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Does your brain work like a dictionary? A mathematical analysis of the connections among definitions of English words has uncovered hidden structures that man resembles the way words and their meanings are represented in our minds.
“We want to know how the mental vocabulary is represented in the brain,” says Stevan Harnad of the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada.
As every word in a dictionary is defined (下定义) in terms of others, the knowledge needed to understand the entire vocabulary is there. Harnad’s team reasoned that finding this smallest set of words and pinning down its structure might help research on how human brains put language together.
The team converted each of four different English dictionaries into a mathematical structure of linked nodes (节点) known as a graph. Each node in this graph represents a word, which is linked to the other words used to define it — so “banana” might be connected to “long”, “bendy”, “yellow”, and “fruit”.
But even this tiny set is not the smallest number of words you need to produce the whole dictionary, as many of these words can in turn be fully defined by others in the kernel (核心). What’s more, the kernel has a deeper structure.
So what, if anything, can this tell us about how our brains represent words and concepts? To find out the answer, Harnad’s team looked at data on how children acquire words and found a pattern: as you move in from the full dictionary towards the Kernel, words which have been acquired at a younger age tend to be used more often, and refer to more concrete concepts.
But the connection does suggest that our brains may structure language somewhat similarly to a dictionary.
Phil Blunsom, at University of Oxford isn’t convinced that word meanings can be reduced to a chain of definitions. “It’s treating words in such a symbolic fashion that they are going to lose a lot of the meaning.” But Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, UK, expects the approach to new insights. “This will be most useful in giving us a sense of how our minds structure meaning.” he says.
53. The first paragraph serves as in the passage.
A. a comparison between human brain and a dictionary
B. an introduction to whether your brain works like a dictionary
C. a conclusion that your brain is just like a dictionary
D. a contradiction that your brain is just like a dictionary
54. What does the underlined phrase “pinning down” in Paragraph 3 mean here?
A. determining exactly B. fixing firmly C. explaining simply D. putting formally
55. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
A. Children acquire words and form patterns more easily than adults.
B. Many of the words can in turn be fully defined by using its similar words.
C. Harnad’s findings may explain how human brains put language together.
D. Our brains may structure language exactly similarly to a dictionary.
答案及解析:
知识点：科普环保类阅读
53-55. BAC
