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A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)

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

#101

Post by panglott »

3131s wrote: post #52
katamaritaco wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:/…

One of the reasons Everett is talked about so much is because his claims are controversial. Many linguists have criticized his methodologies. I have a background in linguistics but have never looked into Everett's work too thoroughly, but from what I have seen I am skeptical of his claims that Piraha lacks recursion. Still, an interesting line of inquiry and it would be nice if there were enough linguists to actually…

AIUI, the controversy was generated based on definitions within generative linguistics that were ambiguous; the Chomskyans clarified what they meant by "recursion" for their purposes, and the controversy should have evaporated. That didn't stop the Chomskyans from getting Everett barred from conducting research among his friends the Pirahã or documenting their language. http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/28/poiso...

If I had to boil it down to a sentence, Everett's claim ultimately was not that the Pirahã can't think recursively, it's that their language reflects a cultural aversion to referring to things that aren't concretely present, and this impacted their grammar for subordinating clauses.

OTOH, and quite separate from the recursion issue, there has been some really interesting research on Pirahã perception of number. The ScienceDirect link/paper in the parent is well worth your time; it's also here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5308732_Number_as_a... and background at LanguageLog http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=341

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

#102

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by panglott »

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…

Also, those in here arguing that numbers are fundamental, basic, and universal might appreciate Ted Chiang's story "Division by Zero", also in "Stories of Your Life". http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumbe...

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

#104

Post by adrianratnapala »

sjclemmy wrote: post #91
skizm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? ;-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism

Even they believe (non-negative) integers.

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

#105

Post by adrianratnapala »

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.

That came out in the movie too, and it was not remotely believable there. It was where you had to turn on your suspension of disbelief and enjoy the Blinkenlights.

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

#106

Post by panglott »

Udik wrote: post #75
Razengan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the musical metaphor makes more sense to us, with the obvious analogy to the length of a vibrating string. "This part is D-flat long, when it needs to be C-sharp!"

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

#107

Post by panglott »

lmkg wrote: post #72
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 just falls apart when you try to define mass nouns in terms of number. Different languages handle mass and count nouns different, just as Japanese where nouns have no inflection for number and you use conventionalized counter words to indicate quantity.

"This is eight milk". Cups of milk? Glasses of milk? Cartons of milk? Liters of milk?

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

#108

Post by david-given »

Udik wrote: post #75
Razengan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could totally do this.

We tend to deal numbers by turning them into symbol sequences and then applying grammatical rules to them --- we're good at grammar, we have hardware acceleration for it. Digital computers work the same way: the quantity is measured, turned into a number, turned into a symbol sequence, then we manipulate those symbols before turning them back into a number.

But analogue computers work by taking a measurement, representing it directly as a potential, and then performing various analogue operations on that potential to yield another potential. At no point during the operation is the potential converted to a number. (Disclaimer: our analogue computers do use numbers for I/O, because they measure the result potential and express it in ways we can understand, but that's just a UI issue.)

So I can totally imagine an alien technology that manipulated quantities using mathematical operations without having any way to express those quantities themselves other than in relation to other quantities. They could use symbol streams to represent the relationships --- if so, they'd probably get on quite well with algebra --- but the idea of representing the potentials themselves as a power series would be completely alien to them.

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

#109

Post by IIIIIIIIIIII »

seewhatIsee wrote: post #14

The Himba tribe in Africa have an interesting perception of color which is believed to stem from their language[1]. For example, their language uses the same word for what westerners separately call green and blue. As a result, they cannot seem to distinguish the colors when presented to them. [1] https://vimeo.com/120808489

And Russians see two different colors where Westerners only see "Blue".

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full

There are more examples.

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

#110

Post by Udik »

david-given wrote: post #108
Udik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could totally do this. We tend to deal numbers by turning them into symbol sequences and then applying grammatical rules to them --- we're good at grammar, we have hardware acceleration for it. Digital computers work the same way: the quantity is measured, turned into a number, turned into a symbol sequence, then we manipulate those symbols before turning them back into a number. But analogue computers work by ta…

There are very good reasons for which we aren't typing these comments on analog computers, and we don't have analog computers in our pockets, and all the data we store, including everything that we experience as analog (music, images, video) are actually stored in digital format.

And before that, the way we write language, numbers, and music is digital, not analog- despite the fact that we seem to think more in an analog way than a digital one. Come to think of it, even our language is digital, despite the fact that our experiences are not and we often struggle to find the combination of words that will better reproduce the meaning we have in our minds.

Come on, this is HN, how can you not see the advantage of calculating with numbers, and writing down numbers, in place of approximate quantities? And why we converted an entire century's worth of audio and photographic recordings to a digital format?

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