Chomsky

This has been a long week. Once a while, when you missed a good night sleep, you could easily catch up, but when you have had short of sleep for so long, get up in the morning is a such drag. Not complaining but a fact! Morning time we all search the place of coffee provider, so important.

Today's system architecture touched the topic of Ambiguity. How many examples we could find out we take same word/phrase into different meanings, which cause many problems. It is very critical to define the word/phrase in the agreed setting. Prof. Crowley passed on the envelopes with a number on top, with some sort of coin inside, after we discovered what is inside, we understand that we should not assume that every coin has head or tail, some even does not have coin. most of all, he wants us to review the fact of what ambiguity could cause us.

By noon, I nodded my head constantly sitting inside classroom, need a nap, definitely. When I wake up, I saw a note at MIT website about Chomsky concert. I watched closely again, making sure that I was reading what I thought was. It was a honoring concert to Noam Chomsky, with his talk prior to the concert. oh, my, I was thrilled. When I first learned Linguistics in China, his theory was all-over my textbooks. That was a huge break through in linguistics field. For me, to learn a foreign language, how he defined normal grammar has impacted so many language learners. Later Chomsky's Hierarchy, has influenced so many fields, including computer science. I know that I will go. What a surprising finding after a needed nap!

The concert is at MIT auditorium. This concert is delicated to scientists from musical tributes. MIT and Harvard head of Linguistics gave their stories about knowing Chomsky, they even did a few liguistics exercises with audience, which totally reminded me of the time when I first learned English, the grammar and how to think about English structure.

After Concert, I went up to Prof. Chomsky, thanking him for his findings which impact my language and computer science studies. I just could not believe that this is the man that I have learned so much from his research.