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Ryan M. Nefdt

Researcher at University of Cape Town

Publications -  21
Citations -  129

Ryan M. Nefdt is an academic researcher from University of Cape Town. The author has contributed to research in topics: Philosophy of science & Scientific modelling. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 17 publications receiving 99 citations. Previous affiliations of Ryan M. Nefdt include University of St Andrews & University of the Western Cape.

Papers
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A Puzzle concerning Compositionality in Machines

Ryan M. Nefdt
- 23 Feb 2020 - 
TL;DR: This paper attempts to describe and address a specific puzzle related to compositionality in artificial networks such as Deep Neural Networks and machine learning in general that focuses on computational applications of human level linguistic abilities or properties and a special difficulty with relation to these.
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Infinity and the foundations of linguistics

TL;DR: This paper argues that a central misconstrual of formal apparatus of recursive operations such as the set-theoretic operation merge has led to a mathematisation of the object of inquiry, producing a strong analogy with discrete mathematics and especially arithmetic.
Journal ArticleDOI

The ontology of words: a structural approach

TL;DR: A structuralist account of linguistic items is proffer, along the lines of structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics, in which words are defined in part as positions in larger linguistic structures.
Journal ArticleDOI

Linguistic modelling and the scientific enterprise

TL;DR: The authors argue that linguistics, like some variants of the scientific enterprise, uses a minimalist method of idealisation, one which includes abstractions and other idealisations not uncommon to scientific model-building.
Dissertation

The foundations of linguistics : mathematics, models, and structures

Ryan M. Nefdt
TL;DR: In this paper, acknowledgements viii and acknowledgements vii are given for the work presented in this paper: https://github.com/mcclouda/