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Parker$B!*(BIan Pa

Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
[snip]

Sorry, you are quite right. However the point I want to put forward is
that what we should really be looking at is the mathematical content
of the task, not anything else.

What I think has emerged is that AI should be viewed as doing
different things from a human, not simply doing human tasks.

But here you have overlooked just my very point. I said that in my
hypothetical case (it is assumed that) there is "no" morphological
information. In fact, in Chinese there is nothing corresponding
to prefixes and suffixes of e.g. many European languages, if one
considers each Chinese ideogram as a unit. Anyway, since I want to
discuss the capability of a "purely" statistical method, one can also
assume that any available informations from prefixes and suffixes
are ignored (not exploited). Now, once again the question: Without
the help of informations from Morphology, could math determine the
parts of speech of an unknown language? (I guess the answer is no.)

M. K. Shen

I agree, Mandarin generally does *not* have the prefixes/suffixes of
European languages or English.

But on the other hand:

1 - Mandarin does have some suffixes e.g. -le for past tense, and -de
for possessive (wode gangbi = my pen, nide gangbi = your pen, zhe shi
wode = this is mine, wo = I/me, wode = my/mine, ni = you, nide = yours,
etc)

2 - Mandarin depends on word order, generally subject verb object, e.g.
wo yao tang = I want soup, *not* tang yao wo = soup wants me (artificial
example). Quite different to Japanese where tag words (-wa, -no)
indicate subject and object, and word order is secondary. e.g Watashi-wa
Hira-no ani desu (I am Hira's brother) or Hira-no watashi-wa ani desu
(Hira's brother I am).

This is oversimplifying, but in Mandarin the word order is often similar
to English SVO, with suffixes for possessive and past tense, whereas in
Japanese word order is very flexible, with suffixes (or tagwords)
indicating the subject & object.

Brian Martin wrote:

I agree, Mandarin generally does *not* have the prefixes/suffixes of
European languages or English.

But on the other hand:

1 - Mandarin does have some suffixes e.g. -le for past tense, and -de
for possessive (wode gangbi = my pen, nide gangbi = your pen, zhe shi
wode = this is mine, wo = I/me, wode = my/mine, ni = you, nide = yours,
etc)

Since the "de" is itself an ideogram, wouldn't it be hard to find out
its grammatical function, suppose one doesn't know the language at all?

2 - Mandarin depends on word order, generally subject verb object, e.g.
wo yao tang = I want soup, *not* tang yao wo = soup wants me (artificial
 example). Quite different to Japanese where tag words (-wa, -no)
indicate subject and object, and word order is secondary. e.g Watashi-wa
 Hira-no ani desu (I am Hira's brother) or Hira-no watashi-wa ani desu
(Hira's brother I am).

This is oversimplifying, but in Mandarin the word order is often similar
to English SVO, with suffixes for possessive and past tense, whereas in
Japanese word order is very flexible, with suffixes (or tagwords)
indicating the subject & object.

I don't have any knowledge of Japanese. I remember to have read
sometime somewhere that it is SOV. Could that be right?

Doesn't this imply that people of different native languages "think"
differently?

M. K. Shen

That's the Whorf hypothesis, and it's been taken up mostly by literary
critics, who've found it congenial to their observations about style.
Psychologists however have not been able to find a definitive answer to
this question. It may be an unanswerable.

Literary critics also point out that writers differ in their "sensorium"
-- a writer's style (choice of worss, imagery) suggests which sense
dominate in his or her experience. Read Helen Keller, for example. She
was deaf and mute. You'll find that aprt from conventional cliches she
does not use visual imagery.

Bi-/multi-lingual people (I'm one) claim that speaking/thinking in
different languages "feels different." That's my experience, too, but
it's very difficult to explain -- because presumably a thought
expressible in A can't, by definition, be expressed in B.... ;-)

There are in fact 2 questions here. Do people speaking different

On 23 May, 13:54, Wolf K <weki... at (no spam) sympatico.ca> wrote:

Doesn't this imply that people of different native languages "think"
differently?
M. K. Shen
That's the Whorf hypothesis, and it's been taken up mostly by literary
critics, who've found it congenial to their observations about style.
Psychologists however have not been able to find a definitive answer to
this question. It may be an unanswerable.

Literary critics also point out that writers differ in their "sensorium"
-- a writer's style (choice of worss, imagery) suggests which sense
dominate in his or her experience. Read Helen Keller, for example. She
was deaf and mute. You'll find that aprt from conventional cliches she
does not use visual imagery.

Bi-/multi-lingual people (I'm one) claim that speaking/thinking in
different languages "feels different." That's my experience, too, but
it's very difficult to explain -- because presumably a thought
expressible in A can't, by definition, be expressed in B.... ;-)

There are in fact 2 questions here. Do people speaking different
languages brought up in the same (in broad terms) culture think
differently? I think the answer seems to be "no". There is another
question "Do languages reflect culture?" The answer to that question
must be "yes". The Bushmen of the Kalahari have a language based on
clicks. This suits their environment, they are hunter/gatherers and
their language reflects the "fittest" hunting language. There is a
question of "survival of the fittest in terms of the evolution of a
language.

BTW - If you look in Kaye and Laby you will find that high pitched
sounds are attenuated more rapidly. For a person living in a
"civilised" environment, this does not matter, although for a hunter
it is of the utmost importance.


- Ian Parker

There are in fact 2 questions here. Do people speaking different
languages brought up in the same (in broad terms) culture think
differently? I think the answer seems to be "no".

There is another
question "Do languages reflect culture?" The answer to that question
must be "yes". The Bushmen of the Kalahari have a language based on
clicks. This suits their environment, they are hunter/gatherers and
their language reflects the "fittest" hunting language. There is a
question of "survival of the fittest in terms of the evolution of a
language.

BTW - If you look in Kaye and Laby

you will find that high pitched
sounds are attenuated more rapidly. For a person living in a
"civilised" environment, this does not matter, although for a hunter
it is of the utmost importance.

In fact millions of people do. The trick is grow up bi-/multi-lingual.
OTOH, people who have learned their second language relatively late in
life apparently use a different part of the brain when speaking the
second language than when speaking the first one. (Sorry, reference lost).

This depends on when you learn your second language. If you learn it

On 24 May, 01:24, Wolf K <weki... at (no spam) sympatico.ca> wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:

[...]

There are in fact 2 questions here. Do people speaking different
languages brought up in the same (in broad terms) culture think
differently? I think the answer seems to be "no".
English was out family language, and German out public language. So you
might say that we were raised bi-lingual in "the same culture". But
English and German still "feel different."

There is nothing in English that cannot be expressed in German and
vice versa.

On 24 May, 01:39, Wolf K <weki... at (no spam) sympatico.ca> wrote:
In fact millions of people do. The trick is grow up bi-/multi-lingual.
OTOH, people who have learned their second language relatively late in
life apparently use a different part of the brain when speaking the
second language than when speaking the first one. (Sorry, reference lost).

This depends on when you learn your second language.{...]

Wolf K wrote:

[snip]

Bi-/multi-lingual people (I'm one) claim that speaking/thinking in
different languages "feels different." That's my experience, too, but
it's very difficult to explain -- because presumably a thought
expressible in A can't, by definition, be expressed in B.... ;-)

The tense system in English is quite elaborate in comparison with
some other languages. If I don't err, both present and present
continuous in English have to be translated to present in Russian.
A Russian certainly could in some sort of roundabout way express the
exact equivalent of present continuous in English. But, since he
in daily life doesn't do that, he thinks normally differently than
an Englishman. Could one argue like that to support the Whorf
hypothesis?

Thanks.

M. K. Shen

Bi-/multi-lingual people (I'm one) claim that speaking/thinking in
different languages "feels different." That's my experience, too, but
it's very difficult to explain -- because presumably a thought
expressible in A can't, by definition, be expressed in B....