Balafon

Memori vortojn kaj gramatikajn leĝojn estas la plej malgranda parto da lingva lernado.

Estas ĉiam multaj manieroj esprimi tiun, kiun oni volas diri. Sed kutime estas plej populara vojo paroli, kies uzo distingas inter flua kaj malflua uzantaj.

Do kial neniam ajn rekomendiĝis la Fundamenta Krestomatio al mi? Estas granda ekzemplaro de stilo kaj kutimoj de Esperanta uzado.

Ĝies stilo estas kompreneble klasika, sed ĝi estas solida bazo sur kio kreskigi onies esperantan sperton.

In the copious free time I’ve had since my daughter was born a year ago (hi Emily!), I have been reading Sydney Lamb‘s work on what he calls Neurocognitive Linguistics. He started out in the 60′s with a relational network model of language that was quite different from the highly symbolic models others were using. Mostly ignored since then, the model turns out to reflect to a surprisingly high degree what the brain actually does when it processes language. It is starting to see a resurgence, particularly in the field of computational linguistics.

I have written the beginnings of a program to experiment with the model. The Neurocognitive Linguistics Lab allows you to graphically create relational networks and then simulate them in time to see how the neural activation and inhibition travels through the network. It has a handy data collection feature that allows you to save the data from your simulations in CSV format for further analysis.

Source and binaries are available at the project website, under the terms of the BSD License.

The program is written in C++ using the cross-platform Qt framework. It has a convenient plugin system for implementing new kinds of network entities. It simulates the neural net by means of an asynchronous automata network, which uses Qt’s parallel processing facilities to automatically make use of multiple cores.

Ĵus aperis ĉe la New York Times artikolo pri konstruataj lingvoj enhave multajn demandon de legintoj, kiujn alrespondis Arika Okrent, aŭtoro de la mirinda In the Land of Invented Languages, kaj Paul Frommer, verkisto de la lingvo Na’vi por la filmo Avatar.

Verŝajne kreskas granda grupo studante la Na’vi post la ekapero de la filmo. Ekzistas pluraj retejoj, kie oni povas ĝin eklerni.

Tute krome, kial mi ofte ricevas ruslingvajn spamajn komentojn ĉi tie?

I’ve seen a few posts lately regarding the “problem” of deponency and/or the middle voice in ancient Greek. One blogger even suggests that we use a different word than “middle”, which is a dumb idea, because “middle voice” is a term of art, with a specific meaning that has only a tenuous relationship to the ordinary use of the word.

To a linguist, this is all very bemusing. Trying to build elaborate models and explanations to help English speakers wrap their minds around the idea that ancient Greek speakers used middle or passive constructions in contexts where English would use the active is just pandering to Anglo-centrism — all the models are attempting to explain Greek in terms of the writers’ English-language categories.

Look, folks, news-flash: ancient Greek is NOT English! The categories of ancient Greek are not those of English, and the ancient Greeks’ reasons for using a particular voice in a particular situation may simply be quite different from those of modern-day English-speakers.

And they may indeed have not had reasons! Far more of language is made up of arbitrary convention than most scholars of language would like to admit. A search for “reasons” (or “deep structure”, cough cough) is often at best an exercise in historical linguistics.

It might have been better had Greek been further grammatically from English — it’s hard to shoehorn an ergative-absolutive system, for example, into English-speakers’ conceptual framework — they just have to learn it on its own terms.

So in teaching ancient Greek it’s not a cop-out to say “that’s just how they did it”. The idea of “deponency” is actually a barrier to thinking in ancient Greek, because it tries to keep the learner using English concepts, instead of forming Greek concepts! I think sometimes language pedagogy goes overboard in trying to teach systems of rules. Languages are in general messy, and the most useful and interesting parts of language are often exceptions to the rules.

I’m brushing up on my Attic Greek right now by going through Reading Greek, which I cannot recommend highly enough, but for my own amusement, I’m not bothering with making sure I’ve got all the paradigms, or even memorizing new vocabulary. Of course, I did have the advantage of memorizing lots of paradigms back in school days, but I’m surprised at how much structure and vocab I’ve been picking up simply inductively. It helps that the texts are interesting, colourful and thus memorable.

Came across some fascinating stuff today in the area of cognitive science.

The first bit is a mention of Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, in which he puts forward a trenchant argument against dualism: if the soul is to affect the body (i.e. when “I” want to move a part of my body), then it must apply energy to the neurons to change their state. Where does the energy come from? We could put a person in a calorimeter and verify that the energy of heat that they put out is no greater than the energy of the food they consume. A corollary I immediately thought of is: why does thinking (or praying, for that matter) consume a measurable amount of glucose from the blood? Why should a “soulish” activity consume matter?

I have long maintained that whatever is meant by the Biblical terms (e.g. psyche) translated “soul”, it cannot consist of matter or energy, but must consist of information. Dennett’s thought experiment is further support for this view.

The second fascinating item is an Edge talk by Stanislas Dehaene. His research on cognition and consciousness has progressed to the point where it is possible to determine from a real-time brain scan if and at which moment a person becomes consciously aware of a stimulus.

I’ve recently been reading Sydney Lamb’s work in neurocognitive linguistics; Dehaene’s work seems to tie in nicely.

I shall be interested to read his papers on the cognition of number and compare with Dan Everett‘s work with the Pirahã, whom he claims do not use numbers.