Context, from 7th century India to today
An essential feature of modern language models is the ability to take context into account. A word’s meaning changes according to the words it accompanies. Although the implementation of this concept is very new, the concept itself is very old — and in fact the earliest systematic account of contextual meaning comes from India of the 7th and 8th centuries, when the philosopher Prabhākara formulated a theory he called “the expression of relational meanings” (anvitābhidhāna). This presentation will give an overview of Prabhākara’s theory, refined by the 8th/9th c. philosopher Śālikanātha, and its connections to ways of thinking about and modeling meaning in contemporary machine learning.
South Asian Studies Initiative is excited to announce an endowment from Professor Emerita Rajeshwari Pandharipande.
The endowment will fund an annual lecture on Indian Languages and Cultures.
Professor Andrew Ollett (University of Chicago) will deliver the 2026 lecture on April 14 at 6 PM, at the Knight Auditorium, in Spurlock Museum.
A reception will follow the lecture.