Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 178 posts

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

#71

Post by aleeds »

zingermc wrote: post #70
thesz wrote: post #64

I haven't seen Arrival myself but I had a discussion with someone who did and, boy, did he was extremely on the linguistic determinism side! After some reminescence and analysis of the discussion I came to bold conclusion that defending strong Sapir-Worf hypothesis is very much akin to racism. Basically, you prohibit someone not fluent in the language of your choice the ability to see the world just like you do or ev…

Maybe I'm being too literal, but how can a grammar be Turing complete? The usual definition of Turing completeness is being able to simulate an arbitrary Turing machine. Typical human languages don't do beta reductions like Lambda Calculus, so I fail to see how a grammar (or the language produced by the grammar) can be said to compute anything.

From what I understand, the idea is you have some string S and an input T, and running a grammar G on ST will produce an output. Sometimes they won't halt. Just like a Turing machine.

In this analogy G is the 'universal Turing machine'

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

#72

Post by lmkg »

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 thought it was strange that they started with "walking" because the aliens don't walk the same way humans do!

Numbers are probably not a good starting point, because they're surprisingly abstract. For example, there's no such thing as 1. You can have one of something, but you can't just have one. Number is a quality rather than a thing. In order to establish communication, you need to start with something where it is completely unambiguous what you're both referring to. You can do this with concrete things, not so much with qualities.

Numbers above one are even harder. There's no such thing as 2. You have a thing, and you have another thing. In order to get to two, you first have to establish the idea of the one thing and the other thing being similar. Then you have to find a way of making it clear you wish to refer to the collection of things, which is an abstract thing. Then, you need to somehow figure out how to make it clear you wish to refer to this abstract quality of quantity about this abstract thing, rather than some other abstract quality about it such as its permanence or utility or orientation.

Compared to this, talking about objects and actions seems a lot easier.d

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

#73

Post by rthomas6 »

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 correctly, in the short story, the heptapods had a more fundamental grasp of calculus and continuous math, and derived algebraic concepts from that. Kind of like the inverse of how humans do it.

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

#74

Post by shas3 »

remarkEon wrote: post #65

One thing that I think always confuses me about any science fiction work that deals with Humans meeting Aliens for the first time is that it seems to assume it's all on us to figure out a common language. I have to admit, my assumption if that if some species is sufficiently advanced to figure out interstellar travel they'd likely be able to decypher our language and find a way for us to communicate.

The story sorts this out. Absent an interpreter, you necessarily need to be able to talk to someone who knows the other language so that you can query them, etc. Realistically, there's no way to intercept or interpret communications as the protocols are almost impossible to figure out (that is another layer of 'language'). Let say an alien intercepts a TV signal, can they convert it back to video? It is almost impossible that they will be able to infer the entire set of protocols: signal -> video, aligning video, etc. Especially given that aliens may be so different from us that their technologies may have developed in an orthogonal direction to our own.

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

#75

Post by Udik »

Razengan wrote: post #55
sidegrid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do we make music without having a name for each frequency? Sure we use letters and numbers to represent them, and words for many musical concepts, but people have been making music without knowing these and since long before they were codified.. The number line is a continuous stream, right? Carrying on from my earlier comment [0], an alien species could use a smooth gradient of colors to represent numbers; their…

Yes. "How much acceleration can this part withstand?" "I'd say violet, but with a shade of pink". "Perfect!".

I'm sure their spaceships will work just fine.

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

#76

Post by artimaeis »

remarkEon wrote: post #65

One thing that I think always confuses me about any science fiction work that deals with Humans meeting Aliens for the first time is that it seems to assume it's all on us to figure out a common language. I have to admit, my assumption if that if some species is sufficiently advanced to figure out interstellar travel they'd likely be able to decypher our language and find a way for us to communicate.

By your comment it seems like you didn't watch Arrival. Maybe I'm misinterpreting that, if so please ignore.

The whole point of Arrival was that we had to learn the alien language. The purpose of their arrival was to teach us their language so we could help them in the future.

Had the purpose of the aliens been to spread the knowledge of their culture then it may have made sense for them to analyze and learn our language, but since that wasn't their goal it wouldn't have made much sense.

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

#77

Post by petters »

shas3 wrote: post #74
remarkEon wrote: post #65

One thing that I think always confuses me about any science fiction work that deals with Humans meeting Aliens for the first time is that it seems to assume it's all on us to figure out a common language. I have to admit, my assumption if that if some species is sufficiently advanced to figure out interstellar travel they'd likely be able to decypher our language and find a way for us to communicate.

The story sorts this out. Absent an interpreter, you necessarily need to be able to talk to someone who knows the other language so that you can query them, etc. Realistically, there's no way to intercept or interpret communications as the protocols are almost impossible to figure out (that is another layer of 'language'). Let say an alien intercepts a TV signal, can they convert it back to video? It is almost imposs…

I and I think many others would disagree that it would be almost impossible to decode a TV signal.

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

#78

Post by Jtsummers »

pebblexe wrote: post #48
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sapir-Whorf is really a family of hypotheses, not a singular one. The differences being degree of influence from language on thought, and amount of feedback based on culture/experience. If my language lacks the concept for an ocean or sea, but I live next to one, clearly we'll find a way to express "seaward" and other related concepts, though the language may require more complex circumlocutions or inventing/borrowing words. But returning that concept and word to my inland relatives may be nigh impossible, because their experience (not just language) doesn't allow them to consider such a thing as even real. They may accept the word, but not the reality of it until witnessing it.

And, yes, if a concept is hard to express in a language that it, potentially, limits your thinking. If all thought is just language, then it may even bar thinking of concepts. But that gets into another debate, is language the key to thought, or is language an expression of thought. We can all probably conceive of things or maybe even have witnessed things which we are unable to articulate in many or all existing languages, but language expands or we adopt new languages (such as mathematics and calculus in particular to express physics). The precise motion of the planets could be explained in plain English, through complex circumlocutions. But calculus and its derived languages allow us to express this concept far more easily (even if just the English translation of the formulae and expressions, and not the precise notations used by physicists and mathematicians).

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

#79

Post by thanatropism »

Razengan wrote: post #45
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…

Riemannian geometry is a geometry on differentiable structures (manifolds) equipped with a "metric tensor" that generalizes the idea of a length to curved shapes.

Symplectic geometry is, similarly, a geometry on differentiable manifolds equipped with a "symplectic form" that generalizes the oriented area spanned by two vectors known in flat structures as the determinant.

Now here's the fun part: Riemannian geometry may exist in 1, 2, 3... dimensions; but symplectic geometry exists in even dimensions only. For example: if you tried to think of a 3D sphere of radius 1, you couldn't pass a 4D sphere through its largest section (a bit like if you couldn't pass a 3D sphere through a circle-shaped hole of same radius.

I forget what was my point initially.

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

#80

Post by skizm »

katamaritaco wrote: post #43
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:/…

What I meant more than anything else with numbers being "universal" is that they exist even if your language doesn't have words for them.
Post reply on HN