Transcript Document
Towards a useful theory of
language
Richard Hudson
SOAS
March 2008
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Fun with Beja grammar
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u-ja:s-u:-k
win-u
the-dog-Nom-your big-is
o-ja:s-o:-k
rih-an
the-dog-Acc-your I-saw
o-ja:s-i-u:-k
niwa
the-dog-’s-Nom-your tail
win-u
big-is
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Truth
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I was discovering the hidden truths of Beja.
Not because they were useful,
But because the process was fun,
And I wanted a PhD.
But I needed a theory.
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London linguistics in 1963
• Little support for USA Structuralism
• Phonetics
– SOAS: Firth’s prosodic analysis
– UCL: the Joneme
• Grammar
– SOAS: nothing
– UCL: a choice by courtesy of Randolph Quirk.
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A choice between …
Noam Chomsky, via
David Reibel
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… and …
Michael
Halliday
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Language for its own sake in 1963
• Main criterion: elegant analyses
– Chomsky: aux-inversion
– Halliday: Boolean choice networks
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Not about meaning.
Not about psychology and the mind.
Not about culture and social choice.
Not about usefulness.
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But some people ask...
• What is the point of linguistics?
• Should public money fund private fun?
• Is linguistics useful?
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Is linguistics useful?
“You're a human being, and your time as a human
being should be socially useful. It doesn't mean
that your choices about helping other people have
to be within the context of your professional
training as a linguist. Maybe that training just
doesn't help you to be useful to other people. In
fact, it doesn't.”
(Chomsky, 1991)
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Another answer.
“I was interested in what other people wanted
to know about language, whether scholars
in other fields or those with practical
problems to be faced and solved – including
…. teachers.”
(Halliday, 2002)
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A precedent: Babylonia, 2000 BC
Akkadian
Babylon
Sumerian
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Becoming literate in Babylon
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Verb conjugations
(Sumerian and Akkadian)
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(in that order!)
We – you – they
Sumerian
Akkadian
English
menden-eše
ni:nu-mi
we
menzen-eše
attunu-mi
you
emene-eše
šunu-mi
they
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So what?
What is linguistics for?
Yes!
• Truth?
• Utility? Yes!
• Do these conflict? No!
• But what if the truth is too complicated
to be applied?
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Two application interfaces
Linguistics
Applied linguistics
Practical
projects
Linguistic
theory
Descriptive linguistics
Linguistic
description
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Popularity
• Utility requires uptake by people.
• Applied linguistics: Can practitioners use it?
• Descriptive linguistics: Does it help writers
of grammars and dictionaries?
• Uptake depends on
– truth (supported by evidence)
– users’ minds.
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How simple is language?
• One answer:
– Very simple
– But it looks very complicated.
– Chomsky
• Another answer:
– Very complicated
– But it looks simple.
– Cognitive linguistics
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Usage-based learning
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We learn language.
We remember individual utterances.
We relate new utterances to old ones.
We strengthen links by experience.
We induce generalisations from stored
exemplars.
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So what?
• “Knowledge of language is knowledge.”
(Goldberg 1995)
• It includes a vast amount of detail
• and generalisations
• and frequency/recency effects
• and finely classified relations.
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Word Grammar
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In short, I-language is a network.
A cognitive network
Like ‘I-society’.
It includes numerous individual exemplars
plus induced generalisations
plus finely classified relations
plus activation levels.
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Evidence for networks
• Spreading activation
• Spilled activation causes:
– Speech errors, e.g. orgasm for organism
– Priming effects, e.g. doctor primes nurse.
• Spreading activation affects the whole of
language, not just ‘the lexicon’.
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Errors at all levels
Errors involve neighbours in:
• Phonology: orgasms (organisms)
• Morphology: slicely thinned (thinly sliced)
• Syntax: I’m making the kettle on
– For: making some tea + putting the kettle on
• Meaning: crosswords (jigsaws)
• The environment: (Addressee is sitting at a
computer.) You haven’t got a computer
(screwdriver) have you?
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Priming at all levels
Words prime network neighbours in:
• Phonology: verse primes nurse (but only
briefly)
• Morphology: hedges primes hedge for
longer than pledge does.
• Syntax: Vlad brought a book to Boris
primes other V + DO + PP sentences
• Semantics: doctor primes nurse
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So …
• It’s networks all the way down.
• Every element of language is intimately
connected with elements at other levels.
• The language network is formally the same
as the general cognitive network:
• This is the main claim of Word Grammar.
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Networks in Beja
acc
Def:acc
DOG
DOG:acc
Your
Poss:nom
{i}
{o}
{ja:s}
{i}
u: - k}
{o:
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So what?
• Suppose Word Grammar is true.
• How could a descriptive linguist use it?
– How do you write a network dictionary?
– And what about a network grammar?
• And how about an applied linguist?
– E.g. How do you design an L1 literacy
programme to teach a network?
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Books
• All our current practice is rooted in books:
– Grammars structured in modular chapters.
– Dictionaries structured in lemmas.
• Maybe that’s why theories with the same
structure are so popular.
• But what if language isn’t like a book?
• Suppose it’s like the rail network …
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Pictures
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Databases
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Bank accounts
Train times
So why not languages?
2nd millennium BC: word lists on clay
tablets
• 2nd millennium AD: books
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Linguistics in the
rd
3
millennium
• One super-database per language
– or per speaker - cf genome
• Many different user interfaces:
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For changing the database.
For retrieving items and their properties.
For planning teaching programmes.
For automatic analysis of texts.
Etc.
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How?
1. Build a computer system with the right
data structures.
2. Build very user-friendly input systems.
3. Let the experts enter their own data.
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cf Wikipedia
especially: Wiktionary (14 languages)
4. Build very user-friendly interfaces.
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Conclusion
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Investigating language is fun.
We should aim for both truth and utility.
But even a true theory is useless if it’s not usable.
Language is actually a complex network.
So a true theory needs a database in order to be
usable.
• Meanwhile we’ll have to muddle through as best
we can.
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Thank you
This show can be downloaded from:
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/talks.htm#soas
For more on Word Grammar:
…/dick/wg.htm
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