Complimentary, but not deep.

The interwebs widely quote Chomsky saying in Kolkata, in a 10-minute speech in 2001, “The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini’s grammar”: An event in Kolkata. Chomsky in fact already said that in the preface of Aspects in 1965: “a generative grammar, in essentially the contemporary sense of this term” . And the final line of The Sound Pattern of English is an allusion to the final sutra of Panini, “ā → ā”.

But as Kiparsky and Staal noted in 1969, Panini’s model of generativity has very different constructs between the two levels: they are derivations, not rewritings. An anecdote on Chomsky’s linguistic theory suggests that Chomsky ended up going back to an approach more like Panini’s with Minimalism in 1991—and might have saved himself 26 years if he’d read Panini more closely when he was citing him in Aspects.

But of course, Chomsky wasn’t learning from Panini, or honing his craft against the Indian master. Chomsky came up with transformations on his own, and merely found it convenient occasionally to allude to Panini as an antecedent. Panini and Chomsky were not undertaking the same research programme, after all.

Well, let’s think this through.

I count three programming paradigms from when I was studying computer science 25 years ago: functional, logical, and procedural. They correspond to three types of semantics: denotational, axiomatic, and operational. The first two are pristine and beautiful articulations of mathematics and logic, respectively. The last involves modelling the internal state of a von Neumann machine, and is so ugly, it’s embarrassing to express it in mathematical notation at all.

By default, I would say denotational semantics comes closest to how formal linguists think of linguistic semantics. It uses statements about the world to formulate a model of the world. And that’s what humans do, in making assertive speech acts.

The catch is, the reason we interact with computers through programming languages is not assertive: we are not (yet) having a debate with the computer about moral philosophy or fiscal policy, for example. It is directive: we are trying to get the computer to do things for us.

The most straightforward way of directing an action is by issuing directive speech acts. We couch our commands to other people as questions and statements out of politeness, but we don’t really do that with a computer. And even when we are doing functional or logical programming, we are not truly authoring mathematical or logical proofs. We are using the mechanisms of those proofs, to get the computer to do something. What we choose to express in those paradigms is still driven by that goal.

(I did a semester project writing a parser in Prolog. My most important learning? Logic programming is still programming.)

So while functional programming is probably closest to how we think of natural language in general, procedural programming is closest to how we think of language in the context of human-computer interaction.

Originally Answered:

Quora now removes the number of upvotes before one clicks it. Why don’t they also remove the number of views and who upvoted it?

Seeing many Quorans that I am following, it’s not hard to see the upvotes must be over 1000, which I believe contradicts to the original intent of not letting users see the number of upvotes before you click it. Also, I can see the numbers of views and comments; it’s not hard to guess a viral answer.

Well then, I guess they will get rid of those now too. Thanks a bunch, OP.

The removal of social media functionality over the last couple of months has been incremental. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Views preview went away before you expand out an answer—in fact, the whole line would need to go in the preview mode. Hiding it in all circumstances, OTOH, would be… counterproductive: if you do want to find out how many people viewed the answer or upvoted it, do you really want to do three clicks, or view it only if you’ve upvoted the answer yourself?

Killing the comments count, I would *hope*, they would be more reluctant to do: that goes to usability.

Stop laughing.

I see an answer here from 2010. Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.

Yes. In fact, recent UX changes—suppressing upvote counts in the feed, suppressing visibility of Most Viewed Writer—are (presumably) an attempt to mitigate this.

Yes, people upvote answers by very popular Quora users, regardless of whether they are any good or not. Yes, people upvote answers that show up from popular users in their feed, without scrutinising whether someone else came up with a better answer. Yes, there is a widespread perception of cliquishness and high school behaviour among Quora writers—and if you google, you’ll see that perception was in place among writers about Quora in tech journals, as far back as 2010 and 2011, even before the Quill.

*shrug* Like I say. Quora, seven years on, is making a stab at mitigating that.

Ζῶσμα

Constantinos Kalampokis’ answer to What is said at Greek funerals? covers everything that happens at a funeral; but I’m assuming the question is particularly after what the condolence formula is.

Both Greek and Turkish are notorious in linguistics for having a formulaic expression for just about every occasion; it’s part of good social behaviour that you’re expected to come up with the right formula for the right occasion. Hence the proverbial expression for someone tactless: Πάρ’ τονα στο γάμο σου να σου πει «και του χρόνου», “Take this guy to your wedding, and he’ll wish you ‘Many Happy Returns!’”

In funerals, the formulaic expression is ζωή σε λόγου σας “life to you” (where λόγου σας “your word” is an old circumlocution for “you”, cf. “your lordship”). https://www.translatum.gr/forum/… offers the alternatives ζωή σε σας “life to you”, and να ζήσετε/ζείτε να τον/τη θυμάστε “may you live/keep living, so that you can keep remembering him/her” (i.e. may his/her memory survive in you).

Τα συλλυπητήριά μου “my condolences” is a more formal, stiff expression; I doubt you’d use it with friends. Κουράγιο “(have) courage!” is also heard, to acknowledge the hardship of family members.

I have a lot of time for the expression Να είναι ελαφρύ το χώμα που θα τον σκεπάσει “may the soil that covers him be light”. But that’s not used at funerals, it’s a valediction typically used for famous people.

This has been answered already, I’ll just answer it more anecdotally.

Indo-European has two words for apple, that show up in different daughter branches:

• *h₂ébōl shows up in Germanic (… apple), Celtic, Balto-Slavic, and probably Hittite šam(a)lu- ‘apple tree’
• *méh₂lom shows up in Greek (Doric mālon, Attic mēlon), Latin (mālum), Albanian (mollë), and Hittite maḫla ‘apple’

This has been a puzzle for Indo-Europeanists.

• Some Indo-Europeanists have assumed the genuine Indo-European word was *h₂ébōl, and *méh₂lom was a pre-Greek loanword.
• Some Indo-Europeanists have assumed that Indo-European had split up into northern and southern dialects, and dialects are allowed to have different words for the same thing—without one word being necessarily more Indo-European than the other.
• This was news to me: Proto-Indo-European phonology – Wikipedia says that some Indo-Europeanists have tried to unify the two forms as *h₂eml-:
• *h₂eml- > *h₂ebl- > *h₂ébōl
• *h₂eml- > *meh₂l- > *méh₂lom
• EDIT: And add the speculation by Guus Kroonen in On the origin of Greek μῆλον, Latin mālum, Albanian mollë and Hittite šam(a)lu- ‘apple’ that *méh₂lom, which he reconstructs as *smh₂l, is related to proto-Kartvelian (as in Georgian) *msxal- ‘pear’.

So much for apple. What’s the story with mălus ‘evil’?

As others have pointed out, the vowel in malus is short; so whatever it’s derived from, it’s not going to be derived from *méh₂lom (where the laryngeal h₂ serves to lengthen the preceding vowel).

malus – Wiktionary

From Proto-Italic, related to Oscan mallom and mallud (“bad”). Originally associated with Ancient Greek μέλας (mélas, “black, dark”), but support for this is waning. Perhaps from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Avestan [math]unicode{x10B28}unicode{x10B00}unicode{x10B0C}unicode{x10B2D}unicode{x10B0C}unicode{x10B0C}unicode{x10B00}[/math] (mairiia, “treacherous”).

Which means… we don’t know. All we do know is, it is indeed a coincidence. Although yes, it’s a coincidence mediaeval theologians have had a field day with. In fact, it’s likely the reason why Westerners assume the forbidden fruit was an apple: Forbidden fruit. De ligno autem scientiae boni et mali “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil/apples”. Jewish tradition instead pointed to the fig, the grape, or wheat.

You mean, the font announced with a literal gong within Quora?

Instagram post by Quora • Feb 11, 2017 at 2:28am UTC

quora: Ringing the gong! One of our oldest traditions for product launches–this time we’re celebrating our new custom typeface [math]unicode{x1F514}unicode{x1F514}unicode{x1F514} [/math]#quora

[Why yes, Quora does use emojis on Instagram—not em-dashes, though.]

Of course this has been covered off with great erudition by Martin Silvertant: Martin Silvertant’s answer to Why is there a disgusting new font on Quora?

In conclusion, Quora has not introduced a disgusting new typeface. Rather, they are using the typeface they chose incorrectly. Quora has done amazingly by using Tiempos Text for body text, but they need some guidance in establishing a harmonious, coherent typographic system for the website.

Quora Design Team. “Guidance in establishing a harmonious, coherent typographic system for the website Sold Separately.”

If you go through her log, you will notice that Susan’s activity is intermittent. She posts for a few days, then is absent for months. In fact, her latest period of posting was her most protracted, and the first in which she posted on more than one topic.

Her being absent, in any case, has plenty of precedent.

I sat through the 1992 revival of Einstein on the Beach, which goes for five hours, and which is much more static (as hardcore minimalist music) than a symphony would be. I had no problem sitting through the entire thing—even though the opera creators imagined you could walk in and out as you pleased. And I was proud to give them a standing ovation at the end of it.

(The audience was much more restless in the 1992 revival than the 1984 revival, apparently. There was booing in the bed scene. The people booing did not stick around for the standing ovation.)

The six hour TV version of The Mahabharata (1989 film)? Not a problem.

I’ve enjoyed Mahler’s Third, which is an hour and three quarters; I’ve been puzzled by where the hell Brian’s Gothic was going, and its length at an hour and three quarters was not the reason why.

As long as the symphony is any good, I’m up for it. Just gimme a La-Z-Boy and a coffee, and I’m good to go.