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NL-KR Digest Volume 04 No. 07
NL-KR Digest (1/19/88 19:34:47) Volume 4 Number 7
Today's Topics:
failure of TG
Re: failure of TG
Re: failure of TM
Re: words order in English and Japanese
Cultural Impact on Word Ordering in any Language
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 88 09:25 EST
From: Greg Lee <lee@uhccux.UUCP>
Subject: failure of TG
In NLKR 4.3 Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com> writes:
>...
>For a more explicit and comprehensive critique of generative
>linguistics, I recommend Maurice Gross's paper "On the Failure of
>Generative Grammar" in _Language_ 55.4:859-85 (1979). Despite its
>prominent publication in the most prestigious journal in the field by an
>acknowledged expert, there has been NO REJOINDER to this paper. It is
>hard to construe this rather astonishing silence other than as a tacit
>confession on the part of generativists. Gross also offers very
>...
I think Gross's criticisms were generally accepted. They were very
influential. Transformational grammar of the sort Gross said had
failed is no longer being pursued. The number of new theories put
forward as candidate replacements approximates the number of working
syntacticians.
Greg Lee, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 88 20:12 EST
From: Bill Poser <poser@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: failure of TG
I wouldn't take the failure of anyone to rebut Maurice Gross' Language
paper "The Failure of Transformational Grammar" too seriously. To begin
with, it just isn't true that Language is the "preeminent" linguistics
journal, at least as far as most theoreticians are concerned. The journals
Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and Linguistics
and Philosophy rank much higher. Secondly, although there were some points
with which most people could agree, most generative grammarians simply didn't
feel that the paper warranted a rebuttal.
This was mainly because they thought that its arguments were so weak that
they would appear convincing only to those prejudiced in Gross' direction.
I speak with some confidence about this because I was a graduate student
in Linguistics at MIT when Gross' paper appeared. We all thought that it was
worth little more than a giggle.
It may well be that someone should have taken the time to write
a rebuttal, but the fact that noone did is certainly not a "tacit confession"
of defeat by generative grammarians.
Bill
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 88 18:03 EST
From: Peril Slob <slob@cwi.nl>
Subject: Re: failure of TM
I wouldn't take the failure of anyone to rebut Igor Marsescu's
paper "The Failure of Transcendental Meditation" too seriously.
Although there were some points with which most people could agree, most
transcendental meditators simply didn't feel that the paper warranted a
rebuttal. I speak with some confidence about this because I was a graduate
student in Altered Consciousness at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi University when
Marsescu's paper appeared. We all thought that it was worth little more
than a giggle.
--
Peril
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 88 02:28 EST
From: Bill Poser <poser@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: failure of TM
I take it that Peril Slob is attempting sarcasm by equating Generative
Grammar with Transcendental Meditation. If so, he misses the point. My
point was that the failure of generative grammarians to reply to a critical
paper in a putatively prestigious journal (Language) does not support the
conclusion that generative grammarians tacitly admitted defeat. This point
stands whatever one thinks of generative grammar.
Sarcasm and other such rhetorical devices are frequently used
in the absence of real arguments. Draw your own conclusions.
Bill
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 19:39 EST
From: Rick Wojcik <rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP>
Subject: Re: failure of TM
In article <1725@russell.STANFORD.EDU> poser@russell.UUCP (Bill Poser) writes:
>
> I take it that Peril Slob is attempting sarcasm by equating Generative
>[...]
I think that Peril Slob's message was much deeper than it was taken to
be. He was not really trying to argue against your point but to help
you transcend an attitude. That attitude is the one that seems to
generate such bitter tirades against linguists. You feel that it is
perfectly acceptable to dismiss arguments with the wave of a hand.
You do not respond to ideas, but you respond to the publication that an
article is written in. With the exception of Linguistic Inquiry, I find
the journals that you mention to be more interesting than Language.
However, Language has a wider readership, and it tries to represent the
field of linguistics as a whole. That article raises points that many
professional linguists agree with. At least some of those linguists
would like to know what causes graduate students at MIT to giggle.
Slob's message was an attempt to show you how you are perceived by those
who do not belong to your school. It was a good send-up, and I enjoyed
it. I hope that you understand its transcendental message :=).
--
===========
Rick Wojcik rwojcik@boeing.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 88 11:35 EST
From: Walter Peterson <sdcc6!calmasd!wlp@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>, nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
> I came up with a theory to explain the difference in word orders
> between English and Japanese. This is a very naive theory. Any
> comments are welcome.
>
> In English, verbs come very early in the sentence...
Not only does Japanese ( and Korean, which is *VERY* close to Japanese
grammatically and which I know far better than I do Japanese ) "delay" the
verb until the end of the sentence, but it is also *Post-positional* rather
than *prepositional* as English is. One would say "store to going am I"
rather than "I am going to the store".
>
> Another example is negation marker. In English it comes very early
> while in Japanese it comes at the end. You cannot tell if the sentence
> is positive or negative until you hear the very last, in Japanese.
That is true; however, nothing prevents the Japanese speaker from saying the
equivalent of "No ! Don't touch it !" ( No !, it touch not ! ), to use your
example.
>
> Now, English (probably I can say Latin) speaking people are basically
> hunters, while Japanese are basically farmers. Hunting is a real-time
> job while farming is not.
There are several problems with this line of reasoning:
1) Latin is every bit as postpositional as Japanese.
2) English has borrowed a good deal of Latin vocabulary, but *VERY* little
Latin grammar.
3) English developed in the basically agrarian culture of medieval England
*NOT* in a hunting society ( in fact, after 1066, it was illegal for the
*English* people to hunt most game. That "right" belonged to the
Norman conquerers. )
>
> ... ...That
> will allow development of language which fits to express very delicate
> things, like person's mood. (I think this is why Japanese has very
> complicated honorific system.) So, in Japanese, you can specify lots
> of objects first and then combine them together at the end with
> several modifications added further.
>
There may be a different cultural explanation. We English speakers,
Americans in particular, are often considered to be direct (blunt) to the
point of being rude. This is especially true in the Far East, where such
directness is considered *VERY* rude. The postpositional and terminal verb
nature of many Asian languages may be the linguistic expression of this
cultural trait. The exact meaning of the sentence is delayed as long as
possible to avoid offending anyone.
There is a serious flaw in any arguments like this. They all assume that
the culture comes first and that the culture directs the development of the
language. I don't know that that is actually the case. The language may
define the culture or there may be such a complex feedback between language
and culture that it is not possible to tell which has the stronger effect
on the other.
--
Walt Peterson GE-Calma San Diego R&D
"The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those
GE, GE-Calma nor anyone else.
...{ucbvax|decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!wlp wlp@calmasd.GE.COM
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 88 16:17 EST
From: Mfg Inspection <voder!blia!blic!inspect@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>, nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
> Now, English (probably I can say Latin) speaking people are basically
> hunters, while Japanese are basically farmers. Hunting is a real-time
> job while farming is not.
Yes, about 1000 years ago, there were a good number of hunters in Europe.
English has it's roots in Latin and the Teutonic and Celtic languages,
not to mention a smattering of other languages. The word order is Europe-
an. The Romans, responsible for "civilizing" most of the Western World,
were, by that time, well removed from the hunter-gatherers their ancient
ancestors were. Most Europeans have been engaged in farming, crafts and
commerce over several centuries now. All people were "basically" hunters
during ancient times.
> I combined those two observations: In real-time communication,
> possibility of misunderstanding is fatal. If you say "DON'T touch
> it", there is no possibility that the hearer try to touch something.
> But if the order were "it touch NOT" which is the case in Japanese,
> the hearer may touch it when he hears upto "it touch".
It sounds good, but if a child were to go too close to a fire or other
danger, the mother of that child would not spend a lot of time saying
"it touch not" or "do not touch that", she would scream or use a word
equivalent to the English "NO!". Real-time communication is not verbose,
it is done with as few words as possible in times of danger.
> In farming, on the other hand, there are lots of time. Planning and
> cooperation among people is more important than real-time-ness. That
> will allow development of language which fits to express very delicate
> things, like person's mood. (I think this is why Japanese has very
> complicated honorific system.)
English-speaking people and even people who speak French and Greek and
other languages frequently express very delicate things, as well. But,
to respond to your theory, a group hunt would require knowing how all
members of the hunting party were feeling. An overly aggressive hunter
could endanger the entire party, and an excessively timid one might not
be of any help at all. A hunter who is mourning, or happy, or distracted
is going to have an effect on the success of the hunt. An individual
hunter needs no words at all.
> I don't think this explains all the difference of language features,
> but at least I find it interesting. Any comments?
Your theory could have some relevance, but you would make a better
argument for it if you were to compare the word orders of present
African hunter-gatherer languages to Japanese. There you would have
two modern languages to compare with each other, one a genuine non-
hunter language (Japanese) and one genuine hunter language. If your
theory has any validity, the African hunter language should have the
same word order as English. This would not, of course, be proof, but
it would be better research.
- Jennifer
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 88 11:11 EST
From: Kai-Mikael J{{-Aro <mcvax!enea!ttds!draken!d85-kai@uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU> nakashim@russell.stanford.edu (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
>I came up with a theory to explain the difference in word orders
>between English and Japanese. This is a very naive theory. Any
>comments are welcome.
>
>In English, verbs come very early in the sentence. Second position in
>declarative and the first position in imperative. In Japanese, verbs
>come at the end of sentences.>
Verbs usually come at the end of sentences in German as well and I'm
not convinced that the Germans are more of a farming people than the
English. (In fact, English *is* a Germanic language.)
/Kai-Mikael
(...uunet!mcvax!enea!ttds!draken!d85-kai)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 88 22:26 EST
From: Richard A. O'Keefe <quintus!ok@unix.sri.com>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
In article <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU>,
nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
> Now, English (probably I can say Latin) speaking people are basically
> hunters, while Japanese are basically farmers. Hunting is a real-time
> job while farming is not.
There are ploughed fields in England which have been under the plough for
3,000 years. In the rest of Europe, agriculture is even older. If we
are to talk about English specifically, word order in Anglo-Saxon (sixth
century on) wasn't all that different from Modern English, and that was
an agricultural society.
Besides, what about the women? Even when hunting was a major economic
activity in Europe, the women weren't out hunting. Their pursuits were
no more "real-time" than farming, and the transmission of language was
under their control. Don't forget half the human race! And what about
fishing? And what about bragging afterwards? When hunting, one says
very little (you don't want the game to hear!).
> I combined those two observations: In real-time communication,
> possibility of misunderstanding is fatal. If you say "DON'T touch
> it", there is no possibility that the hearer try to touch something.
> But if the order were "it touch NOT" which is the case in Japanese,
> the hearer may touch it when he hears upto "it touch".
Think not that negatives in English come first always!
It doesn't seem likely that "possibility of misunderstanding is fatal"
to a higher degree in hunting. Canine and lupine packs typically fail
nine times out of ten, and I don't expect my ancestors did much better.
The anthropologists tell us that in hunter/gather groups hunting supplies
less than half the total amount of food. Make an incautious move while
you're hunting deer, and you go hungry. Make the wrong move while
you're trying to shift a farm bull from one paddock to another and
you're dead.
> In farming, on the other hand, there are lots of time. Planning and
> cooperation among people is more important than real-time-ness. That
> will allow development of language which fits to express very delicate
> things, like person's mood. (I think this is why Japanese has very
> complicated honorific system.)
Hmm. I've just been reading a book about baboons. Seems that they
have a complex system of vocal signals which can express mood quite
clearly, but practically nothing else. Forgive the ignorance of a
foreigner, but is it not the case that the Japanese honorifics are
controlled by the status of the speaker, the hearer, and the people
spoken about, rather than by what the speaker happens to feel? The
point of politeness, after all, is to *conceal* one's feelings, so
that people can co-operate without having to like each other.
> I don't think this explains all the difference of language features,
> but at least I find it interesting. Any comments?
Frankly, I can't see that it explains *any* differences.
How do you account for the word order differences between English and German?
How do you explain the honorific pronouns in Samoan, absent in Maaori?
A good test case for your idea might be South American languages.
Did the agricultural societies speak differently structured languages
from the others?
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 88 12:16 EST
From: Hideyuki Nakashima <nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
I've got many (negative :-) responces to my postings.
Thank you.
Now, I know that the issue I raised was too simple minded.
Nevertheless, and respite of lots of exceptions, I still think
it is one of the POSSIBLE explanations.
In article <2617@calmasd.GE.COM> wlp@calmasd.GE.COM (Walter Peterson) writes:
>
>Not only does Japanese ( and Korean, which is *VERY* close to Japanese
>grammatically and which I know far better than I do Japanese ) "delay" the
>verb until the end of the sentence, but it is also *Post-positional* rather
>than *prepositional* as English is. One would say "store to going am I"
>rather than "I am going to the store".
The above point is closer to what I wanted to point out.
In (one of) Japanese phrase structure grammar(s), there is only one
syntactic rule: phrase --> prefix + head. Any important thing comes
in the second position in the binary tree.
In the cases of English or German, I think there are several rules.
Some of them are counter examples to my theory.
I DON'T MIND HOW MANY CONTER EXAMPLES THERE ARE
AS LONG AS POSITIVE EXAMPLES OUTNUMBER HTEM.
In the area of AI, I believe you should first attack the center of the
problems and leave the details or exceptions out. The problem you are
attacking is too complicated to worry about the boundary conditions.
Words ordering in a syntax is not chosen at random. There must be
some explanation to it. If you know a better one, please let me know.
>There is a serious flaw in any arguments like this. They all assume that
>the culture comes first and that the culture directs the development of the
>language. I don't know that that is actually the case. The language may
>define the culture or there may be such a complex feedback between language
>and culture that it is not possible to tell which has the stronger effect
>on the other.
Of course they are bi-directional. I canNOT imagine that culture had
NO effect on language.
>From: inspect@blic.BLI.COM (Mfg Inspection)
> Your theory could have some relevance, but you would make a better
> argument for it if you were to compare the word orders of present
> African hunter-gatherer languages to Japanese. There you would have
> two modern languages to compare with each other, one a genuine non-
> hunter language (Japanese) and one genuine hunter language. If your
> theory has any validity, the African hunter language should have the
> same word order as English. This would not, of course, be proof, but
> it would be better research.
I think that this is a good point.
Does anyone has data?
However, I am more interested in the origin of the language, than its
current form. My view of language is that it is developped by the
need of communication. What you want to communicate with others is by
no means linear (one dimentional) like an uttered sentence. You must
linearize it. What do you do if you do not have predefined syntax?
Pigin is one of the good examples.
--
Hideyuki Nakashima
CSLI and ETL
nakashima@csli.stanford.edu (until Aug. 1988)
nakashima%etl.jp@relay.cs.net (afterwards)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 88 16:59 EST
From: Richard A. O'Keefe <quintus!ok@unix.sri.com>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
In article <1729@russell.STANFORD.EDU>,
nakashim@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
> linearize it. What do you do if you do not have predefined syntax?
> Pigin is one of the good examples.
There are many pidgins in the world. I do not know which one(s) he
has in mind. The only one I know anything at all about is the one
spoken in the Solomon Islands (there is a book called "Pijin belong yumi"
containing a grammar and dictionary which the appropriate embassy should
be able to locate for you if you are interested; the copy I have read
belonged to an uncle and aunt of mine who learned the language as adults).
Roughly speaking, Pijin is straight Malayo-Polynesian grammar with
Solomon Islands phonology and more-or-less English vocabulary.
I understand that the Pidgin spoken in Niugini is similar.
I don't know what Hideyuki Nakashima means by "no predefined syntax".
Pijin certainly has just as much of a syntax as Indonesian or English
*now*. As for "predefined", the first people to speak Pijin already
spoke *some* language, and everyone tried to keep as much of his/her
own language as possible.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 11:07 EST
From: Mfg Inspection <inspect@blic.BLI.COM>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
Regarding word order, Japanese compared to English, the premise being
that English-speaking people are "basically" hunters and Japanese are
"basically" farmers, guess what I found out after spending 20 minutes
with my home encyclopedia?
Farming became a part of European and English-speaking Europeans around
the year 2000 BC long before English was even a language. Farming did
not come to Japan until the Yayoi Period around the year 250 BC.
So much for the theory of hunters vs. farmers. A little research would
have been in order and the history of agriculture is fascinating.
Try opening a book and doing some research before proposing arrogant and
specious theories.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 18:18 EST
From: Rick Wojcik <rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP>
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
The original comment was that Japanese and English word orders are
somehow affected by the type of culture that the speakers have. The
question of what causes different word orders is very interesting, and
it is covered in great detail in the linguistic literature. The issue
is not just between English and Japanese, but between global language
types. Verb-first and verb-medial languages tend to have very different
syntax from verb-last languages such as Japanese. For example, the
former tend to have prepositions/prefixes and the latter
postpositions/suffixes. Auxiliary verbs precede the main verb in the
former, but they follow in the latter. In other words, there is a kind
of "head-first/head-final" dichotomy among the world's languages,
although this is an overly simple way of putting it.
It is easy to show that the hunter/farmer distinction is irrelevant to
the question of word-order typology. Word order types are distributed
randomly over all types of cultures as far as we can tell. Furthermore,
Indo-European languages, of which English belongs to the Germanic
branch, appear to have descended from the verb-last type--i.e.
structurally parallel to Japanese. So the change to verb-medial
structure would have to be connected with a cultural shift from farming
to hunting, according to the hypothesis offered. Verb-last languages
are so common in the world that it would be very difficult to find a
cultural common denominator to explain their existence.
Finally, this topic really belongs in sci.lang. It has little to do
with AI. In fact, there has been much discussion on this topic in that
newsgroup.
--
===========
Rick Wojcik rwojcik@boeing.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 23:04 EST
From: John A. Deters <jad@dayton.UUCP>
Subject: Cultural Impact on Word Ordering in any Language
You may be on the right track comparing word ordering
to the agricultural origins of the people. It may be based more
on the stability (or relative mobility) of the people who speak
it, and the Japanese, being primarily agricultural, have been very
stable, location-wise. The English (Germanic) peoples, being
originally hunters, were substantially more mobile. The
Japanese culture has been in place for many thousands
of years, and they have not left a very small geographic location.
Their language has stabilized. English, French, and Russian,
on the other hand, have derived from a more mobile people who were
moved about substantially due to wars, invasions, etc.
In English, we all know that the verbs can come almost anywhere.
In French, also, the verb can come between the subject and the object.
The French language is a Latin-based language somewhat similar to
English, and the culture is roughly the same age. Modern
Russian (from what I could glean from a friend) also has a
flexible structure allowing the verb to come anyplace in a
sentence, and it too came from a mobile culture. My friend
also brought up an interesting point from this -- it would
be nice to hear from someone who knows Hebrew, the language of
the "race of wanderers". It might be an answer in this
mobile language theory, and to find out what the sentence structure
is like in that language would prove interesting.
P.S. Any racial references are not* to be construed as slurs!
--
-john deters Dayton Hudson Department Store Company
uucp: rutgers!dayton!jad MIS 1060/700 on the Mall/Mpls, MN 55402
ARTHUR: "A scratch? Your arm's off!"
BLACK KNIGHT: "It's only a flesh wound."
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
