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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)

#111

Post by mamcx »

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…

Warning: Also not a linguistic!

> by using names and human concepts...should start with concepts that are universal: mainly numbers

The way the movie do this make perfect sense.

Some examples:

- Your tribe in a island make first contact with a advanced civilization. You started with 1 coconut. Then you show 2 coconut.

Your advanced emissary think the coconut must the base food of your tribe, and yours is very poor.

Numbers rarely are used in abstract ways. Similar in how (big mistake) people try to push programming as math (because "obviously is math").

- You have a baby. To communicate with him, you start with some universal laws that hold across the universe:

"A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors"

What you consider universal laws, the most important and more universal, maybe are not the first kind of laws others are thinking. And this guys do everything in perl, his civilization have discovered functional programming and discard them 20 centuries ago as annoying.

- Your atlantian civilization, the most advanced that ever existed in earth, make first contact with the atlantian civilization on Andromeda. Both talk in perfect english, obviously. Correctly, you understand this guys must be smart, so you start conversation like this:

"So, do you guy know that the Spirit is the same than the Everything times the light instant and the light instant?, and the light instant is perfect and stay always as before or after?, and you spaceship obviously feed on spirits?"

Both civilization know than E=mc2, but his notations, names and ways to transcribe them not align at all. And probably sound incorrect nonsense.

- You start teaching them your numbering system. Them get confused why 2 + 2 is equal 4.

Your numbering system is decimal, them is not.

Then you try to showcase that exist several systems.

Them start get more confusing. Why your result contradict each time?

----

Not matter how I look at this, walking, eating, you, me, my name, your name look like far more universal and more sensible things to know than anything related to science or tech.

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

#112

Post by mamcx »

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…

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

Neither dogs (Dogs don't(?) think(!) in that as "walking"). You still walk with your dog, and I think most people see a dog walking, and think: "Is walking!"

Even if the way aliens "walk" were more like "swing" them see us moving from A to B. Maybe them translate them as "Moving from A to B".

The we show them "running", and them translate it as "Moving from A to B faster".

Eventually, them see a dolphin, and is moving more like them. Maybe them translate it as "Moonwalking".

Still, different words and concepts from them eventually must equal to our own, and even if are not a perfect 1:1 translation is enough to convey things.

For example, some ancients languages have different words for "Love" but ours use adjectives for them.

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

#113

Post by catshirt »

alpha_squared wrote: post #87
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.

That seems like an awfully ethnocentric perspective. It sounds like, "we understand things this way, therefore things can only be understood this way." I'm not saying there is or isn't more than one way to understand complex topics, but that it's possible there may not be only one way.

seemed like joke not a criticism. I laughed.

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

#114

Post by david-given »

Udik wrote: post #110
david-given wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Yes --- we do that because we are symbolic creatures. We serialise thoughts into sequences of symbols so that we can express them tonally, in series, to other people. We express mathematical concepts the same way. Naturally, the machines we built to help us do these things also work symbolically.

Machines built by people who think differently will work differently.

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by readymade »

UhUhUhUh wrote: post #100

It think this linguistic approach remains very superficial in that it only targets vocabulary and ways to represent it and to translate it. It does not tackle the "deep structure" the grammar that underlies and, in my belief, determines everything that sits above. Yes, I know, I'm a chomskian... I also understand that this would have propelled the narrative in a wildly weird area where most spectators would have prob…

Seeing as though deep structure is by definition unobservable in its direct form, it would be kind of strange to tackle that before building up a lexicon. A more interesting question, IMO, is whether they even have a deep structure.

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

#117

Post by DowsingSpoon »

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…

Mathematics is founded in logic. You cannot use logic to prove logic. Instead, we start with some axioms and build from there using rules that we think we reasonable and intuitive. I vaguely recall learning about a position in philosophy that holds that these axioms and rules come from the way the human mind is structured. If this is true then there is no reason to think that an alien mind would use the same axioms. For example, something that seems entirely fundamental to us might require a very complicated proof in the alien system. If the two systems are pragmatic and useful then they can produce conclusions that correspond to the physical world, and from there we can relate the two.

However, a major plot point in the movie is that time does not exist and that there is no such thing as causality. In the world of Arrival, there is not a lot of reason to believe that mathematics, logic, and science are capable of bringing us to a true understanding of the universe. It wouldn't work to teach human mathematics to the aliens because human mathematics is weird and wrong.

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

#118

Post by Balgair »

tlb wrote: post #82
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:/…

The Piraha language is probably inadequate for developing interstellar travel. As was English hundreds of years ago. You need numbers, and names for concepts like energy, mass, momentum, and time.

I don't know if that is true. I agree with you, but the obvious counterpoint is that a lioness has cubs and raises them to be apex predators just like herself, all without a language. You don't need a language to do things, there are many stories of people living just fine lives without language. To get to the stars, I'll bet on your hypothesis, but I think given enough time, some alien somewhere may have done the same without a thought in it's 'head' at all.

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

#119

Post by Udik »

david-given wrote: post #114
Udik wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Yes --- we do that because we are symbolic creatures. We serialise thoughts into sequences of symbols so that we can express them tonally, in series, to other people. We express mathematical concepts the same way. Naturally, the machines we built to help us do these things also work symbolically. Machines built by people who think differently will work differently.

First, no, we use digital machines because manipulating analog quantities is an impossible mess. The essence of an analog quantity is that it is unquantified, and therefore there is no real way of telling if two quantities are the same or not, or whether they would have been the same if one of the two hadn't been perturbed by something. Whenever you write down (or emit in any way) analog information, you're losing part of it; it can and will be altered by any amount of noise, and altered again when it's picked up by a reader or receiver. Not altered as in "a bit of noise but we can discard that". Altered in the sense of "it's impossible to tell the information from the noise". There is not much processing or storing you can do with it.

As for the fact we're "symbolic creatures", perhaps we are, but again- is it because our brains are natively digital or because we really put a lot of effort in trying to be symbolic? (I don't know whether our brains can be called digital- neural networks seem more analog than digital, but there might be quantization going on at some levels to manage the complexity and the noise of handling analog information.) Maybe symbolic reasoning emerges despite being really hard to master, because it actually manages to grasp some fundamental aspect of reality?

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

#120

Post by duncan_bayne »

Balgair wrote: post #118
tlb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Piraha language is probably inadequate for developing interstellar travel. As was English hundreds of years ago. You need numbers, and names for concepts like energy, mass, momentum, and time.

I don't know if that is true. I agree with you, but the obvious counterpoint is that a lioness has cubs and raises them to be apex predators just like herself, all without a language. You don't need a language to do things, there are many stories of people living just fine lives without language. To get to the stars, I'll bet on your hypothesis, but I think given enough time, some alien somewhere may have done the sa…

Larry Niven's "stage trees" - basically, naturally evolved rockets for seeds - spring to mind, where the space travel is an instinctive, unconscious behaviour.

But I'd bet on the OPs hypothesis as well. At a guess, most space travelling species will have had to climb a similar developmental curve to our own - including agriculture (or whatever passes for it in their biosphere, unless they photosynthesize themselves), tool making, metal smelting, nuclear power, etc. etc.

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