Flashcards in Adjectives Deck (24):
1
Regal [riːɡəl]
Majestuoso, regio
1. The Wolof are the darkest, tallest and most regal-looking people in Africa
2
Pigeonholed
Encasillado
1. Freud was pigeonholed by his contemporaries as a therapist.
3
Orthogonal
Of two or more problems or subjects, independent of or irrelevant to each other
1. A lot of issues that at first appear to be orthogonal to our concerns turn out, on closer consideration, not to be.
4
Attendant
Occuring with or as a result of
1. The book not only endorses the Katz-Postal principle which enacts the forementioned concern, and the principle's attendant innovations, like semantic interpretation rules and trigger morphemes, it strengthens it, by adding base-recursion to the model.
5
Apocryphal [əˈpɒkrɪfəl]
Of dubious veracity, of questionable accuracy or truthfulness, apócrifo
1. Harvey Newquist reports an apocryphal story about an early English-Russian system that translated the biblical quotation “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” into Russian as “The vodka is strong, but the meat is spoiled."
6
Apodictic
Clearly established or beyond dispute, apodíctico
1. However, it is not unreasonable to think (hope?) that cognitive distance is not an unreasonable (note the hedging here) proxy for genetic distance and that an FL that is chock full of sui generis information presents more evolutionary work to build than one that is less cognitively distinctive. I will adopt this reasonable, though by no means apodictic, assumption going forward.
7
Ineluctable
Ineluctable, ineludible, que no se puede evadir
1. Granted the premises, the conclusion is ineluctable.
8
Burgundy [ˈbɜrgəndi]
Burdeos, color rojo púrpura oscuro
1. Her name was Shirley and we were both in a piano class. She wore burgundy overalls, which I for some reason found immensely charming.
9
Enmeshed
Said of a thing entangled in sth
1. Individuals are enmeshed in society from birth.
10
Ensconced [ɪnˈskɒnst]
Settled in a safe position
1. So if adults manifest domain-specific damage, and if it can be shown that infants come into the world with some domain-specific predispositions, doesn't that mean that the nativists have won the debate over the developmentalists still ensconced on the theoretical shores of Lake Geneva?
11
Apportioned
Distribuido
1. Functions in the brain seem to be apportioned asymmetrically to the hemispheres
12
Groping
Moving or going about clumsily or hesitantly, showing or reflecting a desire to understand, esp. something that proves puzzling
1. Similarly, the compensatory respones, which in organic epigenesis consist of groping explorations coupled with action upon the environment, naturally show these characteristics reinforced in the case of cognitive development.
13
Arcane
Understood by few, arcano
1. Finally, the project introduced a generation of experimental psychologists to the arcane world of FLT: The branch of mathematics that concerns itself with finite algorithms, which generate potentially infinite sets of strings.
14
Farfetched
Unlikely, unconvincing, implausible
1. But if all aspects of a language developed like this, then we would expect each language to be a unique reflection of the cultural history of its people-group. It would be a farfetched coincidence if two unrelated languages, spoken on opposite sides of the world, ended up being essentially the same by this kind of gradual and accidental process.
2. Although I was glad to see that brain science was getting cover-story attention, some of the claims and statements in the article, specially those offered by childcare advocates who were not brain scientists, seemed far-fetched.
15
Sundry
Of various kinds, several
1. Likewise, human linguistic expressions may lack a kind of significance that is exemplified by bee dances, or by invented formulae whose interpretations are stipulated. We can and should allow for many types of languages, whose expressions may be significant in sundry ways.
16
Procrustean
Enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality
1. One of the persistent debates in the field has been whether the use of language for encoding and elaborating thought is primary—as an "inner tool"—or whether its use for communication was the consistent core function. I think that this is a misleading dichotomy. Contemporary language clearly functions both in our inner mental lives and for communication, and it seems Procrustean to denote one as "primary".
17
Herculean
Requiring great strength, hercúleo
1. After all, the average high school graduate knows up to 60,000 words, a vocabulary achieved with little effort, especially when contrasted with the herculean efforts devoted to training animals.
18
Cavalier
Casually indifferent or disdainful, nonchalant, carefree, lighthearted
1. -English just isn't a very serious scientific abstraction. Viewed that way, the English language has as much the status of a natural object as, say, the French liver does. -Hold on, I don't know about the French liver, but I wouldn't be so cavalier about dismissing even madder constructs.
19
Judicious
Juicioso
1. Infinity is a powerful tool for abstraction, and its judicious use in mathematics allows a kind of certainty that is wonderfully satisfying.
20
Idle
Pointless, lazy
1. A point aptly made by the linguist is that much of the traditional philosophy of mind and language is idle, because the most basic facts are drastically different from what they appear to be upon simple introspection or straighr conceptual analysis.
21
Felicitous
Well chosen or suited to the circumstances
1. Universal Grammar is thus instantiated in the mind/brain of the speaker of a given language or dialect by means of a complete set of specifications for (as it were) a panel of "switches" (this felicitous metaphor is due to James Higginbotham)
22
Ectopic
In an abnormal place or position, ectópico
1. Fly with an ectopic eye under the wing and on the antenna.
23
Blistering
Expressed with great vehemence, virulento
1. An important challenge to this view arose in the late 1950s, when the young MIT linguist Noam Chomsky published his little book Syntactic structures, followed by a blistering critique of B. F. Skinner's behaviorist manifesto, Verbal behavior.
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