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kuasiChomsky 
Joined: 24 Oct 2009
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Location: Lauderdale/Seattle |
 Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 6:48 pm
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Guijarro wrote:
And, besides, what is THOUGHT for you?
To me it's a process by which I am able to entertain a series of sets of mental structures which may be analogical (i.e., having some sort of resemblance with what they represent) or digital (having none). I call this the LANGUAGE of thought. It is not a language to communicate. To communicate I have to use all the means I have at my disposal (a natural language is just one of them) to make my thoughts public.
but guijarro, just because the word "language" is used for the "thought process" of computers, that doesn't mean that it's at all similar to languages like english or spanish, and it certainly doesn't mean that we can deduce things about such languages (i.e. english and spanish) by drawing conclusions from computer languages.
it's hard for me to tell what exactly you guys are trying to discuss in this thread, but the only thing i can discern from it that really seems worth discussing is the question of where human communicative languages (which is term i'll use from here on out to refer to languages like english and spanish, in an attempt to eliminate any equivocating or ambiguity) came from and what enabled them (and our ability to learn them) to arise. and i personally would argue that the position that they started as a means to internally organize thought falls very short.
for one thing, we already know that human communicative languages will arise pretty much spontaneously in an area where one does not already exist. so, if the faculties in our brain that allow for this sort of language acquisition arose sometime before communicative languages did, then they couldn't have remained unaccompanied for very long before communicative languages would have emerged, invariably influencing the selective pressures working on such faculties.
and presumably, no one thinks that such faculties could have arisen overnight, but rather that they evolved gradually. and if that's the case, then one can only imagine that each step of "partially complete" internal language would have been accompanied by an equivalent "partially complete" communicative language, in which case, the communicative languages being spoken (or signed, or whatever) would have definitely had an effect on the evolution of the internal languages.
more to the point though, there are features of communicative languages that would not likely have been selected for if language evolved internally (at least,,, i can't think of any way in which they would have been selected for, but i'm all ears if anyone can come up with a good explanation). one such feature might be the phonological aspects, but i don't know that speech is as specific to language as people might like to think it is. for one thing, language doesn't require speech. it can just as easily manifest itself in written form (whether phonetic or logographic), and for another thing, other animals (such as dogs) seem at least capable of distinguishing sounds, even if not capable of producing them.
the feature of communicative language that i think most needs explaining though is grammar.
now,,, let's consider the usefulness of grammar and how internal language differs from communicative language. every day each of us encounters new sentences that we've never heard before. we also make sentences that have never been uttered before. and yet all of these new sentences are understood without any problem. -- this is made possible by the fact that a small number of meaningful units (i.e. words, or morphemes) combined with a small number of rules on how to assemble these units (i.e. grammar) can allow for a potential infinitude of combinations, and this is the only practical way for conventional communication to work, since it's unreasonable that anyone could ever learn a separate "word" for every single thought.
the brain also encounters new ideas and must come up with fresh labels for them, but it does not require the same word/grammar system that communicative languages do because in the case of internal thought, it is the same individual who does both the encoding and the decoding. because of this, the brain can essentially make up whatever symbolic representation it sees fit. the rules governing it don't need to make sense to anyone else., it just needs to be something that the brain can remember how to decode later. with communicative languages on the other hand, the rules need to be such that all parties can assemble or disassemble these packages of meaning (i.e. sentences) in the same way.
now,,, it's entirely conceivable that the rules of each language could just be learned, much in the same that the words in each language must be learned, and to a large extent i think they are (i don't want anyone reading this to think that i'm trying to promote the idea of universal grammar - i think that the amount of grammar that's universal is very minimal), but there still needs to be an explanation as to why our capability to use grammar is so innate.
in other words, even if every single language had a separate set of grammatical rules, we would still need to have the ability to understand how to follow such rules in order for us to be able to speak those languages, and it doesn't really seem like our intelligence is enough on its own to enable us to assemble sentences so effortlessly. we have a very special tool which would seem to be very specific to communicative language use and completely useless for everything else we do. and so, how could such a tool have arisen if there had been no selective pressures acting upon it? clearly there were selective pressures acting upon it, but the only way they could have been doing that is if we were already using language to communicate at that point. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:24 pm
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but guijarro, just because the word "language" is used for the "thought process" of computers, that doesn't mean that it's at all similar to languages like english or spanish, and it certainly doesn't mean that we can deduce things about such languages (i.e. english and spanish) by drawing conclusions from computer languages.
This is the result of a bet I had with Pedroski who claimed that LANGUAGE is always linked to COMMUNICATION. And I said, it ain't. I won.
The rest is an hypothesis about the origin of language, which is too long to offer in detail here yet again. I believe that the idea of endosymbiosis proposed by Lynn Margulis for the appearance of complex eukariote cells could serve as an hypothetical analogy to explain the origin of language (L 1) which later merged with our communicative faculties to produce L2 (inbuilt language organ) and L3 (natural language, or, I believe, your "communicative language"). This hypothesis helps to solve more problems than it creates, and, therefore, I adopt it.
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kuasiChomsky
Joined: 24 Oct 2009
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:45 pm
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Guijarro wrote:
This is the result of a bet I had with Pedroski who claimed that LANGUAGE is always linked to COMMUNICATION. And I said, it ain't. I won.
yes, i saw that exchange actually. and i guess since computer language is by definition a type of language, then he owes you some beer. --- still though, that's really all that we can say about the relation between computer languages and languages like english and spanish., that they're both called "language". and that's really not much of a help in figuring anything out since we can't draw conclusions about things based simply on what we happen to call them.
Guijarro wrote:
The rest is an hypothesis about the origin of language, which is too long to offer in detail here yet again. I believe that the idea of endosymbiosis proposed by Lynn Margulis for the appearance of complex eukariote cells could serve as an hypothetical analogy to explain the origin of language (L 1) which later merged with our communicative faculties to produce L2 (inbuilt language organ) and L3 (natural language, or, I believe, your "communicative language"). This hypothesis helps to solve more problems than it creates, and, therefore, I adopt it.
yeah, the bulk of what i wrote is just what i think makes the most sense as an explanation for where language and language acquisition come from. but i do think it's important to stress that before we begin to ask such questions, we need to get past all the semantic games that can so easily throw us off track.
what i mean to say is,,,, if we start off with the question "where did language come from?", then it's easy to get sidetracked by asking what we mean by "language" and turning to a dictionary definition, only to have the conversation end up about the languages of bees or computers., when in reality, there was an actual question we had in our heads, which (i think) was probably just something along the lines of "how did language(s), specifically the kind that we speak, arise?" ---- maybe other people don't even mean to ask that question, but that's the one that i'm most interested in. |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 6:17 pm
Post subject: dynamic |
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Tío! Your computer language is communicative, as I tried to point out with a small example of binary multiplication. It communicates. If not in flux, it does nothing. Ditto human language. You are the only one who says you have won, on the basis of a misinterpretation. What you set out to show, namely that there is 'language' and then there is 'communication' as two separate entities, has not been demonstrated: you will never put language on the slab. It must needs move. It is a product of conciousness.
Si fuese un gazpacho ajodadíssimo, te comunicaría a mi estomago tan pronto! |
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kuasiChomsky
Joined: 24 Oct 2009
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:44 pm
Post subject: Re: dynamic |
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Pedroski wrote:
Tío! Your computer language is communicative, as I tried to point out with a small example of binary multiplication. It communicates. If not in flux, it does nothing. Ditto human language. You are the only one who says you have won, on the basis of a misinterpretation. What you set out to show, namely that there is 'language' and then there is 'communication' as two separate entities, has not been demonstrated: you will never put language on the slab. It must needs move. It is a product of conciousness.
see, this is what i'm talking about. does it really matter if computer languages are communicative? that's a discussion about semantics and nothing else. i mean,,, is this really what you guys want to be arguing about?, what the definition of "language" is?
maybe it is,,, but it seems (to me anyway) like there are a lot of potentially interesting conversations being hinted at, but they're never going to be discovered if everyone keeps getting hung up in conversations about whether languages are always forms of communication, and whatnot. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:15 am
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I hate to return to the same post once and again. According to Chomsky, if we want to talk seriously about something we we better, first of all, reach the level of observational adequacy. At what object (event, relationship, etc.) are we pointing to, what is it that we are observing.
I don't know about you, but I am pointing to:
LANGUAGE 1 (in Spanish, lenguaje) is the mental tool that allows humans to organize, store, retrieve and manipulate aspects of reality by formalising them in two sorts of mental representations: images (or "analogical") representations and propositions (or "digital" representations).
LANGUAGE 2 (in Spanish, lengua) is the innate mental organ which allows humans to acquire their mother languages. It is, in other words, the initial state of the linguistic device.
LANGUAGE 3 (in Spanish, idioma) is the final state of that organ, the result of "formatting" it through environmental perceived linguistic information, the natural languages.
COMMUNICATION is for me the process by which we are able to make public some of our mental representations by intentionally indulging in certain kinds of behaviour (one of which, but not the most important, being the (de)coding of a natural language).
I am talking about THESE objects, not of any others. I have no intention in defining them, but I am interested in reaching the second level of adequacy proposed by Chomsky: the descriptive one. I think Chomsky and followers have done a beautiful job in doing that sort of feat, describing the universal characteristics of all human languages (i.e., the blueprint that comes pre-wired to the human species (or L2), and describing some natural languages like English (L3). There is a further level of adequacy, the explanatory one, in which we try to explain WHY and HOW things are like they are.
According to my view, what we are talking about here (off topic, that is) is about the possible hypotheses that we think we have to do the explanatory job.
People who mix communication and language tend to think that they are the two faces of the same coin and, thus, their simultaneous origin is hypothesised as a selectional process which starts with (1) non-linguistic behaviours that achieve communication, through (2) sounding behaviours, (3) to final human languages. The problem with that hypothesis is, in my view, twofold:
(A) We have never, ever, found a proto-language. All known languages of today, even the most remote, are full languages in the same sense than English is. Surely, when foreigners learn a new language they start by fabricating a kind of proto-language which is known as pidgin. From this, people who want to research on the origin of language, make an analogy and say that what happens in those cases is the same that happened in the very beginning. I think this argument is strongly flawed, for creators of pidgin are already in possession of their linguistic organ, which origin is what we have set out to find out. Same is true of the babbling of newborns. Making analogies of those two instances seems to me to go off the mark.
(B) Human communication is much much wider than just using a natural language in order to achieve the process. The people that believe language and communication are the same sort of story, mistake the semantic of linguistic meaning for the sense of the pragmatic communicative achievement. It is a bigger flaw than the first one I have pointed to above. So, why are we so sure that communication developed into human language? What about the other more crucial processes that happen in it? Ah, those process were already there as part of the mind functions!, they retort.
All I am saying is that I also think that language (L1) was there before it was used to make communicative acts more accurate. It was a mental means to organize and manipulate the environment (yes, exactly as the computer languages do, even if Pedroski who is a very bad loser, intents to stretch the concept in order to claim that he did not lose the bet). It's probably at this stage that the basic blueprint of abstract relational rules was formed. Then, some one found out that instead of signalling things as they used to do in their acts of communication, humans could make manifest some of their mental states, and there, as it were, both faculties, the L1 mental power and the communicative power, merged and began to evolve jointly, creating the linguistic organ (L2) which is the basis for acquiring the natural languages (L3).
Nothing very spectacular, I know. But it seems too difficult for people to admit the hypothesis which, in this way, would do away with almost all the unsolved conundrums that the present research on language origins normally has.
For the last time (I hope), I have tried to make position clear. I know to what things I am pointing to with my terminology; I decide that some descriptions (the generative ones) are better than others; and I explain more things than people that stick to the language/communication preconception.
You may disagree of course, but you'll have to work mighty hard to show me that your theories or hypotheses work better than mine, I am afraid.
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
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Location: Nanjing |
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:31 pm
Post subject: language tongue and idiom |
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Definitions, from RAE.
lenguaje: Conjunto de sonidos articulados con que el hombre manifiesta lo que piensa o siente.
Lengua: Sistema de comunicación verbal y casi siempre escrito, propio de una comunidad humana.
idioma: Lengua de un pueblo o nación, o común a varios.
Communicate what you want to say, but don't use language. Then you will have separated communication from language. Mind you don't go mad trying though! |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:38 am
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Ha ha ha ha ha!
You mean a linguist MUST accept the definitions made up by philologists? Even Humpy Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass knew who was the master of words --in any case, not the dictionaries!
Quote:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that’s all.'
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
You must be joking, Pedroski!
As I said above:
Quote:
I have no intention in defining them, but I am interested in reaching the second level of adequacy proposed by Chomsky
This, I think, I have achieved. You may talk about other things if you wish, using the same terms, fair enough. But, just one little question: how do you distinguish the concepts for lengua and idioma in the RAE definition?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
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Communicate what you want to say, but don't use language. Then you will have separated communication from language
On top of being a bad loser, you try to cheat for you know mighty well that my communicative power is very restrained when using this means.
Pedroski, really! Dtch dtch dtch ...
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 5:07 pm
Post subject: ha ha |
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Well, ten out of ten for self confidence, not so much for accuracy. Given the choice between your idiomatic interpretation of the terms, and the RAE definitions, I will give more validity to the work of the RAE, as this represents a consensus of opinion, with all due respect to Humpty. You said we only have the word language in English. Now you know differently. The only thing missing is your 'level of adequacy'
My position is clear: any instance of language is an instance of communication. Your position is, communication and language are separate things. You have failed to demonstrate this. If nothing is communicated to the OS of a computer, nothing happens. Your challenge is then, show an instance of communication that is not a form of language, or an instance of language that is not communication.
1) Communicate without language. Or 2): use language without imparting something, without communicating. Do it in Spanish, Sign Language, Braille, or whatever. ¡Suerte!
As to distinguishing the concepts lengua and idioma: they are most clearly interrelated. You are the one insisting that they are very different, had you forgotten? |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2009
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Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 7:34 pm
Post subject: Re: ha ha |
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Pedroski wrote:
Your challenge is then, show an instance of communication that is not a form of language, or an instance of language that is not communication.
If you ignore all examples to the contrary, it is easy to maintain your current opinion.
If two people wave to each other, there is communication. Is this language, in your opinion.
While we are talking, I notice that you are beginning to sweat and look nervous. You are figgiting and shifting back and forth on your feet. This communicates to me your state of mind. Where is the language here? I consider this communication that does not involve language. You? |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:04 am
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Yes, Pedroski, dear!
Suit yourself.
NOTA BENE: have you ever heard of a Royal Academy, like our Real Academia Española (or RAE), or the French one, having changed a scientific paradigm (in the way Kuhn showed)? It is a contradiction in terms, for the Philologists's work is to drive the linguistic rocket looking through the rear mirror. No wonder that they make such a mess in defining those three terms in an almost circular way. It's the same confusion that exists in Spanish people at large when using those three terms as if they were almost synonimous. You like it? Well, fair enough. I don't. So we have nothing more to discuss in this aspect, for, although you know (I hope) what "objects" I am pointing to with each term, I don't have the same possibility, since you insist in being consciously muddled --as the dictionary (The DRAE, that is) tells you.
It's amazing that an Englishman, who is a member of a society that has worked without dead Royal Academies, without dead legal codes (for they have always preferred their very much alive Common Law), that has always liked to go along with the new instances that appear every now and then, should now rely on the epitaph of a philological code.
Maybe the English race is now changing for the worst ... (in Spanish we say that "todo se pega menos lo bonito") ... after all, globalization may have this nasty effect.
I am Spanish, and have the feeling of my native language which I have used for 73 years without end (40 of which I used it as a professional linguist). Therefore, no matter what ANY dictionary says about Spanish words, I consider myself as Humpty Dumpty fully able to use the words according to my own idea. If, as it sadly happens, my use is not well disseminated (and is, moreover, kept muddled by Philologists), I have the duty to reach the level of observational adequacy and make clear to all what I use the words to mean as clearly as I may.
I think I have done that, and it seems it doesn't interest you.
Fine.
Der Rest ist Schweigen (the rest is silence), as Goethe said and Bertolt Brech repeated in one oh his poems.
¡Y tan amigos, quillo!
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:25 am
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Quote:
Dennis: While we are talking, I notice that you are beginning to sweat and look nervous. You are figgiting and shifting back and forth on your feet. This communicates to me your state of mind
According to my use of the word "communication" (I have to be very careful with the words I use, and try to point clearly to the concepts they may cover, from now on!), as referring to an INTENTIONAL act and, thus, your example would not be for me an instance of communication, although it INFORMS the interlocutor that something is the case.
In other words, if my idea of universal recursion in human minds has any substance, communication takes place when I achieve and my interlocutors recognize two intentions:
{I want to communicate [that I want to inform(that something is the case)]}
In your last example, quoted above, the first proposition is missing. Therefore, there is no communication according to my interpretation.
However, if {I want to communicate [that I want to inform you (that this awful boring person is approaching)]} and I shift my body so that you may see him coming, I have made a NON LINGUISTIC (hear, hear, Pedroski!) communicative act, albeit the communicative intention was not expressed explicitly in any given language. I call this covert communication).
I hope I make sense!
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JLG
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Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:57 am
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Guijarro wrote:
According to my use of the word "communication" (I have to be very careful with the words I use, and try to point clearly to the concepts they may cover, from now on!), as referring to an INTENTIONAL act and, thus, your example would not be for me an instance of communication, although it INFORMS the interlocutor that something is the case.
I am not sure why you would want the word communication to be so restrictive. Non-verbal "communication" is a part of everything that you call communication, I suppose, and to ignore it is to be completely unable to understand words well. I do not think that intent is relevant. Let me give an example.
If a person encounters someone that he hates on the street, he may voice an involuntary expletive. I assume that you would not call this word communication, because it was not intentional. On the other hand, it might have been intentional. How is the listener to decide? You would call it communication or not based on the intent of the speaker, yet to the listener the result is identical. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:33 pm
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Non verbal communication may be intentional (by shifting the body in my above example), though not overt (the interlocutor may never be sure whether I did it intentionally, and so, he doesn't know if this is an act of communication or not). Your example is another such case. But in that one, as expressions are generally interpreted as intentional linguistic acts, your interlocutor may be well inclined to call it an act of communication.
I seem to fall again in the mortal sin of trying to make useful distinctions between muddled concepts. INFORMATION is one thing and COMMUNICATION is another. I inform you that I've caught a cold because of my way of pronouncing the nasal consonants, although I didn't want to achieve such a result, and I communicate to you (covertly) that I have a cold by mimmicking this sort of pronunciation (i.e., "probouhcihg the basal cobsobants") for that was the result I was seeking.
For me, then, it is clear that the smoke doesn't communicate that there is a fire somewhere, it merely informs that it is the case.
As I said: communication is an intentional process which, (1) wants to attract the attention of an interlocutor by doing an ostensive act of some sort (shifting the body, saying a linguistic expression, mimmicking a cold person's pronunciation, etc.) which clearly shows that I want to communicate. This, in other words, is the initial step in this process. (2) Now, once the interlocutor is aware that something ostensively intentional has happened, she is prepared to interpret whether this communicative intention is able to produce relevant information for her.
But ... och well!
Everybody knows that something is wrong. What is wrong is that we don't make the necessary distinctions. If we would make them, we would be as happy as Kings. And Kings are purportedly very happy. Jerry Fodor
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JLG
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Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:58 pm
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Guijarro wrote:
As I said: communication is an intentional process
I will try to keep your distinction in mind in future communication, er, information flow with you. Still, I will continue to consider that communication may or may not impart conscious awareness of information. I do not see any value for me in trying to consider whether some information flow was intentional or not in order to determine whether or not there was "communication." |
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