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Stenka25 Posted 11 years ago
Vocabulary
The meaning of BURN
the meaning of BURN
The passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.
http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm
Yet another problem is that connectionist networks track the statistics of the input closely: how many verbs of each sound pattern they have encountered. That leaves them unable to account for the epiphany in which young children discover the -ed rule and start making errors like holded and heared. Connectionist modelers can induce these errors only by bombarding the network with regular verbs (so as to burn in the -ed) in a way that is unlike anything real children experience. Finally, a mass of evidence from cognitive neuroscience shows that grammatical combination (including regular verbs) and lexical lookup (including irregular verbs) are handled by different systems in the brain rather than by a single associative network.
In this passage I cannot figure out what the underlined 'so as to burn' means.
I want to ask two questions in this part.
One, what is the meaning of 'burn'? Does this word happen to have any other meaning except 'be on fire' in this context? (I don't think it has, but I want to make sure.)
Second, what does 'so as to burn' mean? (However hard I try, I cannot get the picture of this phrase.)
Thanks in advance.
Regrads.
The passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.
http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm
Yet another problem is that connectionist networks track the statistics of the input closely: how many verbs of each sound pattern they have encountered. That leaves them unable to account for the epiphany in which young children discover the -ed rule and start making errors like holded and heared. Connectionist modelers can induce these errors only by bombarding the network with regular verbs (so as to burn in the -ed) in a way that is unlike anything real children experience. Finally, a mass of evidence from cognitive neuroscience shows that grammatical combination (including regular verbs) and lexical lookup (including irregular verbs) are handled by different systems in the brain rather than by a single associative network.
In this passage I cannot figure out what the underlined 'so as to burn' means.
I want to ask two questions in this part.
One, what is the meaning of 'burn'? Does this word happen to have any other meaning except 'be on fire' in this context? (I don't think it has, but I want to make sure.)
Second, what does 'so as to burn' mean? (However hard I try, I cannot get the picture of this phrase.)
Thanks in advance.
Regrads.
Top answer
" In the above context, "burn in" is used metaphorically to mean strongly imprint or brand . Think of how cattle are branded with permanent marks!
- " In the above context, "burn in" is used metaphorically to mean strongly imprint or brand .
- Think of how cattle are branded with permanent marks!
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6 Answers
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"So as to" means "in order to."
In the above context, "burn in" is used metaphorically to mean strongly imprint or brand. Think of how cattle are branded with permanent marks!
In the above context, "burn in" is used metaphorically to mean strongly imprint or brand. Think of how cattle are branded with permanent marks!
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Right! I got it.
The metaphor of branding of cattle really hit home.
Thanks a lot, teechr
The metaphor of branding of cattle really hit home.
Thanks a lot, teechr
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Stenka25by bombarding the network with regular verbs (so as to burn in the -ed) in a way that is unlike anything real children experience.The author is pointing out that certain verbs, like "burn," have two past forms, a strong form (burnt), and a weak form (burned.) Other examples are shine (shone, shined) and learn (learnt, learned.)
The experimenters
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@ AlpheccaStars: I respectfully disagree. Pinker makes no reference to weak forms, but talks of "bombarding the network with regular verbs."
Moreover, I think he would have used "burn" instead of "burn in" if the text is to be parsed as you suggested.
Moreover, I think he would have used "burn" instead of "burn in" if the text is to be parsed as you suggested.
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Weak verbs are the verbs that form the past tense by adding the -ed/t/d sound. Thus, in this regard, "weak verbs" are in the same class as "regular verbs."
Strong verbs have irregular (strong) past forms.
Strong verbs have irregular (strong) past forms.
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