A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#41

Post by vidarh » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

pebblexe wrote: post #35

jcranmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the evidence for programming languages is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is completely and totally false. To take a topical example, a lot of people complain that the idea of classes in JavaScript is antithetical to its underlying design philosophy. Presume that the statement is true (it's debatable), and you'd find that many of the people who push for this feature are likely to be those who have known no other…

Do you have to manipulate text? Perl is probably better than C for that. Do you have to write a program that operates on lists? Lisp probably is better than Java. Do you have to write a formal proof? Coq is probably better than Python. Do you have to write distributed networking code? Erlang is probably better than PHP. How can the strengths of each language not be direct support for linguistic relativity? All that m…

The first problem here is that you mentioned Sapir-Whorf, and Saphir-Whorf does not have a precise definition. You simply be talking past people with respect to how strong a degree of relativity you are claiming.

I can agree that different languages are more suitable for different purposes and affect how we express different problems. That is consistent with a very weak form of Sapir-Whorf. If that's the extent of your claim, then I don't think there's much controversy over that specific claim.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#42

Post by lkrubner » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

It's important to be open minded when thinking about how alien life might perceive the universe. In that spirit, and being deliberately provoking, I previously wrote:

Was math so universal that any intelligent species discovered the same math as what humans had discovered? Could there be a universe where irrational numbers were the primitives upon which all mathematics was based, in the same way that humans based all of their mathematics on the prime numbers? Was there a “beautiful” universe in which irrational numbers did not exist, and all patterns were simple? Perhaps there was a universe which lacked electromagnetism, and, even as our universe had atoms whose changing bonds explained all physical phenomena, perhaps that other universe had manifields whose changing coordinate systems, mapping one dimension to another, explained all physical phenomena? Our own universe was composed of 3 solid dimensions and then a fractional 4th, but what would life be like in a universe that consisted only of fractional dimensions? How could aliens imagine something whole, if nothing in their universe was whole? How could such aliens imagine a “one”, an integer, something complete? Perhaps in such a universe the integers were the most difficult concept in math, only discovered after thousands of years of careful research. Perhaps there was an alien far smarter than any of his peers, admired even as we admire Einstein, whose greatest accomplishment was the discovery of the formula “1 + 1 = 2”, a formula which, in that universe, was so utterly counter-intuitive that most adults went through their life without ever understanding it.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#43

Post by katamaritaco » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

For what it is worth, numbers are not necessarily a 'universal concept'.

One of the most talked about examples is Piraha[0], a language which doesn't really represent numbers. This is interesting because a study done by Everett and Frank[1] shows that this can actually have effects on cognition, providing some evidence for the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis[3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027708...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#44

Post by johnchristopher » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

Have you read the short story the movie is based on ?

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#45

Post by Razengan » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

I'm a layman in this space but I've been thinking about the idea of numbers a lot, mainly for fictional world-building, how aliens may use them, and wondering if they really are universal..

One of the things that strikes me, is how we just started with integers and then tried to fit everything into them. I mean they're fine for counting, but kind of a hackjob for measuring. Like sure, integers may exist in reality insofar as there may be one tree, two trees... but what about weight, speed, gravitational acceleration?

An alien species may use entirely different systems for Counting vs. Measuring.

We even found out that numbers may be "complex", have multiple dimensions. Beings exitsting in 4+ spatial dimensions may "write" in 3D; using Platonic solids to represent integers and fractions, and spheres for measurements?

And just as how humans took a while to come up with the concept of zero, could such a hypothetical 4D being have a hard time thinking about the idea of 1?

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#46

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

pebblexe wrote: post #35

jcranmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the evidence for programming languages is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is completely and totally false. To take a topical example, a lot of people complain that the idea of classes in JavaScript is antithetical to its underlying design philosophy. Presume that the statement is true (it's debatable), and you'd find that many of the people who push for this feature are likely to be those who have known no other…

Do you have to manipulate text? Perl is probably better than C for that. Do you have to write a program that operates on lists? Lisp probably is better than Java. Do you have to write a formal proof? Coq is probably better than Python. Do you have to write distributed networking code? Erlang is probably better than PHP. How can the strengths of each language not be direct support for linguistic relativity? All that m…

> How can the strengths of each language not be direct support for linguistic relativity? All that means is that certain concepts are easier to manipulate and understand in certain languages.

The principle of linguistic relativity is that language (particularly L1) influences the thought patterns of those who use it. It does not state that certain thought patterns are easier to express in various languages.

To demonstrate support for linguistic relativity, it's not sufficient to say that Perl is better at text manipulation than C. You'd have to say first that Perl programmers tend to view generic programming problems (say, how to route email messages) as questions of text manipulation rather than other paradigms. You would also have to show that this paradigmatic shift is a result of the language itself, and not other factors including (but not limited to) language instruction or library availability.

In terms of natural language, sure, I can't translate the sentence "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" effectively into French (since the different senses of "to fly" are «voler» and «mouche»). But that doesn't matter for linguistic relativity. The linguistic relativity argument is over whether or not the difference between English tending to use "do" for its modals precipitates a different worldview than the French «faire» ("make").

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#47

Post by lutusp » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

plttn wrote: post #27

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

If I remember the book correctly, they talk more about their attempt at using numbers, but due to the way heptapods think (all of time happening at once), the math concepts are actually harder than physical concepts.

> If I remember the book correctly ...

No book, sad to say. The movie is based on a Ted Chiang short story named "The story of your life."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life

There are a number of books out there named "The Arrival" or a variation thereof, but they have no connection with the movie.

I only post this to keep people from ordering books with that name, hoping to acquire more depth than the movie provides. Not to disparage the movie, which I regard as first-rate.

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#48

Post by pebblexe » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #41

pebblexe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have to manipulate text? Perl is probably better than C for that. Do you have to write a program that operates on lists? Lisp probably is better than Java. Do you have to write a formal proof? Coq is probably better than Python. Do you have to write distributed networking code? Erlang is probably better than PHP. How can the strengths of each language not be direct support for linguistic relativity? All that m…

The first problem here is that you mentioned Sapir-Whorf, and Saphir-Whorf does not have a precise definition. You simply be talking past people with respect to how strong a degree of relativity you are claiming. I can agree that different languages are more suitable for different purposes and affect how we express different problems. That is consistent with a very weak form of Sapir-Whorf. If that's the extent of yo…

What's the difference between 'determines' and 'influences'? I mean isn't that just a sliding scale? If a concept is incredibly difficult to formulate in a given language, could it not be said that the language has limited my thinking?

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#49

Post by sidegrid » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #32

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

I'm not so sure that numbers are universal. If your species were hive-like or highly solipsistic, you wouldn't necessarily have the need for numbers (although it is still plausible that they could use "us" vs "them", or "myself" vs "the outside world", but that's not exactly the same as "plural"). Even humans have languages that don't have numbers above of "one, two, three, many"; so long for generalized numbers bein…

How would you build a spaceship (or international ship... Whatever) without a concept of numbers?

Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

#50

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #32

skizm wrote: post #25

What bothered me the most is that the way they start the "conversation" with the aliens is by using names and human concepts (walking, eating, etc.). I'm not a trained linguist or anything, but it seems to me they should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers. Maybe as a CS guy I'm biased (since my language is symbols and numbers), but literally every conceivable language has to contain numbers of som…

I'm not so sure that numbers are universal. If your species were hive-like or highly solipsistic, you wouldn't necessarily have the need for numbers (although it is still plausible that they could use "us" vs "them", or "myself" vs "the outside world", but that's not exactly the same as "plural"). Even humans have languages that don't have numbers above of "one, two, three, many"; so long for generalized numbers bein…

[deleted]