Language and Linguistics

No study of human nature and behavior would be complete without looking into language. Below you will find only the briefest of introductions. But there are some good links.

What is Language?

Language is a term with quite a few definitions. One is: a system of communication using devices such as signals, gestures, sounds, and symbols. Start your study of language at Wikipedia.

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Start your study of linguistics at Wikipedia.

Linguistics and The Brain

How does language relate to human behavior. How did it evolve? What can linguistics tell us about these things? Some thoughts:

Video Highlights:

More videos by Steven Pinker:

Areas of Study

There are quite a few. A small sampling (with general, not technical, definitions):

There is a great deal of overlap between the work of computer scientists, psychologists, etc. on processing language (interpreting, generating, translating, etc.)

Syntax

A grammar defines rules that structure collections of words in such a way that some word sequences are legal and some are not. Here is a grammar for a subset of English (the "|" means "or," the "*" means "zero-or-more," and the "?" means "zero-or-one."):

    S      →  NP VP
    NP     →  (PN | DET ADJ* NOUN) (RP VP)?
    VP     →  IV | TV NP | DV NP PP | SV S
    PP     →  PREP NP
    PN     →  grace | donald | alan | she
    DET    →  a | the | his | her
    NOUN   →  doctor | dog | rat | girl | toy
    RP     →  who | that
    ADJ    →  blue | heavy | fast | new
    PREP   →  to | above | around | through
    IV     →  fell | jumped | swam
    TV     →  liked | knew | hit | missed
    DV     →  gave | threw | handed
    SV     →  dreamed | believed | thought | knew

In syntax diagrams, also known as recursive transition networks (RTNs):

english.png

Here sentences contain verb phrases which contain sentences. Noun phrases contain verb phrases which contain verb phrases. Because of recursion we can make sentences of arbitrary length. Here's a simple example:

    S
    NP VP
    DET NOUN RP VP VP
    the NOUN RP VP VP
    the dog RP VP VP
    the dog that VP VP
    the dog that SV S VP
    the dog that thought S VP
    the dog that thought NP VP VP
    the dog that thought PN VP VP
    the dog that thought grace VP VP
    the dog that thought grace TV NP VP
    the dog that thought grace hit NP VP
    the dog that thought grace hit PN VP
    the dog that thought grace hit alan VP
    the dog that thought grace hit alan DV NP PP
    the dog that thought grace hit alan threw NP PP
    .
    .
    .
    the dog that thought grace hit alan threw the new blue toy to the fast rat
Exercise: Draw the parse tree for this derivation.

Here's a construction that makes clear that you really can go on as long as you like:

    S
    NP VP
    NP SV S
    NP SV NP VP
    NP SV NP SV S
    NP SV NP SV NP VP
    NP SV NP SV NP SV S
    .
    .
    .
    she dreamed she dreamed she dreamed she dreamed . . . she dreamed the dog swam

Note how sentences can be grammatically (syntactically) correct, but semantically incorrect; the classic example is “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

The same thing happens in programming languages:

def (**^% bf
    > $ 89 = 4 === 2@end
    hf9r
!))))(

is syntactic nonsense because it does not follow the rules of the Python grammar, whereas:

x = 3
message = "Hello"
print(x / message)

does follow the grammar rules, but fails to run because of a semantic error, namely you cannot divide a number by a piece of text.

Semantics

Semantics refers to how the meanings of phrases and sentences are computed, generally without regard to context. The meaning of sentences or passages or narratives can be computed from a mental lexicon of words (or in programming language semantics, something similar), and rules that tell you how to assign meanings to the structures defined by the syntax from the meanings of their substructures.

One source of humor arises from ambiguity, namely, a phrase or sentence can have multiple meanings. Often this is due to a sequence of words having multiple parsings (so the ambiguity arises at the syntactic level) and sometimes some words just have multiple meanings giving rise to ambiguity even for a fixed parsing. Examples (I did not make these up):

Exercise: Which of the above phrases had ambiguities arising from syntax and which from semantics (e.g., multiple word meanings)?

Pragmatics

Pragmatics refers to the way language is used to convey meaning and does consider context, innuendo, subtext, shared situational knowledge, etc.

Classic examples (several taken from Steve Pinker talks):

Idioms

Idioms are (short) word groupings or phrases that have a non-literal, figurative meaning. Lists of idioms are all over the web; for example:

Slang

A dictionary definition:

a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.

Where can you learn some slang?

Exercise: What do these very old slang terms mean? DBA, IIRC, SNH, PDBAZ, WERD, LML, LMGTFY, LMK, 5, ^_^, \O/, (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Exercise: Make a list of more modern terms.
Exercise: Learn the programming language (dialect?) Glowup Vibes.

Language and Thought

Does language shape thought? If not, why not? If so, what are the mechanisms?

This is the question of linguistic relativity, and the statement that language does shape the world view of its speakers is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. You can start at Wikipedia for some background, or straight to this Edge article Encapsulated Universes by Lera Boroditsky.

Exercise: List the examples used by Boroditsky in her Edge piece. Do you find them convincing? Why or why not?

Kubishi

Take a tour of Kubishi, a dictionary and encyclopedia for Owens Valley Paiute Language and Culture. The language is classified as critically endangered. You can learn a bit about sentence structure with this LLM-powered sentence builder/translator.

Summary

We’ve covered:

  • Basic definitions
  • Language and the brain
  • Areas of study within Linguistics
  • Language and Thought
  • Language and Computation