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.
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Start your study of linguistics at Wikipedia.
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:
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.)
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):
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
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 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):
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 are (short) word groupings or phrases that have a non-literal, figurative meaning. Lists of idioms are all over the web; for example:
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?
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.
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.
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