Talk:Language (general)

Article Checklist for "Language (general)"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Pat Palmer 14:48, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

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preserving commented-out link to an image, removed from main page

This link: [ [Image:Caslonsample.jpg|thumb|A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 [ [Cyclopaedia]].] ] has been removed from the main page, where it was commented out. It was causing an extra skipped line. I'll leave it here awhile in case someone wants to do something about it.Pat Palmer 11:25, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

And, here's another one for preservation: [ [Image:Surfacegyri.jpg|thumb|Some of the areas of the brain involved in language processing: [ [Broca's area]], [ [Wernicke's area]], [ [Supramarginal gyrus]], [ [Angular gyrus]], [ [Primary Auditory Cortex]]] ]Pat Palmer 14:01, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

I've begin editing this page, and so I've revised its status up to 3.Pat Palmer 11:49, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

note to myself: move some of the language vs dialect stuff to dialect continuum

Making a note to myself; I have to quit now but hope to return shortly and finish cleanup of this page.Pat Palmer 14:15, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

saving reference here temporarily

• Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
• McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. Principles of Neural Science, fourth edition, 1173 pages. McGraw-Hill, New York (2000). ISBN 0-8385-7701-6

The above are not correctly linked to anything on the article but were explicitly typed in to the References area.Pat Palmer 14:37, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

working on a complete rewrite

After playing with this article for a bit, I think it deserves a complete overhaul. The original material coming from Wikipedia made, in my opinion, very simplistic assumptions about the basic definition of language that I would like to handle differently. Also, most sections are worth keeping but need, I think, a quite different structure. Sections about natural language versus animal language versus constructed language versus mathematical and programming language need to be more clearly separated, I think. It's going to be a big job (sigh).Pat Palmer 15:04, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

needed changes to Animal language

There has been a successful project that trained a parrot (I think it was an African grey) to speak a limited vocabulary and limited number of concepts, including reasonably correct English grammar and comprehension. The bird could ask for one of several types of food and could explain to its trainers where the food was stored. It could distinguish and described different colors and geometrical shapes. It was trained by people who gave it praise when it used language "correctly" and ignored it when the words it spoke were not correct. By diligent and consistent feedback, the bird was able to learn. This project changed the prevailing thinking about animals and language. The bird went much farther towards learning English, I think, than any of the comparable chimp projects, including the one where chimps learned a limited sign language (and then astounded researchers by teaching it to other chimps).

Research aside, many pet owners will informally attest that their pets understand a variety or words and, without being able to speak, can communicate certain concepts to their human friends. The current writeup does not do this justice.Pat Palmer 22:00, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

I would strongly advise against any significant emphasis on the alleged abilities of certain animals to use language. The case you are referring to about the African grey (see the BBC here) was widely misinterpreted by the media. Furthermore, a visit to the project's website reveals that their research focus is actually... parrot telepathy. Also, I would not include the opinions of animal-lovers as a substitute for actual research showing linguistic abilities in other species (or rather, lack of it). Finally, the research exemplifying the contrary view has not been subjected to proper peer review, because the most famous researchers, such as Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, have not sufficiently co-operated with others (see Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct for more on this; and there is a reasonably fair piece of journalism covering both sides here). John Stephenson 20:56, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

John, I once saw an hour-long documentary about this project. It is not to be discounted. The bird learned grammar and had a sizable lexicon and used its words completely consistently. I am not "press"; I have enough training in linguistics to know that project is important. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the gray parrot project was somehow of inferior quality; I really can't agree. I didn't see any kind of religious zeal in the documentary or the results it exhibited.Pat Palmer 19:05, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

The reasons I don't want much attention paid to this are like this. The parrot is a single case and a single animal, with all its supposed abilities filtered through its owner, expanding and adding to what the parrot can supposedly do. So we're told, and because we want to believe it, automatically accept, that the parrot has a 950-word vocabulary and can meaningfully communicate. How do we know? Well, her owner and the media say so, so it must be true. This is what has led Wikipedia to make a hash of their page on the parrot; as the logs show, notes of caution regarding these findings have been edited out by those determined to push the 'parrot-can-talk' angle.

Whether you accept this parrot as endowed with a linguistic faculty or not probably depends as well on how you define language. Is it naming or appearing to name things in the immediate vicinity after years of training, or is it a referential system capable of expressing spontaneous thoughts about the abstract as well as the concrete? There are some more blogged articles by linguistics professors Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman criticising the whole 'animal language' deal with specific reference to the African grey case here and here.

Despite reports like 'Parrot's oratory stuns scientists' (by BBC environment and former religious affairs correspondent Alex Kirby), there are no linguists or peer-reviewed research quoted there (or even media organisations, though they have quoted a few welfare groups, primatologist Jane Goodall and a veterinary scientist, all of whom seem to have accepted the BBC's interpretation at face value). In other words, no proper linguistic scientists. I don't think Citizendium is in the business of pushing the views of the media and others well outside the relevant fields.

There is also an interesting sceptical review here (with another about a documentary featuring the parrot here) about the parrot's linguistic performance (and its alleged supernatural telepathic ability - a point which even the BBC removed from its original article), which cover some serious objections. The first review also asks you to listen to an audio clip without reading the transcript in advance - can you follow the conversation without being told what to listen for? Is its owner really having a conversation with the bird, or are things being read into the situation?

I think it's a bit much to devote serious time to this - after all, if the parrot's owner has shown that there is no fundamental linguistic difference between parrots and humans, and overturned centuries of rational, empirical and sceptical thought in the process, why isn't she a multi-billionaire, with monuments raised in celebration and her name in lights? John Stephenson 22:26, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

I intended a completely DIFFERENT set of parrot studies

OK, I wondered if we're talking about apples and oranges (above). Dr. Pepperberg is not a linguist, but her research has generated huge interest in cognitive science, and I really don't see anything about "telepathy" in this project. I think it has enormous implications for linguistics. Please see the following information. It has NOTHING to do with all that stuff you're talking about up there. It is this bird (Alex) below that I have seen film of, and I don't think it is a hoax or is in any way discredited. Amazing how much passion has gone into this discussion before I found out we were talking about totally differint things:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/

Lessons from Cognitive Ethology: Animal Models
for Ethological Computing
Irene M. Pepperberg
The MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA, impepper@media.mit.edu

Excerpt:
Our oldest subject, Alex, labels over 50
exemplars, 7 colors, 5 shapes, quantity to 6, 3 categories
(material, color, shape), and uses “no”, “come here”, “wanna
go X” and “want Y” (X, Y are appropriate location or item
labels). He combines labels to identify, classify, request, or
refuse ~100 items and alter his environment. He processes
queries about concepts of category, relative size, quantity,
presence or absence of similarity/difference in attributes, and
shows label comprehension; he semantically separates
labeling from requesting. He processes conjunctive, recursive
queries to tell us the material or of one object, among seven,
that has a particular color and shape, or the number of, for
example, green blocks from a collection of green and blue
blocks and balls. He understands hierarchical categories, that
is, that specific attributes that are labeled “red”, “green”, etc.
are subsumed under a category labeled “color”, whereas
attributes of “3-corner” and “4-corner” are subsumed under a
category labeled “shape”; if shown a novel item and told that
its “color” is “taupe”, he understands how a second novel
object of that hue is to be categorized. He also forms new
categories readily. He transferred his knowledge of absence
of similarity and difference to respond correctly, without
training, the first time he was given two objects of equal size
and asked to label the one that was bigger (Pepperberg &
Brezinsky, 1991). He thus exhibits capacities once presumed
limited to humans or apes (Premack, 1978, 1983). He is not
unique: Other Greys replicate some of his results
(Pepperberg, 1999). The important questions then are: (1)
How does a creature with a walnut-sized brain that is
organized completely differently from that of mammals (e.g.,
Jarvis & Mello, 2000; Streidter, 1994) learn these elements of
human language? and (2) How does he solve complex
cognitive tasks that require generalization and concept
formation?

Yes, 'Alex' is a different parrot, trained by Dr Irine Pepperberg at her privately-funded 'Alex Foundation' - which admits it's not getting too far with Alex's successors due to lack of money. As far as I know, there's been no peer-reviewed research in linguistics relating to Alex's communicative abilities, though Dr Pepperberg has been the recipient of a small grant to research "UV reflectance in parrot feathers for sexing" (see her CV). She also freely admits she's been firmly turned down for funding, which is why the work on Alex is paid for by donors to the Alex Foundation.

I am also yet to see an actual linguist comment favourably on any of this - Dr Pepperberg's PhD is in theoretical chemistry, and other quotes I've seen come from various people outside the field - e.g. professor of behavioural ecology Alex Kacelnik has spoken publically about this.

A final point is that if you read Pepperberg's own opening words in that edge.org article, she doesn't strongly attach 'language' to parrots, but argues that they have some sort of systematic form of communication which can be developed through training. i.e., no natural language, no language in any real sense. That skeptical review I mentioned before also suggests that she's reading too much into the parrot's behaviour, though of course that review isn't peer-approved either. For these reasons, it's debatable how submissable this work is to our Language article, even if we take it at face value.

I don't really have a problem with mentioning alleged examples of 'animal language', particularly in the context of defining what language is - if we use the everyday definition assumed by the media, then most species have language. (See a new BBC article covering lots of cases without questioning the claims.) I just don't want us to promote a series of highly dubious claims that are yet to find any mainstream support. John Stephenson 04:53, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks John, we are actually pretty much in agreement. While I'm not an "actual linguist", I do have several years of training towards to Ph D in linguistics (Germanic) which I did not complete, and seeing Alex talk did change my perceptions of the cognitive capabilities of this species (grey parrot). This was a helpful discussion. I haven't had time to come back to this article in a while. Would you care to work on it yourself?Pat Palmer 09:39, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

opening paragraph

I made a revision of the opening sentence or two; my hope is that we can keep the metalanguage (the language about language) simple, given that the topic is not at all simple. So I removed "in very broad terms" because the rest of the paragraphs brings up the idea that defining language is bound to be controversial in and of itself. I simplified the very first sentence; it's what lures the reader in. I want the first paragraph to make people want to keep reading, and details can come later in the article. Just wanted to explain why I tampered with some recent edits. You can trump me if you feel strongly, and I won't be offended.Pat Palmer 23:59, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

can we absorb the "See Also" section?

I would prefer it if we dissolve (get rid of) the "See ALso" section. The way I tend to do this is make sure that each phrase in "See also" gets used somewhere in the article, and provide a link to that topic right within the article. It makes the outline of the article cleaner. I basically think that anything worth being in a "See also" is just worth mentioning somewhere in the article. My impression is, that's a holdover from the Wikipedia style, and people did it there because they were in a hurry and it is the quickest way to make a note of a concept without really bothering to discuss how it fits. Can we absorb those terms, or delete them?Pat Palmer 00:05, 9 May 2007 (CDT)