PhD student in Comparative Literature & East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Interests include comparative thought, media history and theory, translation, Manchu studies, intellectual history, and musicology.
The goal of this paper is to systematically construct the Transfer LF functor by modeling both th... more The goal of this paper is to systematically construct the Transfer LF functor by modeling both the syntactic and the semantic categories as compact closed monoidal categories equipped with a Frobenius algebra. This will be an accessible exposition of the program initiated by [1], with attention to the genesis of pregroup grammar in [2] and its elaboration that results in [3]. Mathematical formalism will be introduced only to the extent that is necessary, and I will examine language examples primarily from English with the occasional attention to Classical Chinese and Japanese. The first half of the paper will focus on introducing the necessary mathematical tools: pregroups, monoidal categories, functors, string diagrams and Frobenius algebra. The main objective in this half is to formally delineate the syntactic category S and the semantic category Σ, as well as the Transfer LF functor between them. After this is accomplished, the second half of the paper will first take a number of syntactical constructions (movement, passive construction, relative clause, word class flexibility...), reformulate them in pregroup syntax as lexical morphisms (that is, special arrows from one syntactic type to another), and propose the images of those arrows in the semantic category. The goal is the second half of the paper is to demonstrate a systematic method for transferring syntactical derivations to semantic ones via the Transfer functor.
Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere, edited by Jessica Imbach, 2024
English, Thai, and Klingon are just a few of the languages that WeChat
users utilised to dissemin... more English, Thai, and Klingon are just a few of the languages that WeChat users utilised to disseminate “The Whistle-Giver,” a censored interview with the Chinese doctor who first released information about the Covid-19 outbreak. By engaging with recent developments in translation studies and the technological specificities of the WeChat platform, this chapter analyses this as a new form of textuality—viral text—that is parasitic to the regime of intelligibility and censorship codified by keyword censorship algorithms. This new textuality, which is particularly salient in online spaces under censorship such as WeChat, allows us to see the Chinese language and the language of the mainland Sinophone as different and equally negotiable categories in an increasingly digital world.
This essay revisits the difficulty around “musical” interpretations of the “Sirens” episode of Ul... more This essay revisits the difficulty around “musical” interpretations of the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses. It argues that reading the episode through a looser notion of the fugue than previously suggested can contribute significantly to the understanding of the episode’s texture, narrative mediation, and renderings of affect, without committing to the establishment of formal correspondences between literary and fugal structures that more literal “fugal” readings of the episode tend to require. Furthermore, the essay suggests that the “fugal” quality of the episode is best understood as an extra-diegetic semiosis-through-composition that draws upon, interacts with, and at times perverts the language of diegetic characters, and that Bloom’s journey to the musical world of the Sirens is best understood as modulations in modes of meaning-making throughout the episode that lean into or move away from this second-level, musical semiosis.
The goal of this paper is to systematically construct the Transfer LF functor by modeling both th... more The goal of this paper is to systematically construct the Transfer LF functor by modeling both the syntactic and the semantic categories as compact closed monoidal categories equipped with a Frobenius algebra. This will be an accessible exposition of the program initiated by [1], with attention to the genesis of pregroup grammar in [2] and its elaboration that results in [3]. Mathematical formalism will be introduced only to the extent that is necessary, and I will examine language examples primarily from English with the occasional attention to Classical Chinese and Japanese. The first half of the paper will focus on introducing the necessary mathematical tools: pregroups, monoidal categories, functors, string diagrams and Frobenius algebra. The main objective in this half is to formally delineate the syntactic category S and the semantic category Σ, as well as the Transfer LF functor between them. After this is accomplished, the second half of the paper will first take a number of syntactical constructions (movement, passive construction, relative clause, word class flexibility...), reformulate them in pregroup syntax as lexical morphisms (that is, special arrows from one syntactic type to another), and propose the images of those arrows in the semantic category. The goal is the second half of the paper is to demonstrate a systematic method for transferring syntactical derivations to semantic ones via the Transfer functor.
Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere, edited by Jessica Imbach, 2024
English, Thai, and Klingon are just a few of the languages that WeChat
users utilised to dissemin... more English, Thai, and Klingon are just a few of the languages that WeChat users utilised to disseminate “The Whistle-Giver,” a censored interview with the Chinese doctor who first released information about the Covid-19 outbreak. By engaging with recent developments in translation studies and the technological specificities of the WeChat platform, this chapter analyses this as a new form of textuality—viral text—that is parasitic to the regime of intelligibility and censorship codified by keyword censorship algorithms. This new textuality, which is particularly salient in online spaces under censorship such as WeChat, allows us to see the Chinese language and the language of the mainland Sinophone as different and equally negotiable categories in an increasingly digital world.
This essay revisits the difficulty around “musical” interpretations of the “Sirens” episode of Ul... more This essay revisits the difficulty around “musical” interpretations of the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses. It argues that reading the episode through a looser notion of the fugue than previously suggested can contribute significantly to the understanding of the episode’s texture, narrative mediation, and renderings of affect, without committing to the establishment of formal correspondences between literary and fugal structures that more literal “fugal” readings of the episode tend to require. Furthermore, the essay suggests that the “fugal” quality of the episode is best understood as an extra-diegetic semiosis-through-composition that draws upon, interacts with, and at times perverts the language of diegetic characters, and that Bloom’s journey to the musical world of the Sirens is best understood as modulations in modes of meaning-making throughout the episode that lean into or move away from this second-level, musical semiosis.
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Papers by Elvin Meng
users utilised to disseminate “The Whistle-Giver,” a censored interview
with the Chinese doctor who first released information about the Covid-19
outbreak. By engaging with recent developments in translation studies
and the technological specificities of the WeChat platform, this chapter
analyses this as a new form of textuality—viral text—that is parasitic to
the regime of intelligibility and censorship codified by keyword censorship
algorithms. This new textuality, which is particularly salient in online
spaces under censorship such as WeChat, allows us to see the Chinese
language and the language of the mainland Sinophone as different and
equally negotiable categories in an increasingly digital world.
users utilised to disseminate “The Whistle-Giver,” a censored interview
with the Chinese doctor who first released information about the Covid-19
outbreak. By engaging with recent developments in translation studies
and the technological specificities of the WeChat platform, this chapter
analyses this as a new form of textuality—viral text—that is parasitic to
the regime of intelligibility and censorship codified by keyword censorship
algorithms. This new textuality, which is particularly salient in online
spaces under censorship such as WeChat, allows us to see the Chinese
language and the language of the mainland Sinophone as different and
equally negotiable categories in an increasingly digital world.