Alexander Kilpatrick

Alexander Kilpatrick

Associate Professor at the University of Aizu and Director of the Language, Cognition, and Computation Laboratory. Research interests include computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, information theory, phonology, sound symbolism, and machine learning.

Posts by Tags

linguistics

Why Don’t We Speak Faster? Speech Rate, Surprisal, and the Mind’s Bandwidth

6 minute read

Published:

Human language evolves towards efficiency so that the maximum amount of meaning can be squeezed into the minimum amount of time and effort. The latter is covered by Zipf’s principle of least effort. The time half of the efficiency equation has not received enough attention. An obvious way to improve efficiency would be to simply speak faster. Anyone who has ever listened to a horse race or a house auction understands that, physically, humans can speak incredibly quickly, and when they do, meaning can be inferred from rapid speech; otherwise, winners would never get called and houses would never sell. Ask yourself: why don’t you speak faster than you do? The obvious answer is that it is unusual. Speech is a social tool, presumably, speech communities unconsciously decide on an appropriate rate. Within languages, people are reasonably good at sticking to that rate. People, not real estate agents.

In Defence of Small Effects: Why Any Signal in Language is Amazing

7 minute read

Published:

A few months ago, a paper of mine came back from peer review with a comment I have seen in various forms throughout my career. The reviewer acknowledged that the results were statistically significant, then added, almost as a dismissal: “but the effect sizes are small.” The implication was clear: if the variance explained is modest, the finding is modest. I want to push back on that, not defensively (well, perhaps a little defensively), but because I think this criticism, applied to research on the internal structure of language, fundamentally misunderstands what it would mean to find a large effect, and why finding any effect at all is pretty amazing.

personal

The Lesson of Chelmsford

4 minute read

Published:

Before I knew him, my father was an addict. What follows is not a tragic backstory, nor a tale of overcoming difficulty to become a scientist. It is about what I learned later, as an adult, about the treatment he received, and about how that discovery has shaped how I think about science, evidence, and responsibility in my own research.

research

Why Don’t We Speak Faster? Speech Rate, Surprisal, and the Mind’s Bandwidth

6 minute read

Published:

Human language evolves towards efficiency so that the maximum amount of meaning can be squeezed into the minimum amount of time and effort. The latter is covered by Zipf’s principle of least effort. The time half of the efficiency equation has not received enough attention. An obvious way to improve efficiency would be to simply speak faster. Anyone who has ever listened to a horse race or a house auction understands that, physically, humans can speak incredibly quickly, and when they do, meaning can be inferred from rapid speech; otherwise, winners would never get called and houses would never sell. Ask yourself: why don’t you speak faster than you do? The obvious answer is that it is unusual. Speech is a social tool, presumably, speech communities unconsciously decide on an appropriate rate. Within languages, people are reasonably good at sticking to that rate. People, not real estate agents.

In Defence of Small Effects: Why Any Signal in Language is Amazing

7 minute read

Published:

A few months ago, a paper of mine came back from peer review with a comment I have seen in various forms throughout my career. The reviewer acknowledged that the results were statistically significant, then added, almost as a dismissal: “but the effect sizes are small.” The implication was clear: if the variance explained is modest, the finding is modest. I want to push back on that, not defensively (well, perhaps a little defensively), but because I think this criticism, applied to research on the internal structure of language, fundamentally misunderstands what it would mean to find a large effect, and why finding any effect at all is pretty amazing.

research ethics

The Lesson of Chelmsford

4 minute read

Published:

Before I knew him, my father was an addict. What follows is not a tragic backstory, nor a tale of overcoming difficulty to become a scientist. It is about what I learned later, as an adult, about the treatment he received, and about how that discovery has shaped how I think about science, evidence, and responsibility in my own research.

science

Why Don’t We Speak Faster? Speech Rate, Surprisal, and the Mind’s Bandwidth

6 minute read

Published:

Human language evolves towards efficiency so that the maximum amount of meaning can be squeezed into the minimum amount of time and effort. The latter is covered by Zipf’s principle of least effort. The time half of the efficiency equation has not received enough attention. An obvious way to improve efficiency would be to simply speak faster. Anyone who has ever listened to a horse race or a house auction understands that, physically, humans can speak incredibly quickly, and when they do, meaning can be inferred from rapid speech; otherwise, winners would never get called and houses would never sell. Ask yourself: why don’t you speak faster than you do? The obvious answer is that it is unusual. Speech is a social tool, presumably, speech communities unconsciously decide on an appropriate rate. Within languages, people are reasonably good at sticking to that rate. People, not real estate agents.

In Defence of Small Effects: Why Any Signal in Language is Amazing

7 minute read

Published:

A few months ago, a paper of mine came back from peer review with a comment I have seen in various forms throughout my career. The reviewer acknowledged that the results were statistically significant, then added, almost as a dismissal: “but the effect sizes are small.” The implication was clear: if the variance explained is modest, the finding is modest. I want to push back on that, not defensively (well, perhaps a little defensively), but because I think this criticism, applied to research on the internal structure of language, fundamentally misunderstands what it would mean to find a large effect, and why finding any effect at all is pretty amazing.

The Lesson of Chelmsford

4 minute read

Published:

Before I knew him, my father was an addict. What follows is not a tragic backstory, nor a tale of overcoming difficulty to become a scientist. It is about what I learned later, as an adult, about the treatment he received, and about how that discovery has shaped how I think about science, evidence, and responsibility in my own research.