David Glenn Hays
Encyclopedia
David Glenn Hays was a linguist, computer scientist
and social scientist
best known for his early work in machine translation
and computational linguistics
.
's online faculty for their MA in Media Studies offered through The New School.
's dependency grammar
and Hays become its principal advocate in America. More than anyone else Hays is responsible for the realization that language processing should consist in the application of theoretically motivated grammars to specific texts by general algorithms. In 1967 Hays published the first textbook in computational linguistics, Introduction to Computational Linguistics. At his direction RAND assembled an annotated corpus of a million words of Russian text, and thus pioneered in what is now known as corpus linguistics
.
and, ultimately, the evolution of human culture. He developed an approach to abstract concepts in which their meaning was grounded in stories. Hays elaborated this idea in a series of articles and several of his graduate students, including Brian Phillips, Mary White, and William Benzon, employed the idea in their work. In 1982 he published Cognitive Structures, in which he developed a novel scheme for grounding cognition in perception and action as conceived in the control theory
of William T. Powers
. Working with William Benzon, he published a neural interpretation of this theory in 1988. During the 1980s and early 1990s he and Benzon developed a theory of cultural rank which they published in a series of papers (together and individually) and a book on the history of technology
(Hays alone) in the early 1990s. His last major work was a critical review and synthesis of the empirical work that anthropologists and archaeologists had done on cultural complexity. This book was published posthumously as The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World: Homage to Raoul Naroll. At the time of his death, he had embarked on a study of the ballet, looking to understand how motion generates emotion.
and served as its second president in 1964. He was the first editor of its journal, Computational Linguistics
(then called the American Journal of Computational Linguistics) from 1974 to 1978; the journal was originally published on microfiche to facilitate rapid publication and allow for longer articles than is practical in hard-copy publication. He was one of the founders of the International Committee on Computational Linguistics
, served as its Chairman from 1965 to 1969 and was an Honorary Member from 1965 to 1995.
York, 1967 B00005W7K5
Cognitive Structures, HRAF Press, New Haven, 1982 9991740309
The Evolution of Technology, Preliminary Edition. Diskette-book, Connected Editions, New York, 1991, available online.
The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World: Homage to Raoul Naroll. Metagram Press, New York, 1994 0966725506
Order of subject and object in scientific Russian when other differentia are lacking. Mechanical Translation, 5:111-113, 1958
Dependency theory: A formalism and some observations. Language, 40: 511-525, 1964. Reprinted in Syntactic Theory 1, Structuralist, edited by Fred W. Householder. Penguin, 1972
A billion books for education in America and the world: A proposal ([Rand Corporation] Memorandum RM-5574-RC) (Unknown Binding) 1968
B0006C8SVK
(With Enid Margolis, Raoul Naroll
, and Revere Dale Perkins) Color term salience. American Anthropologist, 74:1107-1121, 1972
Cognitive networks and abstract terminology. Journal of Clinical Computing, 3(2):110-118, 1973
On 'alienation': An essay in the psycholinguistics of science. In Theories of Alienation, edited by R. Felix Geyer and David R. Schweitzer. Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, 169-187
Machine translation and abstract terminology. In Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics, edited by Paul J. Hopper. John Benjamins, 1977, 95-108
(With David Bloom) Designation in English. In Anaphora in Discourse, edited by John V. Hinds. Champaign, Ill., Linguistic Research 1978: 1-68
(With William L. Benzon) Principles and Development of Natural Intelligence. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 11:1-30, 1988
(With William L. Benzon) The Evolution of Cognition. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 13:297-320, 1990
The Evolution of Expressive Culture. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 15: 187-215, 1992
Relativism and Progress. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 18:9-32, 1995
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
and social scientist
Social Scientist
Social Scientist is a New Delhi based journal in social sciences and humanities published since 1972....
best known for his early work in machine translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
and computational linguistics
Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
.
Career overview
David Hays graduated from Harvard College in 1951 and received his Ph. D. in 1956 from Harvard's Department of Social Relations. In 1954-1955 he held a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and took a job at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica in 1955, where he remained though 1968. In 1969 he joined the faculty of the State University of New York at Buffalo where he was founding chairman of the newly formed linguistics department and Professor of Linguistics, of Computer Science, and of Information and Library Studies. He remained at Buffalo until 1980 when he retired from the university and moved to New York City where he worked as a private consultant and pursued independent research in cultural evolution and the arts, especially the ballet. He was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems and starting in 1989 was a member of Connected EducationConnected Education
Connected Education - also known as Connect Ed - was a pioneering online education organization founded and administered by Paul Levinson and TinaVozick. Operating from 1985 to 1997, Connect Ed offered the M.A. degrees in Media Studies Connected Education - also known as Connect Ed - was a...
's online faculty for their MA in Media Studies offered through The New School.
Language and computation
During his years at RAND he worked on the machine translation of Russian technical literature into English and more generally on computational linguistics, a term that he created. The syntactic component of the RAND system was based on Lucien TesnièreLucien Tesnière
Lucien Tesnière was one of the most prominent and influential French linguists.Tesnière was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on May 13, 1893...
's dependency grammar
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar is a class of modern syntactic theories that are all based on the dependency relation and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière. Dependency grammars are distinct from phrase structure grammars , since they lack phrasal nodes. Structure is determined by...
and Hays become its principal advocate in America. More than anyone else Hays is responsible for the realization that language processing should consist in the application of theoretically motivated grammars to specific texts by general algorithms. In 1967 Hays published the first textbook in computational linguistics, Introduction to Computational Linguistics. At his direction RAND assembled an annotated corpus of a million words of Russian text, and thus pioneered in what is now known as corpus linguistics
Corpus linguistics
Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples or "real world" text. This method represents a digestive approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed or else relates to another language. Originally done by hand, corpora are now largely...
.
Culture and cognition
After leaving RAND and assuming his position at Buffalo, Hays turned to more a more general interest in language and cognitionCognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
and, ultimately, the evolution of human culture. He developed an approach to abstract concepts in which their meaning was grounded in stories. Hays elaborated this idea in a series of articles and several of his graduate students, including Brian Phillips, Mary White, and William Benzon, employed the idea in their work. In 1982 he published Cognitive Structures, in which he developed a novel scheme for grounding cognition in perception and action as conceived in the control theory
Control theory
Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The desired output of a system is called the reference...
of William T. Powers
William T. Powers
William T. Powers is an independent scientist who has developed perceptual control theory, which finds that the behavior of living things is not controlled by them, but rather is their means of controlling their inputs...
. Working with William Benzon, he published a neural interpretation of this theory in 1988. During the 1980s and early 1990s he and Benzon developed a theory of cultural rank which they published in a series of papers (together and individually) and a book on the history of technology
History of technology
The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist...
(Hays alone) in the early 1990s. His last major work was a critical review and synthesis of the empirical work that anthropologists and archaeologists had done on cultural complexity. This book was published posthumously as The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World: Homage to Raoul Naroll. At the time of his death, he had embarked on a study of the ballet, looking to understand how motion generates emotion.
Professional service
Hays played an important role in the professional organization of computational linguistics. He advocated the organization of the Association for Computational LinguisticsAssociation for Computational Linguistics
The Association for Computational Linguistics is the international scientific and professional society for people working on problems involving natural language and computation. An annual meeting is held each summer in locations where significant computational linguistics research is carried out...
and served as its second president in 1964. He was the first editor of its journal, Computational Linguistics
Computational Linguistics (journal)
Computational Linguistics is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of computational linguistics. It is published quarterly by MIT Press for the Association for Computational Linguistics...
(then called the American Journal of Computational Linguistics) from 1974 to 1978; the journal was originally published on microfiche to facilitate rapid publication and allow for longer articles than is practical in hard-copy publication. He was one of the founders of the International Committee on Computational Linguistics
International Committee on Computational Linguistics
The International Committee on Computational Linguistics was founded by Dr. David Hays of the RAND Corporation in 1965 to promote biennial conferences on Computational Linguistics, now known by the acronym COLING. The most recent COLING was in Beijing in 2010. Its current President is Professor...
, served as its Chairman from 1965 to 1969 and was an Honorary Member from 1965 to 1995.
Books
Introduction to Computational Linguistics, American Elsevier, NewYork, 1967 B00005W7K5
Cognitive Structures, HRAF Press, New Haven, 1982 9991740309
The Evolution of Technology, Preliminary Edition. Diskette-book, Connected Editions, New York, 1991, available online.
The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World: Homage to Raoul Naroll. Metagram Press, New York, 1994 0966725506
Articles
(With Robert R. Bush) A study of group action. American Sociological Review, 19:693-701, 1954. Reprinted in Readings in Mathematical Psychology, edited by R. Duncan Luce, Robert R. Bush, and Eugene Galanter. Wiley, 1965, 2:242-253Order of subject and object in scientific Russian when other differentia are lacking. Mechanical Translation, 5:111-113, 1958
Dependency theory: A formalism and some observations. Language, 40: 511-525, 1964. Reprinted in Syntactic Theory 1, Structuralist, edited by Fred W. Householder. Penguin, 1972
A billion books for education in America and the world: A proposal ([Rand Corporation] Memorandum RM-5574-RC) (Unknown Binding) 1968
B0006C8SVK
(With Enid Margolis, Raoul Naroll
Raoul Naroll
Raoul Naroll was an anthropologist who did much to promote the methodology of cross-cultural studies. He was born in Toronto, Ontario but was raised in Los Angeles and attended UCLA at the age of 16, dropping out in his junior year. Naroll returned to his studies in anthropology and history in...
, and Revere Dale Perkins) Color term salience. American Anthropologist, 74:1107-1121, 1972
Cognitive networks and abstract terminology. Journal of Clinical Computing, 3(2):110-118, 1973
On 'alienation': An essay in the psycholinguistics of science. In Theories of Alienation, edited by R. Felix Geyer and David R. Schweitzer. Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, 169-187
Machine translation and abstract terminology. In Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics, edited by Paul J. Hopper. John Benjamins, 1977, 95-108
(With David Bloom) Designation in English. In Anaphora in Discourse, edited by John V. Hinds. Champaign, Ill., Linguistic Research 1978: 1-68
(With William L. Benzon) Principles and Development of Natural Intelligence. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 11:1-30, 1988
(With William L. Benzon) The Evolution of Cognition. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 13:297-320, 1990
The Evolution of Expressive Culture. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 15: 187-215, 1992
Relativism and Progress. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 18:9-32, 1995