The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language • Hacker News Board

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#11

Post by lionhearted » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 1:17 AM UTC

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

Good comment. That said...

> 'Japanese words tend to be longer than English words. So how do the Japanese communicate as effectively as we do?'

I speak some Japanese. Japanese is actually a bit harder to communicate in than most other languages. The emphasis on social unity and modesty has evolved to make the language incredibly nuanced and complex. Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally impossible to say in Japanese because the words/phrases/grammar to say them don't match up.

Feynman touched on this in "Surely You're Joking" - there's different verbs for the exact same action based on the social situation and how well respected the person you're talking to is. So if you want someone to look at your garden, you say something like, "Would you please take-a-pasing-glance at my barely suitable garden?" But if you want to look at someone else's garden, you might say, "May I look-with-admiration upon you're beautiful garden?" If it's an official figure or a temple, it'd be something like, "May I quickly-glance-my-eyes-over-reverently on your most majestic of gardens?"

Different verbs. All mean "view" - but with different levels of politeness and appropriateness. One of the HNers who lives in Japan could probably comment more, I haven't spent all that much time there. Fascinating and beautiful language, but tricky to say things sometimes.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#12

Post by TriinT » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 1:28 AM UTC

softbuilder wrote: post #6

TriinT wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English." Define interesting . Personally, I find the entropic analysis of spoken Engligh vs. sign language pretty interesting, especially so when they relate it to channel capacity and other information-theoretic stuff. Your comment sounds anti-intellectual.

>Your comment sounds anti-intellectual. Not a thing wrong with that. Fwiw, I file Technology Review with Wired and SciAm. That is, fluff. Hardly intellectual material imho. >I find the entropic analysis of spoken Engligh vs. sign language pretty interesting That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach. Constraining the analysis to handshapes goes too far. Like constraining English analysis to v…

"I file Technology Review with Wired and SciAm. That is, fluff. Hardly intellectual material imho."

Sure, TR and Wired are fluff. Except that the article links to an arXiv paper. This is not a standard TR article. Moreover, you can't present scientific research in half a page without making it fluff. That, too, is an interesting information-theoretic problem.

"That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach."

You missed the forest for the trees. In case you didn't notice, the people who wrote the paper are electrical engineers. They used the information-theoretic approach that is used in communications theory to a problem outside the traditional scope of application of the theory. Sure, natural language is hard, but if you start your research by focusing on all the little details you will get nowhere. To me, the paper looks like a first shot at a difficult problem. If you can do better, I would love to hear about it.

"...it sounds like the parameters of the study were determined by someone with very little understanding of how ASL actually works."

That is not the point. The point is that someone who does indeed understand how ASL works can read the paper, find out what is missing and build on it. No one knows everything, and inter-disciplinary work is very hard. Your criticism is too hard, because no one ever built a theory in one single iteration.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#13

Post by lmkg » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 1:46 AM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #10

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

It would be interesting to discover that some languages are less efficient than others, and what effect (if any) it has on the economy. I think Japanese probably is more complicated that English - so why does it not appear to slow them down? Or maybe it slows them down in some respect (maybe having to sacrifice a lot of childrens play time to rote learning?), and they compensate in other ways?

Spoken Japanese may be less compressed than English, but written Japanese is considerably more terse.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#14

Post by cakesy » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:00 AM UTC

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

I always thought it was a great opportunity to create a world wide sign language, so you could speak to anyone in the world with it. It would actually make it worth while for a lot more people, not just the dead, to learn signing, because you could use it to speak to others.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#15

Post by retroflexzy » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:03 AM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #11

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

Good comment. That said... > 'Japanese words tend to be longer than English words. So how do the Japanese communicate as effectively as we do?' I speak some Japanese. Japanese is actually a bit harder to communicate in than most other languages. The emphasis on social unity and modesty has evolved to make the language incredibly nuanced and complex. Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally…

> Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally impossible to say in Japanese because the words/phrases/grammar to say them don't match up.

Care to elaborate? As a English/Mandarin/Japanese speaker, I am certainly acutely aware of the limitations of translating from one language in to another, but find such an assertion hard to accept without concrete examples.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#16

Post by lionhearted » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:22 AM UTC

retroflexzy wrote: post #15

lionhearted wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment. That said... > 'Japanese words tend to be longer than English words. So how do the Japanese communicate as effectively as we do?' I speak some Japanese. Japanese is actually a bit harder to communicate in than most other languages. The emphasis on social unity and modesty has evolved to make the language incredibly nuanced and complex. Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally…

> Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally impossible to say in Japanese because the words/phrases/grammar to say them don't match up. Care to elaborate? As a English/Mandarin/Japanese speaker, I am certainly acutely aware of the limitations of translating from one language in to another, but find such an assertion hard to accept without concrete examples.

> Care to elaborate? As a English/Mandarin/Japanese speaker, I am certainly acutely aware of the limitations of translating from one language in to another, but find such an assertion hard to accept without concrete examples.

I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, so I'm not the best person to get into it. I do have a couple good friends who are native speakers or expats with a very high level of understanding. A good mate runs a bilingual IT firm in Tokyo, and can handle even technical/legal Japanese to a pretty high level.

Sometimes I've asked, "How do I say XYZ?" and there's no real way to say it without describing it. To go back the other way, what would the English equivalent of "domo" or "daijobu" be? Daijobu is something like "don't sweat it", but that's not quite right. I'm not sure there's anything quite like domo.

But, that's common enough in other languages. German doesn't "cheers", which is a pretty useful and versatile British English word, but that's not what I mean here. From my general understanding, it's very hard to put together appropriate forms of disagreement in Japanese. Like, it might not possible to say something like, "You're wrong, but I respect the sentiment", or "Agree to disagree."

I'm not sure on those specific examples. I know one of the first things people learn about doing business in Japan is you'll rarely hear "no" from a subordinate, so you have to be very aware of something like, "That might be difficult..." - that might mean it's impossible.

Not entirely sure - I've spent a bit of time living and working in a lot of places, and picked up touches of a fair few languages. I've had people translate for me to some extent or other in German, Dutch, Spanish, Mandarin, and Japanese. By far, the most stumbling and "that's hard to say" I got was in Japanese. I'd actually be curious to have someone more skilled with the language elaborate more to see if I'm on the mark here.

That said, the character of the Japanese language is really beautiful - I love reading Japanese literature translated into English. You'll commonly see a very factual, plain description, followed by a very profound beautiful statement mixed in with minimal transition. Eiji Yoshikawa's "Musashi" is pretty much a must-read for anyone talented who feels some friction with more mainstream and normal society.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#17

Post by christopherdone » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:37 AM UTC

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

I did a ten-week course in BSL (passed with full marks!) and your assessment matches up with my experience, which was that it was like exaggerated enthusiastic telling of a story. It's like miming, too. Hearing people talk with their hands, bodies, faces, reactions, energy, rhythm, speed, etc. all the time already. They get along fine in clubs with loud music thumping away. Just watch someone chatting on the phone, they still make a tonne of physical gestures. And we've seen that textual interpersonal communication (i.e. pure English syntax and grammar) is hard, it's great for technical details or (with some effort) describing stories but sucks at that.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#18

Post by req2 » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:38 AM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #11

crux wrote: post #2

This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English. Syntax and word order are entirely different, and much information is encoded in what one might call 'tone'—eg, the energy or rhythm with which any sign is performed—that in English would be communicated with full words or suffixes. These facts are patent to anybody with a passing acquaintance of…

Good comment. That said... > 'Japanese words tend to be longer than English words. So how do the Japanese communicate as effectively as we do?' I speak some Japanese. Japanese is actually a bit harder to communicate in than most other languages. The emphasis on social unity and modesty has evolved to make the language incredibly nuanced and complex. Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally…

You're mincing words to tell us about Japanese. Your examples seem to indicate that Japanese more naturally conveys social situations and basic descriptions at the same time, making it more effective, not less. Russian has no future first person singular conjugation for 'to win'- this doesn't make Russian 'less effective' at communication, nor does English's use of "I will be able to" in place of "I will can".

If you want to make an argument on the effectiveness of communication, please use a quantitative or otherwise qualified argument, rather than exotic anecdotes.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#19

Post by sev » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 2:52 AM UTC

Along similar lines as the article, I've always thought about how we can be more efficient when speaking. If you notice, there is a tendency to be more and more efficient on the web, with abbreviations/acronyms. Imagine a world where we say "lol" just as though we type it (not hard to imagine). Now take it a few steps further, by considering the vast amount of different sounds/tones our vocal chords can create, imagine if we keep simplifying the spoken language to a point where it becomes like one of those star-trek civilizations with their clicking sounds when they speak.

I believe the trend is inevitible.

Re: The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

#20

Post by cbr » Sun, Dec 20, 2009, 3:01 AM UTC

cbr wrote: post #7

Calling asl "signed english" is usually a good indication that the writer doesn't know much about the subject. Then they go on to say: > "It turns out that the information content of handshapes is on average just 0.5 bits per handshape less than the theoretical maximum. By contrast, the information content per phoneme in spoken English is some 3 bits lower than the maximum." Talking about the information content of s…

Just read the full article. It's no good. Analyzing ASL in terms of hand shapes only, on the grounds that they're the only feature that all linguists looking at ASL seem to agree on is really problematic. Computation of entropy is heavily dependent on the alphabet. If you say english has an alphabet at the syllable level, you'll get a very different amount of entropy than if you say the alphabet is phoneme level. If you go a level below phonemes and look at distinctive features (voiced/unvoiced, aspriated/unaspriated, front/back, high/low, ...) you'll get yet another entropy number altogether. These numbers will be wildly different from each other. Entropy calculations between languages must use comparably derived alphabets which cover the whole communication channel, or they will be meaningless. Argh. Junky article.