IS OS ALPHA SYMBOLIC OR LINGUISTIC?? The problem of deducing whether language precedes symbolic thought or vice versa is an important one because which one is true draws an important distinction in studying Universal Grammar. If language leads to symbolic thought/cognition, we can say all symbolic representation is a language and we can identify all the rules of those languages, much like we have with language in the study of linguistics. In essence, symbolic thought is the realization of language, and the features of Universal Grammar in language, as well as other linguistic principles, can be applied to symbolic thought. However, if the opposite is true, if symbolic cognition is what leads to the capacity for language, then language is just one extension of symbolic thought. The Rosetta Stone for Universal Grammar and language is in discovering the Universal Grammar and principles of symbolic thought. What do other manifestations of symbolic cognition look like? What would our language be like if we did not develop the physiological adaptations for verbal language, or even physical/visual patterns of language? Is there something other than language that symbolic cognition can produce?

These questions grow in complexity with an interesting distinction between two word classes that can be extracted from the Radford reading. Content categories represent ideas, objects, actions – things with a direct correlation with signs. Functional categories are a way of shaping those signs – a meta-analysis of what is possible in the content categories. If language precedes symbolic cognition, then these features are a clue to discovering the abstraction of stored knowledge, a “gist” of information we collect. However, if symbolic cognition precedes language, these features are inferences of the abstract ideas stored in our brains. The answer, as with Deacon’s argument of co-evolutionary adaptations, could be somewhere in the middle.

What is Language

Before the reading, if someone ask me what is language, I will tell him that language is the ability to use a complex system of communication to express feelings, and languages are totally different from each other and arbitrary. There exist 5000-7000 kinds of languages in the world now. But, after the reading, I will say everything could be language, there must be millions of ways to express thoughts. Not only the languages, spoken or signed, can be language; all those auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli to the brain can also be languages. “It is a abundantly clear that the brain is organized in terms of numerous interacting areas that together determine our experience of the world and our intentions to act.” (Jackendoff, 130)

Brain is like a CPU, the input are all kinds of stimuli, and the output depends on the things you familiar with. All man are born equal, yes,it is also true to a linguist. A 8-month-old baby can have the ability to identify all the different existing pronunciations, there are more than 800 pronunciations! But later, if his brain stop being stimulated by the particular sound, he will lose this ability. A Chinese-Speaker cannot pronunciate /l/ sound and /rrrr/ sound, without training. A Japanese-speaker cannot tell the differences between /r/ and /l/, my english-speaking classmates cannot pronunciate my name……

So long as there is an input, stimuli to the brain, the brain can help us to feel this world.

Here is also another interesting device. BrainPort device, created by Wisconsin-based Wicab, Inc., consists of a pair of sunglasses with an embedded camera, a hand-held CPU, and an electrode-laden paddle which sits on the user’s tongue which is placed on the user’s tongue. The camera will capture the visual information, transfer them into electric impulses and stimulate the brain through the tongue.

Besides, output methods can be various. I think we all had inner voice sometimes, which means we can think in words. Some people may curious about how deaf people think in words. Actually, blind people’s dream may contain those feelings, so deaf people can think in those gestures and signs. So it doesn’t matter which language is your mother tongue, we all think in f-language, or f-mind.

Language can exist in everywhere.

What is language?

Defined by linguists, language is a cognitive system which is part of every single person’s mental structure. Linguists believe that cognitive capacities are the product of structures in human mind. Given the hypothesis, language research is inseparable from the study of human brain and psychological process. Going beyond the individuals, language is an intersubjective system of meaning making dependent on collective cognition. Language is the primary tool for human to communicate information and ideas, however, why language became the primary cognitive system that is collectively shared by the human species remains mysteries.

What is the human capacity for language in general?

Human capacity for language is termed as language faculty. When we say language distinguishes humans from other species, in fact, it is the language faculty that makes the difference. Language faculty is the native speakers’ competence in that certain language. The competence of knowing a certain language equals having a certain mentally represented grammar. Native English speakers share common characteristics in their mental structure and it is same logic for any other language. People speaking different languages maintain different mental states. Regardless of the difference, language faculty is not specific to any one human language. That is to say, despite each language is governed by its distinctive grammar, all these grammars share principles of Universal Grammar, which go beyond a certain language, and define the features necessary for any language to be a certain language.

What is “a language,” What are the essential features that enables a language to be a language? 

As mentioned, the essential features that enables a language to be a language are termed as Universal Grammar. A language works according a set of rules. The essence of a language is phrase structure rules. It is these rules that allow for unlimited creativity of phrases and sentences. To form the grammar that is universal to any kind of languages, four components are indispensable: lexicon, syntactic component, phonology form component, and logical form component. It is comprehensible including the lexicon and syntactic component as a part of grammar. Lexicon is the brick for building a house. The syntactic component is the knowledge of architecture. Something special about language is that speech is generated with a sequence of words, and the “neighbors” of a word may change its phonetic form. For instance, the pronunciations of “west” in “west side” and “to the west” are definitely different. Another special point of language is that language is a tool for meaning-making, sometimes ambiguity occurs without the logical constraints. Think about a sentence: The boy saw the man with the telescope. We are not sure whether “with the telescope” is a complement for “the boy” or “the man” without the logical inference.

What are the implications of using the features of language as the model for other symbolic systems (visual, audio, and multimedia combinations) and for most forms of communication and media?

Language is one certain kind of symbolic system among numerous symbolic systems on the earth. Among all the symbolic systems, language emerges as the primary cognitive system of human being. The collective cognition is the most distinctive characteristics of language compared to other symbolic systems. Is it reasonable to apply the features of language to other symbolic system? I think it is a tentative process. Derived from the hypothesis in linguistics research, we can also form a more generalized term “symbolic faculty”, which could be applied to some specific field and specific group of people. Going to concert and art exhibition, is another way for people to communicate via visual arts or music. The major difference between these symbolic systems and language is the efficiency of communication: the efficiency would be discounted a lot if the participant in the communication share little common sense about visual or audio representation.

It is still interesting to apply the language features to music genre. We can imagine a baby who was born in a “music family”, in a band. His four older brothers had already played band for years, and the baby was born in a music atmosphere, which seems like a natural setting just like English language. You are allowed to play bass with the experienced music language speakers. Are you going to become a native music language speaker as well? Probably the answer is YES according to Victor Wooten. In his TED speech, he narrated his story of learning English and music at the same time, in the same way. It seems that it is possible to make the analogy between language and music as long as the natural setting of English and music are almost the same. You are not going to learn bass by enrolling into entry level class; you just play with it. You are not going to be taught English; you just say it. The special experience of Victor suggests the possibility of applying the language features to music genre, but also indicates the importance of social collective cognition of one cognitive system.

Reference:

My particular understanding of the human language actually first came from my experience coding in Javascript and HTML and realizing the extent in which syntax and structures must convey meaning from the human to the computer. Every word has to be placed appropriately and then was allowed to form command sentence structures. These were then nested and looped within each other to create complex architectures.

Of course, I have learned that coding is not language because language is not written language, but is actually words, rules, and interfaces. In computer coding there are very strict series’ of rules and grammars that must be followed. Within my Javascript platform, every word used came from a library which  was previously created and those words meant very specific meanings.

Comparing this experience to the readings about language, I was able to understand the unlimited ways that language itself can work. Words, contexts, and syntax are remixed constantly to form knew understandings from vernaculars to creating new words using morphology like “Googleable.” The lexicon of a single language is infinitely growing and allows for generative and combinatorial phrasing.

So while computer coding is not language by Steven Pinker’s definition, it is clearly modeled after our understanding of language and uses the affordances of recursion and combinatoriality through looping logic statements. Additionally, while many programs offer limited libraries of commands, such as “Circle” or “Canvas” we can also define new objects within coding. By defining variables and then referencing them as the newly defined word. This in many ways is how we bring a diverse lexicon and new meanings to the very rule oriented and structured system built into coding programs.

My question, however, is does coding limit language. As Pinker noted, computers cannot understand context very well and the same word in language can have many meanings with varying contexts. While coding it can only be defined as one thing. I suppose the future of AI is building computer programs that are modeled more closely to language in which words can be rearranged infinite ways and with many contextual components.

Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. OUP Oxford.

Steven Pinker, Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain. 2012.

“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”

― Kahlil Gibran

This week’s reading materials provided me a preliminary impression on the field of linguistics and how linguists analyze our languages, which is different from last week’s neuroscience and archaeological perspectives.

In his Foundations of Language, Ray Jackendoff proposed that human language is different from and more complex than other communication systems such as the sound of whales and birds because human utterance can pass on unlimited information with unlimited and arbitrary forms but from limited rules and mental lexicon[i]. This productivity reminds me of music, which I think in some sense is analogous to language.

Phoneme of music

First of all, music is the art of sound, so every piece of music consists of sequences of basic elements of sound, corresponding with the phoneme in linguistics. But the scope of music instruments is much broader than language. Basically, any sound within the range of human hearing, even the sound of rain can be weaved into music. A piece of iron and a wooden box can be used to make music.

Music has structural rules

Like syntax and phonology of language, these sounds are integrated together following structural principles or rules, to form larger components, such as a beat, a bar, a section, and then a movement, according to their rhythm, tempo and time signature. For example, in a piece with 3/4 time signature and 120 bpm, the rule is that a bar is composed of three quarter notes, each of which represents a beat and lasts 0.5 seconds. Within a bar, the three beats generally follow a STRONG-weak-weak pattern.

There are many other rules or patterns. Specific rules are used for constructing a C major, a B minor or a fugue. In addition, many pop songs follow several chord progressions, of which the most common one is 1-6-4-5 chord progression. You can hear this chord progression over and over again in pop music. Sometimes you can even match the lyrics of a pop song to the accompaniment of another pop song using the same progression without any disharmony.

Dialect in music

People from different places may speak different dialects, even different languages. So does music. There are a lot of genres in music, each of which has their own unique rules or fingerprints, such as the highly recognizable blues chords and progression. I found surprisingly that if I’m playing on a blues scale that intentionally alters some pitches from a conventional scale, even if I’m just messing around, the noise I made sounds exactly bluesy.

Semantics of music

Language has meanings. So does music, although it is not as explicit and specific as language. One unique property of music is that it can convey intelligible emotion. Therefore, people who speak different languages can share a similar understanding for a piece of music. For example, Also Sprach Zarathustra is one of my favorite symphonies, but I know nothing about German, the mother tongue of Richard Strauss. Likewise, you don’t need to learn Maori’s language to feel the fearlessness in their battle songs.

The similarities of music and language can be enumerated continually. I think the reason is that music and language are both human symbolic systems that are used to represent abstract meanings. As Jackendoff put it, we can create and understand unlimited utterances. It is true for music, too. Music is a universal language of human kind.

Reference

[i] Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. OUP Oxford.

I wanted to see how my conception of “language” changed as a result of the readings and video this week, so I first wrote down some keywords I associated with the term. I came up with: culture, history, speech, understanding, communication, and transmission.

After doing the readings, I must admit that I was guilty of the sociological problem Jackendoff describes of laymen being especially susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect when dealing with the field of linguistics. I think this most likely comes from the fact that, as Jackendoff and Pinker both mention, we acquire and comprehend these incredibly elaborate linguistic skills from such a young age, so we’re never really cognizant of the process. Even more so if, as Chomsky proposes, we’re hard-wired for it. I was really blown away by the sheer amount of behind-the-scenes cognitive work (or as Jackendoff calls it, “f-mental” or “f-language”) that must be taking place in the child learning her or his way around language. Pinker’s segment on structure dependent rules was a great illustration of this. I personally had no idea these rules even existed, yet I immediately knew something was off when they were altered. It was intuitively clear to me, and reminded me of this post I saw a few weeks ago:

Another thing I learned from the Jackendoff reading is just how scientific and complex this area of study is. I was struck by the similarity of the illustrations of linguistic rules and structures with the illustrations of chain reactions you’d find in a chemistry textbook. Which, I suppose, is what sentences are: chain reactions that prompt understanding and meaning. Sequencing and hierarchy of the elements within both linguistic and chemical chains are imperative to their outcome. The wrong linguistic sequencing will lead to an illogical or awkward sentence, whereas the wrong chemical sequencing will lead to totally different formula or element (I think…I’m not a chemist).

I’m interested in the efforts to mirror or mimic these linguistic structures in computers and AI, so when Jackendoff talked of “structures built of discrete combinatorial units”, I was reminded of the discussion we had a couple of classes ago about Morse and the foundation of modern computing. Stripping computing down to its fundamentals in binary was illustrative of how crucial chaining and coupling are to computing. It seems as though there may be some kinship between this conceptualization of computing and linguistics.

So after going through the assigned material, I would add the words science, structure, innate, and computing to my previous list.

A few questions I had:

• One of the critiques of Chomsky was that universal grammar may not be specific to language, but what else could it be applied to? Pinker mentions vision, control of motion, and memory. Is this implying that there could be hard-wired ways in which we physically move, see and remember?
• Is the solution to solving the issue of pragmatics in AI linguistics to program for existing social interactions and contexts? Is there some “learning” ability that AI should be able to exercise if they come across unaccounted for situations and contexts?

References

1. Ray Jackendoff, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2003.
2. Steven Pinker, Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain. 2012.

The sociolinguist and Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich once famously quipped, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” [1] Interestingly, this phrase itself displays a number of fascinating, illustrative elements of language. When he says “language” he is referring to one specific set of combinatorial rules and ways of creating sequences of word units into a discourse that is spoken by a particular group of people. [2] But the term “language” itself has multiple meanings, and the one with which we are primarily dealing with in these readings is of the human capability for natural language. As Radford points out, language is ambiguous, and humans must be able to use context to interpret semantic meaning. [3] We know that, in the context of these texts, “language” is primarily a meta concept, while in the above quote “language” refers a specific language like English or Yiddish.

Though this may be jumping ahead, the sentence also points out some interesting semantic and sociolinguistic phenomenon. Claiming a language has “an army and a navy” is obviously meant non-literally—it shows the capacity for language to be (and for humans to think in a way that is) metaphorical and symbolic. It also highlights the fact that the only difference between a formal language and a dialect is that a language has the apparatus of a power structure (in the form of a state with a military) enforcing its official use. The implications of this can be what Radford calls language shift, or when one language becomes dominant over another. [3]

While I have given more attention to the semantics of this sentence (because it’s semantically very interesting), there are three other elements we can examine in light of Jackendoff’s models. First, there is the phonological structure, referring to the literal sounds made when articulating the sentence aloud (which is dictated by the rules of the English language’s letters and how they combine and interact). Second, there is the syntactic structure, which refers to “grammar” or rules for how to combine words to make larger units of meaning. The semantic structure, which I have already addressed, refers to the meaning that we interpret from such combination of words and phrases. Finally, the least flushed out is the spatial structure, which places your understanding of a sentence into the context of a perception of the wider world. [4]

On a final note, something I am particularly interested in is how language—in particular, miscommunication and changing peoples’ expectations of how language functions—is used in humor and comedy. Examples are everywhere, but I thought this clip was particularly appropriate. It features Ali G (one of Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical characters) interviewing our very own beloved Noam Chomsky. In just three and a half minutes it highlights a number of linguistic issues, including ambiguity, dialects/slang (and the misunderstandings that arise from them), language as an exclusively human phenomenon, non-language communication, misperceptions about the field of linguistics, the arbitrary nature of words/signifiers, and more.

REFERENCES

[1] Weston, Timothy B., and Lionel Jensen M. China beyond the Headlines. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Print.

[2] Irvine, Martin. “Language and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts.” (2015): n. pag. Web.

[3] Radford, Andrew, Martin Atkinson, Harald Clahsen, and Andrew Spencer. Linguistics: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.

[4] Jackendoff, Ray. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Web. 20 Sept. 2016.

What is language?

Language is a kind of meaning system used for communication and expression. Language can be expressed three different ways, through speech, writing, or signs. Language is something that is unique to humans. The main question linguists have about language is “Where did it come from?” Was it developed by human cognition because of the development of culture? Or, Is the ability for language already wired in the Homo sapiens brain?  [1]

What is “a language?”

The essential features that enable a language to be “a language” include sounds, words and sentences. An example of “a language” could be French, English, Chinese or Hindi. Each one of the languages listed has a specific structure that has to be learned in order to communicate in that language effectively. I took French courses throughout high school and college. In these courses I had to learn the correct structure of a French sentence vs the English structure I was comfortable with. For example, in English I could say “Jane is wearing a red bathing suit” this translates to “Jane porte un maillot de bain rouge” in French. If I were to take this sentence word for word and translate it back to English, I would get “Jane is wearing a bathing suit red.” This is cool because these rules can be recorded, documented and tested. However, when it comes to the idea of language as a meaning system, it is much harder to record, document or test. [2]

Whoa. Siri has its work cut out for it.

If someone asked me what a language is, I would probably start by telling them what language is not, as Pinker does. It is not thought; it is a way of expressing thought. As we learn more about connections between language and other forms of expressing thought (i.e. multimedia, film) this should hold true. When we think about the rules of language, for instance, lexical categories (finite) and their combinatorial nature (infinite), I assume we can apply them for other forms of expression. In music there are only so many notes you can play on any given instrument, but there are endless possibilities with which you can play those notes in a song. I haven’t gone further than basic googling, but it seems that childhood musical development is concurrent (or they at least have some overlap) to language development. I wonder if music is also structure dependent like language.

When Jackendoff writes “the little star besides the big star”, his spatial structure model seems intuitively clear. Although when he draws out the physical structure of a big star and a little star, I wonder if drawing two celebrities of unequal fame would also suffice. There are parts of all of the other structures that make sense, but as a whole the new terminology makes them more difficult. I never really thought before about the way that plural suffixes have three different types of sounds (s,z,uhz), or how syllables have a nuclei which makes up the bulk of the word. I still have a hard time following how he maps the different structures out, but the structure itself provides a useful framework.

I’ve only taken one class on linguistics and it was the last requirement I needed for my Anthropology minor. It focused on social uses of language, although we started off by going over syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We also discussed things that I assume we won’t be using here like haptics (use of touch in communication) and proxemics (location in communication), although their implementation can alter our perception of meaning. What’s interesting is that although we spent a lot of class time going over the ebonics debate and how descriptivist’s would agree that it is sophisticated, but we never went over Chomsky. His ideas seem to be integral to the idea of linguistic relativity. Jackendoff even mentions his merge rule (although he doesn’t say whether we should give it creedence), where any word or phrase can be combined with any other word or phrase (I suspect this rule governs how startups choose their company names and Dada art). How far did Chomsky take this rule?

Lastly, here’s Rick and Morty’s take on a universe where grammar evolved to have ‘shm’ as the prefix for everything (I wasn’t sure how to weld it to an examplet in the reading, but I know it belongs here):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pAMdn9oSPE

Martin Irvine, Introduction to Linguistics and Symbolic Systems. 2015.

Ray Jackendoff, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2003.

Steven Pinker, Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain. 2012.

After this week’s reading on linguistics, I think I am finally starting to understand the idea of the human mind as OS Alpha. Just as computers process code, humans process language (among other things) and create meaning out of it. Our assigned readings and video proved to be helpful in many ways, but thanks to the visuals/diagrams in the readings, I could finally cement the idea of language as code (mostly because I could process the images [ex. images 252 & 253 in Redford reading] but I’m not quite sure I understood what they meant…).

Something that stood out during the readings was the topic of dialect. I appreciated Ray Jackendoff’s example, given early on in the reading, regarding the School Board of Oakland’s proposal that Ebonics be employed as part of class instruction (Jackendoff, 10). It highlighted the fact that language is tied with social identity, and that linguistic issues can oftentimes be considered social issues, too. Furthermore, incorporating the information shared in Steven Pinker’s video, I was able to sort out the differences between dialect and language and the fact that the rules of both language and dialect differ from one another – I didn’t really understand that before the reading. As I read though each of the readings, I kept asking myself the simple question of “Who made up all of these rules (grammar, sentence structure, etc.)? Why are there so many rules associated with something that seems to come so naturally to us?” While I still don’t really have a concrete answer, I appreciated Steven Pinker’s explanation of the dialect that was used in – and ultimately chosen from – the south of England. I’ve always thought of the phrase “I can’t get no satisfaction” as “bad English” or improper language, but I never realized that it’s really no worse than “I can’t get any satisfaction” (both serve as a double negatives); it’s simply the dialect that was chosen based off of geography  –  There’s nothing that makes a culture’s chosen dialect special (am I correct in thinking that?).

Continuing on the topic of dialect, to second/bounce off from Katie’s question, could we consider “text speak” a new” dialect? John McWhorter, who teaches linguistics at Columbia, gives an interesting TED talk on the concept and proposes that texting is a “fingered speech.” Much of the language & sentence structure used in texting does not sound or look correct, yet I find myself using it in my speech, as well as receiving it from others in conversations. However, I only speak words I would text with when I’m in conversatio with someone who texts. I wouldn’t speak in “text dialogue” with my grandmother, or someone else who does not know how to text, because s/he would not understand what I was saying. This brings me back to the idea of language, or dialect, being connected to a social identity, or the “communication environment” stated on page 3 of Dr. Irvine’s Linguistics, Language, and Symbolic Concepts. McWhorter also seconds the fact that language is not writing, but speech (like Pinker mentioned). However, the rules mentioned in Radford and Jackendoff’s readings do not necessarily seem to apply to text/instant messaging – in fact, this new kind of messaging seems to be based on a loose assumption that the rules are irrelevant. Could this then be reflected in the way we speak out loud – our language? I don’t seem to hear it as much as I read it, so perhaps this idea of text dialog is far fetched. For example, it seems as though many new words and terms have been created since we began using sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It is evident when we read the posts, but do we speak these terms out loud? It seems as though we’ll sometimes incorporate hashtag “slang” into spoken language, but do we say it enough for it to become a dialect?

References: