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A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

nautil.us

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Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#21

Post by cmurf »

dTal wrote: post #14
jostmey wrote: post #12

Ramblings of non-linguist: The problem with the human body is that is extremely hard to share information. We can absorb gigabytes of information through our eyes and other sensory organs, but we can only emit a few bits of information. When we communicate, we are essentially trying to share our thoughts through a very narrow straw that limits the flow of information. The result of this bottleneck is language. Langua…

Note that the average speed of communication in different languages is the same, even though they differ in verbosity and expressiveness. This is why Spanish speakers seem to speak so fast - Spanish has more syllables on average. So the bottleneck would appear to be, not the physical limitations of communication, but the rate at which we can structure information to be consumed by another mind. Rather like how the li…

When simultaneously translated English to Spanish, my translators complained because I speak fast, and they'd tell me they can't keep up. When I slow down enough, I end up losing my train of thought, so I had to practice speaking slower.

Also it might differ Mexican Spanish vs Castilian, where I didn't get much of a complaint by Castilian translators.

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#22

Post by oh_sigh »

ABCLAW wrote: post #19
oh_sigh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: we don't absorb gigabits of information. Perhaps there is that much bombarding our senses St any given moment but the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max

This is incorrect. Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair. Perhaps you meant we only commit a few hundred bits of information to long term memory per second under uninteresting conditions? *Sorry for piling on! I didn't see the other two replies and went to get coffee before finishing my reply.

I guess I have a question of what OP meant when saying your sensory organs "absorb" gigabits per second of information. In my reading, I took that to mean sensory input that actually makes it into the brain. After all, asphalt absorbs that same information, but I don't think that is a particularly interesting use of the infirmation.

In another reply I quoted research that shows that only ~10 kbits/sec make it even into layer 4 of v1 from the optic nerve.

If you have anything talking about spinal processing I'd love to read it.

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#23

Post by oh_sigh »

jostmey wrote: post #15
oh_sigh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: we don't absorb gigabits of information. Perhaps there is that much bombarding our senses St any given moment but the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max

We definitely absorb huge amounts of information -- but only a fraction of that information reaches the conscious level. Just google search "unconscious visual processing"

Not even concuious level - I'm talking about information that even makes it into all but the shallowest levels of your brain

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#24

Post by sametmax »

custos wrote: post #9
sametmax wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't because we don't know any possible concept, nor do we know if we can even conceive them, so we can't prove a language can express them. Plus we already have concepts we can't express. We can't share what looks like the resulting feeling in your mind of something the other never encounter, like a color to a blind man or a sound to a deaf girl. There are many feeling and sensations that you encounter in your…

What you're referring to are known as Qualia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

TIL

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#25

Post by Someone »

ABCLAW wrote: post #19
oh_sigh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: we don't absorb gigabits of information. Perhaps there is that much bombarding our senses St any given moment but the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max

This is incorrect. Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair. Perhaps you meant we only commit a few hundred bits of information to long term memory per second under uninteresting conditions? *Sorry for piling on! I didn't see the other two replies and went to get coffee before finishing my reply.

oh_sigh:

"the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max"

ABCLAW:

"Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair."

Does that information actually make it to the brain? I thought sending a signal to the brain to process it there and then send back balancing signals would take too much time to keep you on your feet (at around 100m/s, a nerve signal would take about 1/50 of a second to move from legs to brain and back)

There also is evidence that your spine can do quite a bit of the muscle control needed for balancing on its own. See knee reflex and spinal cat (completely cut the spinal cord of a cat in the neck; notice that cat is paralyzed. Hang cat in harness, with feet on a treadmill. Turn on treadmill; cat walks (possibly only after some training; I don't know the details). Known since the 1950's. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spinal-cats-walk/ (paywalled)).

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#26

Post by ABCLAW »

Someone wrote: post #25
ABCLAW wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair. Perhaps you meant we only commit a few hundred bits of information to long term memory per second under uninteresting conditions? *Sorry for piling on! I didn't see the other two replies and went to get coffee before finishing my reply.

oh_sigh: "the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max" ABCLAW: "Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair." Does that information actually make it to the brain? I thought sending a signal to the brain to process it there and then send back balancing signals would t…

Not all of the information processed in the main spinal nerve bundles make it to the brain. Note that I'm not replying to the 'reaches our brain' portion of his statement with my counter-example. I think that's a very arbitrary place to delimit the human information processing system.

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#27

Post by ABCLAW »

oh_sigh wrote: post #22
ABCLAW wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair. Perhaps you meant we only commit a few hundred bits of information to long term memory per second under uninteresting conditions? *Sorry for piling on! I didn't see the other two replies and went to get coffee before finishing my reply.

I guess I have a question of what OP meant when saying your sensory organs "absorb" gigabits per second of information. In my reading, I took that to mean sensory input that actually makes it into the brain. After all, asphalt absorbs that same information, but I don't think that is a particularly interesting use of the infirmation. In another reply I quoted research that shows that only ~10 kbits/sec make it even in…

Not sure what you're looking for specifically, but a quick search for Spinal Nerve (or bundle!) Processing will give you a ton of results. Restrict yourself to pub med or google scholar, because there are a lot of mediocre results.

I think the main confusion here was over the definition of 'absorb'. Your version is much narrower than I'd use. The sensory molecular pathways and accompanying structure of nerves themselves produce significant processing right at the outset which your definition would entirely discount. There is no reason to discount what would otherwise become 'pre-processing' in your model.

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#28

Post by edjroot »

jostmey wrote: post #12

Ramblings of non-linguist: The problem with the human body is that is extremely hard to share information. We can absorb gigabytes of information through our eyes and other sensory organs, but we can only emit a few bits of information. When we communicate, we are essentially trying to share our thoughts through a very narrow straw that limits the flow of information. The result of this bottleneck is language. Langua…

> We can absorb gigabytes of information through our eyes and other sensory organs, but we can only emit a few bits of information.

That's pretty much what Elon Musk cites as his motivation for Neuralink.

Re: A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

#29

Post by kbenson »

custos wrote: post #9
sametmax wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't because we don't know any possible concept, nor do we know if we can even conceive them, so we can't prove a language can express them. Plus we already have concepts we can't express. We can't share what looks like the resulting feeling in your mind of something the other never encounter, like a color to a blind man or a sound to a deaf girl. There are many feeling and sensations that you encounter in your…

What you're referring to are known as Qualia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Under the assumption that the whole "you need to be exposed to something X times before you really remember it" thing is true, I love when I get reintroduced to stuff like this that I've completely forgotten about since it was last mentioned.
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