Let the Skywriting About Language Beginnings Begin!

From: Stevan Harnad (harnad@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 27 1999 - 14:45:34 GMT


Hello Everyone in the Minicourse of Language Evolution!

According to what I have heard so far, the following 13 students are
officially in the course, but others are "auditing" too, so they are
invited to participate in the Skywriting too.

Only these 13 will be officially assigned one of the 5 papers, but
others can participate as they choose, commenting either directly on
the paper, or on the comments on the paper.

(1) Three Skywriters on Dunbar
        http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.dunbar.html

1. Thuma Orsolya <thumao@mail.alba.hu>,
2. Pocs Kata Rita <pkatas@mars.arts.u-szeged.hu>,
3. Zemplen Gabor melyik a jo cim? <gzemplen@drotposta.hu>, <zemplen@hps.elte.hu>

(2) Two Skywriters on Wilkins/Wakefield
        http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.wilkins.html

1. Gervain Judit <h633301@stud.u-szeged.hu>,
2. Kovacs Agnes <agikov@hotmail.com>,

(3) Three Skywriters on Pinker/Bloom
        http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.pinker.html

1. Hofer Adam nincs cime <Btamas@btk.jpte.hu>,
2. Ivan Zsuzsanna <manka1@freemail.hu>,
3. Toth Eva <tothe@edpsy.u-szeged.hu>,

(4) Three Skywriters on Harnad-1 [Origin of Words]
    http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad96.word.origin.html

1. Csak Laszlo nincs cime! <pleh@edpsy.u-szeged.hu>,
2. Olah Gyongyver <gagarin@mksh.u-szeged.hu>,
3. Stacho Laszlo Pal <h633874@stud.u-szeged.hu>,

(4) Two Skywriters on Cangelosi/Harnad
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.language.html

1. Farkas Agnes <f_agi@hotmail.com>,
2. Jelasity Mark <JELASITY@INF.U-SZEGED.HU>,

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

I hope you have all had a chance to read your respective papers by now.
To do your skywriting, save the paper from the web as "text" (not
"source").

Then go through the text file and delete everything you do NOT plan to
comment on. (For the passages you do comment on, make sure you leave in
enough context so it will be clear what it is about.)

Once you have reduced it to the passages that you want to comment on
(about 20% of the text), make sure it is formatted (i.e., no lines that
run on beyond 72 characters) and then "quote" it, using the "> "
convention, like this:

> This is what a quoted passage should look like. it should not have
> lines that wrap around onto the next line. You can have deletions
> within a passage. Mark them as: [...]. Don't make the quoted part either
> too short, leaving out the context, or too long, leaving in a lot of
> unnecessary additional material, not relevant to your comment.

Then, follow the quote with your comment, like this.

I had originally said I would divide the papers into 3 parts, but I
think it's better if each of you picks what you want to comment on from
anywhere in the paper (and it doesn't matter of more than one of you
happens to choose the same passages to comment on).

Apart from doing your own comment on your own paper, please comment at
least once on someone else's comments (not necessarily on your own
paper) or any of my or anyone else's replies to the comments.

I will try to reply to as many of them as I can, but for that you should
do your comments now, and not 1-2 days before I arrive!

Send your comments to me, and I will both re-send them to the entire
list and archive them in the Skywriting Archive, where you can review
the comments:

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/CogSci-Szeged99/

Very important: The Subject headers must be the following, nothing else:

Subject: Dunbar Grooming
Subject: Wilkins Neurolinguistics
Subject: Pinker Grammar
Subject: Harnad1 Words
Subject: Harnad2 Symbols

Do not invent your own Subject headers. If you use these, it will be
easy to follow the archive. If you invent your own, it will be hard.
For an example, See:

http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Debates98/

The Subject thread will keep reappearing with a Re: for example:
"Subject: Re: Dunbar Grooming"

That's fine. It might also be helpful if each skywriter put their 1, 2 or 3
after their first comment: e.g., Orsolya's first comment on Dunbar would
have "Subject: Dunbar Grooming 1." and Kata's would have " "Subject:
Dunbar Grooming 2." etc.

Don't worry too much about the details because I will fix Subject
headers if they are wrong.

Now you can begin! Others are free to join in at any time, on any of the
topics.

Happy Skyriting,

Istvan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM



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