Christopher, On 12/2/08, Christopher Carr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Long time lurker here. > > If I understand you, Steve, your are saying (among other things) that > English is less polysemous and pragmatically less complicated than, say, > Russian.
Certainly not. I am saying that with enough words, long and complex sentences, etc., that you can more accurately convey more things than in Russian. That comes with a LOT of semantic ambiguity, multiple levels of overloading, etc. Everyone has been concentrating on disambiguation, which is a challenge, but even with perfect disambiguation there are STILL some severe limits to all languages. Is English your L1? Yes. Do you speak Russian? 2 years in HS + 2 quarters in college. Enough for greetings and to find the men's room, but not much more, though I do have a good Moscow accent. However, that IS enough to get more attention from Russian speakers than other conference attendees receive. If English is indeed your first language, it is perhaps not surprising that > English seems more semantically precise or "straightforward," as -- short of > being a trained linguist -- you wold have less meta-awareness of its > nuances. It's not as if the Arabic and Russian examples you provide have no > English analogs. My comments come more from competent human translaters, than from my own personal experiences. An interesting thing about Russian is how the language has shifted since the fall of the Soviet Union. They have several words that all map to the English "you", which is easy for Russian>English, but hard for English>Russian. The Communist Party adopted "tui", the closest form typically spoken between family members, to refer to other Communist Party members. Then, with the fall of the Soviet Union, "tui" with its communist overloading, is now seldom used. The synonyms of "you" is a good example of a Russian richness not shared by English. However, Russian has no indefinite relationship form of "you", the only form that English has, in part because their written language is a relatively recent invention. Of course, if the relationship were an adjective, it could be omitted. Interestingly, English doesn't even have these adjectives in its lexicon, which makes some BIG gaps in the representable continuum. Steve Richfield ================= > Steve Richfield wrote: > >> Mike, >> >> On 12/1/08, *Mike Tintner* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto: >> [EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: >> >> I wonder whether you'd like to outline an additional list of >> "English/language's shortcomings" here. I've just been reading >> Gary Marcus' Kluge - he has a whole chapter on language's >> shortcomings, and it would be v. interesting to compare and analyse. >> >> The real world is a wonderful limitless-dimensioned continuum of >> interrelated happenings. We have but a limited window to this, and have an >> even more limited assortment of words that have very specific meanings. >> Languages like Arabic vary pronunciation or spelling to convey additional >> shades of meaning, and languages like Chinese convey meaning via joined >> concepts. These may help, but they do not remove the underlying problem. >> This is like throwing pebbles onto a map and ONLY being able to communicate >> which pebble is closest to the intended location. Further, many words have >> multiple meanings, which is like only being able to specify certain disjoint >> multiples of pebbles, leaving it to AI to take a WAG (Wild Ass Guess) which >> one was intended. >> This becomes glaring obvious in language translation. I learned this >> stuff from people on the Russian national language translator project. Words >> in these two languages have very different shades of meaning, so that in >> general, a sentence in one language can NOT be translated to the other >> language with perfect accuracy, simply because the other language lacks >> words with the same shading. This is complicated by the fact that the >> original author may NOT have intended all of the shades of meaning, but was >> stuck with the words in the dictionary. >> For example, a man saying "sit down" in Russian to a woman, is conveying >> something like an order (and not a request) to "sit down, shut up, and don't >> move". To remove that overloading, he might say "please sit down" in >> Russian. Then, it all comes down to just how he pronounces the "please" as >> to what he REALLY means, but of course, this is all lost in print. So, just >> how do you translate "please sit down" so as not to miss the entire meaning? >> One of my favorite pronunciation examples is "excuse me". >> In Russian, it is approximately "eezveneetsya minya" and is typically >> spoken with flourish to emphasize apology. >> In Arabic, it is approximately "afwan" without emphasis on either >> syllable, and is typically spoken curtly, as if to say "yea, I know I'm an >> idiot". It is really hard to pronounce these two syllables without emphases, >> but with flourish. >> There is much societal casting of meaning to common concepts. >> The underlying issue here is the very concept of translation, be it into >> a human language, or a table form in an AI engine.. Really good translations >> have more footnotes than translation, where these shades of meaning are >> explained, yet "modern" translation programs produce no footnotes, which >> pretty much consigns them to the "trash translation" pile, even with perfect >> disambiguation, which of course is impossible. Even the AI engines, that can >> carry these subtle overloadings, are unable to determine what nearby meaning >> the author actually intended. >> Hence, no finite language can convey specific meanings from within a >> limitlessly-dimensional continuum of potential meanings. English does better >> than most other languages, but it is still apparently not good enough even >> for automated question answering, which was my original point. Everywhere >> semantic meaning is touched upon, both within the wetware and within >> software, additional errors are introduced. This makes many answers >> worthless and all answers suspect, even before they are formed in the mind >> of the machine. >> Have I answered your question? >> Steve Richfield >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> < >> https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | Modify < >> https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Your Subscription [Powered by >> Listbox] <http://www.listbox.com> >> >> > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
