It's all Greek to me
I missed my Greek class yesterday because of a migraine. That bums me out; the class keeps me sharp. However, as penance I did sit down and work through several exercises on my own this morning.I have this (neither original nor very remarkable) observation to make: knowing grammar makes language acquisition easier.
It doesn't matter if the language in question is as familiar to the Anglophone as French, or as alien as Indonesian. At this point, our grammar is surprisingly capable of organizing nigh on all extant linguistic forms. And that leads to a question: was Chomsky more right than I've ever been willing to credit? I mean, clearly small children utter ungrammatical phrases all the time, strongly suggesting that grammar is more emergent than innate. But if I can draw a sentence tree for well-formed sentences in any language, then maybe we really are constrained to think in terms of subjects, objects, and adverbs nonetheless. Are these categories merely successfully descriptive of the languages we have encountered thus far? Or are they rather indicative of necessary constraints on the kinds of grammatical relationships of which people are able to conceive?
posted by Skay @ 10:39 AM
12 Comments:
I'm inclined to think the former. English classifies a whole host of words as prepositions and gives them a very specific function, but most Chinese languages do away with them entirely (or replace them coverbs). Of course, this doesn't mean that Mandarin speakers can't conceive of prepositions naturally, but a Mandarin speaker with limited knowledge of would have considerable difficulty identifying the functions of all of the words in an English sentence with a prepositional phrase.
This little example makes me think that it'd be awfully strange if all the languages in the world had already enumerated every possible part of speech. But how can we identify a part of speech that we haven't thought of yet? Obviously, we can't, not in the terms that we've used to name things. But in another framework for identifying things, we could conceive of them.
Godel's second incompleteness theorem is making my brain spin in circles right now. I need to sit down.
Well, for that matter, many English speakers would have trouble identifying the functions of all the words in your English sentence.
You do seem clearly right here, given your compelling example of the Chinese speaker learning English grammatical forms. I wonder, though: is it concievable that at some point we WILL have outlined all possible grammatical forms? Because if so (and that seems distinctly possible to me, insofar as I suspect the human brain to be practically constrained in the number and type of linguistic relationships it can comprehend), why should we assume that we haven't already done so?
Ignoring the fact that my first comment contained so many typos that it probably can't be properly understood by anybody, I'll attempt to elaborate along Godelian lines...
Imagine that we have some language X. We want to be able to articulate the sentence, "The grammatical form x is not describable in X."
If we take the statement to be describable in X, then what it says of itself, that it is not describable, can be described. This conclusion cannot be described, though, so the description of the fact that x is not describable in X cannot be described. So we can't know whether we can describe the statement within the language. It seems then, that any language system X, no matter how complete it seems, is doomed to be incomplete because it cannot describe both the statement above and the statement that it is indescribable.
Of course, in some other language Y we might be able to describe x, but we could similarly say that Y is incomplete with the statement that some y cannot be described in Y.
So if we can outline every possible grammatical form, we can't do it all within the same language. I don't know quite how to make the jump from here that we can't describe all forms, but I find it to be a reassuring possibility about not only grammar, but life in general. It's reassuring to me that there's always something to be learned and that systems allow for flexibility.
Donovan,
I think you're not quite right about Godel. What you say is true in a CONSISTENT BUT INCOMPLETE system, like mathematics, but not in an INCONSISTENT BUT (plausibly) COMPLETE system, like natural language.
Consider: In an axiomatic system like mathematics, you cannot say a=b and b=c but a>c. (This is equivalent to saying something like 1=4/4 and 4/4=8^0 but 1>8^0.) We would say, basically, that the "grammar" is wrong; that the rules of numerical manipulation (in this case, transitivity) don't allow for the above. This is one of the great benefits of a mathematical language: if you follow the rules, you can only derive statements that are true (in the system in question). You can posit other systems--make it an axiom that 1=2, for example, or that two parallel lines might eventually intersect (the fundamental basis of non-Euclidean geometry)--but still, following the rules of a consistent system like this will always yield truths. And you are right, Donovan, that such systems will always partake of Godel incompleteness, too.
But language is not a system like this. We can use grammatical rules to say both "the sky is red" and "the sky is never red"--even though the two are mutually exclusive. These sentences conflict and cannot have the same truth-value, but that does not mean that we applied the linguistic rules wrongly in order to make either one of them (as such a statement would mean in mathematics).
All of this is a lengthy way of getting around to saying that I still think it's plausible (not likely) that we've named all the grammatical forms of which the human brain can concieve.
Here, I think, is what you do, Donovan:
1. Say, "I cannot describe grammatical form x in language X." (We'll call this statement itself X*.)
2. Posit that X* is "describable in X" (your words), or (in my words), that it is itself grammatical in X. In other words, X* is an element of X.
3. Conclude that, because X* can be formed in X, X* is true.
This last step is the fundamental flaw here, as I see it. In a mathematical system like those with which Godel worked, MERELY BEING ABLE TO FORM A GRAMMATICAL STATEMENT WAS SUFFICIENT TO PROVE ITS TRUTH. In English--or any other natural language, I am going to say uninformedly--the mere grammaticality of a sentence is insufficient to ensure truth, however. The rules of sentence formation are not wedded to the rules of grammatical consistency. As a result, it is false to say that the statement X*, said in language X, actually makes x undescribable. Basically, X* might just be FALSE. This is precisely what I am positing when I suggest that we may well already know and have categorized all of the grammatical forms of which the human species can comprehend.
This is also the beauty of natural language: it's complete, but not consistent. We can lie left and right, and have good grammar while we do it.
Your rebuttal makes excellent sense to me. I still feel like the idea of incompleteness could further illuminate this question (one way or the other), but you seem to be right that I've misread Godel. I will have to think about this further (admittedly, I find this issue intriguing; I'd never given it any thought before).
You're right that there's a certain beauty in the idea of completeness and inconsistency of natural language. Even playing with vocabulary that doesn't seem to fit together can be fun. I had an English teacher in high school who taught us the somewhat dirty pneumonic, "You can lay out on the beach, but for goodness' sake, I hope you don't get caught."
OK, I am out of my depth with this Godel-stuff. But for what it is worth, here are a couple observations.
First of all, I agree with Skay’s observation that knowing grammar makes language acquisition easier. But I’ll also say you can reverse-engineer grammar. I learnt more about English grammar when learning French and Spanish than I did in high school English classes.
Secondly, I am against the thought that our language, or any language, is complete. If it is complete now it will stagnate later, and become a ‘dead’ language, like Latin. Given that a majority of international business is conducted in English, I would say, English would stagnate to business terms, the way Latin is used for medical and scientific terms. Kind of an interesting thought, really, as is what would replace English in daily usage?
Third, if English is grammatically complete, which I believe is what your and Donovan’s argument is about, then the only way for English to grow is through vocabulary. English is perhaps the most versatile in adapting, including and absorbing words from a different language into itself, with root words derived from Indian, Japanese, Native American, German, Latin, and practically every other language it has ever come across. However, I think if English is limited only to vocabularic growth (being grammatically complete), it is the beginning of that stagnation.
Looking at that last sentence, I believe I just contributed to the store of English words… ‘vocabularic’ is an example of how something could be grammatically correct and yet not quite make sense.
My fourth point I’ll derive from Shakespeare: simply that, Shakespeare wrote English, is still considered one of the masters of the language, and yet his writing is an extinct idiom. Shakespeare’s English is not used on a daily basis. I believe spelling uniformity was introduced around that time, starting the path that lead to today’s language structure. There could come a time when today’s English is similarly archaic. What would cause this fundamental shift? It would have to be something as fundamental as deciding that ‘bridge’ can only be spelt ‘bridge’.
I think English is currently going through just such a dramatic change right now, due in equal parts to technology and laziness. If you spend any time instant messaging or in on-line chatrooms, you’ll know most people don’t use proper grammar, or proper spelling, or even complete sentences. Between the poor spelling and Internet shorthand, this laziness could be the trigger that fires the final salvo on the English language.
Lastly, I like this blog. You write well, you cover such a range of subjects, and you are not afraid to be intellectual, as so many people seem to be these days. “It hurts to think” is the most common excuse I hear; it’s crap, they’re just too lazy to take the time or too afraid to be wrong. So congratulations to you on being neither, and being eloquent to boot.
Thanks, blackcrag! I'm kind of stunned that I seem to have a loyal readership (of, well, two people).
When Donovan and I say that language is "complete" in a Godelian sense, what we mean is strictly technical. We are saying something about the number of possible grammatical statements in natural language, not the number of statements (or grammatical forms) that are actually used.
That said, your post takes us in a new and equally interesting direction. After reading it, I am left asking the question: is English in decline because of the "technological laziness" on view in chatrooms and text messages... or is it all the richer for the slang and shorthand that is emerging through these new media? After all, I'm not sure it is a bad thing that we've introduced phrases such as "OMG" or "BRB" (even if I may say so at times). Maybe this just chronicles the continued evolution of our rich and varied language?
OK, Skay, you are making me think in two directions at once now. I’ll try my best.
So, the first argument: I’m still trying to wrap my head around Godel. I think what you are saying is we, as people, have conceived of every possible grammatical structure, though we may have not used them all. It is... hardwired into our brain? But isn’t that cultural hard wiring?
As you were saying above, a Chinese speaker with limited exposure to English wouldn’t know what to do with a preposition. So, he (or she) can’t conceive of our grammatical structure. Similarly, I haven’t the foggiest idea what constitutes correct Chinese grammar.
Or are you saying between the languages on Earth we have conceived all possible grammatical structures?
On to the second argument: Some slang is accepted into everyday language and enriches it. ‘Cool’ has maintained its original slang meaning for three generations now. Other words fall by the wayside. To draw from Shakespeare’s time again, ‘Cad’ and ‘Varlet’ are no longer used. More recent examples of ex-slang would be ‘Far out’ and “Groovy’ – outside of the Austin Powers movies that is.
With technology developing as it is right now, language is growing exponentially to keep up. This does enrich the language. However, I still don’t think typing OMG is grammatically correct, or particularly enriching. With luck, that shorthand will fall by the wayside, as a generational thing. Or every generation will have it’s own Internet slang as they do spoken slang. I like watching the language develop, but I would prefer it develop elegantly, not lazily.
Now that I'm trying to express my ideas in plain English, I think I'm actually saying something not so very insightful, viz., there is some physical limit on those grammatical forms that people can use (merely because of how the brain is put together), and it is possible that we are already in command of all such possible forms (in our languages combined). That is, surely English alone does not encompass all possible human grammar, but maybe English + Urdu + Chinese + Inuit does.
To switch gears, I suspect that most linguistic development--perhaps like most technological development--is a product of human laziness. Rigor of language keeps things static (which is not inherently bad); laziness allows sounds and morphologies to change and evolve, and allows new words to be coined where a collection of old ones might have sufficed.
That said, "OMG" is not particularly helpful, I grant.
I do suspect that most linguistic change is spoken first, and only later written down. The development of chatroom-only neologisms may be at the forefront of changing this order... but then again, it may just be doomed never to take for precisely this reason.
OK, now that I understand the Godel argument, all I can say is I hope we haven’t conceived of everything. That we have explored all avenues of language in all the various cultures/tongues/idioms that exist… well, I like language too much to think it is limited in any fashion.
As for linguistic development, I don’t think all of it comes from laziness. Many of the expressions that exist today are drawn from literary sources, such as (no, I won’t say his name yet again, but yes, him) John Donne, Alexander Pope, and contemporary writers like Jack Kerouac and Stephen King contribute to the language we use today. And, from my own experience and that of several friends, creative writing is never lazy.
Increasingly today, television and movies contribute to the daily usage, where authors did before. Think of any one liner from an Austin Powers movie, or a Jim Carrey or an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie—or the sappiest line ever… “You had me from hello” (Thank-you Renee and Jerry Maguire).
“Groovy, baby!”, “Smokin’!” or “I’ll be back” lack the inherent wisdom of an “Ask not for whom the bell tolls”, or the wit of “Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think” but they are part of the common experience and therefore form the language links that bond us together.
One of the most interesting idioms, I think is the hip-hop/rap talk. (No, I don’t rap, nor am I ever going to try. From me it would just be wrong.) I could do with out the constant swearing, but the constant imagery used in the lingo is fascinating. Everything is referenced to something else in the ultimate pop culture lexicon, i.e. “Gonna bite you like Cujo.” The grammar leaves something to be desired, but the meaning is vivid. Vividness is at the heart of all language. Vividness is what makes deathless prose. Boring language, on the other hand, is just prosaic death.
As for your thoughts of chatroom neologisms… I can only hope they don’t take, or not only will we be speaking in anagrams but we will also have to tilt our heads to one side to laugh or smile. That thought also depresses me.
Hmm. What you say about rap is convincing. I no longer think that the vast majority of linguistic change is born of laziness.
We don't have much of a literary culture anymore; children (and adults) rarely memorize poetry, for example. But you're right that this doesn't mean there aren't people working hard to coin new words and phrases--with great success sometimes, too. I do think the newspapers (and TV news? I don't watch) should get a disproportional amount of the credit here. And, frankly, Harry Potter deserves more credit than I'd like to give it (though I enjoy the books); everybody knows what a "muggle" is, and I've recently encountered the word "muggle-headed" as well.
blackcrag: 1
skay: 0
Tangentially: I had a professor in college who suggested that Texas was the only place where it was still acceptible to talk in similes, while rap and country music provided the other popular fora for the device. I think there may be some truth in that.
Bad boy, missing your Greek lessons! No baklava for you! (I know, the ancient Greeks probably didn't have baklava... or *did* they??)
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