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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 168
AIList Digest Sunday, 2 Dec 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 168
Today's Topics:
Perception - Language and Thought
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Date: 4:55 pm Nov 10, 1984
From: dts@gitpyr
Subject: Language and Thought
...
> The lack of a syntactic feature does not necessarily mean a communicative
> deficiency. And in any case it is not clear that if a language cannot
> communicate some certain meaning it is deficient - maybe the native speakers
> of that language have no need to express that meaning.
I don't take it as given that there exist any concepts that some language
can't express, because I'm not sure what it means to say that a language
"can't express" an idea. One thing that most people in this discussion
seem to have overlooked is the fact that the words don't carry all the
meaning.
The words you are reading now are arousing ideas in your mind. I have no
direct control over those ideas. All I can do is try to chose my words
so that they will evoke the ideas I want them to in the minds of the
majority of those people who bother to read this. If you fail to properly
understand what I am trying to say, whose fault is it? Mine for choosing
the wrong words? Yours for having the wrong ideas? English's for not
having a single word which encompasses everything I'm trying to say?
I've had discussions on this topic before with friends, in which I took
the position that there are things that can't be expressed in English.
But now I think that's a naive viewpoint because so much depends on
mutual understanding between the persons involved. I asked a Dutch
person about "gezellig" and she explained it so that I think I
understand. The closest single-word synonym I could think of in English
is "homey" but that's not really anywhere near being an exact equivalent.
But now, if someone said to me, "Homey. You know, in the Dutch sense,"
I would have a good idea of what they meant. English will have
communicated an idea that many people on the net have been saying it
can't.
-- Either Argle-Bargle IV or someone else. --
Danny Sharpe
School of ICS
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts
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Date: 1:00 pm Nov 9, 1984
From: arndt@decwrl
Subject: The Soapy-Woof theory of talk.
It seems to me that there is a hole at the bottom of the bag.
I mean, does language really have THAT much control over how we think?
"Language exists to communicate whatever it can communicate. Some things
it communicates so badly that we never attempt to communicate them by words
if any other medium is available."
". . . what language can hardly do at all, and never does well, is to inform
us about complex physical shapes and movements. Hence descriptions of such
things in the ancient writers are nearly always unintelligible. Hence in
real life we never voluntarily use language for this purpose; we draw a
diagram or go through pantomimic gestures."
"Another grave limitation of language is that it cannot, like music or
gesture, do more than one thing at once. However the words in a great poet's
phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous
chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the next.
That way, language is unilinear as time. Hence, in narrative, the great
difficulty of presenting a very complicated change which happens suddenly.
If we do justice to the complexity, the time the reader must take over the
passage will destroy the feeling of suddenness. If we get in the suddenness
we shall not be able to get in the complexity. I am not saying that a genius
will not find its own ways of palliating this defect in the instrument; only
that the instrument is in this way defective."
"One of the most important and effective uses of language is the emotional.
It is also, of course, wholly legitimate. We do not talk only in order to
reason or to inform. We have to make love, and quarrel, to propitiate
and pardon, to rebuke, console, intercede, and arouse. The real objection
lies not against the language of emotions as such, but against language
which, being in reality emotional, masquerades - whether by plain hypocrisy or
subtler self-deceit - as being something else."
From: C.S. Lewis, STUDIES IN WORDS, Cambridge University Press, 1960.
Chapter 9 "At The Fringe Of Language, p.214-5.
Comments???????????????????
Regards,
Ken Arndt
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Date: 7:21 am Nov 12, 1984
From: robison@eosp1
Subject: Perception
I disagree strongly wth the C.S. Lewis quote below (from ken Arndt).
>"Another grave limitation of language is that it cannot, like music or
>gesture, do more thatn one thing at once. However the words in a great poet's
>phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous
>chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the
>next. That way, language is unilinear as time. Hence, in narrative, the great
>difficulty of presenting a very complicated change which happens suddenly.
>If we do justice to the complexity, the time the reader must take over the
>passage will destroy the feeling of suddenness. If we get in the suddenness
>we shall not be able to get in the complexity. I am not saying thta genius
>will not find its own ways of palliating this defect in the instrument; only
>that the instrument is in this way defective."
>
>From: C.S. Lewis, STUDIES IN WORDS, Cambridge University Press, 1960.
> Chapter 9 "At The Fringe Of Language, p.214-5.
All arts that appeal primarily to one sense suffer to a degree from
the fault Lewis describes, that one item of information is processed at
a time, and the artwork is perceived serially in a sense. Almost all
great artists in all media have wonderful ways of addressing this
problem, so that it is not a limitation, but merely a challenge.
In the specific example, the words of poems particularly tend to have
multiple meanings, and to give additional meanings to other parts of
the poem. Even if one focuses on the INITIAL reading of a poem
(which is ridiculous), the words already read will continually change
in perception as additional words are read. This is a heavy parallel
activity!
Other examples one might give:
In writing, many authors contrive to describe a complicated sudden
change obscurely, so that the reader knows he does not understand the
words fully in his serial reading, but the entire complex moment may
be understood suddenly when, after many pages, the whole situation
falls into place. I'm sure we can all think of books where this
occurs. For spectacular, but easy examples of this I would recommend
the beginning (say, the first 15 pages) of either of these novels by
Henry Green:
- Living
- Party Going
In each case, he starts by partially describing the current situation
in such an uncommunicative manner that the reader is all at sea.
Conversation, observation, and environment just accumulate in the
readers mind, awaiting elucidation. Then orientation occurs, the
meaning of the opening pages hits the reader in a rush, and he is
emotionally deep in the fabric of the book, having been struck by
a torrent of words suddenly, in a way C.S. Lewis would have thought
impossible...
Painters and similar artists know that the eye perceives a picture
serially. Most types of art attract the eye (not 100%, but
materially) to a part of the picture, and then lead it from place to
place. Many pictures are arranged so that the actual motion of the
eye will be soothing or otherwise. Some pictures are arranged so
that a surprise awaits the eye after part of the picture is
perceived. [In Western Art, landscapes that slope down from left
to right tend to be more soothing than the reverse, since Western
eyes tend to read from left to right. Some pictures just lead the
eye round and round through an unsettling maze, as Picasso's
Guernica.]
Musical compositions are heard serially. Again, if we focus on the
initial hearing, musical ideas are being presented serially, with
a minimum of parallelism possible. But as a composition goes on,
the listener learns more about, and re-interprets, what he has heard.
An obvious example would be a theme and variations, in which some of
the variations emphasize constructional characteristics of the theme,
and some recall the theme so the listener can rethink its impression
on the basis of better understanding of its parts. These variations
will be communicating in parallel (what happened before, plus the new
variation itself).
Three-dimensional sculptures must also be perceived over time, since
they are not fully visible from one place. Mnay sculpors are aware
of this and arrange that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
------------------------------
Date: 10:26 am Nov 14, 1984
From: ben@sysvis
Subject: Perception
Interesting. (But why is this in net.ai instead of net.lang.n?)
Language as an informational tool, especially when in written form,
seems to have some distinct disadvantages in terms of information
density. When describing a house, for instance, it is certainly
more informative to draw a floor plan, with dimensions, and provide
architectural renderings in color, than to give a verbal description.
However, the emotional impact of being present in a building itself
cannot be conveyed by graphic or pictorial means alone. If you visit
the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, it is a moving experience.
However, the photograph you bring back cannot convey the emotion you
experienced. It will arouse emotional reactions in your viewers, but
not necessarily the emotions you wished to convey.
To a limited extent, written language together with graphic and pic-
toral information will provide the emotional base for communication.
Spoken language, with all its intonational coloring, will convey much
more of the emotion. These combined with musical score will allow
you as a communicator to most closely recreate the experience both
informationally and emotionally for your audience. Thus the basis for
this combination in cinema and video.
Ben Evans
{ctvax!convex}!trsvax!sysvis!ben
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Date: 5:02 pm Nov 17, 1984
From: mark@digi-g
Subject: Language and Thought
arndt@lymph.DEC writes:
> ... does language really have THAT much control over how we think?
That depends on what you mean by `think'.
This is one of my pet theories.
At the very least, there are functional areas of the mind that perform
verbal reasoning. This area maintains the continuous internal dialogue
that we all experience. Most people identify this area as `I'. There
are certainly non-verbal areas, too. But this is not identified as the
self. Consider, as an example, reflex actions: `I jumped out of the way
before I was even aware of it...'. Other non-verbal areas influence
the `verbal-consciousness' with messages called `intuition'.
I believe that the reason we assign such importance the the verbal
consciousness is that we are social animals. The importance of our
interactions with others of our ilk is so great that we tend to define
ourselves as that which others can experience. Because language is the
primary means of communication with others, we percieve verbal
consciousness as being terribly important. Self-awareness would not exist
without the built-in social hooks.
Language, however, has little effect on the non-verbal areas of the mind.
A human in total isolation with no language experience could probably
function quite well with no internal dialogue. Many complex tasks, which
we would like to have computers emulate, are performed without language.
Comments?
-- Mark Mendel
-- ...ihnp4!umn-cs!digi-g!mark
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End of AIList Digest
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