Tag: word cloud

Well, a word cloud anyway.

I’m busy focusing on the manuscript for Chapter One of my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. Scanning the copy—over 4,000 words—I noticed some repetition. My eye caught ‘fundamental’, which I use often in speech as well. I decided to try a word cloud to illustrate common words.

As this is a hypothesis on the limitations of language, the fact that these are prominent is no surprise, but 34 instances of ‘fundamental’ seem fundamentally off—see what I did there? And this is only the first chapter of eight.

I’ll review the content to see if I can remove some instances—perhaps entire sentences—or choose a synonym to see where it leads.

The manuscript is in its fourth full revision, and it feels closer to completion. I aim for an early 2025 release date, but time will tell.

Ass usual, I employ AI (Claude, in this case) to do some heavy lifting.

Having analysed the chapter, I’ve identified several places where “fundamental” could be substituted or removed to enhance the linguistic diversity and rhetorical effectiveness of the text. Here are some examples:

1. “These limitations, we argue, manifest not merely as practical challenges but as fundamental features of how meaning systems operate…”
   • Alternative: “These limitations, we argue, manifest not merely as practical challenges but as intrinsic features of how meaning systems operate…”
2. “This theoretical perspective fundamentally reframes several longstanding problems in linguistics and philosophy.”
   • Alternative: “This theoretical perspective radically reframes several longstanding problems in linguistics and philosophy.”
3. “These patterns suggest inherent rather than circumstantial constraints – limitations that emerge from language’s structure itself rather than from inadequate definition or imprecise usage.”
   • Here, “fundamental” could be omitted entirely without losing the core meaning of the sentence.
4. “Understanding these constraints as systematic features rather than implementation failures provides a crucial theoretical foundation for the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis.”
   • Alternative: “Understanding these constraints as systematic features rather than implementation failures provides a vital theoretical foundation for the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis.”
5. “These cognitive constraints manifest not as mere practical impediments but as necessary features of how meaning is processed and transmitted through human neural networks.”
   • Here, “fundamental” could be replaced with “essential” or simply omitted.

Notice that 3 of the 5 recommendations didn’t include the offending word. Rather, they already employed synonyms. This gives us insights into how LLMs translate language with fuzzy logic. Perhaps that’s an article for another day.