If the second primary word doesn't generate matching phrases, then there is no point in
checking the other words because we already have the limit of two non-matching words.

The idea of allowing only 2 non-matching words is arbitrary, but seems reasonable.
As usual, you can change it to any number you wish.

Looking up linked entries

When it comes time to parse sentences, it will be necessary to find all entries in which words in the sentence are linked to each other, either directly (in the same Cortex entry) or indirectly (in different entries in a series of linked Cortex entries).

At this time, up to 10 words, separated by commas, can be entered in the Enter word(s) input box and clicking the Look it up button.

The program searches all standard linking entries for the first word, then searches those entries for the other words specified. Linked entries with all the specified words in them are displayed in the Links list box. An option could be added to show entries with a specified number of matching words short of requiring all words to match.

ran, across
The only POS for "ran" is past tense and it has a root of "run".
So look up links for "run" and each word for which it is the root
     and for each Type-of/Part-of for each word.
Look at each link set for the word "across" and if found, list it.
"across" can be preposition, adjective, or adverb, but it does not
     have a root for any of these nor is it the root for other words.
     So we do not have to look for other forms of "across" in the links.

run, across
"run" can be noun or verb, so look up links for "run - noun" and
     "run - verb" and for each word for which either is the root and
     for each Type-of/Part-of for each word/POS.

cut, operating
Do "cut" as above, but in addition to looking for "operating" in the
     links, also look for its root ("operate") and all words for which
     that word is the root (operated, operates).

An option could be to show links to synonyms of these words, though that really stretches things out. I think that for parsing, that is definitely something which should be done.

Adding a new word/linking entry

The New Entry section is somewhat complex because associated with it are so many features designed to help automate many of the steps for adding/changing entries.

The Save New Entry button changes to Save Changes when a cID# has been entered and the Find cID# button has been clicked and an entry displayed. Save Changes is also set to being the Default button so that if Enter is pressed while in any input box, the Save Changes click event will be executed.

In the GotFocus event of text boxes, you will see .SelStart=0 and .SelLength=32768. This causes any text in the box to be selected so that when the user starts typing, it replaces the old text.

The LostFocus event of the t_NewWord text box looks up the word entered, if any, and if it is in the Words table, it adds the ID# to the box. If the StartID box is blank, the default lb_POS cID# is entered in the StartID box as the root of the new word.

Changing an entry

Under New Entry, enter the cID# of the Cortex entry to change, then press Enter or click on Find cID#. Make the changes and save.

Look-up buttons

This is pretty simple and self-explanatory in the code.

Spelling Corrector

When a word is not found in the Words table, it may be a misspelling. The spelling corrector routines find good words most closely matching the misspelled word. There are two steps for getting suggestions. The first is to compile a list of words roughly matching the word entered. The second is to evaluate those words to find the closest match(es).

Compiling words for suggestions::

Soundex: When a word is added to the Words table, the Soundex routine is called to compute its Soundex code to save with the word. When a word is not found in the Words table, we compute its Soundex code and look up all entries in the Words table with the same Soundex code.

Soundex is normally the first letter of the word followed by 3 digits representing the consonants following the first letter. Vowels after the first letter are ignored. Similar sounding consonants, such as d, t, and p, are assigned to the same numeric digit. Consonants after the first three are ignored (with some exceptions).

Here are changes made to Soundex in AI-C:

Convert non-English characters to English, such as any of �� to A.
Convert non-phonetic leading letters to the letter they sound like, such as PS to S, PN to N, PH to F, etc.
Convert non-phonetic non-leading letters, such as STLE or SCLE to SEL (as in whistle and muscle).
The Metaphone algorithm converts letters to their sound-alikes. Some of these conversions are used here, though not all of them apply.
Convert doubled codes to non-doubled: S17735 to S1735. This not only gets rid of the second T/3 in RATTY (R330), but also the second and third T in RATATAT (R333), both of which end up R300.
Soundex converts each of CGJKQSXZ to the digit 2, but that seems wrong to me if the intent is to group letters which sound alike. GJKQ are all hard-sounding letters while CSXZ are sibilants, so I have changed CSXZ to the digit 7. (C usually has a hard sound when it is the first letter, but we are dealing here with letters after the first letter, such as dice. Exceptions, such as in SC, CT and SK are manually changed.)

After getting the words with Soundex codes which match the code of the submitted word, we add more words based on these tests:

Add words with a code where the 1st and 2nd digits are reversed, such as S415 versus S145. Likewise for the 2nd and 3rd digits, such as S415 and S451. If the input has consonants swapped, the Soundex codes will not match, so the correct alternative will not be added to the list of possible alternatives.
Split up the submitted word to look for run-on words, such as greatforehand instead of great forehand. See comments in the source code for more detail and examples.
Test each letter in the submitted word to see if swapping the letter for each of the keys around the letter on a QWERTY keyboard will result in a good word. Example: OHNE - swap I,K,L,P for O and when you get to P, you'll find a match: PHONE. The assumption is that if the person typing the word hit a wrong letter by mistake, it is far most likely to be one around the intended letter.
Test each letter in the submitted word to see if dropping the next letter will result in a good word. Example: PHJONE. When you get to the J, dropping it results in a good word, PHONE. Again, the assumption is that if you hit an extra key while reaching for the intended key, the wrong key will be adjacent to the intended key. This test applies to the letter itself, since it is easy to double-hit a key by mistake (e.g.: PHOONE).
After each letter, try adding each letter from a to z and check for a good word. This is the only sure way to get a dropped letter, such as "write" for "wite". Even with this, which is a lot of crunching (26 tests for every letter in the word), if there are any of the other errors mentioned here, including a second dropped letter, the correct word will probably not be found. The only way to improve the odds from here is to run the entire GetSuggestions routine for each letter. That would REALLY be a lot of crunching.

Evaluating possible alternatives:

GetSuggestions presents the user with a list of likely alternatives. The suggestions are displayed in a list box with the closest matches at the top. The number shown by each suggestion is the Damerau-Levenshtein Distance. This is the number of changes to the submitted word to make it match a possible alternative.

For example: wite has a D-LD of 1 compared to white because it takes 1 edit (adding an "h") to make them match. It has a D-LD of 2 compared to wait: 1 to add the "a" plus 1 to drop the "e".

Evaluation tests include qGram, nGram, and Damerau-Levenshtein Distance. Google for more information about each of these.

Words with the smallest Damerau-Levenshtein Distance are moved to the top of the list with the D-LD number at the start of each line.

The number in parentheses is the ranking of the frequency of usage of the word in everyday text/speech.

In the Suggestions list, some words may be marked as (Not in Cortex.) because while the word is in the Words table, it has not been entered into the Cortex. In particular, a lot of plurals are not in the Cortex when they are formed simply by adding an "s" to the singular noun form.

Even if an exact match is found for the entered word, the suggestions list is created because the matching word is not necessarily what was intended. An exception is that if a misspelled word has been specifically added to the Cortex with a link to the correct spelling, we just show it. It must be a common misspelling to be in the Cortex, so we assume that the word it is linked to is the desired one. If it isn't, then vary the spelling of the entered word and try again.

Use of these routines in AI-C:

These routines are primarily intended for use when parsing input text which may have words not in the dictionary due to typos. When actually used in parsing, these routines will be greatly helped by knowing the parts of speech and words to which the selected word is linked.

Here is a sentence from a posting on the Lost forum, just to show what to expect as input from the web.

ITs dumb becaise Alpert was the most knowledgeable, adn he jkust ignored smokey.

Changing the algorithms:

The suggestions routines have been doing a good job of finding the intended words for misspellings, but improvements are always possible.

When changes are made to the Soundex routines, the Words table must be updated. You can do this by running the ChangeSoundex subroutine.

Rhymes

Rhymes are probably not a significant feature of an NLP program, but since AI-C has the pronunciations table, it is easy enough to check it for rhymes.

Searching for rhymes at the end of words requires a brute-force approach of simply going through the whole pronunciation table an entry at a time. If rhymes were a significant feature, it would probably be worth creating a rhyming table of word endings.

It might also be worth adding near-rhymes, such as words with similar sounding vowels and consonants (nob, nod, not, naught, etc.).

Miscellaneous Information

Linking Words To Get Facts

Some, if not most, AI language processing projects seem to emphasize feeding a lot of "facts" into their system in the form of sentences from which their AI can make deductions. One that I was reading about not too long ago gave this as an example:

Facts:

A person's cousin is the child of the person's aunt/uncle.
A person's aunt is the sister of a person's parent.
An aunt's child is a person's cousin.
Joe's father, Bob, has a sister, Mary, who has a son named Sam.
What is Sam's relationship to Joe?

From these facts, the AI program can deduce that Sam and Joe are cousins.

AI-C's approach is to start by linking dictionary definitions in the Cortex. An example follows. Numbers shown in square brackets link to another entry's ID, where the words from that entry would be plugged into the current entry. Numbers not shown in square brackets refer to an entry where the Word-POS entry for the word shown is linked as an element of the set {relatives}.

ID#	Start	Link	Next
125775	125774 (cousin)	of	125766 (=person=)
125786	[125775]	is	[125785]
125785	125783 (child)	of	[125784]
125784	125752 (sibling)	of	[125772]
125772	125745 (parent)	of	125766 (=person=)
125750	34462 (father)	is	parent [125772]
125792	125748 (sister)	is	sibling [125784]
125764	125753 (aunt)	is	[125792] of [125750]

The text =person= is a way I am presently showing a specific person rather than just using the general word person. I may change this after seeing how necessary it is or isn't.

Going back to the statement to be analyzed:

Joe's father, Bob, has a sister, Mary, who has a son named Sam.

Joe is a person [125766: =person=]
#125772: Bob is Joe's father [125750: parent]
#125784: Mary is the [parent's] sister [125792: sibling]
#125785: Sam is a son, which is a male child.
#125786:
- #125785: The [child: Sam] of a [sibling: Mary] of a [parent: Bob] of a [person: Joe] is
- #125775: The [cousin] of the [person: Joe].

Let's say you are analyzing written text to determine its meaning, and that you have already parsed the current sentence. To display all data linked to a word:

Search the Words table for the word and get it's ID, which will be the WordID in the Cortex table.
Search the Cortex table for the WordID and the Part Of Speech (POS). Example: child - noun.
All other searches from here down will be in the Cortex table.
Search for the entry linking the WordID-POS's Cortex ID# to a Link Type of element of.
If no entry is found, use the WordID-POS's entry ID#.
If there is more than one element-of entry for the Word-POS ID#, do the following for each one:
Search for entries with a cID# which match the NextID# ("nID") of the entry above to track down its meaning.
For each entry found, search for its ID# as the NextID of another entry.

Example (matching the numbered list above):

The word child has a WordID# of 15131.
#21864 has WordID# 15131, child, and a POS link type of noun.
#125783 links #21864 (child-noun) as an Element Of relatives.
#125785 links #125783 (child-noun:{relatives}) of (belonging to) #125784.
We now have child of #125784, so we look for cID# 125784 to get its meaning.
#125784 links #125752 as being of (belonging to) #125772, so look those up:
#125752 links #101182 as being an Element Of #125773 (relatives).
#101182 is a Word-POS entry for sibling - noun, which ends the branch for #125784.
Now that we have sibling, we go back to #125784 and get its NextID (125772):
- #125772 links #125745 as being of #125766, so look those up:
- #125745 tracks back to parent and #125766, to person,
resulting in: child of sibling of parent of person, which is obviously not complete.
So now we look for an entry with #125785 (the ID# from #4, above) as the NextID:
#125786 says #125775 is #125785

#125775 links #125774 as being of #125766
#125774 links to #27857, which is the WordID-POS entry for cousin.
#125766 is the WordID-POS entry for person
We now have: cousin of person is + child of sibling of parent of person for a complete definition.

Filler/Pause Words

Rarely is there a sentence spoken or written in conversation which does not have words in it which are not necessary for the understanding of the sentence. Example: Why, I'm sure I don't know. in response to a question instead of a simple I don't know.

I used to call words like this filler words because on the surface, they appear unnecessary. One of the most frequently used filler phrases is: go ahead and.... If you listen to unscripted instructional TV shows or videos, you will surely hear this phrase, sometimes at the start of almost every sentence: Go ahead and measure. Then go ahead and mark the measurement on the board. Now go ahead and cut it. Now go ahead and nail it to the other boards... instead of just Measure it. Mark the measurement... Cut it. Nail it...".

However, I've recently started speculating that these might more accurately be called clue filler words because they give your brain clues about the subject matter or the tone of what is being said, making it easier for the Cortex to predict what is coming next or to analyze what is actually meant.

As previously discussed, the brain is an analysis and prediction machine. When you say a word, it starts trying to predict what you are going to say and what other words may be coming. It also must predict whether your words are meant to be taken literally or as a joke or sarcasm, etc. So when you start a sentence with Go ahead and..., you are giving the listener's brain a clue as to what is coming next.

A similar filler is the use of go to between two verb phrases where leaving it out would not change the meaning of the sentence:

Let's go to play golf.
She left to go to look for her keys.
He went to go to greet his friend.

However, leaving out go to can change the specific meaning of some sentences, such as I want to go to eat (not at the current location) versus I want to eat (here or elsewhere).

Another type of filler words are the pause for thought fillers. Often, the pause filler is not a word, but just a sound like uh which is normally uttered unconsciously. Pause fillers can morph into nervous tics rather than true pauses, such as Because, uh, when I, uh, eat peanuts, uh, I have an, uh, allergic reaction. The go ahead and... phrase might also be a pause filler at times.

Unlike clue fillers, which can be seen in print as well as in speech, pause fillers are not seen in printed conversation unless the person using them puts them in for effect.

Choosing Responses

A computer is normally programmed to be efficient, but in AI, the most concise and precise response is not always the most efficient in terms of relaying information. Here are different ways to respond in the affirmative to a question where a simple "yes" would seem to be the most concise answer, but each of these responses carries different ancillary information with it (shown in parentheses):

Of course. (The answer is obvious.)
Certainly. (A more formal tone than of course.)
Is the Pope catholic? (So obvious that the question is not taken seriously.)
Okay. (Often less in agreement than a simple yes, such as in response to a question like Do you want to go shopping for dresses with me?, where a husband might say okay, which is actually not an appropriate answer to Do you want to... and means Not really, but I will. while a female friend might say Yes, meaning I would love to go.)
Okay by me. (An even less formal tone than okay, often meaning that it doesn't really matter.)
If that's what you really want. (An even stronger implication of Not really, but I will.)

Size Matters: Brain vs Computer

The human cortex is estimated to have about 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses.

The cat's brain simulator on IBM's Dawn Blue Gene/P supercomputer simulates the activity of 1.617 billion neurons connected in a network of 8.87 trillion synapses. It requires over 147 thousand CPUs and 144 TB of main memory, just to achieve this, according to an IBM press release.

The human Cortex has 13.6x as many neurons and 24.8x as many synapses, so roughly speaking, it may take 20x as much computing power and memory to simulate the human Cortex. That is about 3 million CPUs and 3000 TB of main memory.

Natural Language Processing Problems

The following is from Wikipedia: Some examples of the problems faced by natural-language-understanding systems:

(October 2010 update: In the Wikipedia discussion page, I objected to the following examples as being non-issues with regard to NLP for the reasons given below. The examples were removed from the main article.)

1. The sentences "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry" and "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were over-ripe" have the same surface grammatical structure. However, the pronoun "they" refers to monkeys in one sentence and bananas in the other, and it is impossible to tell which without a knowledge of the properties of monkeys and bananas.

The purpose of AI-C is to provide such knowledge of the properties of entities. AI-C would link the capability of feeling hunger to monkeys and not to bananas, and would link the conditions of being unripe, ripe and over-ripe as conditions of bananas. With this knowledge, AI-C could easily understand that in the first sentence, it is the monkeys which are hungry and in the second sentence, that the bananas were over-ripe.

2. Susumu Kuno of Harvard asked his computerized parser what the sentence "Time flies like an arrow" means. In what has become a famous response, the computer replied that it was not quite sure. It might mean:

Time moves quickly, just like an arrow does;
You should measure the speed of flies like you would measure that of an arrow
('time' being an imperative verb and 'flies' being the insects)
You should measure the speed of flies the way an arrow would measure the speed of flies.
Time only the flies which are like an arrow.
The magazine, Time, travels through the air in an arrow-like manner. English is particularly challenging in this regard because it has little inflectional morphology

Two other examples treat "Time flies" as a type of insect, just as a "Fruit fly" is, but that seems pretty weak.

This example should not give AI-C any trouble because it starts with an expression which is so widely used and known that it dates back to a Latin version, tempus fugit, a form of which was used by the Roman poet Virgil.

It is worth noting that time flies is not an idiomatic phrase because a general meaning of to fly is to move quickly.

3. English and several other languages don't specify which word an adjective applies to. For example, in the string "pretty little girls' school".

Does the school look little?
Do the girls look little?
Do the girls look pretty?
Does the school look pretty?
Does the school look pretty little?
    ("pretty" here meaning "quite" as in the phrase "pretty ugly")
Do the girls look pretty little? (same comparison applies)

The letter "A" can have many different meanings: the first letter of the English alphabet, a musical note, a grade, etc., just as the phrase "pretty little girls' school" can have any of the meanings shown above. In either case, the meaning is determined by the surrounding context and it is ridiculous to say that understanding the phrase is a problem any more than understanding which meaning of "A" is intended when no context is given for either.

4. We will often imply additional information in spoken language by the way we place emphasis on words. The sentence "I never said she stole my money" demonstrates the importance emphasis can play in a sentence, and thus the inherent difficulty a natural language processor can have in parsing it. Depending on which word the speaker places the stress, this sentence could have several distinct meanings:

"I never said she stole my money" - Someone else said it, but I didn't.
"I never said she stole my money" - I simply didn't ever say it.
"I never said she stole my money" - I might have implied it, but never explicitly said it.
"I never said she stole my money" - I said someone took it; I didn't say it was she.
"I never said she stole my money" - I just said she probably borrowed it.
"I never said she stole my money" - I said she stole someone else's money.
"I never said she stole my money" - I said she stole something of mine, but not my money.

With audio input, the NLP software would need to be able to detect and make note of such variations in emphasis.

5.Computer's side of a conversation requires:

the generation of questions or comments regarding an existing aspect of a conversation subject ("deepening"),
the generation of questions or comments regarding new subjects or new aspects of the current subject ("broadening"), and
the ability to abandon a certain subject matter in favor of another subject matter currently under discussion ("narrowing") or
new subject matter or aspects thereof ("shifting").

6. Real world "grammar":

I still have not figured out why so much time and effort is put into the theory of grammar when people write/talk like this:

Very bad

Do. Not. Buy.

Point, tap, drag, and that was about it.

Very bad is not a sentence, but at least it ties to the previous word. I wonder how a parser/tagger handles Do. Not. Buy. The last "sentence" is similar to the very bad "sentence".

The Most Frequently Misspelled Simple Word?

Perhaps the most common misspelled word in printed text conversations (which means mostly on the Internet) is using loose (an adjective meaning not secured) in place of lose (a verb meaning to no longer have possession of). Here is an example taken from a posting on the Internet:

If a month later I decide to buy a Nook or Sony Reader and sell the Kindle, then I will loose all the books I spent a lot of money on. What would happen if people had to loose their entire DVD collection every time they switched DVD player brands?

A problem with this misspelling is that loose is a legitimate word. It is only a misspelling insofar as the intended word is lose, so for a spelling checker to catch this, it would have to be able to parse and understand the meaning of the sentence it is in.

The Use of a Versus an

Mainly in speech, a is used before a vowel, occasionally, and more often in some dialects than in others: *a apple*, *a hour*, *a obligation*.

Before a consonant sound represented by a vowel letter, a is usual: *a one*, *a union*, but an also occurs, though less frequently now than formerly: *an unique*, *such an one*.

Before unstressed or weakly stressed syllables which start with h, both a and an are used in writing: *a historic*, *an historic*.

Shades of Meaning of go to:

travel to a particular location. E.g.: Did you go to the store?

travel to and stay a while. E.g.: Did you go to Paris?

attend. E.g.: Did you go to college?

idioms:

go to sleep = sleep (but see Filler Words, above)

"The Curse of Dimensionality"

While a large amount of information makes it easy to study everything, it also makes it easy to find meaningless patterns. That's where the random-matrix approach comes in, to separate what is meaningful from what is nonsense.

In the late 1960s, Ukrainian mathematicians Vladimir Marcenko and Leonid Pastur derived a fundamental mathematical result describing the key properties of very large, random matrices. Their result allows you to calculate how much correlation between data sets you should expect to find simply by chance. This makes it possible to distinguish truly special cases from chance accidents. The strengths of these correlations are the equivalent of the nuclear energy levels in Wigner's original work.

What is of interest in this article is the idea that with a massive amount of data to analyze for patterns, which is the goal for AI-C, patterns found may be meaningless. This idea will need to be addressed at some point.

Computer consciousness

None of these approaches solve what many consider to be the "hard problem" of consciousness: subjective awareness. No one yet knows how to design the software for that. But as machines grow in sophistication, the hard problem may simply evaporate - either because awareness emerges spontaneously or because we will simply assume it has emerged without knowing for sure. After all, when it comes to other humans, we can only assume they have subjective awareness too. We have no way of proving we are not the only self-aware individual in a world of unaware "zombies".

Dictionary Errors

Ambiguities

Here is Random House's definition of abacus (as seen on Dictionary.com):

a device for making arithmetic calculations, consisting of a frame set with rods on which balls or beads are moved.

The phrase consisting of a frame set with rods is ambiguous. Is a frame set a set consisting of a frame with rods in it, or is it a single frame which has rods set into it? In addition, a frame can be almost any shape, so a more precise definition would refer to a rectangular frame. Also, it would have been easy to indicate the size of an abacus by saying that it is a handheld device, but they left that significant word out while putting in the following redundancy:

The phrase ...rods on which balls or beads are moved is problematic as well. The same dictionary defines bead as a small, usually round object... with a hole through it. For modern (the last couple of thousand years or so) abacuses, on which balls are moved on rods, bead is a sufficient description while ball is redundant and less precise.

The phrase ...rods on which balls or beads are moved is imprecise. It could be interpreted as moving balls which are sitting on rods rather than being strung onto the rods. Finally, saying beads are moved is considered poor/weak grammar; better form is [subject] moves the beads.

A better definition would be: a handheld device on which the user performs arithmetic calculations by moving beads which are strung onto straight rods which are set into the opposite, longer sides of a rectangular frame.

I do not claim to always be that precise in my own writing; I'm just pointing out the very typical weaknesses in dictionaries which, after all, are offered up as being reference sources of correct spelling, grammar, etc.

Vagueness

www.TheAnimalFiles.com says this in their description of aardvarks:

They will change the layout of their main burrow regularly and every so often they will dig a new one.

How often are regularly and every so often? Once a week, a month? Several times a month? Probably one of those, but the terms are so vague as to almost be useless.

Circular references

When entering data from a landscaping textbook, this text came up:

Sexual reproductive PARTS of a plant are those directly involved in the production of seed.
These PARTS include ... seeds.

So according to this, seeds are directly involved in the production of seeds. (While it is true that a seed can ultimately grow into a plant which has seeds, that is not direct involvement.)

Duplicate definitions

The definitions of ability at Dictionary.com:

the ability to contain: This hotel has a large capacity.
the maximum number that can be contained: The inn is filled to capacity.
the power of receiving knowledge; mental ability: The capacity to learn calculus.
ability to perform: He has a capacity for hard work.

The ability to contain (#1) is the maximum number it can contain (#2).

The ability to learn calculus (#3) is an ability to perform/do (#4).

Attributing meaning to the wrong words

The following are different definitions for the word of, each followed by an example (from dictionary.com):

indicates deprivation - robbed of one's money
indicates source - a piece of cake
indicates cause, reason - to die of hunger
indicates item(s) within a category - thoughts of love
indicates inclusion in a group - one of us

It's not of in these definitions which indicates anything, but the other words. A definition which fits all of these is --
of links words to what they apply.

robbed of what? -- one's money
a piece of what? -- cake
die of what? -- hunger
thoughts of what? -- love
one of what? -- us

Context-Sensitive Spell Checking

Context-sensitive spell checking has a lot in common with the kind of analysis needed for NLP.
Here is a very helpful document.

Why AI-C is free

Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, made a very conscious decision to make the Web an open-source project. He said:

Had the WWW been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off. The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal. You can't propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.

I only recently came across the above quote, so it was not my motivation for making AI-C free, but the rationale is the same.

Context-sensitive text

When trying to understand submitted text, we analyze all the words to see what they have in common in order to pick the meaning for each word which fits in best with the others. This can also be used for such things as context-sensitive grammar/spelling checkers.

For example, loose is the correct spelling of an actual word, such as in: A screw was loose. However, it is frequently misused in place of lose in writings on the Internet, such as in: I didn't loose any sleep over it. (Microsoft Word does not catch this as a grammatical error.)

Wikipedia shows this poem to illustrate the problem:

AI-C has the potential to resolve such problems because AI-C stores the pronunciation for each word. Since chequer and checker (chek�EHr), revue and review (ri-vYEW�), threw and through (thrEW), etc., all have identical pronunciations, we can swap out such words until we find a set of words which fit together.

The first line actually makes it easy since there is a spelling checker but not a spelling chequer. Eye have is an easy change to I have since a person may have a spelling checker but eyes normally do not. A spelling checker is a function of computer software and is related to writing, so this guides our analysis of the rest of the text.

Question Words

Pronouns: who, what, where, when, how.

Verbs: is/are, shall, do/does/did/will, can, could, should, would, may, might, have/had

A sentence starting with one of the above is usually a question.

Pronoun question words are followed by a verb ("Who is...")

A verb question word is normally followed by a noun or pronoun.

If a question starts with a word other than those above, it is normally because one of the question verbs is assumed. ([Have you] "Read any good books lately?")

Eye Dialect

Eye dialect is spelling a word the way it is pronounced. It is usually done in fiction to indicate that the speaker is uneducated (would not know how to spell the word) or is just stupid. Here is an example from Oliver Twist:

"That�s acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley to make �em come down again," said Gamfield; "that�s all smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain�t o� no use at all in making a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen'l'men, and there�s nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run. It's humane too, gen'l'men, acause, even if they�ve stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes �em struggle to hextricate theirselves."

Humans don't have a lot of trouble reading the above, so for NLP purposes, this makes a good challenge - to see if NLP programs can read it as well.

Here is my ideas about how the human brain processes the above text:

acause -- A search is done in parallel for the letters a-c-a-u-s-e being linked together in that order. A match is not found, so alternatives are explored. A match is found for c-a-u-s-e and those letters are often used in speech, and even in writing, for because. The phrase That's because followed by a noun and verb is commonly seen, so because is assumed to be the intended word.
chimbley -- A parallel search for letters returns c-h-i-m-*-*-e-y. A further mental search turns up the word chimney. The further discussion of smoke and blaze makes chimney the most likely intended word. You might think that this could be a difficult one for the computer, but if chimbley is entered in the AI-C Lookup program, chimney is the only suggested correction returned, so this is an easy one, even without the smoke and fire associations.
vereas is a real toughie. A human would likely only get this in context. The ending sounds er-az come after a semicolon followed by a concept contrasting to the text before the semicolon. A word with the same number of syllables and also ending with er-az is whereas. In addition, most people are aware that a dialect with German influence often substitutes v for w, further reinforcing the choice of whereas. Analysis is similar for later uses of wery and vith.
sinds is easy. Even AI-C returns sends as its top choice because of the e for i substitution plus the matching consonants. Likewise, obstinit is a rhyming eye dialect and easy to figure.
wot rhymes with what and its syntax in the text suggests that what is correct. AI-C suggests what, but because it takes to edits to go from wot to what, it comes after a number of suggestions with only 1 edit.
hextricate is a rhyming eye dialect. Since h is often silent, leaving off the h actually results in the correct word. AI-C makes extricate its only suggestion.
gen'l'men -- The brain's parallel search of g-e-n-*-l-*-m-e-n should return only gentlemen, which is reinforced by the context in which it is used. AI-C offers gentlemen as the only word matching the wild cards.
theirselves is a nonstandard form of themselves and is in AI-C as such, and as it probably is in the brain. Likewise, 'em is such a common contraction of them that it isn't a problem.

Brain Cortex components

At one time it was thought that neurons did all the communication in the cortex. Then it was determined that astrocytes (see Wikipedia) plays a role. More recently (11/2010), microglia has been recognized as working with neurons. (See this article.) Perhaps most interesting is that microglia are seen to perform in one way when the lights were off and another way when they were on.

How the brain stores words

I've read books and scoured the Internet looking for authoritative information about how the brain processes and stores words, but the results can best be summarized by this quote from www.ling.upenn.edu:

Very little of what we know about mental processing of speech and language can be translated with confidence into talk about the brain. At the same time, very little of what we know about the neurology of language can now be expressed coherently in terms of what we know about mental processing of language.

The most respected experts in the field, from Chomsky to Steven Pinker, debate theories on the subject based on inferences from how language has evolved, how children acquire language, how what happens to the speaking of people who have suffered brain injuries, but only incidentally based on brain neurology.

Steven Pinker has what may be the best summary of how the brain does it in his book Words and Rules in which he discusses whether word forms (e.g.: plural and past tense) are stored as individual words or are created on the fly by "rules" in the brain that say when to add "s" or "ed".

The Sylvian fissure [of the brain] anchors the major language areas. Above the fissure toward the front lies Broca's area, thought to be involved in the planning of speech, in verbal short-term memory, and in the comprehension of complex sentences. Below the fissure toward the rear lies Wernicke's area, thought to be involved in connecting the sounds of words with their meanings, with the meanings of words of different categories (colors, animals, tools, and so on) concentrated in different parts. The division of language into a front part for grammar and speech planning and a back part for words and speech understanding is surely too simple. There are hints, for example, that some verb meanings have links the front lobes, and that understanding sentences with subtle syntax may involve the anterior superior part of the temporal brain.

The purpose of Pinker's book is to convince readers that inflected forms (-s, -ed, -ing) of regular nouns and verbs are not stored in the brain, but are computer by "rules" when needed, while irregular forms are stored in the brain like their stems are.

The closest I've seen anywhere to the actual neurological functioning in this process is Pinker's account of an experiment which showed that in generating the past tense form of a verb, the left temporal-parietal region of the brain is active where the word stem is recognized and memory is searched for any irregular forms. Then for regular verbs and only regular verbs, the activity shifts to the left frontal lobe, where the suffixing operation is carried out.

But this only scratches the neurological surface. I was taught in my youth (a long time ago) that words are stored in one part of the brain, and only brought out when needed. I still believed this when I started AI-C and decided that words should be relegated to a separate table and that AI-C's "cortex" should contain only links, as I thought was true of the human cortex. I didn't give much thought to the fact that we receive words in different forms: sound, images, and even touch (braille, obviously, but also tracing the outline of embossed or carved letters with your finger).

How and where are these different word formats stored? How (or do) they link to each other, to word meanings, to the letters used to spell them?

The following are the bits and pieces I have been able to find along with recapping of facts which I believe are generally accepted. (Most of this applies to people who can hear.)

1. Sounded out words: Obviously, we learn to recognize and eventually understand spoken words long before we are able to read. These are the sounds found in the Pronunciation table of AI-C (or variations of them). So the first word storage system in the brain has to be for word sounds. Most (if not all) words we first learn to recognize and remember are names of things that we see, so we know that the word sounds are linked in our brains to images in the visual cortex. Soon, we learn non-visual words, such as verbs and adjectives ("No, don't touch the stove! Hot!") and even nouns for which no visual reinforcement is provided.

We link word sounds to images, smells, touch, emotions, and to other word sounds and create quite a network of interconnections in our young brains prior to linking them to images of the printed words or the sounds of letters which spell the words.

Next we learn the alphabet by looking at an image of a letter and saying the name of the letter out loud. The name of the letter must be stored as a word sound since to the brain, there is no difference between the name of a letter and the name of anything else. The word sounds must be linked to the image of the letter, just as the word sound bAHl is linked to the image of a ball.

Finally, we learn to read by combining and sounding out the letters in a word. Eventually, we quit reading aloud, but we do what is called subvocalizing. This may involve actually moving the lips as if reading aloud, but normally, no visibly detectable movement of the lips is used.

There is a lot of debate about subvocalizing. Most people say that hear the words being spoken in their minds as they read, but some people say that they do not read by sounding out words but by recognizing the images of words.

Some deaf people say that they hear a voice in their minds when they read text, despite never having heard a voice.

The book The Psychology of Reading ("TPoR"), by Keith Rayner and Alexander Pollatsek, says that there are three main techniques used to study inner speech:

using equipment to detect movement in speech-related muscles during quiet reading,
involving the speech tract in some other activity while reading,
determining if sound properties of text affect reading.

TPoR says that inner sounding of words

...can't be exactly the same as overt speech because we can read silently much faster than we can read aloud. If reading necessitated obtaining the identical acoustic representations as in real speech, then we would read more slowly than we do.

This doesn't make any sense to me. We can read faster silently even while sounding out the words because we do not have the physical mechanics of speech slowing us down. [Later on, TPoR says it is possible that the difference between oral and silent reading rates is because a motor response for actually pronouncing each word need not occur in silent reading. It's odd they didn't mention this earlier. Two authors - maybe they disagreed.]

Here's an experiment from TPoR to try:

Read one of the following paragraphs, but make sure to hear them being said in your head. Now, at the same time, say "blah-blah-bla" out loud over and over as fast as you can. The result is that you can easily hear the voice in your head while your mouth [and the rest of your speech tract] is fully engaged with something else [proving] that there can be a voice in your head that says at least most of the words you read and furthermore it does not require any involvement of the speech musculature to produce it.

TPoR argues that inner speech aids comprehension while reading by bolstering short-term memory, which TPoR claims is importantly acoustic in nature, making the words available longer while other processes are done, such as working out the syntactic structure of the sentence or holding an easily accessible representation of nouns to search for the referent of a pronoun. I will refer back to this assertion later.

TPoR reports that EMG tests (in which electrodes are inserted into muscles or placed on the surface of speech organs) show increased activity in the speech tract during reading. In contrast, deaf readers [who use signing] show a considerable amount of forearm activity during reading. From this, the authors conclude:

Subvocalization is a normal part of natural silent reading. To our knowledge, there is little controversy about that assertion [addressed later].

Researchers have been able to use feedback training to reduce subvocalization, but the effect was short-lived and began again very soon after the training session. Other tests have found that comprehension of difficult passages suffered when subvocalization was decreased by feedback training.

From http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/72146/my_answer_to_the_question_how_do_deaf.html

I will do my best to describe what it is that I "hear". I believe it is a mixture of several methods of thinking. The strongest one would be how I feel myself talking inside my head. For example, I feel my mouth moving and forming words in my head. Second biggest one would be imagery. I see and feel myself signing inside my head. Last one would be, yes . . . a little voice in my head. I know some people would wonder how can she hear a voice in her head when she doesn't even know what it is like to hear a voice? I honestly can't even explain it, since I don't completely understand it myself either. My closest comparison is that since I grew up taking speech therapy for about five years, I do understand the basic concept of how to speak. It just happens that I am not all that good at it. I also wore hearing aids until I reached the end of seventh grade, and did hear a number of sounds but I never was able to understand what exactly I was hearing. I think that with the help of speech therapy and my experience s with hearing certain sounds has somehow formed a concept of a voice and how words would sound?

People who think that they recode printed text in images:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2921760: It's apparently normal for people to develop their thinking along the lines of language, but some people, myself included, think in pictures, I dunno if other people think in images+feelings though.

http://www.meryl.net/2007/03/30/hearing-words-in-your-head/:

Posted by Dawn Goldberg on March 30th, 2007, 2:56 PM -- I don�t hear words, I see them written as letters. So, I don�t hear the word �house� spoken; I think of it as h-o-u-s-e.
Posted by Mandy on June 2nd, 2009, 12:09 PM -- I am sooo glad someone has addressed this issue! I thought I was crazy! No one in my family or associates �hear� the words in their head. I am a hearing person and always have been. I began to wonder about this because I was unsure how deaf individuals can read if they don�t know what the word is supposed to sound like. That is when I learned that most people don�t actually �hear� the words. I am an average-speed reader, but my comprehension has always been outstanding.
http://ask.metafilter.com/27778/How-do-people-with-littleno-language-skills-process-informationthink I seldom think in words. I seem to think in a kind of symbolic shorthand that sometimes, but not always, approximates words and sentences. I often find it hard to translate my thoughts into writing. posted by martinrebas at 10:12 AM on November 23, 2005

the gulf between spoken and visual language is far greater than that between, say, English and Russian. Research suggests that the brain of a native deaf signer is organized differently from that of a hearing person.

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001054.php

I was born deaf and (swedish) sign language is my primary language, so here's my observations...

Misspellings in sign language during the childhood years exist and are mostly, as joe tomei guessed, due to inadequate muscular control. And then it's usually forming the hand shape that presents the largest difficulty.

As for thinking... that's a complex and interesting question. I do dream in sign language and my parents have mentioned that I sometimes signed vaguely during dreams when I was young. And subvocalizing/subgesturing... I guess I do indeed think in sign then... especially if I'm preparing for a speech, interview or something like that. However, if I'm thinking about how to write something I think in that language(in written form, of course) But as for thinking in general...

As sign language is a bit limited language - there are many words that doesn't have a sign - I think I think in a mixture of gestures and the word I associate with a concept. Sometimes the word is in english, sometimes swedish.

Also I think I actually think the gesture and word at the same time... One thing I'm pretty sure of is that I don't think in fingerspelling when thinking of a word that doesn't have a sign - that'd be too awkward. So I guess I just think of how the word looks like or something like that.. *shrugs*

An interesting phenomenon is how deaf people write. They don't make many misspellings but grammar mistakes are much more prevalent. Especially wrong tenses and sentence structure... Which seem to indicate thinking in sign language. I know that when thinking stuff like "Ouch, this stuff is very difficult" I don't think the word "very" - I use the sign language method of intensifying "difficult"..(hard to explain how that's done without making a mess of it, I'm afraid... but generally we sign the sign faster or slower depending on the concept and also more exaggerated... usually there's a lot of changes on the face expression... more intense)

http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1505584:

As a Chinese, now I can think in languages (dual thinking in Mandarin and English), but in the school days I have developed a totally different, alternative way of thinking process.

All Indo-European languages have alphabet to represent syllables, but Chinese is not a language (Mandarin, Cantonese are languages), it's a distinctively unique writing system. Why unique? Its logograms/logographs are not directly linked with phonemes but linked with the meaning itself.

When I do thinking and reasoning, I recall a concept by the word's exact character shape and structure, then match with the picture of book pages I memorized, identify the corresponding semantics and then organize my result. This is way faster than thinking in languages like a background voice speaking in my head.

Elementary education in China has a technique called ??, which means read without speaking, after we learned this, later we were taught to get rid of "read" altogether. We only scan the picture of one book page, and cache it as a static picture, then a question is raised about a particular word appeared in that page. We are demanded to recite the context out. This is called memorize-before-comprehend. After decades of training and harsh tests like this, we were totally used to treat thinking as pattern extracting from lines of sentences.

This is why Chinese find English grammar funny, a noun is a noun, it should be a static notation of things, easily recognizable universally, why the hell do people invent stuff like plural form to make obstacles for recognizing?

Human voices spectrum are way smaller than visual spectrum. And our brain is faster and more optimized at processing mass volume visual stuff(especially pattern recognition), does anyone else think in pictures?

Heh, you sound like my girlfriend. She has a similar problem in which all letters appear as they do to you with numbers. I've had her sit down and explain what she sees, along with drawing what she sees. She's also the only one she knows that has her type. And she also thinks she's stupid. Btw, she has 4 bachelors, 2 masters, and a phd. Her intellect is through the roof. But because counsellors in her high school had no experience in her learning style, they simply said it was "not applying" or "stupidity" or some such tripe. She also has a photographic and phonophonic memory, so those voices appear in her head telling her how stupid she is. So yes, even as a SO, I understand. And judging from your writing style and comprehension, you're not stupid... Just different. There's a few other things you'd be good at, but those would be best to take private.

G. Mulhern (1993) : In attempting to account for inferior mathematical attainment among deaf children of all ages, some researchers have proposed that observed deficits may be partly the result of an absence of vocalization and subvocalization in the acquisition and execution of arithmetic by the deaf. When performing mental arithmetic, hearing children, it is claimed, rely on covert counting mechanisms based on internalized speech, while their deaf counterparts, due to a lack of articulatory prowess, are unable to utilize such mechanisms and instead are forced to adopt other less effective methods based on associative retrieval of arithmetical facts from long-term memory. The present study sought to throw light on these assertions. Ten prelingually profoundly deaf 12-13-year-olds, and 10 hearing controls were required to solve the 100 simple addition combinations. Analysis of response times revealed strong similarities between the two groups, with all children appearing to employ mechanisms based on covert counting.

I don't believe that the brain tries to work out the spelling of a word every time it hears what it thinks is a new word because it is too busy interpreting what is being said. It just stores the word as sound(s) and only figures out and stores the word's letters if it ever needs to write the word or if it sounds out a word seen in print for the first time and the sounds match stored sounds for a word.

This, along with the fact that when you try to commit a printed word to memory, you sound it out in your mind first, makes me believe that word sounds are the primary link point. Another point is that sounds-meanings links in the brain have been around for eons while writing has only been around for about 5,000 years, so again, it stands to reason that word sounds memory takes priority over written words memory.

People born without hearing cannot sound out words in their minds. It seems likely that sign language memory takes the place of sounds memory in anchoring words in such people. If they cannot sign either, but can read and write, then word memory generally has nothing else to link to (with the exception of images for some words).

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/how-deaf-people-think/

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt92139.html

this quote from Helen Keller interesting: �Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. (�) Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another.� Hellen Keller, 1908: quoted by Daniel Dennett, 1991, Consciousness Explained. London, The Penguin Press. pg 227

Another poster:

No way. I read too fast for that, and anyway, my concept of a word is its written form primarily, not necessarily its spoken form. (Mispronunciation is easy that way; misspelling only happens if I've seen the word spelled the wrong way too many times! Hyperlexia ftw )

I tend to think of the way words sound when writing, but I don't actually make any movements. That makes sense; writing is outward bound communication, just like speech, so it makes sense that writing a word would trigger thinking of the sounds associated with it.

I also think of sounds while reading poetry; the sound of poetry is part of the way it's supposed to come across, so to get the sound of it you have to think of how it would be read out loud.

and another poster:

I know exactly how lots of words are spelled, but I only know how to pronounce a few of those I know.

The younger I was, the worse my speech was in that aspect. I couldn't pronounce pronounce correctly and didn't know how to say necessity or reluctantly... though I knew how to spell each of them.

There are still so many words I use in writing without giving it another thought, but I'd never voluntarily use these when talking because I don't know how to pronounce them.

Another:

Hmm... I think I may be the other way on this entirely. I suspect that I have some form of hyperlexia, as my ability to understand and to use the written word outstrips my ability with spoken words by far. I tend to trip over myself and botch up everything I'm trying to say when I speak; saying things unclearly or saying the wrong things altogether. The best I can describe it is actually misrepresenting the written sentence playing in my head. It's as if something literally gets lost in translation, a problem that I do not seem to have in the least when writing. In order to clearly get my points across, I usually need something like 5-10 seconds to visually construct my sentences in my head first and sort through the cobwebs of trying to translate it into oral format, and by then the conversation has already moved on and it's too late to provide input.

When I read, usually I don't hear the words at all, even in my head (unless it's spoken dialogue). Rather, a visual representation of the scene appears in my mind and it gets to the point where I barely recognize the words at all. It's as if I'm feeding the words on the page through a projecting reel that simply plays out a movie of the book in my head. I believe it has something to do with the visual nature of the experience. Processing sounds, both inwardly and outwardly, use up far more of my brainpower than visual tasks, writing vs. speaking in particular, thus leaving me with a lot more ability to think about what I'm going to say.

When imagining single words or phrases in my head, the image of the written word/phrase itself flashes in my mind rather than hearing it aloud. I don't know if anybody else is like this, but trying to read aloud or consciously force myself to experience auditory imagery instead of visual not only cuts the speed at which I can read by about half, it does about the same for my comprehension.

Sounding out words gives you two ways to recognize it -- visual and auditory. You may have heard a word (or its root/stem) before but not seen it in print.

Word image readers should not be able to "get" puns, poetry, etc. They should not be able to understand words spelled in (ironically) "eye dialect".

http://www.techlearning.com/article/5094

[Background:] This is a report of a three-month study of AceReader Pro in a small rural central Wisconsin elementary school. There were two criteria used in looking at computer programs dealing with fluency for classrooms. First I needed to find a program that could engage students in reading. Second, and most important, it had to be technologically simple.

AceReader helps students become more proficient by:

(1) Reducing Subvocalization, which means pronouncing or saying the words mentally as one reads. This slows down reading rate because one can subvocalize only about as fast as one can talk. The program pushes users to read at higher speeds through pacing techniques. At these higher speeds, it is physically impossible to subvocalize.

(2) Eliminating Regression, which means allowing one�s eyes to wander back to re-read text. -- The program will display or highlight words in a manner that encourages forward-only eye movement. In non-highlight modes, it presents words without the surrounding text being shown at all. This promotes forward-only eye movement since there is no previous text visible.

(3) Reducing Eye Fixation Time -- Reducing the time spent when one�s eyes are focused on a single point.

(4) Expanding Eye Fixation Zone -- Improving one�s ability to read a wider text width than when one�s eyes are focused on a single point.

(5) Increasing Re-Fixation Speed -- Improving one�s ability to reposition the eyes at a rapid rate.

[Almost all of the above statements are contrary to research findings.Her results were not great; probably about what they would have been given any kind of intensive reading tutoring - possibly less.]

Photographic (eidetic) memory:

photographic memory in the popular sense is probably a myth. But something close to it can be found in some children. Eidetic memory, to use the clinical term, is the ability to recollect an image so vividly that it appears to be real. Typically the child is told to examine but not stare fixedly at an illustration on an easel for 30 seconds. Then the illustration is removed and the kid is asked to look at the empty easel and describe what he sees. Most offer vague recollections of the image, but perhaps one in twelve can describe it in accurate detail for five minutes or more. It's not just a retinal afterimage, either. The image has normal coloration, not an afterimage's complementary colors (blue becomes orange, etc.). The descriptions are in present tense--"I see . . ."--and given without hesitation. Most striking of all, the subject's eyes move around the nonexistent scene as he describes it, as though it were actually there.

Sure, the tests rely on self-report, leading some observers to think the testees were faking it, or at least not exhibiting anything out of the ordinary. Then someone hit on the ingenious notion of decomposing an illustration into two images, each consisting of an apparently meaningless set of lines or dots. One image would be presented for inspection, then taken away and after a few seconds replaced by the other. Those who truly had the gift could combine the two images into the original illustration--objective evidence, it would seem, that eidetic memory really exists.

Eidetic ability fades with age--one investigator guessed that fewer than one in a thousand adults had it. Most eidetikers can't summon the eidetic image once it fades from mind, either. But there are exceptions. In 1970 Psychology Today reported on Elizabeth, a Harvard instructor. Using her right eye, she looked for several minutes at a 100 x 100 grid of apparently random dots--10,000 dots in all. The next day, using her left eye, she looked at a second grid of 100 x 100 dots. She then mentally merged this grid with the remembered one into a 3-D image that most people needed a stereoscopic viewer and both grids to see. Reportedly she could recall eidetic images of a million dots for as much as four hours.

Even eidetikers aren't seeing a truly photographic image, psychologists believe--they just have the ability to organize information with unusual efficiency. Children have the edge, no doubt, because they lack an adult's competing mental clutter. A means of organizing data seems to be the key to all superior memory, eidetic or otherwise. For example, expert chess players can re-create a board position involving two dozen pieces with great precision due to their knowledge of the game. But if the pieces are placed randomly on the board, the expert players' recall is no better than a novice's.

To some extent the ability to remember can be learned, although the result isn't photographic memory but simply improved recall. Even mnemonists, known for impressive feats of memory, enhance their native talent with tricks.

[Input from indiviuals:] http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/memory-skills/photographic-memory.html

When I am in a test and i try to remember the things i have studied, i trace back to the sheet of paper i was holding when i was studying it and simply remember the image and then the answer pops up because i can see it (in my head). I don't know if it makes sense, but i can't really explain it. I find it odd and an unreliable way to remember things because they don't stay in my mind for long.

I have the same kind of memory. When I try to recall information for a test, i think about the book or notes i studied from and visualize them in my head and think of where the answer was. I'm also good at spelling because I remember what the written word looks like. When I'm studying a different language or trying to say someone's name, I need to see the words written down in order to say them right. I'm also really good with directions. If I drive somewhere once, I can usually remember how to get there again, not by street signs but by visual memory. They need to do more research on this.

I think i have i am in the same shoe as Sali, i mean exactly the same, i recall pictures of what i studied an d the answer just pops into my head, i on't know what the hell that is photographic memory or not, all i know is it helps me and i am happy about it...

It is amazing to me..I can remember 100 phone numbers in my head and I when I study for test I can look at the paper and then It just pops in my head when im taking the test..

I am diffinately in the same baot you guys all i have to do to memorize stuff for example produce codes I memorized 50 in about 12 minutes I looked at the picture of the produce and then the four digit number next to it when I felt I was done I closed my eyes and went down each page as I saw them in my mind This is also how I have learned Foreign lanuages I just see the word and remember the meaning I memorize the vocab or even complete sentences. Are any of you all musically inclined? I am but I suck at Math is that why story problems are so hard because I can't see all the picture clearly? I also memorize through music or certain rythems that I make up in my head any feed back would be great thanks

Charles Willington: Photographic memory exists, except in rare cases is imperfect and is difficult to describe to someone without it. Often if you try and memorize something intentionally under pressure the pressure of the attempt to memorize it interferes with doing so, making studying something like this very difficult. I can recall long passages of books I read once years ago, have complete recognition of radio shows I hear again when they are rerun. Often the best success at recalling something is when I don't intentionally try and mememorize something. As opposed to reading and rereading the same page over and over again in effort to force myself to memorize it (as one might do for school), I'm likely to have better recollection if I read it once for pleasure and am asked about it in the future (even if it is many months from now). What is described here as "eidetic memory" is totally different, you don't just picture something in your mind's eye for a few minutes it is burned into it, is always ther e and under the right circumstances you can recall it exactly as it is. Unless you're the person who can tell the difference, you're only the scientist trying to describe what goes on in an individual's mind. Remembering things in the manners believed as being photogrpahic is something done subconciously. If I'm in the right mindset when I read something I can repicture the page of the book in my mind then read it again (I can do this as far back as stuff I remember reading as a kid). I can tell you what it isn't, it is not perfect, is often subconcious and works worst when you try and pressure yourself to memorize things and seems to work best (at least for me) when not under any pressure to do so. It is not a memory trick done by trying to remember things through little rhymes. It does not get worse with age (at least not yet, I'm 29), just more and more details become piled in, the stuff that was there is not forgotten doesn't become fuzzy but there is more and more stuff you remember. Usually if something jogs your memory of something you can call up something you didn't know you even remembered (I find this often when hearing parts of rebroadcast radio shows, and often I'll even remember where I was when I first heard the braodast).

No such thing as... http://www.slate.com/id/2140685/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

Further evidence on this skepticism towards the existence of eidetic memories is given by a non-scientific event: The World Memory Championships. This annual competition in different memory disciplines is nearly totally based on visual tasks (9 out of 10 events are displayed visually, the tenth event is presented by audio). Since the champions can win lucrative prizes (the total prize money for the World Memory Championships 2010 is 90,000 US$), it should attract people, who can beat those tests easily by reproducing visual images of the presented material during the recall. But indeed not a single memory champion has ever (the event has taken place since 1990) reported to have an eidetic memory. Instead without a single exception all winners name themselves mnemonists (see below) and rely on using mnemonic strategies, mostly the method of loci.

http://www.neurology.org/content/34/3/347.abstract: Pure Word Deafness:

In pure word deafness, comprehension and repetition of speech are impaired, but reading, writing, and spontaneous speech are preserved. Pure word deafness is distinguished from generalized auditory agnosia by the preserved ability to recognize environmental sounds. We examined a patient with pure word deafness associated with bilateral infarctions of the primary auditory cortex, who could use auditory affective intonation to enhance comprehension. The primary auditory cortex seems to be essential for comprehending speech, but comprehension of nonverbal sounds and affective prosody may be mediated by other cerebral structures such as the auditory association cortex.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/105/2/271.extract

Pure word deafness is a rare syndrome in which a patient is unable to comprehend spoken words with otherwise intact speech production and reading abilities. AKA: auditory aphasia, acoustic aphasia. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pure+word+deafness

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/123/3/532.full

Studies in various mammals (including primates) have repeatedly shown that hearing is not chronically abolished after bilateral ablation of the (primary) auditory cortex

We observed spontaneous deaf behaviour in patient SB, a 22-year-old right-handed man who had suffered from two consecutive strokes, destroying Heschl's gyri and the insulae bilaterally, with lesions extending widely into both superior temporal gyri. SB showed no orienting or startle response to unexpected, sudden sounds, in contrast to the majority of patients with milder impairment cited above. Consequently a diagnosis of cortical deafness was made. Normal function of the auditory periphery to the inferior colliculus was demonstrated with audiological and neurophysiological measurements. SB has no other clinically apparent neurological or neuropsychological deficit, except for severe speech apraxia.

When SB was explicitly instructed to focus his attention solely to audition and to try to detect the onset and offset of sounds, he achieved conscious awareness of these sounds. Galvanic skin responses to sounds were elicited only when SB focused his attention to audition. The purpose of our functional neuroimaging experiment was to identify the neural correlates of volitional selective auditory attention in this patient, and to identify modulatory effects enabling conscious awareness of sound.

At the time of testing, he was fully able to communicate by writing and reading

During the state of listening consciously when the patient was focusing his attention on audition rather than unattended auditory stimulation, we found strong bilateral cortical activations. This network comprised the (pre)frontal cortices [Brodmann areas (BA) 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 46] and the middle temporal cortices (BA 22 and 21) bilaterally, as well as the left head of the caudate nucleus, right putamen and thalamus, and the cerebellum bilaterally. In contrast, only two minor foci of significant activation in the right posterior parietal and medial superior frontal regions were found during unattended auditory stimulation compared with the resting condition

The striking clinical phenomenon in our patient was that he was consciously aware of the presence of sounds only when he paid selective and undivided attention to audition. He showed no hearing when not attending, and only under focused attention was his residual hearing preserved. This syndrome has not been described before and may be labelled as `deaf-hearing'. This situation cannot be induced in normal hearing subjects, as auditory perception is automatic and mandatory, and cannot be consciously suppressed.

Any chess player rated as Expert or higher is most likely able to play "blindfold" chess, in which a game is played without viewing a physical board.

The visuospatial sketchpad is assumed to hold information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual information, such as remembering shapes and colours, or the location or speed of objects in space. It is also involved in tasks which involve planning of spatial movements, like planning one's way through a complex building. The visuospatial sketchpad can be divided into separate visual, spatial and possibly kinaesthetic (movement) components. It is principally represented within the right hemisphere of the brain

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/123/3/532.full

In healthy human subjects, sustaining attention in the visual domain is associated with right more than left lateral prefrontal and parietal cortex activation and seems to depend on the bilateral prefrontal lobes for the auditory domain. In another recent PET study, the effect of paying attention to audition versus vision was investigated during bimodal stimulation in which top-down auditory attention was found to be associated with activation in the right thalamus. Bilateral prefrontal and temporal cortex activations may therefore be expected during the attentional processing of auditory material.

Time

"Time" is such a charged word that it is very difficult to think of it without bias. So for a while, what we refer to as "time", I"m going to call "meti".

Meti is a system used to measure the rate of change or movement (which is also change) of something. At least two changing things are needed to have system of meti -- one thing which changes at a fixed rate and another thing whose rate of change can be compared to (measured against) that constant. The constant can be something like the rotation of the earth on its axis as well as around the sun, the rate of decay of radioactive material, the rate of travel of a particle of light in empty space, etc.

To illustrate: start with empty space. Add 3 particles, A and B, which are fixed in space, and C moving back and forth between them. There is no meti because there is nothing else to which to compare C's movement. Now say that C pulses (expands and contracts) 10 times per trip. So we can say that a cycle = 1/10th of a trip or that a trip = 10 cycles, but if a trip starts taking more than 10 cycles, we don't know if C is moving slower or the cycles have speeded up or even if the A and B have moved further apart. To resolve this issue requires enough other changing things in our new universe that we can determine which things change/move at a constant rate and thus can be used to measure the rate of change of other things.

Let's say that we determine that the cycles happen at a constant rate and that the trip between A and B has also remained constant at 10 cycles, and that they are now part of our constantly expanding universe in which the rate of change of everything is measured in C-cycles and C-trips, such as saying that the "meti" it takes to walk a mile is 10 C-trips and 5 C-cycles, or 10.5 C-trips. We can calculate that it would take 21 C-trips to walk two miles.

We also know how many C-trips it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth, and how long (in C-trips) it takes for the moon to circle the earth, the earth to rotate on its axis and for it to circle the sun.

At this point, it should be easy to see that "meti" is not a "thing". It is, as was said above, a system used to measure the rate of change of "things". As such, we would not talk about "meti" changing or that we could travel back in "meti" because, again, it is not a thing but a system of measure.

There are a lot of things in the universe which change/move at a relatively constant rate. But let's say that we continue to use just the pulsation cycles of "C" as the standard by which the rate of change of all other things is measured. If everything in the universe speeded up, including the C-cycles and C-trips, it would be undetectable to anyone inside the universe since the unit of measure had also changed.

But say that for whatever reason, the rate of change of everything on earth, and only on earth, speeded up. We would not say that the unit of measure of meti had changed, nor that meti itself had changed. We might say that meti had changed on earth because that is easier to say that "the rate of change or movement of everything on earth had changed", But saying that meti had changed is obviously inaccurate. Yet in this discussion all I have done is mix up the letters of "time" to call it "meti", and when people say that "time" has speeded up or slowed down, nobody considers that an inaccurate statement.

Time Travel

Since time/meti is a system of measuring change and not a "thing", you cannot travel through it. When people talk about time travel, what they really mean, whether they realize it or not, is returning to a previous state of being.

Using our previous example of a pulsing particle moving between two points: say that with each pulse, C ejects a subparticle which travels away at a right angle to C's direction of travel, and say that C had made 10.5 trips. In the meti system, we would say that 150 C-cycles would have passed and C would be at mid-trip, or point B, and would have sent out 150 subparticles, the fartherest of whi. At 125 C-cycles, C was half way between A and B and moving towards B and had sent out 125 subparticles.

If a C-cycle is the rate at which C pulses and we measure time in C-cycles, there is nothing in the physics of the universe to suggest that C can unpulse, yet to go back in time, C would have to unpulse, and everything else in the universe would have to reverse whatever it had done, including the universe itself having to reverse its expansion.

Even if that did not defy the laws of the physics of the universe, which it does, and everything in the universe went backwards, there would be no way to detect it because the person hoping to travel back in time would be part of the "everything" that has reversed itself and at some point, he would return to the womb, or short of that, once the reversal stopped, his brain would be as it originally was and any memory of what comes next would have been lost in the reversal.

If the time traveler remained unchanged, it would have to have some effect on the reversal of change that everything else was going through.

One alternative to exactly reversing the change of everything, including oneself, and "rewinding" to a previous state of being is to leave the present state of being intact while traveling back to a

One theory in favor of time travel is that you can do it by by traversing a wormhole. Even if that were physically possible, which doesn't seem to be the case, it raises another problem with time travel -- to travel back to a point in time would mean that every single particle in the universe would have to change back to the position, momentum, etc., that it had at that point in time. Ignoring that the presence of a time traveller would make that impossible, and given that this is not just our present universe in which everything has magically reversed itself (as dismissed above), where does this past universe come from?

Some sci/sci-fi people propose parallel universes in which every change in this universe results in another universe for every possible alternative change. If you decide to turn left at one point in your travels, a parallel universe is created in which you turn right, and another in which you decide to go straight, etc.

The idea that time is a "thing" in its own right has become so engrained in our thinking that even physicists having made it the equivalent of space by coining the term spacetime, which (from Wikipedia:) combines space and time into a single continuum. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time... [and] the observed rate at which time passes for an object depends on the object's velocity relative to the observer and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields, which can slow the passage of time.

The Wikipedia page on Time has a section on "time measurement devices". If time does not exist as a thing, but as a system of measure, then it makes no sense to talk about "measuring a system of measure".

Newton said that time is an absolute and that it flows at the same rate for everyone. Einstein said that time is relative, depending on the location and motion of the observer: "observers in motion relative to one another will measure different elapsed times for the same event."

If time is defined as simply being a system of measure, then it cannot have physical traits of its own. It cannot be absolute, it cannot move, it cannot go faster or slower. All it can do is serve as a system of measuring these traits in other things which DO exist.

Multiverses:

Well, if you cannot reverse the changes of every single particle in the universe (including particles which dissipated into nothingness) to travel back in time and then reverse the backward changes to start going forward again, and if you cannot just travel back to our universe as it existed at a specific point in its ever-changing past (which is a fatuous idea in itself since if it is ever-changing, it is a flow, not a series of points, one of which can be travelled to), then that leaves multiverses.

Here is one type of multiverse:

In brief, one aspect of quantum mechanics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. According to the MWI, each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe. Suppose a die is thrown that contains 6 sides and that the result corresponds to a quantum mechanics observable. All 6 possible ways the die can fall correspond to 6 different universes.

This is typical of the restricted thinking that is usually applied to the concept of multiverses. The problem is not that a different universe exists for each possible outcome of the toss of a die, but that any rule that applies to die faces must apply to every other change taking place at the same time. Even if we limit that to observable changes/motions, there would have to be a separate universe formed for every possible combination of every observable motion that takes place while the die is being thrown - the path the hand takes, the position of the fingers, the precise position of the die, the speed of the toss, how the die strikes the table, and so on.

Meanwhile, there is a virtually infinite combination of other changes taking place in the observable universe, not just where the die is being thrown. Even assuming that an infinite number of universes could, contrary to all laws of physics, be created out of nothing and exactly matching the location, motion, and rate of change of every particle in our universe, change and motion are continuous, not discrete points, so the number of parallel universe would also have to flow constantly from ours.

As farfetched as all this, if it were somehow true, it then raises the problem of how do you navigate an infinite number of universes to get to the one you want? Also, the question remains of how travelling to an alternative universe gets you to the past.

The bottom line is that if you look at the theories of how to do time travel, it is obvious that the people who generate these theories are so wrapped up in the theories that they have lost track of the fact that time is not a thing, but a system of measuring change.

1. Written input: Most people learn to read by sounding out words and reading people to sound it out and mainly remember the sounds while still retaining the visual image to a lesser extent, or remembers the visual image without sounding out the word.

"Sounding out" written words can be done by reading the words aloud,

Possibly the first step in trying to figure it out is to look for words in memory which are similar to the new word in whole or in part.

Example: "idiomaticity" is a word I just saw recently for the first time. The word "idiom" is not that rare, and many words end with "atic" and even more with "ity". If a brain is already familiar with these word parts, it will have them linked to their sounds and meanings, so the brain can safely assume that "idiomaticity" is a similarly configured form of "idiom" and can store its spelling like this:

     (letters of the alphabet)         (letters of the alphabet)
      | | | | | | | | | | | |              | | | | | | | | |
      i d i o m | | | | | | |              t h e m e | | | |
      | | | | | | | | | | | |              | | | | | | | | |
   (1)--------- a t i c | | |           (1)------- | a t i c
            |   ------- i t y                 | |  | -------
            |      |    | | |                 | |  |    |
         (2)--------    -----                 | ---|-----
                |         |                (2)------  |
                -----------                           |
                      |                              (3)
                     (3)
        (1) idiom                          (1) them  (THem)
        (2) idiomatic                      (2) theme  (thEEm)
        (3) idiomaticity                   (3) thematic (thi-mat-ik)

For "theme", the brain can save time/space by linking to a neuron which already links to the letters in "them", even though the words have nothing else in common. Then all it has to do is add a link to "e".The word "thematic", which is an offshoot of "theme", cannot link back to "theme" because of that extra "e", so it too has to link back to "them", then add "atic". But the question is how it knows that a particular neuron has the links to the letters in "them".

It seems more likely that the brain originally links each word's sound back to the letters like this:

           t     h     e     m     e     a     t     i     c
         ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
         | | | | | | | | | | | |   |     |     |     |     |
        (1)| |(1)| |(1)| |(1)| |   |     |     |     |     |
          (2)|  (2)|  (2)|  (2)|  (2)    |     |     |     |
            (3)   (3)   (3)   (3)       (3)   (3)   (3)   (3)

         Sounds:
         (1) them
         (2) theme
         (3) thematic

It is well established that the brain is a pattern matching machine, so at some point it would notice that the letters t-h-e-m are being linked to multiple words' sounds. It seems likely that the brain consolidates multiple instances of the same pattern. (It would be grossly inefficient not to.) The result would be the diagram above this last one.

Notice that while the spelling can be created from the component words, the sounds often do not carry forward so neatly. Even though "them", "theme", and "thematic" all start with "them", none of them start with the same sound.

Example 2: "frangipani". If you are like me, you won't see any words embedded in "frangipani" which look like they could be the basis of this word. (It is the name of a tree, as well as the name of a perfume made from its flowers.) In fact, the closest word to it is frangipane, which is a cream made from ground almonds, as well as a pastry made from that cream. Another close spelling is frangible, which means "easily broken".

So with nothing to go on (in the brains of most of us) for help in storing this word, the brain must first try to sound out the word by syllables, which might be frang-i-pane (frAEng-i-pAEn) or fran-gi-pane (fran-jEH-pAEn) or fran-gi-pan-e (fran-jEH-pAHn-EE). Let's assume that it settles on "fran-gi-pane" as the most likely. It then stores it as the sound of the word and links that sound to the spelling. If the brain later discovers that a different pronunciation is correct, it will change it at that point.

3. Image input: Some words can be linked in the brain to images which represent the words. Other words, such as "idiomatic" or "theme" would be difficult to represent as images and would not have an image link to words.

Rules vs Words

Steven Pinker says in his book Words and Rules that by using rules to generate the different forms of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, the brain saves "significant" space: The rules for -ed, -s, and -ing cut are mental storage needs to a quarter of what they would be if each form had to be stored separately. He offers no proof or illustration of that claim. Here is how the brain might link to the rules for making the past tense form of a word rather than saving the actual word:

First we'll assume that we have just heard for the first time the word that sounds like dAEs [dace, a made-up word] when someone says: "I dAEs every day." You now have the sound dAEs in memory and you have it linked as being something this person does (hence, dAEs is a verb); however, you do not yet have a spelling for it.

You ask what "dAEs" means and he says "It means to [blah-blah-blah]." You can now link that in memory to the sound "dAEs". It turns out that you took the same action yesterday, so you respond: "Oh yeah. I dAEst yesterday, I just didn't know what it was called."

Where did "dAEst" come from to represent a past occurrence of "dAEs" since you only just learned "dAEs"? Well, your brain undoubtedly compared dAEs to verbs ending with the same AEs sound, such as deface, pace, replace, etc., and discovered that to apply these sounds to past action, they all added a "t" sound, such as "pAEst".

If the word sound had been "plou" (for the word plow), then an examination of similar sounds (coud=cowed, voud=vowed, woud=wowed) would suggest adding a "d" sound to the end, as in "ploud", rather than a "t" as above.

Another "rule" applies to verbs whose sounds end in "t" or "d", in which case the sound "id" is added to the end of the word. Example: in-vIEt (invite) becomes in-vIEt-id.

Though we talk about "rules" in the brain, there is not a block of code or an actual list of rules in the brain saying when to add a "t" sound, a "d" sound, or an "id" sound; instead, it seems most likely that the brain simply does what it does best -- pattern matching -- to figure out what to add.

On page 44, Pinker says: "Speakers of English seem to analyze become as be plus come, even though the meaning of become is not computable from the meaning of be and meaning of come." And since our brains already have came as the past tense of come, our brains also make became the past tense of become.

Well, the problem is that become was not derived from be + come, but from the Old English word becuman. Pinker covers this base by saying it's how "speakers of English seem to analyze". So would they not also analyze welcome as well plus come? Yet we say welcomed, not welcame.

Pinker applies his same analogy to stand - stood and understand - understood. Yet people say that a showoff grandstanded, not grandstood, and the meanings of grand and stand are much more closely related to grandstand than the previous examples were to their components.

He says: "Clearly the perception of an embedded word comes from its spelling: become contains come while succumb doesn't." Yet even an illiterate who doesn't know how to spell will say became, not becomed.

How letters and words are stored in the brain:

The brain has about 100 billion neurons. Each neuron has on average about 7000 synaptic connections to other neurons. An adult has a total of 100-500 trillion synapses. It is thought that neurons can encode both digital and analog data. Of the approximate 100 billion neurons in the brain, 15-20 billion are in the cortex along with over 60 billion glial cells.

A part of the cerebral cortex called Wernicke's area is thought to be involved in the understanding of written and spoken language. Damage to this area greatly impacts language comprehension while the syntax and delivery of words sounds normal.

Decoding printed/written words most heavily involves the visual cortex, which actually modifies its neural structure to record the bits and pieces of light and darkness which make letters recognizable. Audio and visual input travel from their areas of the cortex to the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe where their patterns are temporarily stored. When these temporary neural patterns are accessed, the process is reversed, returning the signals back to the audio/visual long-term memory areas of the cortex where they are reinforced.

The audio/visual short-term memory areas are not to be confused with iconic memory which retains sensory input for about one second and is easily disrupted.

Another part of the cerebral cortex called Broca's area is linked to speech production and, it is now believed, to language compreshension. Damage to this area impacts the ability to speak, although functions attributable to both Broca's area and Wernicke's area have been found to continue in some cases by shifting the work into nearby areas of the brain.

People with Broca's aphasia are able to understand what they hear (presumably including internal speech), but are unable to speak or write fluently. This is the opposite of Wernicke's aphasia. Part of Broca's aphasia is difficulty finding the right words.

Studies have found that part of Broca's area known as pars triangularis when dealing with words whose spelling is not directly related to its sound. For example, have is pronounced with a short "a" while the similar words cave, Dave, pave, rave, save, and wave are all pronounced with a long "a" (AE, in AI-C), according to the Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Theory has it that word recall works by retrieval of multiple possible matches from which the pars triangularis excludes less appropriate selections based on the meanings of words.

From http://www.projectlearnet.org/tutorials/word_retrieval_problems.html:

Because words have two very different storage systems in the brain, word retrieval relies on the development of both systems.

Meaning (or Semantic) Storage System: The meanings of words are stored in the brain as a large number of connections and systems of connections among nerve cells. These connections correspond to what we call word associations. For example, when a person is asked �What�s a sparrow?� she might reply, �A sparrow is a bird (category). Like all birds, they fly and sing and ...(actions); they�re not used for food or much of anything except to look at and listen to (use/function); they have a beak and wings and skinny little legs and feet (parts); they are small and grayish and round, with a shrill call (attributes); they make their nests in trees and are found in the following locations in summer ... (location); and when I think about sparrows, I think about my uncle the bird man...(idiosyncratic associations)� The specific details are not so important here; however, the important concept is that word meaning is a set of more or less organized associations that correspond to large numbers of neural connec tions in the brain. These neural connections can encompass large and distant areas of the brain. Each meaning connection represents one �route� to that word in the brain.

Sound (or Phonologic) Storage System: In order to say a word, we also need to know what sounds go together to make the word. These sounds and their organization are stored in the phonologic storage system of the brain � again, a set of nerve cell connections, but this time not so wide spread in the brain.

The occipital lobe's main function is vision. Retinal sensors send signals to the visual cortex (via the optic tract to the lateral geniculate nucleus) where it is organized and sent to the ventral stream for recognition and representation, and then on to other areas of the brain for processing. The primary visual cortex has about 140 million neurons in each hemisphere of the brain.

www.Suite101.com says:

In the brains of unskilled readers, most of the function for reading takes place in the parieto-temporal lobe, which is the word analysis area. Broca�s area, a part of the brain that controls speech production, assists the parieto-temporal lobe in recognizing written words. These parts of the brain are most active when a child begins to recognize the relationships between spoken language and alphabet letters. The brain undergoes a slow, painstaking process of recognizing letters and identifying the sounds created by the letters, then blending the sounds into a word and finally matching the word to a mentally stored object.

Skilled readers' brains rely mainly upon the occipito-temporal area, which is the long-term storage area for words. The brain creates a visual word form and stores it in this part of the brain. The brain retrieves the image as well as its spelling, pronunciation and meaning from storage when the child sees the word again

Research indicates that reading takes place in the left half of the brain. The left front of the brain controls phonemes, while another area matches the letters to the sounds. Finally the information is sent into long-term storage, where the word is automatically recognized.

Poor readers, the researchers learned, have difficulty accessing this automatic recognition center. They rely almost exclusively on the phoneme center and the mapping center. Each time poor readers see a word, they must puzzle over it, as if they were seeing it for the first time.

Word-Formation In English by Ingo Plag

The attachment of the nominalizing suffix -ity to adjectival bases ending in -ous, which is attested with forms such as curious-curiosity, capacious-capacity, monstrous-monstrosity. However, -ity cannot be attached to all bases of this type, as evidenced by the IMPOSSIBILITY [emphasis mine] of glorious-gloriosity or furious-furiosity. What is responsible for this limitation on the productivity of -ity?

Here is the above in simple English:

A noun form of some of the adjectives which end in -ous can be created by adding -ity. Examples: curious-curiosity. However, this does not work with all adjectives ending in -ous, such as glorious (gloriosity). The raises the question of why not?

The original text is technobabble, which is very common to books on NLP or linguistics, for some reason. I suspect it is because most, if not all, such books are either textbooks or books otherwise aimed at the education or research market. Using rarely seen jargon, even when simple, common words are perfectly adequate, makes the books sound more scholarly. The problem is that if the brain is wrestling with rarely seen words, it takes away from its analyzing and learning of new information:

Laura-Ann Petitto of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, US, and colleagues asked 12 young adults to imagine spelling a word they heard via headphones. They were then asked to judge whether the same word presented on a screen was correctly spelt.

Each participant was tested on a total of 90 words while lying in a brain-scanning machine. A third of these words had regular, phonetic spelling - such as "blink" - in which their letters corresponded directly to the sounds of the word. Another 30 words had irregular spelling, including the word "yacht", while the remaining 30 were nonsense words, like "shelm". "We wanted to know how words are stored in our mental dictionary," explains Petitto.

The scans revealed that more regions of subjects' brains became active when they heard words with irregular spellings, rather than regular ones. In particular, they showed greater activity in regions such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) - an area believed to store information about word meaning. Another area that showed more activity was one called the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), which helps process printed text.

Back to Word-Formation:

Another typical problem with many postulated word-formation rules is that they are often formulated in such a way that they prohibit formations that are nevertheless attested.

formation, formulated

formation

For example, it is often assumed that person nouns ending in -ee (such as employee, nominee) can only be formed with verbs that take and object (employ someone, nominate someone). Such -ee derivatives denote the object of the base verb, i.e. an employee is "someone who is employed," a nominee is "someone who is nominated". However, sometimes even intransitive verbs take -ee (e.g.: escape-escapee, stand-standee). Ideally, one would find and explanation for these strange conditions on the productivity of these affixes.

A further problem that we would like to solve is why some affixes occur with a large number of words, whereas other [affixes] are only attested with a small number of derivatives. What conditions these differences in proliferance?

http://www.akri.org/cognition/hummod.htm

How is all of this knowledge stored and how is it accessed?

There must be some strategy or storage method. Consider the following task.

Name a fruit beginning with the letter p.
Name an animal beginning with the letter l.

and now try,

Name a fruit ending with the letter b.
Name an animal ending with the letter w.

Why is it easier to access information using the initial letter as a key rather than the last letter?

The spelling of words is not stored as reliably as the sounds of words. That's because we hear words a lot more often than we have to spell them, so the sounds get reinforced much more often. Even if we see a word in print, we don't read it one letter at a time. We sound it out to ourselves.

So if someone asks you to name an animal beginning with the letter l or ending with the letter w, you use the same process for either task. You start thinking of the names of different animals. It's easier to look for the first letter because when you think of the names, you have to convert the name sounds to letters, and the first letter comes first (duh). When you think of an animal, such as "antelope", you instantly know it starts with an "a", but to figure out that it ends with "e", you have to work out the spelling all the way to the end of the word.

If I say to think of an animal whose name ends in "w", it's not hard to come up with "cow" because it is a short name for a very common animal. But what fruit has a name ending with "b"?

One way to show that we do not normally use the image of sounds when we read is to see how laborious it is to read the following:

Iff yue sowned owt thiss sentans tew yoreselph, yoo wil komprehenned it.

I don't get his point. The fact that it is laborious to read would, if anything, indicate that we DO use images when we read and that in this case, it is laborious because we do not recognize this text as a stored image and must rely on sounding out each word/syllable. On the other hand, it shows that we do not need word images to recognize words because we CAN sound them out.

When I hear the sound yEW, I think that I can picture the image of the printed word "you", but if I were to see the phonetic spelling of this green vegetable -- brah-kuh-ly -- I would not be able to picture the image of the printed word because I'm not sure how it is spelled. (Does it have two c', two l's, both? What are the vowels in it?)

I believe that when I picture an image of a word, what I'm really picturing is what my mind puts together from the letters which I think spells it. To test this, think of a made-up word such as "plith" or "grush" (but make up your own word and don't write it down). Now picture how you think your word is spelled. I don't know about you, but I can picture an image of a made-up word printed out when obviously, I've never really seen the word in print.

I further believe that when we read printed text, we sound out the words in our minds in order to convert the printed spelling to sound chunks which are then sent to our vocal processing system, and when we want to write a word, we convert the sounds we hear in our minds when thinking of what we want to write, then convert those sounds to letters which are sent to our motor cortex to write.

nOO-vAEt (where OO is the sound in book, wolf, pull, etc.)

Is nOO spelled
noo as in nook
neu as in neuron or
pneu as is pneumonia

abbreviate is often misspelled abreviate
The pronunciation is EH-brEE-vEE-AEt
Notice it has a single "b", which may be why some people drop a b when spelling it. OTOH, they often double a consonant when it should be single, which may be a case of overcompensating.

Many misspellings result from getting vowels wrong.

Other common errors are related to:

i before e (or vice-versa)
silent letters: acknowleged for acknowledged, aquire for acquire, adolecent for adolescent
adding "d": adcquire, alledge for allege
mixing up ice and ise, such as advise for advice.
e for y in androgenous for androgynous



         (letters of the alphabet)
           |   |   |   |   |   |
           b   o   n   t   e   d
           -------------   -----
                 |           |

random observations:

When we learn our ABC's, we associate "a" with the sound "AE", but when we learn to read, we sound out the word "cat" as "kat", not "kAEt".

pay, paid, pAEd
say, said, sed
make, made, mAEd

When we read and sound out the words in our minds, my feeling is that we sound out each word individually, but when we speak the same words out loud, we run word sounds together.

The great majority of non-typo spelling errors are related to:

double letters, such as brocolli versus brocolli
mixed up vowels: abundunt vs abundent vs abundant

Reviews of NLP-Related Books

Natural Language Understanding

http://www.kurzweilai.net/neurons-lose-information-at-one-bit-per-second?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7b702d886d-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email

Blended Words

A blended word (also known as portmanteaus) is a single word formed by combining the start of one word with the last part of another.

brunch = breakfast) + lunch
Spanglish = Spanish + English
urinalysis = urine + analysis

turducken

tur

cken

brunch

breakfast

break

fast

Many blended words are in the dictionary, but their nature is that people make them up frequently. For example, smog (smoke+fog) is well established but smaze (smoke+haze) is rarely (if ever) seen, and if used, would probably not be understood, so using smaze instead of just saying smoke and haze is just an affectation.

An episode of How I Met Your Mother made a play on turducken with turturkeykey, a turkey stuffed inside a turkey, but this is not a blended word. It is a complete word inside another complete (despite being split) word, like abso-friggin'-lutely.

To search for blends of two words, we start with the first two letters of the blended word in word1 and the rest in word2. We look in the Words table Text field for words starting with word1 letters and in the Backwards field for words ending with the word2 letters. Then we keep repeating the process, advancing one letter at a time (e.g.: first 3 letters in word1, then first 4 letters, etc.).

A blended word could have many possible matches. brunch could be break+lunch, brow+hunch, etc. Over 1000 words in AI-C start with br and about 20 end with unch. That's a lot of possible word combinations. Even a blend like affluenza, which is af with only one possible match, influenza, has to deal with a lot of words starting with af. On the flip side, it could be a word starting with affluen, which leaves a lot of words ending with za, or any combination inbetween, such as aff + luenza, affl + uenza, etc.

So the biggest problem with blended words is that there could be thousands of possible combinations and which combo is correct is wholly dependent upon the person who invented the blend. This means that until and unless a word becomes widely used, it must be accompanied by an explanation whenever used, which seems to defeat the point of combining two words into one, unless the point is solely an attempt to be clever, cool, etc.

Whatever the reason, it just seems a waste of time to try to analyze a word to see if it is a blend. Established blended words, such as carjack and motel, which are in dictionaries and commonly used, don't need analysis, and the words which are not commonly accepted and are not accompanied by an explanation are to ambiguous, as we have already seen.

AI/NLP Related Web Links and Books

Corpus Collections

American National Corpus

Big.txt

ClueWeb09 Dataset

Corpus of Contemporary American English

Oxford University spelling corrector test corpus

NLP Projects

The Freebase home page does not tell you what Freebase is, other than to say that it is An entity graph of people, places and things, built by a community that loves open data. It does have a link under the heading "What is Freebase?"

That page tells you: Freebase is a repository of structured data of more than 12 million entities. An entity is a single person, place, or thing. Freebase connects entities together as a graph. Below that is a link to a video entitled "Welcome To Metaweb", but neither the page nor the video explain what the connection is between Freebase and Metaweb.

Freebase data files can be freely downloaded. I did not download all of them because of their size, but I sampled some and could not easily figure them out, either by examining the files or by reading the related web pages. It appears that Freebase primarily collects facts about, as they say, people, places and things. For example, if you want to know the teams, scores, players, etc., for every NFL football game, Freebase can probably give it to you, but this is a long, long way from being a useful knowledge base for a generalized AI/NLP.

NELL

team

Design-wise:

The inputs to NELL include (1) an initial ontology defining hundreds of categories (e.g., person, sportsTeam, fruit, emotion) and relations (e.g., playsOnTeam(athlete,sportsTeam), playsInstrument(musician,instrument)) that NELL is expected to read about, and (2) 10 to 15 seed examples of each category and relation.

...500 million web pages and access to the remainder of the web through search engine APIs.

The goal was to have NELL teach itself without human supervision, though some human supervision has been needed to put it back on the right course when its logic has jumped the track. NELL has been running 24/7 since January 2010.

While this is the general direction I would like to take AI-C, I think that starting by having it read pages from the Web is a mistake. As discussed in this document, it makes more sense to me to start by incorporating dictionary definitions, then expanding into encyclopedia articles. This gives the AI/NLP program a more solid foundation of information.

I think that this sample given on NELL's web site of NELL's recently-learned facts is a good example of the shortcomings of the NELL approach:

bestfest_america is a film festival

hair_tree_porcupine is a mammal

the companies news and drudge report compete with eachother [sic]

tim_sullivan is a journalist that writes for the publication san_diego_union_tribune

english is a language used in the university newcastle_university

elton_john collaborates with john

Here is what I consider problems indicated by the above:

Probably none of these items will be of general use.
Item 6 is completely useless.
Item 3 is also of questionable value. (Is there really a company named news?)
Items 2 and 5 illustrate one of the drawbacks of not having a proper foundation.
Oddly, searches on Google and in Wikipedia do not turn up a "hair tree porcupine", but here is how the entries for the bahia porcupine would be structured in AI-C:
- porcupine is a type of mammal
- New World porcupine is a type of porcupine
- bahia is a type of New World porcupine
The advantage of this approach is that the bahia, streaked dwarf, hairy dwarf, Roosmalen's Dwarf, etc., can each be linked to New World porcupine, and they automatically inherit the characteristics of the links above it as well as being automatically differentiated from the Old World porcupines.
Likewise, Newcastle University would be linked up the tree to universities in England, one trait of which is that English is spoken at them. It would be unnecessary to link each common trait to each individual university in England as it appears NELL would do.

Another possible difference in the approach taken with NELL is the hundreds of catagories defined by the crew. While "hundreds" is a lot more than similar projects, it is still a limit that will eventually cause problems. If more categories can be easily added, as in AI-C, then it is not a problem, but if the categories are pretty much hard-coded into the system, then it is a needless limitation.

Open Cognition Project

Open Mind Common Sense

OMCS collects input which becomes part of ConceptNet. It collects input from random people on the Internet who sign up to enter "facts". This method of getting input has been used for many AI/NLP projects and so far, has not shown any great results. It suffers from the same problems that are usually found in such projects:

Getting input from random passers-by does not provide full coverage of technical detail. The best way to illustrate this is to enter "aardvark" in OMCS and in AI-C and compare the results. AI-C has dozens of facts while OMCS has four (as of 12/20/2001). Two of those four facts are that an aardvark is a mammal and an aardvark is an animal. Since a mammal is an animal, those two facts are really just one, so they just have 3 facts.
Enter "anatomy" in OMCS and you get directed to "body" and about 20 "facts", including:
- Everybody has a body
- A human has one body [duplication]
- You are likely to find a main artery in a body [just "likely"?]
- You are likely to find an artery in a body [duplication]
- You are likely to find skin in a body [found "in" a body?]
- body has flesh [some senses of flesh = "skin", so... duplication]
- and so on.
None of these facts are connected to each other, meaning that at some point, someone will have to manually interlink all these entries to make whatever sense they can from them. My experience is that if you are going to manually interlink words/concepts, you may as well make the original entries for them rather than deal with all the junk you get from random contributors.
Apparently, no foundation was laid on which to build up these facts. If definitions and encyclopedia data were first entered for all words, then contributors would have some structure into which they could add to subjects some facts and concepts which are otherwise not easily attainable. (Wikipedia and Wiktionary could supply a foundation.)
If you look up "anatomy" in AI-C, among a lot of different facts, you get this set of interlinked entries:
In AI-C, you get the above set no matter which element of the set you enter. That is, if you enter "head", you will see how it fits in with all the rest. This is in addition to whatever other data is in AI-C linked to "head". In addition, this is only what is called the superficial human anatomy, which is that part of the anatomy visible to the naked eye. In OMCS, what little data there is for anatomy is not organized in any way.
OMCS only has about 20 fixed categories into which all input must be forced. That number is simply inadequate for the job. AI-C has 20+ categories just under structure alone, and it is not limited to those since more can easily be added.
To illustrate the problems with this, enter "abacus" in OMCS. These four entries currently appear:
1. An abacus can count that transaction [? no clue what that means]
2. An abacus can still be useful
3. An abacus can add a series of numbers [the only really useful "fact"]
4. calculating things quickly is for an abacus [??]
Even if a person wanted to put in useful information, such as how an abacus is put together, there is no obvious way to do so. In AI-C, we find

openNLP - collection of open-source NLP projects

Penn Treebank Project

WordNet:

It would be wonderful if I could import synonyms, commonsense statements, and "glosses" (brief definitions) of words from existing databases into AI-C. There are many such databases available, but none which have been simple and straightforward enough for my use. I have yet to find any database which is available in a simple text listing.

As far as I have been able to tell, none of them use the simple linking method AI-C does. The following is from WordNet's site:

WordNet is a large lexical database of English, developed under the direction of George A. Miller. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be navigated with the browser. WordNet is also freely and publicly available for download . WordNet's structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing.

Here is a start of the data in WordNet:

00001740 29 v 04 breathe 0 take_a_breath 0 respire 0 suspire 3 020
* 00004923 v 0000 * 00004127 v 0000 + 00780628 n 0303 + 03926953 n
0301 + 04088055 n 0105 + 00780628 n 0101 ^ 00004127 v 0103 ^
00004923 v 0103 $ 00002307 v 0000 $ 00002536 v 0000 ~ 00002536 v
0000 ~ 00002669 v 0000 ~ 00002887 v 0000 ~ 00003726 v 0000 ~
00003932 v 0000 ~ 00004127 v 0000 ~ 00004923 v 0000 ~ 00006596 v
0000 ~ 00007227 v 0000 ~ 00016718 v 0000 02 + 02 00 + 08 00 | draw
air into, and expel out of, the lungs; "I can breathe better when
the air is clean"; "The patient is respiring"
00002307 29 v 01 respire 1 004 $ 00001740 v 0000 @ 02047097 v 0000
+ 00780628 n 0103 + 00780248 n 0101 01 + 02 00 | undergo the
biomedical and metabolic processes of respiration by taking up
oxygen and producing carbonmonoxide
00002536 29 v 01 respire 2 002 $ 00001740 v 0000 @ 00001740 v 0000
01 + 02 00 | breathe easily again, as after exertion or anxiety
00002669 29 v 01 choke 0 002 @ 00001740 v 0000 + 13256399 n 0101 01
 + 02 00 | breathe with great difficulty, as when experiencing a
strong emotion; "She choked with emotion when she spoke about her
deceased husband"

The WordNet documentation's description of the above starts with this:
synset_offset lex_filenum ss_type w_cnt word lex_id [word lex_id...] p_cnt [ptr...] [frames...] | gloss

From this it is obvious that the database is not something which can be quickly and easily imported.
See the complete documentation.

Online Dictionaries, Thesauruses, etc.

Page of links to dictionaries, etc.

Parsing/Tagging Software

Link Grammar Parser

SharpNLP - open source natural language processing tools

Stanford Parser: A statistical parser

Statistical Parsing Of English Sentences

TreeTagger - a language independent part-of-speech tagger

Programming Tools/Info

The Code Project

About Words

Determiners

A Linguistic Introduction to English Words

SAMPA - computer readable phonetic alphabet

Word Lists

Heterony/(Homophone) Page

Homophones

Kevin's Word List (and dictionary list) Page

Outpost9's list of words, names, etc.

Word usage frequency lists

American National Corpus
- 300,000 "words" with lemma, POS, and frequency.
- Lots of common, non-uppercase words with Proper Noun tag.
- Lots of junk "words", maybe 40k-50k good word forms out of 300k entries.
- Usage frequency for different words is not believable;
  i.e.: rarely heard words often outrank common words,
  but the list can be used to decide which POS of a known word is most likely.
  Example -- line:
  - noun=5088,
  - proper noun(?)=273,
  - verb (present tense other than 3rd-singular)=80,
  - verb (general)=70,
  - unknown=22,
  - adjective=6.
  So when parsing a sentence and coming across line, it is most likely a noun.
- lemma for -ing nouns is just the -ing form. Not wrong, but should be noted.
  Example: listening < listen for verb, but listening < listening for noun.
- The list is in a table in AI-C as AmerNatlCorpus.
IBM Top 100,000 word list by frequency
Really - how does junk like this make it into any kind of "frequently used" list:
- 0872
- user32
- corliss
- 7726
- helpfull
- 7845
- fonction
- meriwether
- agere
- 7542
- newb
- 9605
- bonnier
- enp
- 8483
- gault
- 516129
- 7285
- jayde
- smartmedia
- myocytes
Notice that many of these are just random numbers and the rest is random junk. Even for good words, no frequency counts are given and no distinction is made for the same word's different parts of speech, much less meanings. It's hard to know what possible use this list could be.
WordFrequency.Info: 5000-word list free, larger ones for sale.

Disappearing NLP efforts

Some NLP focus groups and projects just stop. This list documents them in case a question about them arises.

ThoughtTreasure was a knowledge base. The creator of ThoughtTreasure tried to make it commercial, failed, and gave it up in 2000.
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience had seminars going strong from 1998 until a cancelled seminar in April 2004, then no more and no explanation.

Books

I've done more research online than by reading books, but here are some books I've read or used for reference, mostly since 2000:

Heath's College Handbook of Composition

The Language Instinct

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage

On Intelligence

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Speech and Language Processing

Words and Rules

Pronunciation Pairs

Master The Basics of English

Natural Language Understanding

Understanding Reading

The Psychology of Reading

Books waiting for me to read:

Mapping The Mind

Neuroscience

The Human Brain Book

Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain

Computational and Math. Modeling of Neural Systems

Principles of Neural Science

Word-Formation in English

Conversations with Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature of Thought and Language

Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing

Articles I would like to have...

I recently (Nov.2010) started scouring the Internet looking for information about how and where letters and words are stored in the brain and accessed when listening or reading. In the course of this search, I came across several unrelated articles which might (or might not) have useful information related to the approaches I have taken in AI-C.

The problem is that AI professionals don't give away any information for free. The paltry few dollars they might get by charging for a PDF file means more to them than the advancement of AI/NLP. I say "paltry" because some of these articles are over 40 years old and show little or no signs of activities at the download sites I visited. My paying $35+ for each article (not a book -- a single article of less than 15 pages usually) is not going to impact the author's lifestyle, but it will mine if I have to keep popping that much for articles which may turn out not to be that helpful anyway.

Here are some examples:

How are words stored in memory? (Robert Port, 2007) - 27 pages, $40. This was a great disappointment because this subject is what I was originally looking for. Because this was a recent article, I tried looking for a university web site for Port and found it, along with a list of his articles available for free downloading, including this one.
The Teachable Language Comprehender (M. Ross Quillian, 1969) -
An organization of knowledge for problem solving and language comprehension (Chuck Rieger; 1976) - 2k PDF, $36.
A natural language understander based on a freely associated learned memory net (Sara R. Jordan) - 982k, $34.

Paul Allen: The Singularity Isn't Near

Technology Review

While I don't disagree with his assertion that it is a long way off, I do disagree with some of the arguments he makes in support of his view.

Allen starts with multiple statements of how AI software needs to be better than it is today, which is no surprise, but then he says:

Building the complex software that would allow the singularity to happen requires us to first have a detailed scientific understanding of how the human brain works that we can use as an architectural guide... we absolutely require a massive acceleration of our scientific progress in understanding every facet of the human brain

This is a remarkable statement similar to saying that to build a jet plane, we must have a detailed scientific understanding of how birds fly.

We must know how billions of parallel neuron interactions can result in human consciousness and original thought.

The problem is that these are nebulous and highly debated concepts, so how can be strive to achieve them? What we need is an understandable, achievable goal. What is it that we hope for singularity AI to do? How about find solutions to the world's problems?

While we have learned a great deal about how to build individual AI systems that do seemingly intelligent things, our systems have always remained brittle -- their performance boundaries are rigidly set by their internal assumptions and defining algorithms, they cannot generalize, and they frequently give nonsensical answers outside of their specific focus areas.

That's they way they were designed. This doesn't mean that it is impossible, or even that difficult, to design an AI which CAN generalize and whose boundaries are NOT rigidly set.

A computer program that plays excellent chess can't leverage its skill to play other games.

This is a poor example. What other games lend directly themselves to benefitting from a knowledge of chess? I was a tournament chess player in my younger days and I can't think of any.

A better game example would be card games. In the late 1980's, I wrote CardShark Hearts, a Hearts-playing game for windows. After completing it, I decided to write CardShark Spades. I started by copying over many of the subroutines, not just for how to shuffle and deal cards, but how to analyze the trick taking and avoidance potential of suits.

While it's true that I, and not an AI software, copied the code over to "leverage" it into playing Spades, getting AI software to a point where it could do such copying on its own is easily achievable -- so much so that I have always just assumed that such an AI would be able to modify its own code. In fact, that is probably an essential feature.

The best medical diagnosis programs contain immensely detailed knowledge of the human body but can't deduce that a tightrope walker would have a great sense of balance.

I've stated elsewhere in the AI-C documentation that one advantage a computer has is that it (or we) can write a program specifically to accomplish a task such as playing chess or cards or diagnosing medical problems in a way which is MUCH easier, more reliable, and more efficient than the way our brain has to cobble neurons together to accomplish the same thing.

Unfortunately, most of his article builds on the above statements, so there is nothing else to address.

Scherer Typology of Affective States

Emotion: brief organically synchronized ... evaluation of a major event

angry, sad, joyful, fearful, ashamed, proud, elated

Mood: diffuse non-caused low-intensity long-duration change in subjective feeling

cheerful, gloomy, irritable, listless, depressed, buoyant

Interpersonal stances: affective stance toward another person in a specific interaction

friendly, flirtatious, distant, cold, warm, supportive, contemptuous

Attitudes: enduring, affectively colored beliefs, dispositions towards objects or persons

liking, loving, hating, valuing, desiring

Personality traits: stable personality dispositions and typical behavior tendencies

nervous, anxious, reckless, morose, hostile, jealous

Sentiment Tokenization

hat, eyebrows: < >
eyes: : ; = 8
nose: -o * '
mouth: ) ] ( d D p P / : } { |
eyes: : ; = 8

Look up: Brendan O'Connor twitter tokenizer

Hard to classify reviews:

Perfume review: please wear it at home exclusively and tape the windows shut.
Dorothy Parker about Katherine Hepburn: She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Thwarted Expectations and Ordering Effects

Sentiment Lexicon

The The General Inquirer

Hatzivassiloglou and McKeown intuition for identifying word polarity

Adjectives with "and" have same polarity ("funny and entertaining")

Those with "but" do not ("honest but unreliable")

Turney Algorithm

In classifying a word in text which can be one of several different classes, assign a positive value to words related to the target class and a negative value to words related to other classes which the word might be part of.

Example: "fall - noun" can be in the class "accident" or "season (of a year)".

1. "he took a nasty fall when he tripped over a rake"

"tripped" has a strong positive relation to the class "accident" and "nasty" has at least a mild positive relation.

"rake" has a weak positive relation to the class "season (of a year)" in that you rake leaves in the fall.

In sum, tripped and nasty outweigh rake and the sentence is deemed to be about accidents.

2. "this fall I'm planting daffodils".

"planting" has a positive relation to the class "season (of a year)".

"planting" can also have a relation to "accident" such as "avoid a fall by planting your foot firmly before changing directions", but the former is a stronger relation (by usage frequency) and would indicate that the sentence is about the season.

Hearst's Patterns for extracting IS-A relations:
Y, such as X
such Y as X
X or other Y
X and other Y
Y including X
Y, especially X

Dictionary.Com API

Like so many other NLP-AI resources on the Web, Dictionary.com will give the researcher a taste of their data (via an API) but their terms of agreement for the API prohibit downloading their entire dictionary, so it is of limited value for projects like this one.

polysemous -- a word with related meanings; example: bank is a type of financial institution or a building housing a type of financial institution. Systematic relationship: building & organization (school, hospital) as well as Shakespeare ("Shakespeare wrote..." and "I love Shakespeare" (his works) and plum (tree and fruit).

Antonyms are opposites with respect to one feature of meaning: dark/light, short/long, fast/slow, hot/cold, in/out.

A binary opposition: opposite ends of a scale: long/short, fast/slow.

Reversives (different directions): rise/fall, up/down.

Hyponym: car is a hyponym of vehicle, pear is a hyponym of fruit.

Hypernym: vehicle is a hypernym of car, etc.

synset (synonym set) = near-synonyms

gloss = a definition:

chump = a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of

These words share the same gloss: chump, fool, gull, mark, patsy, fall guy, sucker, etc.

WordNet Noun Relations:

hypernym = superordinate : breakfast = meal
hyponym = subordinate : meal = breakfast
member meronum = Has-Member : faculty = professor
has-instance = __ = : composer = Bach
instance = __ : Bach = composer
Member Holonym = Member-Of : copilot = crew
part meronym = has-part : table = leg
part holonym = part-of : leg = table
antonym = __ : leader = follower

Dekang Lin similarity theorem

sim(A, B) = IC(common(A,B)) / IC(description(A,B))
IC = information content

www.geonames.org = geographical data (population, location, etc.)

Simplifying parsed sentences:

Remove:

attribution clauses(?): "international observers said Tuesday".
PPs without named entities: "...increased *to a sustainable number*" (just "increased").
initial adverbials: "for example, OTOH, as a matter of fact, at this point..."

AI-C

AI-CortexKnowledge Base

Contents:

Purpose of AI-C

Designing A NLP System

AI/NLP Textbooks

AI-C's Design

AI-C Project Phases

Downloads

Contact me regarding AI-C

Brains vs. AI

The Brain's Cortex

"Programs" in the brain.

Should AI work like our brains?

Advantages of the computer over the brain.

Perfect memory of virtually infinite duration

Unlimited memory capacity.

Capacity for work.

More efficient "programs"

AI-C's Database Structure

Microsoft Access

The Cortex table

The Cortex table's fields

Words table

LinkTypes Table

Pronunciation Table

Numbers table

Shapes Table

Sources Table

"z" Tables

Using the AI-C Lookup Program

Introduction

Set-up

Word look-up's

Phrases

The Links List Box

The Links Table Window

Creating new Cortex entries

Entering Definitions

Changing an entry

Deleting an entry

Numeric and date entries

External Reference menu

Tools menu

AI-C Lookup Program Code

Introduction

Complexity of the code

House-keeping code

VB6 programming quirks

Looking up a word

Miscellaneous Information

Time

Reviews of NLP-Related Books

AI/NLP Related Web Links and Books

Paul Allen: The Singularity Isn't Near

We must know how billions of parallel neuron interactions can result in human consciousness and original thought.

A computer program that plays excellent chess can't leverage its skill to play other games.

The best medical diagnosis programs contain immensely detailed knowledge of the human body but can't deduce that a tightrope walker would have a great sense of balance.

Scherer Typology of Affective States

Sentiment Tokenization

Hard to classify reviews:

Thwarted Expectations and Ordering Effects

Sentiment Lexicon

Hatzivassiloglou and McKeown intuition for identifying word polarity

Turney Algorithm

Dictionary.Com API

AI-Cortex
Knowledge Base