miller@b17a.INGR.COM (David S. Miller) (12/08/90)
jwl@garnet.berkeley.edu (James Wilbur Lewis) writes: >In learning by immersion, the foreign text is not the only channel of >communication. The student can often infer the meaning of a new phrase >from social convention (e.g. the first foreign phrase taught will almost >certainly be some sort of greeting), by gestures (pointing to objects >when teaching their names), and by trial-and-error (taking advantage >of the positive and negative feedback provided by the teacher). Correct. The translator would also base his assumptions on even more general assumptions, such as the belief that the "foreign text" operates under rules of syntax, and as such is consistent in regards to that syntax. In other words, the assumption is that what is being "translated" is a "language" of sorts. Further, besides the assumption that the foreign text is written in a language (If the translator received more "foreign text" in the future, he would expect it to follow the same general syntax as the previous text), there is the assumption that the foreign text is *meaningful* -- that there is an idea behind it. Another way to put this is that an entity created the text for the purposes of emotive/descriptive/... expression. But, this may not be the case at all. One may create a language (or use one of the many that exist already) and create output text in that language that is syntactically correct, but for all intents meaningless. >In learning by *imitation* (as discussed here), as opposed to immersion, >none of these cues are present. Under those circumstances, I don't see >any way to assign meaning to the symbols being manipulated, even if we >assume that the syntax is learnable. (I'll concede the theoretical >possibility, given a sufficiently large body of foreign text, but >the original proposal stipulated "no analysis, just copying", which >is a pretty tough constraint.) I agree here, too. Symbols that don't stand for anything aren't symbols at all! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Miller | How do we know that the light in the Intergraph | refrigerator goes out when we close the ingr!b17a!mapdm!miller | door, if we eat the only witnesses ? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
person@plains.NoDak.edu (Brett G. Person) (12/29/90)
Ahem!
Twas brllig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Try translating this. These are all valid words, most just aren't used in a
sane way. So that the overall effect is nonsense verse. In fact, Carroll
gave the world a new word in chortle. Which now has a vernacular meaning
substantially close to his intended meaning. Thus, he effected language. A
symbol (chortle) came to mean a certain type of laughter.
This, I will contend, is the Chineese room in action. None of us really
understand Carroll, but we can still enjoy his works.
Flame away!
--
Brett G. Person
North Dakota State University
uunet!plains!person | person@plains.bitnet | person@plains.nodak.edushafto@ils.nwu.edu (Eric Shafto) (01/05/91)
In article <7330@plains.NoDak.edu>, person@plains.NoDak.edu (Brett G. Person) writes: > Twas brllig and the slithy toves > Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. > All mimsy were the borogoves > And the mome raths outgrabe. > Try translating this. These are all valid words, most just aren't used in a > sane way. So that the overall effect is nonsense verse. In fact, Carroll > gave the world a new word in chortle. Which now has a vernacular meaning > substantially close to his intended meaning. Thus, he effected language. A > symbol (chortle) came to mean a certain type of laughter. > This, I will contend, is the Chineese room in action. None of us really > understand Carroll, but we can still enjoy his works. > Flame away! Well, if you insist: They are not all valid words. In fact, most of the nouns and verbs are made up by combining parts of other words. At least, according to Carroll. Leave out and, or, the, to be, did, and t'was, and you have almost no real words at all. Your point is well taken, though. We native English speakers get something like meaning out of the poem anyway. > Brett G. Person > North Dakota State University > uunet!plains!person | person@plains.bitnet | person@plains.nodak.edu Regards, Eric Shafto Institute for the Learning Sciences